West Virginia Cryptids – ‘It was big, it was white’ Part 3: Sheepsquatch

“It  was big, it was white and tall, but kind of hunched over. It released an ungodly, gut-curling growl and started to come right at us. We saw a Sheepsquatch, that’s what we saw!”

Dakota Cheeks, Monsters And Mysteries In America, 2013 Destination America

SHEEPSQUATCH, or White Thing; is a cryptid infamously connected with Boone county, West Virginia. It’s about the size of a grizzly bear but reportedly covered in white hair, and instead of claws its hands are like that of a raccoon. It’s reportedly bipedal with cloven hooves for feet. It has a large head with a dog like snout topped with two single pointed horns like that of a goat, though it’s head has barely any flesh, revealing a horrific exposed sheep like skull. The strange beast also has a long hairless tail mimicking a rats.

Latest sighting

The last major sighting of this West Virginian cryptid was in the south western area of the state, around Boone County. So cryptid hunters should make for this part of the state, as it’s most likely that the Sheepsquatch  resides here.

Boone County

One well documented sighting was from 1995. A young couple who were driving through a long secluded road in Boone Country, which was famed for it’s low densely wooded hills. The driver stopped the car abruptly on the road, after spotting a large white creature lurking in the ditch by the side of the road. The strange humanoid then attacked the car, the driver responded by swiftly driving away from the thing.

Death Omens

Later, in an even more precarious incident, that has been described by Rosemary Guiley in her book Monsters of West Virginia: Mysterious Creatures in the Mountain State, two campers in Boone County were chased out of their camp by something that fitted the description of a Sheepsquatch. The campers were chased to the edge of the midnight woods. The entity did not follow them after they left the woods, though as they walked back to their nearby home, they stood still as they heard the inhuman death scream that whistled through the trees, like the death omen scrawl of a banshees song coming from the woods behind them. Making the campers take flight to their home. The next day they went back to the forest in safety of daylight to retrieve their equipment and find any clues of what they saw and heard in the forest. Their expectations were not disappointed as when they emerged into the campsite clearing they saw their tent violently shredded and even the ground itself had been ransacked, ploughed up and had large visible claw marks etched deep into the soil.

Fulks Run Virginia

The most resent sighting of the Sheepsquatch was in 2015, near the town of Fulks Run in Virginia, beside the George Washington National Forest. The incident involved another group of people camping on a clearing below a hill who one evening witnessed an entity befitting the description of Sheepsquatch emerging from the woods behind the hill near their campsite. When it noticed the group of campers it charged down the mound attempting to penetrate the brook that cut the hill of from the campers below. But, suddenly the strange thing halted its murderous rampage when another, different, wraith like howl came from the woods nearby. The Sheepsquatch made a gasp like noise and quicker than when it charged down scampered back the way it came. Nobody ever saw the entity that made the Sheepsquatch take to its heels, and probably for the best… But who knows? 

Etymology of the name

Sheepsquatch is a combination word, a mixture of sheep and Sasquatch, the native american word for Big Foot. It is also known as the White Thing, for obvious reasons.

Sheepsquatch in Fallout ’76

The Sheepsquatch has also appeared in the controversial multiplayer video game Fallout ’76 . In the form of downloadable content, or DLC, in 2019. It was secretly put into the game for gamers to discover, and it was also given a backstory.

In one event in the game, the player attends to a herd of Brahmin (mutated two headed cows) within the TNT area of West Virginia. After defending the herd from wild animals – a Sheepsquatch emerges and howls loudly at the player’s character, it then begins to attack with its portent acidic urine and claws.

There are various stories plotted around Appalachia in the game, some regarding the Sheepsquatch, and some of the scenarios are very similar to real life sightings of the cryptid. One such story involved a fisherman spotting a Sheepsquatch drinking from a nearby river, however it’s stated that the man ate a variety of mushrooms before the encounter. And another game encounter is very similar to the story of the couple in the car from the Boone County incident. There is another type of Sheepsquatch called the Impostor Sheepsquatch Which can be fought as a boss with other players.

Connection to the Point Pleasant TNT area

A lot of witnesses have stated that when the Sheepsquatch is nearby there is a distinct smell of strong sulphur. This has also made some cryptozoologists link the smell of sulphur to a possible origin of the creature within the TNT research area in Mason County, West Viginia. This old World War 2 ordnance site is located 7 miles north of Point Pleasant and is where the Mothman cryptid was first spotted in 1966.

The TNT area, now called The McClintic Wildlife Management Area, has a bunker complex used to store WW2 explosives and ammo. However, when the war ended and especially during the UFO hysteria of the late 1960s there were many cryptid sightings and reported activity, including the mothman, and likely the Sheepsquatch and other various entities such as Indrid Cold and even Big Foot . Furthermore, the whole area was put on the USA’s Environmental Protection Agencies hazardous waste list in the 1980’s. The leaking of DNT and TNT could explain the strong sulphuric smell that is associated with Sheepsquatch.

The Mothman, as well as conjuring feelings of intense evil in those who witness it, has also been described as having a noxious sulphuric smell. There is also the rumour that the nearby abandoned north power plant was reputedly the hideout of the Mothman in November 1966 where the first sightings where made on the lead up to the tragic 1967 Silver Bridge collapse in Point Pleasant. The bunkers in the TNT area, as the locals call it, are concrete igloos now covered with overgrown briers and grass. They are still dangerous, and not just in a mysterious way, as in 2010 one of the them exploded due to the combustion of several thousand pounds of left over unstable chemicals. About the old ordnance area Kurt McCoy, author of White Things – West Virginia’s Weird White Monsters: “The TNT area is just chock full of amazing weirdness.” The whole area can certainly be claimed to be a place of interest to any cryptid hunter.

The bizarre north power plant is reportedly home many well known mysterious friends and was a cryptid ground zero before it was demolished in the 1990s . With Big Foot, Indrid Cold, Sheepsquatch and the Mothman all allegedly living there, did they all have a room each? Thoughts drift to a strange reality TV show set in the old power plant, it could be called F.I.E.N.D.S.

The potency of its piss

The TV show Mountain Monsters did a fantastic episode on the Sheepsquatch and during their ‘hunt’ the Sheepsquatch was interrupted marking its territory and urinated on the leader of the team, called Trapper. His face began to burn, the temperature was even revealed in the black zone imaging on a thermal camera. All of which we here at thehumanoid.net found ridiculously funny.

Mundane explanations

There is always the case that this cryptid is merely an ordinary phenomenon given extraordinary meaning within the imaginations of uncritical witnesses, akin to hearing voices in white noise or seeing faces in clouds. But, this does not mean we should dismiss the many sightings of Sheepsquatch as being the product of exaggeration and over active minds, the mere fact that there have been such a multitude of sightings calls for more in depth investigation. Cryptid researchers must apply due diligence to their research. The beast could be a large bear, but the fact that it has always been described as pure white rules this out. Could it be a human prank? People in the woods in costume? There is the tendency for humans to see what they want to see.

Further reading

Monsters of West Virginia: Mysterious Creatures in the Mountain State, by Visionary Living, Inc. By Rosemary Ellen Guiley