INTERVIEW: Patrick boyton - author Snallygaster: lost legend of frederick county

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

 Ray Tarara: Let's just start off with what your name is, and a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Snallygaster.

Patrick Boyton: My name is Patrick Boyton. I grew up in New Jersey, but I've lived in Frederick County, Maryland since 2006. Many people who live here consider it Western Maryland, but that's a geographical misnomer. It's more like Northern Central Maryland. My full-time job is, I'm a civil servant for the federal government, but I've always enjoyed writing and researching local history, and that's how I spend my spare time.

Ray: What was the first introduction to the Snallygaster itself for you?

Patrick: My first introduction to the Snallygaster was soon after my wife and I moved to Maryland, we were at a local brewery and one of the local beers was called the Snallygaster. It was on the board, up above and it struck me as a funny name. I asked the waiter about it and the lucky for us the waiter was a native to the Frederick area, and he was able to give me a whole origin about the local legend. I was hooked from there.

Ray: From that point on, you went on to actually write a book about it. What about it, specifically, got you so interested that you would spend so much time researching and writing about this specific topic?

Patrick: The way the Snallygaster was described to me at first was this winged dragon-like creature, and right away it made me think of the Jersey Devil, which was a myth that I had grown up hearing about in New Jersey. I went online to look for information about the Snallygaster, and there was really not a lot out there. This was around 2006, and just wasn't a whole lot of information about the Snallygaster online. I went to our county library and they have an excellent local history section and a really knowledgeable staff. I started going through old newspaper articles. Everything was on microfilm, so it was very cinematic. I was scrolling through these old microfiches, it was very Silence of the Lambs. Before I knew it, I gathered a stack of research and my wife recommended that I write a book on it, and that's how it started.

Ray: Had you written a book before this, or was this your first book you wrote?

Patrick: It was my first book. I had not. I'd done writing very short stories and such, made some short films, but I'd never written a book before.

Ray: Didn't you go on to write up a children's book actually about the Snallygaster after your primary book?

Patrick: I did. That one's called Beware of the Snallygaster. It's a chapter book for eight to 10, 11-year-olds. It follows the adventures of two local kids trying to seek out the Snallygaster.

Ray: Have you ever thought about doing a film on the Snallygaster with your filmmaking background?

Patrick: I have not, no. It's a good idea. I hope somebody does it.

Ray: What can you tell us about Maryland at the time of the first Snallygaster sightings?

Patrick: The first settlers in Frederick and Washington counties were the Pennsylvania Dutch who migrated from South Eastern and South Central Pennsylvania in the late 18th century. Frederick was an important stop on their migration route as the came down from Gettysburg and they continued south through Winchester, Roanoke, Virginia. The Pennsylvania Dutch, it sounds like they should be immigrants from the Netherlands, but they're actually German settlers. The name Dutch in this case is from Deutsch which of course means German. Some folks think that Pennsylvania Dutch are actually Dutch but they're German.

Ray: During that time, what was the first Snallygaster sighting?

Patrick: The first Snallygaster sighting, according to Alyce Weinberg's books, Spirits of Frederick, tales of Snallygaster go back to the earliest German settlers in about 1735, but there's nothing really recorded until nearly a century and a half after that.

Ray: With these German settlers who came and were reporting this creature, did they have a history of reporting similar sightings back home? Is there folklore that stretches back even further than their time in the US?

Patrick: Based on my research, the Snallygaster and its description as a flying winged creature probably come close to dragon folklore. Of course, there's a lot of dragon folklore in Germany. In 1876, there was a widow from Washington society, her name was Madeleine Dahlgren, and she purchased an old inn on South Mountain in Washington County, that neighbors Frederick County. She turned the inn into her private residence, her summer residence. She was a writer and she had started collecting folklore and legends from the locals who lived on the mountain. She published these legends in a book called South Mountain Magic. It's a great book. It's still in print, by the way. It's filled with all these crazy stories about werewolves and hoop snakes. Hoop snakes are these snakes that move by biting their own tail and rolling around like a tire. They're really crazy, and just really, really great stories. She doesn't mention the word Snallygaster in South Mountain Magic, but Madeleine Dahlgren does talk a lot about ghost stories and poltergeists. In my early research, I discovered that Snallygaster may be a mispronunciation of Schnielgeister , which is itself a corruption of the German term, Schnelle Geist, or quick spirit. In the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, quick spirit is responsible for things being knocked off shelves and moving around, like a poltergeist we would think of. The Snallygaster actually could have started out as a ghost story. The Snallygaster might be an amalgam of a traditional ghost story and dragon lore.

