Exploring American Monsters: Delaware

Selbyville Swamp Monster

Two raccoon hunters trudging through the Great Cypress Swamp of Selbyville, Delaware, one night in the 1920s found something unexpected. The hunters knew something was wrong when their dogs froze, and tucked tail, but they didn’t expect what they encountered next. “They heard something screaming, and this horrible noise started coming toward them,” author Andy Nunez told the newspaper Coastal Point. “Rather than fire on whatever it was, they backed away. Something large and heavy continued to follow them, snapping through the branches as it came.”

The hunters encountered the Selbyville Swamp Monster, a large, hairy, hulking beast.

An editor of the Delmarva News, Ralph Grapperhaus, claimed he created the Selbyville Swamp Monster as a hoax in the 1960s, and dressed friend Fred Stevens in a hairy costume Stevens used to terrify motorists on Route 54, and Grapperhaus printed stories of Swamp Monster hunts in the Delmarva News. Stevens revealed his part in the hoax in 1987. He’d stopped dressing as the monster after a few months as hunts for the creature became common, and he feared for his life.