The Dwayyo Attack on "John Becker" near Gambrill State Park

The Dwayyo was older than 1965. In north Frederick, Washington and Franklin counties it was a bogeyman. It kept children indoors after dark. It explained dead or missing livestock. Five-pointed stars on barns were said to ward it off. Noel Sloboda traces reports to 1944, with mysterious cries and footprints at West Middleton. Writers link it to the Pennsylvania Dutch Hexenwolf.

Late November 1965. The Frederick papers printed a story from a man who called himself John Becker. He gave his address as Fern Rock Road, a narrow dirt road near the entrance of Gambrill State Park.

It was a Saturday evening. He heard a strange noise in his yard and went to look. Something was moving toward him. It was as big as a bear, with long black hair and a bushy tail. It growled like a wolf or a dog in anger.

As it drew closer, it rose onto its hind legs and attacked him. Becker fought the creature until it ran into the woods. One retelling says his wife and children were left in horror. He reported the attack to the state police and called the animal a Dwayyo. Where the name came from, he never explained.

Reporter George May of the Frederick Post kept the story alive. A Frederick hunter said his dogs had chased something black near Middletown. It "trotted something like a horse." A woman at Ellerton said it "cried like a baby and then screamed like a woman for months." Then a man claimed to have a baby Dwayyo in his basement. City police went to the house. The homeowner called it a prank. May answered in verse: "The City Police went to a basement to get themselves a Dwayyo; but when they got there the basement was bare and the Dwayyo had gone away-yo."

Students at Frederick Community College organised a monster hunt. Between 50 and 100 signed up. Nobody showed. Then the Frederick News-Post received a letter for John Becker from the Frederick County Treasurer. Inside was a $1 dog licence. The breed read "Dwayyo?". By mid-December, the story had faded.

The Maryland State Police took the report. Sgt. Clyde B. Tucker reportedly said that, as far as he knew, there was no such thing as a Dwayyo. There was no Fern Rock Road in Frederick County. No John Becker could be found.

A false name and a road that does not exist point to a prank call to the paper. Local writers say so plainly. No hoaxer was ever named. Many callers thought of a big dog instead. The paper printed an artist's sketch, and it reminded them of an Irish Wolfhound on its hind legs. James Rada Jr. notes the breed stands over 3 ft at the shoulder and can weigh more than 120 lb.

The name outlived the joke. In the summer of 1966, a man outside Gambrill State Park described "a shaggy two legged creature the size of a deer" that screamed and backed away, its movements "almost spider-like." Around the mid-1970s, two men near Thurmont watched an animal "at least 6 ft tall" cross their headlights. In 1978, two park rangers near Cunningham Falls saw "a large hairy creature running on two legs." Today the Dwayyo is remembered as Maryland's wolf-man, a dogman story with the Snallygaster as its mortal enemy.