You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host Dave, joined as always by Sarge, aka Darth Handsome. What's going on buddy? Hey, what's going on? For those of you who can't see, Sarge is wearing a Stormtrooper helmet because today we're recording this on May the 4th. Yeah. So obviously, you gotta celebrate
in your own way. I got a ham tattoo. You know, he's wearing a helmet. You know, we celebrate in different ways. That's the beauty of society and culture. Right, Sarge? Yeah, of course. I mean, this is why I'm wearing this helmet. I want to celebrate my imperial roots. So I figured what better way than to put on a Narragansett t -shirt and then put on a Stormtrooper helmet. Which, interestingly enough, when it's humid... The inside fogs up very quickly, so I'm going
to take it off. Okay, good. But I want everyone to know that I do appreciate Star Wars. Holy shit. Goddamn, that was hot in there. Woo! I'm glad you took it off, because it also sounded like ass. Yeah, I wasn't going to do the whole episode. I promise. That wasn't the plan. Yeah, so what's going on, bud? How are you doing? I'm good. I'm fucking great. Had a really busy week at work last week, but I got a lot of stuff done.
Hell yeah. I got a very nice message on TikTok from someone, and that was nice of them to say, to agree with you, Dave, actually. They agreed with you. With me? Yeah, that I am extremely hot. Well, I mean, yeah. That's what they said. Yeah, that tracks. I find you eerily... Irresistible? Irresistible, yes. I appreciate that, man. I really do. Yeah, yeah. It means a lot to me. Glad you're doing good. Glad work's going well. How are you doing? I'm dying from the inside
out. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Last night at Neshaminy Creek, which is a brewery up by my house, every Star Wars weekend, like May 3rd, 4th, they always do a Star Wars thing and they put out a different Star Wars beer. Last time I went, it was Bantha Fodder. This year it was Bespin's Best Lager. Really good. Oh, I like that. Yes, I like that. I had a few. And then I ended up getting a tattoo of Darth Maul's skull on my hand. So, you know. Kind of badass. Just decisions all around. Was
it expensive? Not good or bad decisions, just decisions. No, it was like $150. Oh, that's not bad. No, it was just like a flash thing they had going on there. But I did get Street Fighter. and The Mummy on VHS in Japanese. So they're Japanese. Would it be hard to follow? Or are they subtitles? It's in English. It's just subtitles. Oh, okay. All right. It's pretty cool. The covers are all Japanese. They're pretty sick. Very cool. I'm regretting every decision I made that night.
But besides that, we're doing great. You know what will help you with that? What's that? Some Narragansett lemonade with Dells. Iced tea and lemonade. The hard tea. I'm not drinking, but I always keep my Shandy's right next to me. Shandy's are so goddamn good. I need more, Cam. I'll talk to our guy. Yeah, if I could drink, I would, but I think I would die if I didn't buy it. So you're not a hair of the dog guy? No, I'm more
of a crushing energy drink. Hopefully later today I'll have something greasy and then I'll die. That's a way to do it. Yeah. I hate this. All right. So, yeah, like I said, Sarge, listeners, I'm going to be very upfront. I, as previously stated, am hungover as fuck today, and I didn't feel like digging into some fresh rabbit hole to find something new to talk about. So I figured what we would do, just take it easy, and we're
going to do another redo episode. We did one a couple weeks back, maybe a couple months back on the Flatwoods Monster. So we're going to go back and cover... I guess one of the very first topics I ever covered on the show way back in April of 2023. So this is like long before you were even a guest, I think, for the first time. Yeah. And the show is basically just me rambling at anyone who would agree to come on. So today I figured what we would do is we would revisit
the Grafton Monster. Are you familiar with the Grafton Monster? No. No? No, I'm not. Oh, shit. No. Is it from Grafton, Massachusetts? No, it's West Virginia, obviously, because everything awful comes from there. Yeah, so the Grafton Monster was a huge, pale, headless nightmare that caused a bit of a stir in West Virginia in the year of our Lord, 1964. What I love about the Grafton Monster story, which is why I like it, is that it wasn't just like a one -off, I
saw something weird story. This kicked off a frenzy in the community. Teens were organizing monster hunting parties, local papers were scrambling to cover it, and the town was buzzing with both excitement, and fear. So today we're going to break down the first sightings of this thing, the media coverage surrounding it, how the public reacted, and how this lumpy -ass cryptid wormed its way into the West Virginia folklore lexicon.
