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Head to Immortal Workshop dot com and join the Metazoo revolution. Your collection and your wallet will thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, and dive into the unknown. Today I'm joined by Tuesday of the band Echo Break. You might also know him from either guesting on a live show with every other band from Ohio or just from being himself. Goddamnit. How you doing, man? Goddamnit.
I mean, to be fair, that is a really good description. If there's a band in Ohio, I've probably been on stage with them like once or twice. I figured that would have been the best way to introduce you to the audience. But what's going on? How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. Just got my drinks. Why don't you tell the audience what you are drinking currently? The worst shit imaginable other than Bush Light. It's fucking hard Mountain Dew, Black Cherry. Oh, it's so gross, dude.
I don't know how you could drink that. Where'd you even find that? My roommate just gave it to me because I didn't have anything to drink and I don't have a fucking car to go get shit. So I was like, I really wanted to get some drinks and they're like, hold on, bestie. And that's I don't think that's a bestie move. That's like the opposite of. Hey, they also gave me a bigger Smirnoff Smash. So it's like whatever. All right. Well, yeah, I'll take that. I got something to wash down with.
You got to chase your drink with another drink. That's how you know it's good. All right, man. Well, thank you for coming on last minute. This was a kind of a fly by the seat of the pants type deal. So I really do appreciate you help me out with this. I guess my first question for you, this is an interview, but I do have a question for you. What is what is your relationship with cryptids? Are you a cryptid guy?
Like, do you fuck with cryptids or is this like going to be just mind blowing all around for you? I don't really follow cryptids other than like the few local legends that we have in Ohio and the lead vocalist of day walker who I assume is some sort of cryptid because like he meets the criteria, dude. He's been around for about a thousand years. Everyone has really weird and badly cropped photos of him that don't really show him correctly because he's dark skin.
He's elusive and he screams like, bro. Well, give me some give me some facts about him after the show and maybe I'll write an episode 300 Greg from day walker. Well, today I'm going to tell you the story of the Grafton monster. Are you familiar at all with what this is? No, not at all. How familiar with the state of West Virginia? I've driven through it twice. I let him that nothing. All right. Well, why don't we just dive right in?
I'll tell you the story and then just feel free to jump in with anything you need to say or whatever. Fuck yeah. So the small town of Grafton is located in Taylor County, West Virginia. The only reason why the city came into existence is because it's a junction point for the Baltimore and Ohio railroads. They serve like several bunches, branches that are vital to the coal industry that were in the region at the time. I'm pretty sure they probably still are. I honestly have no idea.
Grafton is also home to the West Virginia National Cemetery's. The West Virginia Equal Suffrage Association was formed there in nineteen eighty ninety four. It was one of the first cities to observe Memorial Day. And fun fact, Mother's Day was founded there in nineteen oh eight. I don't know if that's impressive, but besides that, there's not really much going on with the town. It's just like a small little like booming. I don't know what's the word railroad town.
I just kind of can't believe they gave Frank Zappa's other band a whole ass holiday. But like I said, there wasn't really much going on that is until June 16th of 1964 when a reporter for the local paper came across what would come to be known as the Grafton Monster, a.k.a. the Beast of Grafton. You ready to dive into the story? Hold up. I'm going to let's see some pics of this. I'm going to pull it up on Google Images. See if anyone has any badly crop photos yet.
You can't because I have to give you the description of it first. OK, I don't want you to ruin the story, but you're doing it anyways, aren't you? I can hear you typing. You know, I'm getting the search queued up and I'll click enter whenever it's convenient for you. All right.
So the story goes that on that night, Robert Cockrell, a reporter for the Grafton Sentinel now rebranded as the Mountain Statesman, which sounds like a militia that would be formed, was driving home from work around 11 p.m. He was driving down what is now Yates Ave, a.k.a. Route 119, a.k.a. Riverside Drive, a road that follows along the Tigard River. I don't know if I pronounced that right.
