Many people believed the Dwayyo could have been an Irish Wolfhound. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Was it a man or beast, and just where did the name Dwayyo come from?
At the end of November 1965, John Becker heard a noise in his backyard. When he went to investigate and found a six-foot-tall creature covered in black fur with a bushy tail. The two fought and the beast ran off.
Becker called the Maryland State Police to report the creature, calling it a Dwayyo. Besides what the beast was, the origin of the name was never explained.
Becker told the police that he lived on Fern Rock Road, a narrow dirt road near the entrance of Gambrill State Park. The police tried to investigate the call, but they couldn’t find a John Becker in Frederick County or a Fern Rock Road.
Most people assumed the call was a prank or that the man had had too much to drink and was seeing things. However, a couple days later, a Frederick man was hunting near Middletown and had a run in with a creature.
“My dogs started chasing something, and I saw it was black, but I didn’t think too much of it, believing it was a dog maybe even a bear,” he told George May with the Frederick Post. “However, after reading the newspaper article, I’m not too sure it wasn’t a Dwayyo. It trotted something like a horse. I don’t know what it was, but I’m looking for it this week.”
Most people were skeptical of the story, but some began to worry. It didn’t help that May continued to write about the mysterious creature. Even though it was obvious he was one of the skeptics, some of his readers weren’t.
When police went to investigate a report that someone had been holding the Dwayyo captive in his basement for a year, not only didn’t they find the Dwayyo, but the property owner said he hadn’t called the police. May wrote, “The City Police went to a basement to get themselves a Dwayyo; but when they got there the basement was bare and the Dwayyo had gone away-yo.”
An Ellerton, Md., woman reported that she may have heard the Dwayyo months earlier near her Catoctin Mountain home. “It cried like a baby and then screamed like a woman for months. All our neighbors heard it. My husband tried to look for footprints, but none could be found.”
In man near Middletown, Md., called in a report, saying that he had seen the Dwayyo and that it looked like a dog. In fact, several people called saying that the artist sketch in the newspaper reminded them of an Irish Wolfhound on its hind legs. The breed can stand three feet high on more when on all fours and weigh upwards from 120 pounds.
Some people also began suggested it might be a snallygaster, the other famous monster from Middletown Valley. However, the two descriptions were nothing alike.
A hunt was planned for the Dwayyo that supposedly 100 people signed up for. However, it didn’t happen because too few people showed up.
“A young Frederick boy, apparently worried about the Dwayyo, said he thought the paper was just making –up the Dwayyo stories so children would be good until Christmas,” May wrote in one of his stories.
The tipping point seemed to be when a letter for John Becker arrived at the Frederick News-Post offices in care of May. The letter was from the Frederick County Treasurer and contained a dog license for the Dwayyo.
After that, sightings stopped, and May suggested that perhaps the creature had moved on.
Many people believed the Dwayyo could have been an Irish Wolfhound. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Phantoms and Monsters blog reported that the Dwayyo was seen the following year again just outside of Gambrill State Park. A man known only as Jim A. saw it as he headed for his campsite. “It was described as a shaggy two legged creature the size of a deer that had a triangle shaped head with pointed ears and chin. It was dark brown in color and when approached it made a horrid scream and backed away from the man. Jim described it as having an odd walk as it retreated, its legs, ‘stuck out from the side of the trunk of the body making its movements appear almost spider-like as it backed away’”.
Ten years later, two men were on Catoctin Mountain on a private road between Cunningham Falls State Park and Catoctin Mountain Park. A large animal ran across the road in front of them, and they saw it in their headlights. Their description matched the general description of the Dwayyo.
If the Dwayyo had moved on, as May suggested in 1965, then it hadn’t gone far, just moving north along Catoctin Mountain.
Maybe it will make another appearance, or it may continue to be just as elusive as Bigfoot.
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