The Snallygaster: Maryland’s Winged Monster — and Its Newspaper Hoax
About 4 min readThe Snallygaster — a half-bird, half-reptile monster with a metallic beak and a single eye — terrorised Frederick County, Maryland, in the newspapers of 1909. The creature was real enough to draw a reward from the Smithsonian. The sightings, it turned out, were written by the newspaper itself.