Ray: Interesting how it goes from something that's incorporeal, that you can't see, to something that's flesh and blood, dragon flying over the skies [chuckles] .

Patrick: Exactly.

Ray: You touched a little bit on the physical descriptions of the Snallygaster, but could you maybe just give us a clear description of what the Snallygaster looked like at the time and how it was reported?

Patrick: Around the 1909, when it first started appearing in the local newspaper, it was described as a winged dragon-like creature. In addition to its wings, it was described as having a needle-like beak and four legs armed with steel claws, like hooks, and a single eye in the middle of the forehead. It was also reported to emit a screech, like a locomotive, whistle.

Ray: Sorry, let me just-- I just lost my spot for a second. Could you tell us maybe about the original runners of Snallygaster stories in 1909? What was the beginning of those stories?

Patrick: The original run of the Snallygaster stories in 1909 began on February 12th of 1909. It appeared in The Middletown Valley Register, which was a local newspaper. A Snallygaster was spotted by a man named Bill Gifferson who was walking on a country road one evening when a winged beast swooped down from the night sky and snatched him up, pierced his neck with a beak and tossed his lifeless body over a cliff. I'm not sure if Mr. Gifferson counts as an eye witness because he didn't live to tell the tale, but that's the first recorded Snallygaster victim, and the first time the Snallygaster appears in the newspaper. Following the initial story, there were a series of articles that appeared in The Register and surrounding papers about additional sightings in the area. There was a man named George Jacobs who was hunting this Snallygaster, and when the beast came down from the sky and Jacobs shot at it, but apparently, the bullet rattled off its hide as a pitting an iron plate, and the man narrowly escaped into a barn. It was a happier ending for him than Bill Gifferson for sure.

Ray: Do you know who recorded that story about Bill Gifferson? Where did that originate from? Because obviously he wouldn't be the one to report it. Do you know who told that story for the first time?

Patrick: I don't. I don't know who told the story of Bill Gifferson for the first time. I think it's interesting that the first Snallygaster story has no eyewitnesses. It makes it funny in a way. It wasn't lost on me when I was researching it. I always found it amusing.

Ray: Have you ever heard any stories about whether Bill Gifferson was actually a real person or not? Is there any record that someone did die in the area named Bill Gifferson at the time?

Patrick: I did do some research to see if there was an actual Bill Gifferson, and I was unable to find anything in the records. Now, some of the names, particularly the publisher and writer associated at the paper at the time, were real individuals, but Bill Gifferson and some of the other eyewitnesses were not names I was able to find.

Ray: What do you think caused the monster to arrive in the area at this particular time in history?

Patrick: When I started researching the Snallygaster, I had reread an old book I had on the Jersey Devil. As I mentioned earlier, as soon as I heard about Snallygaster, I had decided that it definitely parallels to the New Jersey stories, New Jersey. Soon as I started reading about the Snallygaster, I realized that there were these parallels between the Snallygaster and the New Jersey Devil, and I had heard stories about the New Jersey Devil growing up. I went back to an old book I had on the Jersey Devil, and there was a big rash of sightings. Lo and behold, they happened just weeks before the Snallygaster stories started to emerge. The similarities didn't end there. They both shared similar physical characteristics as far as having wings and talons. They were both referred to as Jabberwocks, which, of course, comes from the Lewis Carroll poem about a fierce creature. If you're inclined to believe the stories, you can surmise that the Jersey Devil traveled south and is the same creature as the Snallygaster. Certainly, a lot of people have come to that conclusion. Or you can come to the conclusion that The Valley Register publishers ripped off the story from the New Jersey papers. I don't stress that connection too much because nobody likes to think of their hometown monster as being a knockoff with another monster [laughs] .

Ray: That's true. I feel like Bill Gifferson's story is probably the one that stands out the most to me. Do you have any others from this time that stuck out to you as just interesting or funny stories about the Snallygaster?

Patrick: Sure. From the 1909 era, to me, the most interesting Snallygaster story is the connection that it had with President Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was in his last weeks of office, and when the Snallygaster stories made their way down to DC, there were reports that the Smithsonian Institution wanted to capture it alive. It didn't take long before President Roosevelt, himself, expressed interest in hunting down the beast. Of course, Teddy was already known for his big game prowess, so it would have made perfect sense to rehearse at the time. Roosevelt, as I mentioned, was in the last weeks of his presidency, and he was planning a trip to Africa to hunt big game, and his African safari dominated the papers, so it was big news. Much more interesting than the incoming president-elect Taft, which nobody seemed real excited about. Everybody loved Teddy Roosevelt, and I think that papers wanted to continue talking about him even as he was getting ready to leave office. I love the idea of Teddy Roosevelt hunting the Snallygaster because it's easy to picture him climb into this legend because he's already this larger than life mythic feature. It's easy for Teddy Roosevelt to picture playing into the Snallygaster legend because he's already a mythic figure in his own right. It really captures that turn of the century America to have these two legends battling it out, but I don't think it ever happened.