But anyways, turning a curve in the road, Cockrell was met by what he described as a huge white obstruction standing on a patch of grass located between the road and the river. Not really sure what he was seeing. He slowed down to get a better look. There he saw what he described as a seven to nine foot tall, four foot wide creature that was boned white, had skin like a seal. It also had no discernible head, but somehow was also emitting a whistling sound.
So if you want to go ahead and look up a picture of it right now, feel free to because it is probably one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen. This is going to be interesting. Keep that description in mind while looking at these photos. Damn, brother, new amnesia DLC is looking tight. What did you find of a good picture of it? There's no good pictures of it. It's all going to be artist renderings or screencaps from Fallout 76. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing is fallout 76.
But that's pretty much what it looked like. Accurate. It looked like that. Just a I don't know. It reminds me of do you remember Looney Tunes at all? Yes. I know that you think I'm that young. No, but you know that furry red alien that's always with Marvin the Martian, like the big thing. It looks like that. Well, like no, no fur. It's just skin. Some of the other renderings I'm seeing kind of look like the yellow devil from Mega Man.
And I really don't know how to feel about that with trauma I've sustained from Mega Man on the NES. It does kind of look like that, doesn't it? Yeah. But it's pretty nightmarish. Imagine like turning the corner of like a winding road and just seeing that. I like this picture of it because it implies that it ties our nipples. That's very accurate. Oh, my God. All right. Well, clearly freaked the fuck out. Cockerel took off out of the out of their fast as he could.
Once home, he called up his friends, Jerry Morris and Jim. I don't know how to pronounce Jim Mouser to go back with him to the spot where he had seen the creature. But when they returned, the monster was nowhere to be seen. No tracks, no nothing except this faint whistling sound that seemed to follow them as they investigated and some trampled grass where the creature was standing.
The next day, Krokel Cockerel Cockerel went to work at the Sentinel like any other day, but decided not to say anything about his encounter because it's fucking crazy. And I feel like in 1964, if you walk into your place of business claiming you saw a no headed nine foot tall seal skin monster, you'd probably be immediately fired and ridiculed. They'll be like, yeah, we got something for that pulls out the ice pick is given the lobotomy right then and there like, no, no, no, it's fine.
You'll be calmer after this. It's fine. Trust me, Jack. It's a swift procedure. Is that is that 64? Is that more like I think that's like 1920s like like flapper era. It's all depends on where you are in the U.S. That's fair enough. Like I said, people still speak like that. They do in Maine. But that is until he decides to keep quiet until he heard other people having a similar encounter.
I guess he received more than 20 calls from people who claim to have also seen some like headless bone white blob. Now how they knew to call him, I don't know. One source I read said that even though he wanted to be quiet, just like I'm sure you have friends that would do the same way as I would, his buddies like loved the idea of a monster on the loose. So they went around town and pretty much told anyone who would listen to them that there was a monster around town.
This led to people, mostly teenagers armed with baseball bats and literally any weapon that was closest to them. They formed monster hunting parties. Now this roving pack of armed teenagers could be found up and down Riverside Drive, not far from where Cockrell had his sighting. Now I honestly thought that when researching this, that like a pack of like armed teenagers roaming the streets would have easily have led to a lot of problems.
Like in the case of the Enfield monster, I don't know if you heard that episode, but people just started open firing into bushes and shit like that. But as far as I can tell, that didn't happen. But basically his encounter led to basically like the warrior situation. Just like teens walking down the streets with like baseball bats and found like, I don't know, just found items. It's wild.
If you want to check your phone, you'll know exactly what I've been thinking this entire time you're explaining that. Fucking Earthbound. That is kind of what, but that without the head is got to be. Yeah, that is a hundred percent the monster. Yes, I agree. A hundred. You just described the entire opening of Earthbound up to the star mad. Well, I mean, maybe that's where they got the idea from. Possible actually. It is.
Now, like I said, these this roving group of teens, they didn't nothing happened with them. What did happen, though, was Cockrell was inspired by the teens and the new sightings that he received. He decided to write an article for the Grafton Sentinel, interviewing some of the teens and sourcing some of the calls that he received. He published his article titled, quote, Teenage Monster Hunting Party's latest activity in Grafton scene on June 18th, 1964.