Plus, I'm going to be pulling in some extra details that I missed the first time around because, let's be honest, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing back then. I mean, I still don't, but that's the size of it. Yeah, but I mean, neither do I. Yeah, so you ready to dive into this bitch? I am very excited because given the rural implications here. I think we're going to get some of my favorite things when we cover
cryptids. I'm not going to say it because I don't want to steal your thunder, but I think we're going to get into some of my favorite cryptid situations. I think you have a good sense about this. I'm not going to confirm or deny, but I think... I think you're right on the money. So I know my country. I know my I know the United States. So the whole grafted monster saga kicks off on the night of June 16th, 1964, when 18 year old reporter Robert Cockerell was driving
home after his shift at the cock. You know, I try really hard to behave myself and be an adult, but sometimes you just you hear a name and you're like, you know what? That's funny because it's a dick. Yeah. You can't do anything about it. I tried to just breeze past it, but I could not giggle because I'm, you know, almost 40. Yeah. So Robert Cockerell was driving home after a shift at the Grafton Sentinel newspaper. Now
it's around 11 p .m. and he's cruising down a stretch of road alongside the Tigert Valley River when he catches a glimpse of something in his headlights on the side of the road. He described it as a quote unquote huge white obstruction just looming there on the riverbank. Also known as Baron Trump. So Cockerell slams on his brakes
to get a better look at this thing. He described what he saw as being between seven to nine feet tall, roughly four feet wide at the shoulders with slick pale skin, almost like a seal, but without like the fur, if that makes sense. Just
like a slick white. mass but the worst part about this thing is that it didn't have a head all right like it was and it wasn't like hunched or bent down like it's just straight up headless just like a massive pale cylinder of pure muscle standing upright not great it's not no no i don't like this yeah so obviously freaked out by this andre the giant looking motherfucker cock rolled nope the hell out of there and just like tore off home but after a few minutes he was like
reporter instincts or more likely the I need to prove I'm not insane instincts kind of kicked in and he rounded up two buddies Jerry Morse and Jim Mouser and together they headed back to the spot to check it out now when they got there the monster was gone but the grass where it stood was flattened like something big had been stomping around there now even weirder As they searched the area, they heard a faint but distinct whistling sound that seemed to be following
them as they were conducting their search. Again, not great. Well, no, I don't like it. Now, the whistling will show up later in other reports, but that night, all it did was convince Cockrell that he hadn't just hallucinated the whole thing. I've got to tell you, as a veteran, there is nothing I hate more than a distinct whistling noise. Um, cause there's usually explosions after that. Yeah. That, that tracks. That makes sense. Um, I don't think that like that sound. Yeah.
