The Sykesville Monster, Carroll County, Maryland, 1973

Sykesville is a small town in Carroll County, Maryland, on the Patapsco River. Woods and railway tracks run close to the houses. Frederick County folklore already had its monsters, the snallygaster and the dwayyo. In late May 1973, something new began moving through the trees.

May 29, 1973. About 10:30 pm. Anthony Dorsey of Norris Avenue heard his dog apparently "fighting something" in the woods about 12 metres behind the house. He went in. He heard "a crashing sound." In his flashlight beam, two large eyes reflected red. They were more than 2 metres off the ground.

Officer Charles Rupp of the Sykesville police answered the call. He heard the crashing too. Dorsey's mother, Mrs. Agnes Dorsey, told the Baltimore Afro-American: "I hope it's caught!"

June 3. Again about 10:30 at night. E. Howard Gassaway saw a large figure through his back window. Outside, a large ape-like creature was heading toward a neighbouring house. His mother and his cousin, Diane Coleman, saw it too. Later it returned. They watched from about 10 metres as it emerged from a thicket and stood. It was grey-white, almost 2.5 metres tall. The next afternoon Gassaway saw it again beside the railway tracks. So did William Rozier, 19, and Tom Williams. Afterwards, tracks were found.

Around June 8, a truck driver from out of state was on Route 32. Something dark brown, 7 to 8 feet tall and "caked with mud from the waist down" seemed to be sitting by the roadside. It stood up. It looked at him for a moment or two. Then it went into the woods. "It could have been a man on stilts," he said.

Police Chief Omer Hebert found several large, human-like tracks in mud, about 13 inches long, and made a plaster cast of one. Town police, the Maryland State Police and a game warden searched. Residents formed their own hunting parties. They told the Evening Star of something "between 7 and 10 feet tall," "thin of build," with "long grayish-brown hair" and "big, big feet." The chief worried that jittery armed hunters might be more dangerous to each other than the creature. One woman told The Sun it would "cry like a baby and then scream like a woman."

The State Police called in Dr. Ted Roth, assistant director of the Baltimore Zoo. He concluded the print came from a large human foot "with fallen arches." Zoo officials thought a sandal could have made it. A State Police spokesman blamed hysteria over The Legend of Boggy Creek, then playing in Baltimore theatres. Witnesses rejected that. John Lutz of Odyssey Scientific Research logged the case as "an unidentified prowler until more information is gathered" and warned a prankster might call it "all a big joke." No hoaxer was ever identified. No creature was ever caught.

In 1980 the Enigma Project re-interviewed the witnesses. Their accounts were unchanged. Mark Opsasnick later rebuilt the story for Strange Magazine from the local papers and his own investigation. Hebert took the cast with him when he left office and moved out of state. Its whereabouts are unknown.

In 2014, Main Street Director Ivy Wells said no official police records of the investigations could be found. Lon Strickler, who reported his own encounter near the Patapsco in 1981, is among those who see a cover-up in that gap. The same year, the case reached television in Monsters and Mysteries in America. A local pub sold a drink named after the monster.