CRYPTIDS & CREATURES
Blood-Drinking Dragon of South Mountain Stirs Anew in Podcast Retelling
A Weird Darkness episode revives the Snallygaster, the Maryland beast said to have drawn the interest of the Smithsonian and a President.
SOUTH MOUNTAIN, MD. — A creature that Maryland families once guarded against with painted stars has returned to public attention. The Snallygaster, a dragon-like bird said to drink the blood of its victims, leads the latest episode of the Weird Darkness podcast, published on the second of November.
According to the episode's notes, families in the region painted seven-pointed stars on their barns to keep the beast at bay. The notes say German settlers in Maryland called the creature the Schneller Geist and described it as drinking blood through a metal beak lined with razor teeth.
The legend reached its height in 1909. The episode summary states that sightings near South Mountain filled the pages of the Middletown Valley Register that year, and that the reports drew the interest of both the Smithsonian and Theodore Roosevelt. The notes do not say what either of them concluded, and the matter is left for listeners to pursue.
The episode's own title promises a "Surprising End" to the legend, and its notes pose the questions in the manner of a coroner's inquest: whether the creature was real, where it was hiding, and why only some people ever saw it. The segment is credited to a written account by Ellen Lloyd for Ancient Pages. The notes give no answer to those questions, and this newspaper makes none.
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