I don't think it was that kind of whistling to me. I don't know what I've, I don't, I was, I couldn't find an example of it because that'd be just that Russian guy. The, uh, no being the reporter that he was, he wanted to report on his encounter, but held back knowing. damn well people would just laugh him out of the newsroom if he showed up ranting and raving about a headless
giant down by the riverbank. Still, word got out, and by the next afternoon, June 17th, Cockerell's little monster secret wasn't so secret anymore. Whether it was his friends talking shit or just the grapevine doing its thing, rumors of the alleged sighting exploded across Grafton. But here's the crazy part. Dozens of other locals, mostly teenagers, started calling the Sentinel and swapping stories around town saying that
they had seen the same thing. Tall, white, headless, and emitting a weird, eerie whistling sound. So Cockrell, now realizing he wasn't the only one, finally decided to write up his story for the newspaper. But his editors were a bunch of fucking wet blankets about the whole thing. They pretty much were like, eh, sounds like a prank or local hysteria, and they rejected his draft. It's really encouraging to know that reporters
have not changed at all. They're very much maintaining their integrity and not publishing absolute lies because they can't prove them. It's good to know that they're still doing that today in 2025. Now, meanwhile, the town was losing its collective shits. Here we go. Packs of teenagers grabbed flashlights, crowbars, and even shotguns and went full Scooby -Doo up on Riverside Drive trying to hunt this thing down. Just small town chaos
at its finest. So you got a bunch of horned up teenagers, long summer nights, and a spooky ass creature lurking down by the river. So of course they're going to mob the place and start poking around. Of course. Yeah. Now by the next day, this is Thursday the 18th, traffic was so jammed up on Riverside Drive that locals started joking that the monster couldn't have shown up even if he wanted to. Poor bastard would have been stuck in a traffic jam. Traffic, am I right?
Right. Now that same day. The Grafton Sentinel finally runs its first official story, but they don't exactly go like full X -Files and dig deep into the story. Instead, they came in hot with headlines basically saying, get a load of these idiots out there monster hunting. Yeah. The article focused way less on the creature and way more on the spectacle. I mean, it makes sense. Teenagers were roaming the riverbanks with fucking shotguns. So obviously you're going to report on that.
And the editors at the Sentinel were loving the chance to just mock the whole thing. Then came June 19th. The Sentinel ran another story titled Monsters, Results of Spring Fever, Wild Imagination. Now, in this article, the paper declared that after a routine check, they figured out the whole mystery. The whole thing was just a case of mistaken identity. What it was is some dude was pushing a hand cart stacked with boxes down Riverside
Drive that night. and was half -lit by passing headlights, he was mistaken for a big -ass headless monster. So, case closed. Everyone go home. I have questions. Yeah. How does a box look like a headless person? Well, I mean, if they're big boxes and they're all stacked up over the guy's head. Okay. I don't know, dude. All right. Okay. Yeah. This is feeling very swamp gas to me. Weather balloon, swamp gas situation. Yeah, so the editors didn't just shut the door on this one. They slammed
it, locked it, pissed on the handle. They basically told the whole town, calm your tits, everyone. You're getting all worked up over some teamster on the side of the road. What they were doing with a handcart on this road at 11 o 'clock at night, who knows? He's just an American worker really trying to earn money for his family. Exactly. By making his boxes... look like a headless person who is nine feet tall. But that tracks. That happens all the time. Yeah, you see it every
day. I see it on the side of the highways, roads, back roads. Walmart. I see it in Walmart constantly.
Every day. So, yeah. Cockerel. the original witness he never bought that explanation he did believe that yeah some of the later reports were probably just teens spooking themselves sure but his sighting the thing he saw that night down by the river that wasn't a dude with a handcart like that was a living headless thing so yeah well the sentinel was busy trashing the whole town for thinking there was a monster on the loose, the people on the ground, the townsfolk, were split
down the middle on what they believed. So on one side, you had true believers, mostly teenagers who were all in on the story. These kids were pretty much LARPing as cryptid hunters, prowling the riverside at night, convinced they were going to be the one to bag the Grafton monster. So for them, those few days in June weren't scary. They were awesome as hell. Like, this was the most excitement Grafton had seen. Pretty much ever. God knows I would have lost my fucking
shit. Oh, yeah. But on the other side, you had the skeptics, like the parents, the police, newspaper guys, all are basically saying, Jesus Christ, it's summer break and these kids are just bored out of their mind. They're just doing what kids are going to do. Fucking wet blankets is what they are. Yeah. And they were entirely wrong. Like the monster hype hit right when school let out. The weather was warm and every teenager in town was just itching for something to do
besides mow lawns. Whatever it is they would do in 1960s West Virginia. So for the kids, this week ruled. But for some, it kind of ruined their lives. I'm talking, of course, about Robert Cockerell. For him, the fallout of the story was pretty brutal. The dude was a young reporter. His credibility mattered to him. But all he got for going public with his story was a big old plate of public ridicule. His editors hacked up his articles on the sighting. His peers rolled their eyes.