Ray: Do you have any sense of whether Teddy Roosevelt actually believed this could be a real creature or if he was just jumping on the bandwagon and maybe making light of the situation?

Patrick: I think either Teddy Roosevelt was making light of the Snallygaster stories -there's a possibility, he had heard the Snallygaster stories- or there's another possibility that Teddy Roosevelt had not heard about the Snallygaster and that the papers were capitalizing on Teddy's popularity, and injected him into the Snallygaster story, which really makes perfect sense, as I mentioned, because he was a famous hunter, even at the time. An interesting aside is, a lot of animal specimens at the Smithsonian Institution today were ones killed by Teddy Roosevelt on that African trip that he took after leaving office.

Ray: Have you found any evidence in your searching that Teddy Roosevelt actually did comment on the Snallygaster? Or is it all word from papers publishing stories at the time that maybe could not be very credible?

Patrick: I couldn't find any direct quotes that Teddy Roosevelt had commented on the Snallygaster. I couldn't really find too many stories from the DC papers. It was quoted, from the local papers, from The Middletown Valley Register and the Frederick paper that he was involved. It's probably pretty unlikely that it was something that he knew about or seriously considered. Like I said, I don't want to ruin anybody's fun. It's a fun story and it's fun to think about, but I don't see any historical evidence for that action to take place. Ray: That was definitely the reason we first got interested in this story, is hearing that Teddy Roosevelt publicly said that he was going to hunt a monster called the Snallygaster. It initially grabbed us. We were like, "Wait, what?" [laughs]

Patrick: It's great.

Ray: Yes, it's hilarious. What caused the Snallygaster to stop attacking people in 1909?

Patrick: What caused it to stop attacking people?

Ray: Yes, to stop attacking people.

Patrick: It was in 1909 that the Snallygaster met its match in the form of a group of men from Emmitsburg, Maryland, which is in the northern part of the county, Frederick County. There was a railway worker named Ed Brown, he was sitting outside the Emmitsburg Railroad Station when he heard a noise around back. Now, he believes that this was a coal thief because, in the winter months, coal theft was actually one of the most common crimes committed in rural Maryland. He went around back and sure enough, he found that he was 16 pieces of coal short. He was about to go get the authorities when the Snallygaster swooped down and grabbed him, pick them up by his suspenders, and started to fly off. Now lucky for Brown, his buddy Dan Snyder pulled up in his automobile, and Dan Snyder grabbed his friend. Dan Snyder grabbed Mr. Brown by his ankles and he was pulling him down so there was this tug of wars. The Snallygaster was trying to fly off and he finally was able to pull Mr. Brown down and free him. Then, the two of them ran and chased the Snallygaster off into the woods. At some point, there was a deputy game warden, who showed up, flashed his badge, and then ordered the Snallygaster from the county. I guess the Snallygaster was law-abiding because he flew off and it wasn't heard, again, for another 23 years.

Ray: These stories are captured in newspapers, is that the way you're finding them?

Patrick: Yes, these stories were mostly taken from the Middletown Valley Register.

Ray: Could you maybe talk a little bit about the history of the Middletown Valley Register, if you have it? Was it known for being a credible source of information?

Patrick: Well, the Middletown Valley Register was a daily paper that served the Middletown Valley of Washington County. It started in 1856, I believe, and actually operated until 1990 when it became a weekly paper. Then it turns into TheMiddletown Citizen, which is still in print.

Ray: What can you tell us about George Rhoderick and Ralph Wolf and their association with the paper?

Patrick: The Middletown Valley Register's publisher or the editor of The Middletown Valley Register was a gentleman named George C. Rhoderick, and Ralph Wolf was the writer. Wolf did most of the writings of these articles and Rhoderick was the editor at the time. They were both real members of the community and they actually did run that paper for that period.

Ray: Did they ever come out and say publicly that they made up any of these stories? Or did they never admit to any of that?

