Snallygaster

Origins:

The Snallygaster, by all accounts, originates from the influx of German immigrants from the 1800s on. Bringing with them Old World lore and stories, it mixed with local lore, culminating in a truly American cryptid.

It's reported that with the immigrants came the idea of "Schnell geiste" (also written as "Schneller Geist" and "Schnellegeister," depending on the source), translating to (roughly) "quick spirit," a catch-all term for the little odd things that happen: unexplained drafts, doors closing on their own, small objects falling over, creaks and groans that seemingly come from nowhere. Also coming over were more (literally) draconic beliefs, as it was not uncommon to at least consider the possibility of dragons living amongst the Alps. Per "Itinera per Helvetiae alpinas regiones facta annis 1702–11" ("Travels through the Alpine regions of Switzerland made in the years 1702–11") (1723), a travelogue written by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, the Alps were teaming with

scaly dragons and slimy dragons, dragons with wings and feet, dragons with two legs and four legs, with and without wings, and sometimes without wings or legs, but with objectional heads with semi-human features, and an expression at once humorous and malignant.

As these melded with local cultures, what was originally a spirit began to evolve into a more physical creature; consistency in appearance and nature wasn't yet solidified. It's hard to even say when the name began the shift from the original German to a bastardized title: Snallygaster.

At least, that's the generally accepted background. Without concrete documentation anywhere, this is hard to definitively state as fact. Either way, it isn't until 1909 that the Snallygaster finds its first appearance in print.

In late January 1909, the Jersey Devil went national with a wave of sightings and hoofprints in the snow, and on February 12th the Snallygaster unfurls its wings in response (make of that what you will!). Per Atlas Obscura:

Less than a month after the Jersey Devil sightings began, the Valley Register ran a story about a man named Bill Gifferson who had been walking home when a winged creature attacked him, carried him up to a hill, slashed his jugular with its beak, drained his blood, and finally dumped his lifeless body in a ravine. A flurry of other stories and sightings followed, including one report of a man who happened upon the Snallygaster as it was draining a hundred-gallon tub of water, after which it exclaimed, “My, I’m dry, I haven’t had a good drink since I was killed in the Battle of Chickamauga,” as though the fearsome, dragonesque creature was somehow the ghost of a dead Civil War soldier. This went on until July, when a final dispatch from the Valley Register described a scientific expedition to discover the nocturnal monster’s lair, whereupon it erupted from the ground and flew off to Virginia.

The excitement got as far as Baltimore, but the Snallygaster failed to enter national lore as the Jersey Devil had. But just because something is so obvious a hoax doesn’t mean it doesn’t have something to tell us. The Snallygaster, copycat that it is, offers a strange, fascinating, and upsetting story of its own. It’s a story about what hides in the mountains, stalks the woods, and lurks in the shadows, about real forces that get associated with the strange and impossible.

The story of the Snallygaster would enjoy resurgences, however. In 1932, rival newspapers picked up the creature and dusted it off, providing conflicting physical descriptions in an attempt to one-up each other. They told a tale half-reptile, half-bird creature that might have sharp teeth or possibly several tentacles, that appeared at seemingly random. After several sightings and encounters, the newspapers seemed to come to a amiable agreement, and the creature was drowned in a large vat of moonshine, the alcohol dissolving the creature to bone before any officials could arrive. For prohibition reasons, they then blew the entire vat up with dynamite, destroying any possible remains of the creature.

It cropped back up in 1940s and 50s in response to a rash of UFO sightings. Per a 1947 article ("Snallygasters Next - Flying Discs Reported Seen Moving Across Cumberland") in the Cumberland Evening Times:

As the flying saucer mystery continues it is reported from Middletown, Md., that residents there aren't much impressed about the discs as they remember the snallygastsers. And, compared to snallygasters, flying discs and flying saucers sound pretty tame.

The first snallygaster (snallygaster bovalopus) made its appearance in Middletown in 1909 and periodically ever since has swooped down from the skies to terrify Middletown and neighboring communities. The creature's last foray was in 1932, when observers reported it was wearing water wings and riding a bicycle.

[...]

In 1944, for a short time, Westminster suffered a snallygaster scare.

The creature ultimately, however, was identified as a wildcat.