And he learned pretty quickly that... If you want to keep a job in journalism, maybe don't be the guy who cried monster. He's fucking dickheads. Yeah, I get it. Now, by all accounts, Cockrell went quiet after that retreating from the story. Like he stopped publicly talking about it. He didn't write any more about it. But behind closed doors, he kept investigating. He even found about like 20 other witnesses who confirmed that they
had seen the same headless beast. Now, as for the town people, yeah, a few got laughed at. Maybe a few teenagers had to endure their dads calling them dumbasses. No one got ran out of town or branded a lunatic, not even Cockrell. Mostly it became one of those, remember that crazy week kind of stories that people chuckled about over coffee or a beer or something like that. So let's get into what the Grafton Monster
possibly could be. You got any theories? Yeah, I think it was a tall white guy with a camouflage hat. You just couldn't see his head. He was there. It was like a camouflage, like balaclava or whatever they're called, just right over that. You just couldn't see him because he was wearing camouflage. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now, like I said, the official explanation, the one that's put up by the newspaper, some dude pushing a hand cart stacked with boxes down a dim -ass road
at night. According to the paper, that's what people saw. But that's boring and lame. So let's look at some other theories as to what this thing could be. Now, first up, we have escaped animal. Some teenagers suggested that maybe it was an escaped polar bear in 1960s West Virginia because, sure. Without a head? I don't know. But spoiler alert. There were no missing bears. None were
ever reported. And if one had gotten loose, it would more than likely just be tearing through trash cans, not whistling down by the riverbank. You know what I mean? Right. Kind of weird. The next theory is that it's a cousin of Bigfoot. So some cryptid enthusiasts have speculated that maybe this was some Appalachian variant of Bigfoot, some sort of headless relative, or maybe it was a Bigfoot carrying something in its arms that
was just blocking out its head. Call back to the Appalachian Monsters episode that I did. Perhaps this is the White Fang. Perhaps. Which is, he lives in trees. We surmise that it's probably just Grandpa and he's like really hairy. Gotcha. Get ahead of yourself, Sarge. Okay. Sorry. The only thing with the Bigfoot theory is that when you see a Bigfoot or you get reports of Bigfoot, it's usually mentioning like hair, the smell, the noises it makes. It's not shiny skinned,
doesn't whistle. And it's, I mean, I guess it could be nine feet tall, but I feel like this is bigger. Lots of farts too. It eats a lot of roughage. Yeah. So we can chalk this one up as a maybe, but probably not kind of thing. Now let's move on to the fun shit. We got aliens and interdimensional visitors. This comes from none other than Gray Barker. He's the West Virginia paranormal writer who helped blast Mothman into
the spotlight. He had caught wind of the story and went on to write that maybe this was some kind of alien lab animal that was left on Earth, like a science experiment that escaped and just started walking down along the river. The aliens were just really busy and so they didn't have time to put a head on it. Exactly, yeah. It's like forgetting to put the head on like a Lego man or something. Yeah. That happens to all of
us. Others took this theory and spun it into interdimensional traveler theories, saying the monster was something slipping between realities, popping in and out of our world by accident or possibly by design. Now, obviously, there's no hard evidence for either of these theories, but hey, if you're going to get weird with it, you might as well just go. All the way with it. Let your freak flag fly, guys. Yeah. And then you
got the folklore connection. Like you said, some people link the grafted monster to the West Virginian white things. But those legends describe more like a ghostly form, not like a chunky headless nightmare. Dave, I don't want to correct you here, but it's pronounced thang. Oh, sorry. T -H -A -N -G. Gotcha. That's on me. Yep. Oh, and then a quick little fun fact. Apparently someone had reported a similar creature up in Morgantown, West Virginia, just like a week before the Grafton