Some of the sightings in the article are wild, but this one right here is probably my favorite. It's a bit long, but trust me, it's worth it. So this is this is anonymous. I don't know who sent this in, but it reads, I have seen the creature called the Grafton monster several times when I was a young man. It is very real. My first encounter, I was with my father cutting wood. He had finished and were loading the truck when our two dogs started barking. He stood there and listened.
Something was walking, getting closer. My dad told me to get the gun from the cab. He carried a double barreled 10 gauge with zero double zero buckshot. Whatever it was, it picked up its pace and continued towards us. All we knew for sure was it was big and wasn't scared of us, the dogs or the chainsaw. It stopped at 50 to 55 yards from us in the trees and went quiet. My dad pulled both hammers back and stood in front of me, told me to be ready. The next thing that happened. I'll never forget.
He stepped out, looked at us, took three strides in our direction, turned and walked back into the tree line. That was my first sighting of the beast and I'll never forget it. My second encounter was two months later at night fishing alone. I spotted him on the opposite bank. I got the hell out of the area. Hands down, one of my favorite stories of this, this Grafton monster. Just I love that every story that we tell on this, someone has a gun and they're ready to shoot whatever it is.
And he just dips like a pussy. Dude, if you're nine feet tall and four feet wide, I don't like what the like I don't think a shotgun blast is really going to slow you down. But maybe seal skin might not be that thick. So I don't know unless it's like shark skin. I don't know if sharks can seal soon. It's the same thing. I don't know. I don't care how tall am I'm still afraid of a shotgun. Yeah, I'd be more afraid of the chainsaw, though.
I feel like if you're like a fucking cryptid, I don't think I don't know. I feel like people shoot shit with shotguns all the time in these stories and then nothing ever happens to them. True, but like chainsaws are more of a sensory overload than they are like a truly threatening weapon. Until they fucking hit you. Yeah, but it's way easier for a shotgun to hit you than a chainsaw. That's not true from like 50 yards away. You're really going to use that. I guess buckshot.
It just kind of spreads. But I feel like a feel like a shotgun is very close range weapon like he'd have to get real close before you can do some serious damage with a shotgun. Fair same with a chainsaw. That's fair. Are you just long ranging your chainsaw? Do you have it on a string? No, dude, it's one of those fucking those like lumberjack chainsaws. It's like nine feet long. You know the ones I'm talking about.
Oh my God. No, obviously the authorities couldn't just have like a bunch of regular dudes, now amateur monster hunters walking around in the woods with like bats and guns. So they decided there was to open their own official investigation.
So on June 19th, the same paper re released released another article claiming that the town that the entire town was suffering from quote spring fever, dismissing the monster altogether saying that the board locals were just imagining a creature, which according to them was just some dude pushing a cart piled up, pushing a handcart piled high with boxes and at the low lighting caused them to take on a weird shape and have people mistake him for a nine foot tall creature. Interesting.
It's my that's my favorite explanation for a cryptologist. She's a dude, dude. And he's just pushing boxes. What do you guys have against Steve? Come on, bro. It's just Steven. Is she, dude, but who's fucking pushing carts full of boxes at 11 o'clock at night down a road? You know what I mean? Obviously crackhead Steve. True. He was going around collecting cans and just got really enamored with these boxes. Bro. This is West Virginia. True. It's West Virginia, but 1964 crack wasn't invented yet.
So it's probably math or moonshine. They both fuck with your brain. Moonshine moonshine. All right. We'll go. We'll go with moonshine. Steve. That's what he's probably coming down from his distillery and all those were filled with jugs of moonshine. God damn. I think we cracked the case, dude. Yeah, bro. It wasn't a cryptid. It's just moonshine. Steve moonshine. Steve, man. No, obviously that's a fucking stupid explanation for what people saw.
But there are other explanations that I think are much better. Gray Barker, one of the people responsible for putting Mothman on the map, thinks that maybe the grafted monster was an alien lab animal put here by extraterrestrials to test the livability of planet Earth and that the whistling sound you were hearing was actually coming from his spaceship. Others suggest it's an interdimensional being. But my favorite explanation comes from one of the teenagers who was monster hunting.