Patrick: To my knowledge, Rhoderick and Wolf never came out to admit that they have created any hoax, but I think it's important to point out that hope stories were very prominent up until a few years following the turn of the century there. After the end of the Civil War through the early 1900s, newspaper readership has risen 26%. From the end of the Civil War to the early 1990s, newspaper readership rose from 10 to 26% of the population, and this reflected the illiteracy rate which had dropped from 20% to 10. This was due to an increasing population and urbanization. Suddenly there was this huge demand for newspaper content, and papers would often make up and spread crazy stories to stand out in a crowded marketplace. These weren't just for ideological or political slant, although there were certainly that, but a lot of them were just really nutty off the wall stories just to get attention. Before becoming a famous author, Mark Twain wrote a story about a man who murdered his wife and ran through the streets with her scalp and his own throat cut. Then there was another story about a man who had crossed the Atlantic in a hot air balloon. There was another story about a man who would cross the Atlantic in a hot air balloon, and this was written 100 years before it actually happened. The writer of that story was Edgar Allan Poe's, so this was pretty popular at the time. Entering the 20th century, there was a turn toward journalistic integrity as readers became more sophisticated, but a lot of the smaller papers like The Valley Register continued to run and reprint these hoax stories.

Ray: That makes a lot of sense. Were there any political issues at the time that may have prompted them to write these stories more than just for viewership?

Patrick: The first victim of the Snallygaster, Bill Gifferson, was reported to be an African American man. There were references in the articles that the Snallygaster preyed on Black people. A book about the Maryland history, published in 1940, echoes this sentiment and described the Snallygaster as being a reptilian bird of that size that preys on Black children. Being that this was Jim Crow-era south, when I was doing my research I just assumed that these references were reflected as general racism that was prevalent at the time and place, but while this was certainly the case, the connection of the Snallygaster to the African American community appeared to have been more pointed in its political targeting. In a follow-up article, another African American resident was quoted as saying he wasn't scared of running across the Snallygaster, the only devil he was worried about was the democratic amendment next fall. I started researching this and the amendment in question was the Strauss' Amendment, which was a democratic proposal than intended to restrict the voting rights of African Americans. Democrats controlled Maryland government on a white supremacist platform in the early 1900s. Reading the editorials and coverage of the Valley Register, it was clear that the papers publishers held a republican position, and Middletown was and is still to this day a strong Republican stronghold. I believe that Rhoderick and Wolf were using these Snallygaster stories in part to troll Democrats in a way, and put a spotlight on the concern of voter suppression in the African American community. It seems to have worked because the Strauss' Amendment was one of three attempts to amend the state constitution to suppress the Black vote and all three were defeated by referendum.

Ray: Interesting. You think they were actually trying to poke holes, as opposed to use the Snallygaster as a point of intimidation for Black people?

Patrick: That's really hard to say. There is a belief that that's what they were doing that, but there's also a sense in reading the peripheral editorials and articles in the paper that were coming out at the same time that there was this issue of voter suppression and that this was an issue that they were concerned about. There would be these editorials that the paper would run side by side next to the Snallygaster stories, and the editorials would talk about challenging African American voter suppression, voter rights, and so forth. That happened later on, we can discuss that, but reading these Snallygaster stories in the context of the newspapers themselves through the microfilm as opposed to an article that's been cited, I feel it really contextualizes the stories and really finds it and helps you understand the political climate. Maybe the political sensibilities and biases of the paper at the time. I started to really get a sense as to what they were trying to do with these stories. Because when I first started reading them, I had no idea that there was this racist underlying theme running through the Snallygaster stories. It took a lot of thinking to really put that in context and really begin to understand what that was.

Ray: That's really interesting. Can you talk about how the Snallygaster disappeared for about 32 years and then came back in 1941? What was the first sighting at that time?

Patrick: The Snallygaster actually came back about 23 years later on November 11th, 1932. A number of people had claimed to have seen this giant winged one-eyed creature flying over the South Mountain region, and it was determined to be the Snallygaster that had visited the region in 1909. This time, the creature was set to change colors and throw out long tentacles like an octopus. If you see the cover of my first book, Snallygaster, The Lost Legend of Frederick County, the illustration on the book cover is the 1932 Snallygaster with the tentacles coming out of its mouth. Those tentacles hadn't really been part of its description in the 1909 stories.

Ray: Wasn't there an alleged photograph at the time that was taken of the Snallygaster too?

Patrick: There was, yes [laughs] . Yes, there was a photograph at the legend, and it's neat to look at that in the microfilm. I believe I have a copy of that in the book. It's just this grainy image of a flying creature. It's just like a bad 1932 Photoshop.

Ray: Do you have any background or history on that photograph that was published?

Patrick: I don't have any history on that. I imagine the photograph was something that was created and manipulated for The Middleton Valley Register.

Ray: Actually, I didn't realize that it was 1936, you said, when it returned?