monster sighting. So is it the same thing? I don't know, but I just thought that was kind of cool. It's not really mentioned in any of the other stuff, but now had this happened in Indiana, we could have proposed the theory that something terrible had happened to Larry Bird. All right. So let's get to wrapping this bad boy up. So, okay. Okay. After all the chaos of June, 1964, The sightings, the newspaper buzz, the roving bands of armed teenagers. What happened
next? Well, pretty much nothing. After that wild week, the Grafton Monster slipped right back into the shadows. There was no major new sightings hitting the papers. No townsfolk were hauled off by headless beasts. And the cops never filed any official reports. It just kind of faded from front page headlines and settled kind of in the back of like small town folklore. But just like Babe Ruth said in the hit classic cinematic masterpiece, The Sandlot, legends never die. So forever. So
for decades, the Grafton Monster remained. One of West Virginia's lesser known cryptid cases, overshadowed by the Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and the whole gang of Appalachian weirdos. You'd hear about it occasionally covered in like cryptid books or some weird blog deep dive, but it wasn't really front and center. But that all changed
thanks to the magic of... Pop culture. Now, I'm not saying it was all thanks to this, but when Fallout 76 dropped in 2018, suddenly you had gamers worldwide running into a virtual grafted monster, a hulking, brutal monster lurking in the game's digital version of West Virginia. And just like that, the legend exploded into mainstream nerd culture. Players started Googling it, streamers made videos about it, and cryptid fans were handed a fresh new wave of curiosity.
Now, locally... Grafton leaned the hell into it. By 2018, they'd slapped up a welcome sign declaring themselves the home of the Grafton Monster. Local businesses cashed in on it with shirts, mugs, hats, art, anything you could put it on, it's been put on. And by 2024, they launched the first annual Grafton Monster Festival with costume contests, memorabilia, panels, and plenty of people swapping, like my uncle once saw this
thing, tails. What started out as a short -lived summer scare in the 60s has turned into full -blown local heritage, celebrated and laughed over instead of denied or mocked. It's not just a creepy riverside tale anymore. It's part of the cultural fabric, a quirky point of pride. And that's kind of the beauty of cryptid lore
in stories like these. Even if we never get proof, even if the thing never shows up again, the stories ripple outward, shaping towns, pulling in curious travelers, inspiring video games, podcasts, art, and giving people something to wonder about. There you have it, Sarge. That is the story of the Grafton Monster. I hope you enjoyed it. A little shorter of an episode today, but, you know, we did what we could. It's a classic, though.
And if you're one of the eight people in West Virginia, please invite us to the Grafton Monster Festival. I mean, you don't have to be invited. You can just go. Or do you mean like as like speakers? Yeah, no, we should go there to speak about it because I've got some theories. But most of them involving a tall guy with a camouflage hat. Gotcha. All right. Well, you make sure you write those down and we'll see what we can do. I already did. I just got the one theory, really.
Okay. So it's not theories. It's just theory. It's not a bad theory. You know, like I could probably expand upon that. Maybe it is Barron Trump. We don't know. He is a tall, scary white thing. He's terrifying. He's like fucking Slender Man. Yeah. I mean, he's not that. He's tall. But he's not that tall, is he? He's seven feet tall. No, he's not. He's something like six, I want to say six, nine or seven feet tall. He's
a fucking giant. Dude, that is disgusting. Yeah, that's why it's hilarious to see him standing next to Donald Trump, who is actually in real life only 5 '10". Dude, he's... He wears lifts, but he's only 5 '10". I feel like Baron's going to end up with hip dysplasia, like a fucking old German shepherd or something. You can't be that tall and not have joint problems, right? I feel like they're going to have to put him down eventually because his hips are fucked.