And he thinks that it's just a regular old run of the mill boilerplate escaped polar bear. But I don't know where. I don't know where. Like no one like the case explanation is like, but where would it come from? It's not lost. Like, there's no just polar bears running around West Virginia as far as I know. Definitely not natural habitat. No, bro. A polar bear would thrive in West Virginia. You think so? Those motherfuckers are big. Those are bigger than regular bears. Yeah, but it wouldn't.
Well, at least the ones we have out here in the Midwest. I'm not going to say anything about like the bears that I have seen in New Hampshire because no, the fuckers big. But the polar bears in the Midwest are nothing to be fucked with. No, the regular ass bears. My bad. Yeah, but he says this is an escape polar bear, not a regular ass bear. It would not thrive. I was saying it would thrive in West Virginia because it would be bigger than competition. That is true. That is true.
It would die very quickly, though, because there's no seals or anything. I don't know what. No, dude, it would start killing anything. You think so? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how polar bears work. I don't know if they have to be cold. Like, do they have to be cold? No, I think they're just like a bear that evolved to sustain cold. So it's got an extra thick coat. And wouldn't the heat like kill it because it has that extra thick coat?
Like, it wouldn't be able to like bears that exist in the heat also have extra thick coat. And usually it is to block off sunlight. All right. That's fair enough. But yeah, that just works. But yeah, we probably won't ever really know what Robert Cockerill and the others saw by the Tigard River in 1964. But it's clearly left an impact on Grafton with the Grafton monster being featured in games like Fallout 76 and Metazoo and the subject of countless television episodes, books and documentaries.
But yeah, that's the story of the Grafton monster. What did you think, man? Definitely very reminiscent of Earthbound. That's your takeaway from it. What did you think? That's what like do you think like it's something that would have existed or do you think it's just like they saw fucking moonshine Steve bringing down his jugs? Honestly, in the most plausible argument sounds like the escape polar bear. But where would it have escaped?
I don't think there was just like a like, like, you know, when they when they when he suggested that, I think they were like, well, there's no like zoos around here, like unless someone was buying exotic pets back then and just one of them got loose. Rich people on the exotic pets is nothing new. And then getting loose is also nothing. Yep. That is very fair. You'd some rich dickhead just lose his polar bears like, yeah, then that's the thing about this. But do you come forward at that point?
Like you're like, it's my polar bear or you're like, fuck, dude, they all think it's a lot like you skip town, you change your name. So some roller. So some railroad tycoon had a polar bear just locked up in his yard and then it escaped. He's like, I don't know what happened here. Must have been a monster. What do you mean? Look, Green wasn't enough to feed him. You're telling me he doesn't survive solely on Coca-Cola's. I've seen the commercials. All right, man.
Well, I appreciate you coming on. Help me out with this episode. Do you have anything you want to plug? Anything you got coming up? I know you got a show coming up soon. If you want to plug it. I actually have a shovel, a couple of shows coming up. One, my last show with day Walker is going to be the second stage of chaos and carnage. Fuck yeah, opening up for suicide silence, dying, beat is born of Osiris, Sugar Booger bong or whatever that band's called from Ohio.
All I know is that born of Osiris was going off on their Facebook page the other day about them. It was the most funny thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I love San Sioux, Singapore so much. I'm really pumped to see them. And then Echo Breaks first two shows out of hate. The first two shows are coming up May 27th and May 30th. Hell yeah, man. Well, I don't live near you so I can't go, but I wish you all the all the best. And yeah, thanks again for coming on.
And with that, do I got to plug anything? Oh, yeah. Follow me on Instagram at cryptic cocktail party. You can follow me on Twitter to at the same handle, but I rarely ever use it because Twitter is a fucking nightmare. We also have a co-fi. If you want to support the show, throw a couple bones. It's co-fi slash cryptic cocktail party. But besides that, I don't think I got anything. So with that, I guess we'll sign off. You want to say goodbye to everyone later?