Patrick: Yes, it was actually 1932. It was a 23-year difference between 1932 and 1909.

Ray: Then was there a reemergence in 1941?

Patrick: There was, there was a reemergence. I can talk a little bit about the 1932 sources. Those are really the two main eras, 1909 and then 1932. Then there are these sporadic reemergences, it sporadically re-emerges again, here and there through the years.

Ray: I see. If we could dig into 1932 sightings and what was happening, that would be awesome.

Patrick: Sure. Stories of the Snallygaster in the 1932 run get less fanciful and significantly more frightening than in the 1909 run. The city of Frederick is the county seat of Frederick County. Even then, it was much different than the rest of the county where the Snallygaster stories had originated. Now, Frederick had factories, and shops, and row houses, so when reports the Snallygaster came to the city of Frederick, it took on a much more like an urban legend flair. Instead of flying over farmland and swooping down to eat chickens, the Snallygaster was seen scaling fences and peering through bedroom windows. It was much more threatening and menacing, more akin to something we'd see in a modern horror movie.

Ray: Was there any tie during that time to the Snallygaster and prohibition?

Patrick: Yes, there was some. I could talk a little bit about how the Snallygaster died in 1932. Then we could use that to segue into the political events that were happening around that time if that works for you.

Ray: Yes, that sounds great.

Patrick: Apparently in 1932, the Snallygaster died from alcohol. He was attracted to fumes from a moonshine still out in the woods at Washington County. I guess he flew too close and was overcome by the fumes, and then fell into this 2,500 gallon vat of boiling moonshine. Of course, the moonshiners that were attending the elicit still fled into the woods, and by the time that our prohibition officers arrived on the scene, the mash had eaten away at the monster's skin and muscle leaving nothing but a skeletal remain. Just to be sure, they put 500 pounds of dynamite onto the vat and blew it up.

Ray: This is recounted in newspapers at the time, right? That's how we know about this.

Patrick: Yes, that story was recounted in The Middletown Valley Register. That's the story that had the big Snallygaster allegedly photograph, and it also had a photograph of the prohibition officers standing there with their rifles and standing over the still. It was quite something. What motivated that was prohibition that was going on in the country at the time [crosstalk] . Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Ray: No worries. I was just wondering, was the goal to scare people? Bootleggers away from creating moonshine? It seems like such an odd use of the creature.

Patrick: Yes, I think that the local newspaper, The Middletown Valley Register, which was very pro-prohibition was using these stories of the Snallygaster being attracted to moonshine stills as a way to scare off moonshiners. It was used as a way to scare off the moonshiners. It was also a way to get in their political shots as being pro-temperance anti-alcohol. Just as Jim Crow voter suppression was a big issue in 1909, the important issue in 1932 was prohibition. During the Democratic National Convention of that year, candidate Franklin Roosevelt declared war on prohibition. Americans were eager to get their legal drink back on and Roosevelt was eager to make that happen, and he won by a landslide. 10 days after he won the presidential election, The Valley Register started running the Snallygaster stories again, so there's a real connection there between Franklin Roosevelt's election and the re-emergence of the Snallygaster story. The Valley Register publishers, at the time these two gentlemen named Charles Main and Edward Leiter, they were big supporters of upholding prohibition, and they feared that it will kill-- The Valley Register publishers, Charles Main, and Edward Leiter, they were big supporters of upholding prohibition. They feared that a repeal of the 18th Amendment wasn't far behind, which of course it wasn't. The paper was filled with pro-prohibition pieces and it was time to unleash the Snallygaster to take on another social evil in their eyes.

Ray: I think it's so interesting that the Snallygaster was just so clearly used as a political platform to push certain ideologies. Do you think that's common for mythological creatures like the Snallygaster to be used in this way? I can't think of any examples of Bigfoot or something like that being used so clearly to push a platform like this. Have you seen any other examples of a creature being used like this?

Patrick: Well, no. That's an excellent question that you're asking. That's why I was talking about the real benefits of reading these stories in context of a newspaper, in the layout of the paper itself so you get to see all the surrounding peripheral articles and issues that were going on at the time. I think once these weird stories get isolated, reprinted, archived, put into a book form, all that stuff gets lost. You just distill it down to this creature. Who knows? I haven't really researched these other myths, other legends, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are rooted in these social issues at the time, especially ones that came about during the turn of the century when these hoax stories were still really prevalent.

Ray: That's really interesting. It makes me want to dig back into old stories that I've heard and just try and figure out what was happening at the time to see how it ties in because I'm sure it does. In isolation you don't get the whole picture, which is a really interesting way to look at it.

