7 Spooky Legends Marylanders Grew Up Being Warned About
A good ghost story is even better when it happens close to home.
Many Marylanders grew up hearing tales set in places they know, from back roads to the bay.
Here are the local legends worth sharing before your doorbell starts ringing with trick-or-treaters.
1. Bowie’s Goatman
The Goatman first made the news on October 27, 1971, in the Bowie-based Prince George’s County News.
A follow-up headline read “Residents Fear Goatman Lives.”
By the end of November, the Washington Post carried the story to a larger audience.
The Goatman had arrived.
Fletchertown Road in Bowie became the stretch where the stories put him on the hunt.
Tellers disagree on where he came from.
One version has a scientist at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center whose experiment backfired.
Another has an angry goat herder.
The Department of Natural Resources says in an October 2024 write-up that the legend may have started in the early 20th century and resurfaced in the 1970s.
Many people who grew up in Prince George’s County have heard a version of it.
If you drive Fletchertown Road after dark, you may think of it.
2. Snallygaster
The Snallygaster is a dragon-like monster from Frederick County folklore.
If you picture a dragon, you’re close to the Department of Natural Resources’ description: Half reptile and half bird, with sharp teeth, claws, and large wings.
The first story about it ran in the Middletown Valley Register in 1909.
In December 1932, a Montgomery County Sentinel headline read “Sleeping Snallygaster Snores Serenely In Sugar Loaf Sunday; Seven Snares Set.”
The legend has two competing origin stories.
The Snallygaster Legend’s Two Origins
The Department of Natural Resources traces the Snallygaster legend to the German immigrant community in 18th-century Frederick County.
“Schnelle geist” means “quick ghost” in German.
The Baltimore Banner reported that a retired librarian and author became convinced the Middletown paper’s staff invented it.
That case rests partly on an 1882 folklore book, South Mountain Magic, that never mentions the monster.
The first story’s headline read “The Colored People Are in Great Danger.”
The department also notes that news stories from the early 1900s through the 1970s are reported to have portrayed the monster as preying on people of color.
3. Black Aggie
Black Aggie is a shrouded statue that once marked a grave in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville.
Brig.
Gen. Felix Agnus, a Baltimore newspaper man, commissioned it around 1905.
It copied another funerary statue, the one at Rock Creek Cemetery, without a license.
Some said her eyes glowed green or red.
Stare into them, the stories warned, and you’d go blind.
Sit on her lap and you’d die.
In 1967, descendants of Agnus donated the statue to the Smithsonian.
The statue left Pikesville that year.
The Banner reported in 2024 that the statue’s courtyard in Washington, D.C., near the Dolley Madison House, is open to the public on weekdays.
4. Moll Dyer’s Rock
Moll Dyer’s Rock moved to Tudor Hall Manor, home of the St. Mary’s County Historical Society, in 2021.
For almost 50 years before that, it sat in the Old Jail Museum.
The story goes that Moll Dyer took the blame for an influenza epidemic in the winter of 1697.
Next, a mob set her cabin on fire.
She escaped into the woods on a bitterly cold night in February 1698.
The tale ends with her frozen hand on a large rock.
The rumor says touching the rock can make you dizzy or even ill.
Leonardtown’s mayor proclaimed Moll Dyer Day in 2021, to fall on the last Saturday in February each year.
Psst! How much do you know about Maryland’s monsters? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Maryland Legend IQ
Answer eight questions on Maryland’s monsters, witches, and haunted history. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Rebecca Fowler is the only person Maryland executed for witchcraft. Which county convicted her?
5. Chessie
Chessie is the Chesapeake Bay's snake-like creature.
Many people who grew up on the Chesapeake still know the name, so you've likely heard it.
The Department of Natural Resources says the first report came from a 1936 flyover.
In 1982, the Christian Science Monitor reported on a three-minute videotape of a slender, 35-foot object snaking through the bay.
A businessman from Kent Island shot the tape.
He filmed it from 200 yards away.
Scientists at the Smithsonian would examine the tape the following month.
6. Dewayo
The Dewayo is reportedly a 6-foot-tall, wolf-like creature with a bushy tail that walks on two legs.
If you check the Department of Natural Resources, it dates the Dewayo legend to the 1940s in Frederick County.
According to lore, the Dewayo hatches from a Snallygaster egg.
The lore also gives it human traits, so you may picture something more than a wolf.
In 1973, state police began searching Sykesville for a huge, hairy monster that residents described as a cross between the two creatures, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Psst! How much do you know about Halloween myths? Tap each card and see how many you can call.
7. Snarly Yow
The Snarly Yow is a dog spirit said to appear in spots around Western Maryland and West Virginia.
If you pass the old National Road in Boonsboro, a plaque warns you to beware of it, according to Hagerstown Community College.
The tale is often tied to Civil War events.
The story seems to have started with 18th-century German immigrant folk tales.
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