Supernatural Sunday Series:
The Awful: How did this Vermont Monster Inspire Horror Writer H. P. Lovecraft?
Something is lurking in the secluded woodlands of Vermont. Whispers of an otherworldly being known (perhaps a little prosaically) only as “The Awful” echo among locals.
So much for a descriptive name: what does it look like? Its appearance will be familiar, a mythical fusion of dread and fascination: a griffin. This cryptid, shrouded in mystery, is said to have first appeared in 1925, stalking locals and filling them with fear.
As the story goes, the creature was so terrible legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft even visited Vermont to investigate. Supposedly, what he saw there went on to inspire many of his stories.
However, not everyone is convinced. Few people out of Vermont (and arguably in it) have ever heard of the creature and no experts on Lovecraft have ever mentioned the beast. So, what’s the truth?
Is a griffin stalking rural Vermont? Or is The Awful yet another easy to disprove urban legend?
Vermont’s Monster: Griffin, Cryptid, or Hoax?
Sometimes it feels like everywhere in the United States has its own cryptid, or camera-shy monster. The Pacific Northwest has Bigfoot, the Southwest has the Chupacabra, West Virginia has the Mothman and even New Jersey has the Jersey Devil. Well, in 1925 Vermont joined the monster game with the joyfully named “The Awful”.
This monster was reportedly first spotted near the towns of Berkshire and Richford. As the story goes two (or three) mill workers from Richford were crossing the town’s main street bridge when they spotted a massive beast hunched on the roof of the Boright building.
The creature was said to be so terrible (or Awful) that one of the men immediately suffered a fear-induced heart attack. He later made a full recovery, as chance would have it, but was plagued by terrible nightmares for weeks.
What had the men seen? They claimed the creature resembled a massive griffin with gray-ish wings and a 20-foot (8m) wingspan. It also had a long, snake-like tail, and terrifying, enormous claws. It seemed that a creature straight from Greek mythology had decided to settle in Vermont.
Two weeks later locals reported seeing the creature again, this time with either a small child or baby clutched in its terrible talons. In the following months, the Awful was repeatedly spotted, especially by farmers, who were repeatedly sent fleeing in terror. The creature seemed to delight in being a menace, flying over fields and perching on rooftops. It never attacked, just sat there, and stared.
As is often the case with mysterious monster sightings like this, eventually reports of the Awful dried up. By the end of 1925 sightings had become rare and by 1928 they’d pretty much stopped completely. Or not.
Once in a while a Vermont resident would claim to have seen a strange beast in the region. One such example is Lisa Maskell of Montgomery who as a child spotted a monster near Trout River. A few years later she saw a drawing of a pterodactyl and claimed that it looked like the beast she’d seen as a child.
Then, in 2006, the Awful reappeared in a big way. That year on October 19, H. P. Albarelli published a piece in the County Courier, “Has The Awful Returned to Berkshire and Richford?”
In it, the writer recounted how a respected Richford native had seen the Awful appear “from nowhere and plucked a huge black crow” out of a tree. The article seemed to remind locals that they had their very own monster and surprise, surprise soon reports started coming in of more sightings.
On November 30, 2006, a follow-up piece, “The Awful sighted again; relic produced” appeared in the same paper. This second article included the testimonies of several more locals who claimed to have seen the monster.
These included Lisa Maskell who retold her story of seeing the monster as a child as well as an unnamed 60-something who believed he had seen the creature in the Gibou area of Montgomery. He told the reporter that the creature had been seen in the area repeatedly over the last 25 years. Another resident, dowser Edith Green, claimed that everyone was “very nervous about it.”
Of course, eyewitness testimony can only go so far. Luckily for Albarelli, he had proof the monster existed. He claimed to have been given a petrified jawbone that belonged to the Awful. In his article, he said he was taking it to a biologist at the University of Vermont for identification and promised to write a follow-up.
That follow-up never came. Maybe Albarelli got bad news. Or maybe someone pointed out that his claim of having the creature’s petrified jawbone didn’t make much sense since his article claimed people were still seeing the Awful. Was the Awful flying around Vermont without a jawbone?
The Lovecraft Connection
Albarelli had more to say about the Awful, however. He also claimed that in 1925 infamous horror writer H.P. Lovecraft visited Vermont to check out the Awful for himself. Some corners of the internet then ran away with this claim and Albarelli’s assertions became internet “fact”.
Supposedly the Awful then became the inspiration for many of Lovecraft’s writings, a claim that sent Lovecraft fans wild since it’s a story they’d never heard before. Probably because it’s false.
There’s literally no evidence that Lovecraft visited Vermont in 1925 or was inspired by the Awful. For a start, anyone even a little familiar with Lovecraft’s creations will know nothing like the Awful ever appears in his work. Giant reality-ending squid gods? Check. Griffins? Not so much.
When Justin Woodman, author of the blog, “Whispers from the Ghooric Zone” called out Albarelli’s claims all he got in return was conflicting answers. Albarelli claims to have letters written by Lovecraft that substantiate his claims, but no one else has ever seen them.
It’s often all too easy to look at claims of cryptid sightings and laugh but the truth is over the years a fair few cryptids have turned out to be real, most famously the giant squid. So, with that in mind, what about the Awful?
It doesn’t look good. Despite sightings of the Awful supposedly going back nearly 100 years, the first written record of the creature is Albarelli’s 2006 article. In the 100 years preceding it, not a single other person wrote about the monster.
Albarelli seems to genuinely believe in the monster, but he’s the only source. A source that isn’t even reliable and whose original articles were taken down. All he has is unsubstantiated eyewitness accounts, letters no one has ever seen, and a jawbone that has never been confirmed.
In all likelihood, the Awful never existed and it definitely didn’t inspire Lovecraft (who had no shortage of inspiration, including his own troubled mind). There are plenty of likely explanations for the eyewitness accounts, the most obvious of which being big birds and superstitious locals.
Top Image: Known as the Awful, what was the truth behind the giant griffin seen in Vermont? Source: Dianne / Adobe Stock.
References
Nadel. D. 2016. The Awful: Not Quite a Lovecraftian Monster. HubPages. Available at: https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Awful-Not-Quite-a-Lovecraftian-Monster
J. 2021. Cryptid Casefile: The Awful. Strangeology. Available at: https://www.strangeology.com/post/cryptid-casefile-the-awful
Budd. D. 2023. THE AWFUL. BellaOnline Available at: https://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art61325.asp
Fascinating investigation into how modern media can retroactively create mythology. The way Albarelli's 2006 article became the sole "source" for something supposedly happening since 1925 shows how easily gaps in documentation get filled with speculation. I remember back in college studying folklore and seeing similar patterns where one determined researcher can basically bootstrap an entire legend. The lack of any contemporaneous written record is probly the biggest red flag here.