Patrick: You're absolutely right. In a way for the story, I think to survive and endure it almost has to become isolated from these instances, because first of all, there's just lots of ugly racial connotations, like in the case of 1909. When I came across that stuff, I didn't know I was going to come across it when I was writing the book. To be honest, there was a part of me that said, "I don't know how to fit this into the tone of a book I was writing." I was writing this book about this interesting creature and this ugly stuff has come up, this racism, and I don't know how to deal with it. Well, I had to deal with it, because it's part of history and it's part of the Snallygaster's history. I couldn't rightly ignore it, because then I would be whitewashing the Snallygaster myth and promoting it. Now, when I've given talks locally about the Snallygaster and those points come up. Some people bristle at it as if I'm making the Snallygaster less fun or taking something that they view as playful and innocent and associating it with something much darker, but it is what it is.

Ray: There was a reoccurrence of the Snallygaster I think in 1947, that may be tied into another interesting event at the time. Do you have any information on those sightings, and what else was occurring in July 8th of 1947 to cause the Snallygaster to reappear?

Patrick: Sure. On July 8th, 1947 the Frederick news ran a story about a local man who had witnessed flying saucers, traveling from the North and headed towards Washington, DC. There were five flying saucers in formation, and the paper tried to tie the incident into the Snallygaster legend by basically saying, "We're not afraid of you at Bose. We've dealt with Snallygasters. Now, I researched it, and 1947 was when the UFO sightings first started to begin. I'm not a UFO expert, but I'm sure something your listeners will be much more familiar with it, the background here. But apparently there was a pilot who had first reported a flying saucer UFO in 1947, June of that year, I believe. I think it was that summer. That's when the flying saucer or UFO stories really started to take off. There, again, we have an example of a local paper capitalizing on the UFO craze and folding in their own legend to make it relevant.

Ray: In 1953, the Snallygaster was used as a comparison to Senator McCarthy. Could you talk a little bit about that and why the Snallygaster was used as a comparison?

Patrick: Sure. I didn't run across the information about-- I never ran across the story connecting the Snallygaster to Senator Joseph McCarthy, when I was doing my research. It was something that I came across later on, probably in the same sources that you have, Wikipedia and stuff. I don't have a whole lot to say about the connection between Senator McCarthy and the Snallygaster. Except for that the word 'Snollygoster', which is a derivation of Snallygaster, is often used as a description of an unscrupulous politician. It's still occasionally will come up. If you do a search for snollygoster a lot of the stuff that comes up are references to a politician. If a politician is acting without scruples, they are called a 'Snollygoster', and I don't know where that started. I don't know when that term was first published or who ran with it, but there's always been a connection between Snallygaster for snollygoster and corrupt politicians. Probably, because of the Snallygaster proximity to Washington, DC, if I can take a guess.

Ray: Could you talk about Gordon Chaplin and what his relationship with Snallygaster is?

Patrick: Sure. Gordon Chaplin, he's a writer and he was a staff writer at the Washington Post in the 1970s, and he wrote pieces for their Sunday magazine on travel and politics, and his stories often had a humorous bent. He wrote a-- Gordon Chaplin in 1976 published a story called, "The Grand Bcentennial Washington Post Potomac Expedition to Darkest Maryland in Search of the Mysterious Snallygaster." It sort of reads like a cross between Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and a Wes Anderson movie. It's very absurd, in the vein of Hunter Thompson's Gonzo journalism. Again, you read the article in context. It's clearly some sort of satire. It's playful, it's fun, it's bizarre.

Ray: Has it ever been misinterpreted as not satire? Is it pretty widely understood that this is something that's not meant to be taken seriously?

Patrick: No, I think it is misinterpreted as not being satire, probably quite often. Because as we were talking about before, most of these stories exist out of context eventually, right? Gordon Chaplin just goes on a Snallygaster expedition in 1976, and it's funded by the Washington Post. That becomes the story that most people read. It just becomes part of Snallygaster lore. The idea that it was this satirical article-which is a great piece, I read it in full-gets lost I think, but maybe that's not such a terrible thing

Ray: After his expedition. Did he ever come back with any evidence that he had found anything relating to the Snallygaster?