He's like a Great Dane. Yeah. Just all sorts of fucking joint problems for that kid's future. What a mess. Yeah. Oh, God. But there you have it. That's insane. That's crazy. It's got no. So, I mean, I think my problem is, and maybe the reason why the grafted monster didn't catch on more, even though there's other cryptids out there that, that don't have the, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? The it factor. Well, no,
I feel like the graph, that's the thing. I feel like the grafted monster doesn't have the it factor where other cryptids who probably been seen even less. have more of an it factor. And it's because he doesn't have a head. Yeah. There's no like creepy glowing eyes or like fangs or anything like that. Yeah. It's just a hulking mass of just flesh, which I mean, I feel like is worse and also kind of sick. It is worse.
It is kind of creepy, but I feel like it didn't catch on in the imagination because you're not imagining like, you know, it's, it's glowing eyes in the, in the darkness. Instead, you just see his nips, you know? Maybe the nips are the eyes. Maybe we're getting this all wrong. There was no mention of nipples or anything like that, but I mean, I'm not knocking it. It's a good theory. Yeah, I mean, up until you described the fact that he didn't have a head, I was like,
oh, this is just like my dad, really. Yeah. I imagine he has the same body shape as Danny DeVito in... when he's a trash man and it's always sunny, but just take the head off. And I think that's, that's the shape I picture. I could be wrong. I was also thinking of the episode always, always sunny where they were in the, they were in the bar and they all had like the flu and Frank covered himself in, in a hand sanitizer and was like writhing around on the floor. Yeah. I mean, that's
what I was thinking too. Yeah. He's just, I like that. We both were picturing Danny DeVito, but it's just various. Various situations. Basically, anytime you say creepy and white, that's the first thing that comes into my mind. That's fair. I wouldn't expect anything less. Then the second thing is me without a shirt on. I mean, people want it. I don't know why you don't just give it to them. Welcome to the pepperoni potty, ladies.
All right. Yeah, that's all I got. Before we sign off, is there anything you want to plug or talk about? Yeah. Yeah, we've been doing our sponsor dirty. We haven't talked about Narragansett in a little while, so I want to give them a shout out. The hard tea is actually weirdly good for a hard tea. You would think like hard tea, it just tastes like a hangover, but this is actually really good. That's because it's got local lemonade. It's the light carbonation, I think, that does
it for me. Yeah, it really does. Something about it. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah, I agree. But the weather is getting warmer and I've been... hammering those shandies down. I'm about to run out. I'm very upset about it. I need more shandies as well. Yeah, Cam, get on it. I need to work on that. Alright, what else we got? Oh, the coloring book is still around. It's a ghost that haunted me. I think it's a tulpa. I made this coloring book expecting it to be a one -off and now...
Everything predicted in the coloring book seems to be coming true. You kind of did will this into existence somehow. I am so sorry to everyone. Your coloring book is basically the Death Note notebook, I feel. Yeah, it's totally my fault, and I apologize for that. But if you want to get a copy of this coloring book to take out your frustrations on the horrifying hellscape that is America currently, just go to SajasSuperNormal .com. And purchase a copy for $9 .99. There you
go. There you have it. Sajasupernormal .com. Nailed it. That's fine. Sajasupernormal .com. There's going to be two S's in the middle there, so don't forget about them. If you want to follow us on social media, you can follow us on Instagram at Crypto Cocktail, TikTok Crypto Cocktail Party. There's also links in our bio where you can find this coloring book, Sarge's social media, all that stuff. Leave us a rating and review, please.
It really helps the show. I can't ask. enough but you know it's and send us direct messages just telling us like if you can't review send us direct message and we'll read them on the show yeah I mean I know fun I know Spotify doesn't allow reviews you can write some content yeah I haven't done one of those in a while so let's yeah let's get on that um I think that's it that's all I have anyways hey everybody goodbye and I love you