Patrick: No, but I had not heard anything of Gordon Chaplin coming back with any stories about the Snallygaster. Apparently hundreds of people had volunteered for his expedition, and including bartenders, taxi drivers, atomic scientists, even some politicians. He narrowed it down to what he considered to be the five most qualified people in the world. These people were Dick Swanson, who was a Life Magazine photographer, who had covered the Vietnam war for six years, and he was in charge of defense and pharmaceuticals. Then there was a husband and wife team called The Lockets, and they were in charge of logistics. Then there was Ginny Duran. She was a filmmaker who documented the lives of prostitutes. Then there was Gordon's wife, Helen, who had practiced homeopathic medicine. She served the role of a psychic healer. It was all very 1970s. You read the article in context, and there's elements of the Watergate scandal and new age religion and Gonzo journalism, and it's all meshed together into this fun, absurd article

Ray: Gordon Chaplin, did he buy into like some of the more new-age ideas at the time? I assume he must've if his wife was a spiritual psychic healer.

Patrick: I can't tell if Chaplin was put into that stuff or not. He may have been making fun of or poking fun at what was going on at the time, and there was a lot of this new age stuff. There's a good chance that he was actually poking fun at that, instead of really being a part of it. I do know that he was an environmentalist and he wrote a lot about environmental issues and some of those details creep into his Snallygaster expedition story, where folks are concerned that killing the Snallygaster is going to disrupt the ecosystem and so forth.

Ray: What do you think it is about the Snallygaster that makes it so adaptable? We've heard so many different stories about them throughout the years. Why does it keep reoccurring?

Patrick: I think what makes the Snallygaster so adaptable is you can see him through all kinds of different lenses. Through folklore, through a sociopolitical commentary, cryptozoology. That seems to be the strongest draw for a lot of people. I actually have a funny story about that. If you have time.

Ray: Please, yes. Please tell us.

Patrick: A couple of years ago I get this call out of the blue from this producer in Los Angeles. He says, "Well, are you the Snallygaster writer?" I said, "Yes. I wrote this book about the Snallygaster." "That sounds great. I'd loved to talk to you about it, because we want to do this documentary series on the Snallygaster." "Okay." He told me who he was with and I won't name the channel, but he mentioned that he was going to do that-he was going to make this very series documentary about Snallygaster. He started asking me all these questions and I'm going on and I'm talking about all the stuff I'm talking to you about, and all this socialpolitical stuff and African-American voter suppression. Let me go back a second. He starts asking me all these all these questions about the Snallygaster, and I'm giving them all the information I've given you about African-American voter suppression and prohibition and Dutch Pennsylvania folklore and mythology. I'm going on and on and I'm probably talking for 20 minutes straight. I'm imagining, "He's going to have me on as some Snallygaster expert and I'm going to be the guy in front of a row books." Then he pauses and he goes, "Well, have you ever seen it?" I just was crestfallen, and I knew where-right then, I knew where it was going. I went, "No, sir. I have not seen it. I'm sorry." He goes, "Do you know anyone that's seen it?"

Ray: Oh, my God.

Patrick: I said, "No, sir, I can't think of anyone. I don't know, I'm sure you can go out there and find them. I'm sure they're out there" "Thank you very much, I really appreciate your time. We'll be in touch." I never heard from them. A month later somebody gives me a call and he goes, "You got to turn on the TV. They got your Snallygaster on there." I turn it on and it's the show. [laughs] It's these guys out in the woods making Snallygaster calls, hunting it down. All very, very serious, and they have night vision cameras and whole thing. The lesson learned is I missed my 15 minutes, and if I had only told them I had seen the Snallygaster and I was willing to traipse through the woods in the middle of the night to find it.

Ray: That was hilarious. I can picture exactly the type of show you're talking about. It's funny too, because I have to think that it may have been from the History Channel, which makes it so much funnier that they wouldn't be interested in the history of the creature. [laughs]

Patrick: Accurate. Very funny, very funny indeed. It was hilarious. I did enjoy the show, it was very entertaining. It was a lot of fun, and I'm all for Snallygaster in the spotlight. I mentioned that, because cryptozoological element is definitely the thing that appeals to most people, that's definitely where we are right now in the Zeitgeist. [LAUGHS] When I talking about the other stuff, I got to be honest, I lose some Focus. But that's okay, that's all right, because there's always somebody out there willing to go out there with a Snallygaster whistle and do Snallygaster calls and set traps and so forth.

Ray: We're living in a pretty turbulent political time now, do you think there's any chance that we might see some Snallygaster sightings in the near future?

Patrick: I don't know if you can see the Snallygaster in the future, but there is the Snallygaster Beer Festival, which is coming back to DC on October 12. It's been going on for a few years now, I've always meant to go, haven't been. But they have a series of local breweries and people bring beers and they drink, and there's a commemorative Snallygaster mug. [laugh] That started a couple years ago, and that's the Snallygaster Beer Festival, it's very popular, apparently attracts a lot of folks. But in all seriousness, as far as the Snallygaster coming back, that's a really good question, we are in really turbulent times. It's hard to say. If the Snallygaster comes back, it's virally, somehow, it's probably not going to be the Snallygaster that we recognized from 1909 or even 1932 or even 1976 or the Snallygaster had already taken on more of a Bigfoot look. I think the Snallygaster changes with the times, and it would probably be something that we're not all that familiar with. You see these myths and legends emerging to speak to modern anxieties and fears. We have an eight-year old in grammar school and we got an email last year, sort of hysterical email that there was this thing on YouTube that was trying to get your kid to hurt themselves. It was all a hoax, none of it's real. But what it was, was it was a reflection of parental anxiety about technology and about losing your kids to YouTube, and all these very real concerns. It's incredible how these urban legends and their stories and mythologies will always emerge to speak to modern anxieties.

Ray: That's a really good point. We talked a little bit about the children's book that you wrote about the Snallygaster, but what do you think it is about that creature that made you want to fictionalize it in your own words and put your own stamp on it?

Patrick: For me, the appeal to the Snallygaster has always been it's idiosyncratic regional weirdness. It'd be really hard to export the Snallygaster out of this region without losing its uniqueness. It would probably just become a generic dragon or something. Not that there's anything wrong with dragons, but it wouldn't be the Snallygaster. If you took the Snallygaster and removed it from this region of Maryland and its history, it would be something very different. That's always been the appeal to me. It's something that resists being commodified. Everything seems to be commodified now. It's pretty strange . At the same time, somebody out there with no connection to the area may take the Snallygaster and do something unique and cool with it, and that's cool too.

Ray: Do you have any plans to write more about the Snallygaster in the future or do you think that you've gotten it out and you're done with the topic?

Patrick: Never say never. I'm not sure if I have enough material to write to write another book about the Snallygaster. The kids book was a lot of fun, wasn't terribly successful, to be honest. What I was trying to do with it was I was trying to kind of scratch that cryptozoological itch that a lot of kids have, that really wasn't present in the first book. I'd go do readings at schools or libraries in the area and realized that the material, the way I presented it, needed to be modified to capture the attention of children. I thought, "Well, take these young kids and I'll put them at the center to a story, and have them search out the Snallygaster." That was my attempt of what I was trying to do there. Another reason I wanted to do that was, the region has changed quite a bit. You have a lot of kids that live here that did not grow up in the area, whose parents didn't even grow up in area. It's become much more of a commuter community than it was even 30 years ago. You've got a lot of folks that live out here that take those big long commutes into DC. You've got these professionals out here and their kids have never heard of the stories of the Snallygaster, because they didn't grow up hearing them from their grandparents. I wanted to find a way to continue the legacy of the Snallygaster in an honorable way, for a new generation to show some interest in it, and that's really my goal. If I sell a few books, that's cool. My legacy, hopefully will be that. There's a book about the Snallygaster sitting on the bookshelves of the local libraries, and that future generations may stumble across it and realize that they've got a monster in their own backyard.

Ray: If people want to check out the books you've written on the Snallygaster, what's the best way for them to find them?

Patrick: Best way to find my books probably would probably be on Amazon. You can order them on Amazon. I'm sorry. Let me just answer that. [laughs] Go ahead and ask the question again.

Ray: Totally. If you could just maybe throw the titles of the books in there too when you answer, just so people can search them if they want. Where can people find these books if they want to read them?

Patrick: Both of my Snallygaster books, Snallygaster: the Lost Legend of Frederick County and Beware the Snallygaster, are available for purchase on Amazon.

Ray: Perfect. Is there anything we haven't touched on that you think is interesting to relay about the Snallygaster for final thoughts?

Patrick: I just like to encourage folks that are listening to your podcast to seek out the weird myths and legends of their own communities, because who knows, maybe, they'll end up writing a book on an obscure local legend. There's a lot of local legends that are more popular, more well known, but a lot of folks would be surprised. There are stories in every town in America, large and small, mythical creatures, ghost stories. I'm sure you'll cover a lot of them in your podcast series. I would encourage folks to go beyond the internet and go to the local libraries and go do research and find out what's out there.

Ray: That's great. Thank you so much.

Patrick: Because when I first started-- I'm sorry.

Ray: No, finish your thought.

Patrick: Sure. I was just going to say when I first started researching the Snallygaster, there was very little information on it. I had to go to the libraries and seek it out.

Ray: Thank you so much, Patrick. We've really enjoyed talking with you. It's a super interesting topic.

Patrick: Thank you so much, Ray. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on your show.