About This Location
The area near Grafton where the Grafton Monster was first reported in 1964. Described as a large, roughly 10-foot-tall humanoid figure with smooth, pale skin resembling a seal, the creature was spotted near the riverbanks and has become one of West Virginia's notable cryptid legends.
The Ghost Story
Late on the night of June 16, 1964, Robert Cockrell was driving along Route 119 near the Tygart Valley River outside Grafton, West Virginia, when something emerged from the darkness that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Cockrell was no wide-eyed teenager looking for thrills -- he was a reporter for the Grafton Sentinel, trained to observe and document. What he saw defied both observation and documentation.
Standing at the edge of the road was a massive figure, seven to nine feet tall, with smooth, seal-like skin that reflected the dim light. The creature appeared to have no head -- its body was a single pale, rounded mass that sat directly on broad shoulders without any visible neck or facial features. It produced a high-pitched whistling sound that cut through the night air. Before Cockrell could process what he was seeing, the creature scurried off the road and disappeared into the darkness along the riverbank.
Cockrell reported his encounter in the Grafton Sentinel on June 18, 1964, and the story ignited the small community. Groups of teenagers armed with flashlights and improvised weapons organized search parties along Riverside Drive and the Tygart Valley River banks, scouring the area for any trace of the creature. A follow-up article in the Sentinel on June 19 attempted to calm the town, characterizing the episode as the product of 'spring fever' and overactive imaginations. But the searches continued, and additional witnesses came forward with their own accounts of encountering something large and inexplicable near the river.
Cockrell took his sighting seriously enough to pursue further investigation. He connected with Gray Barker, a Clarksburg-based paranormal researcher and publisher who was already well known for his work on West Virginia's supernatural phenomena, including the Flatwoods Monster encounter of 1952 and the emerging Mothman reports from Point Pleasant. Cockrell and Barker collaborated on an article for UFO Magazine, though the piece was never completed or published. Barker's involvement lent the Grafton Monster a degree of credibility within the paranormal research community, linking it to West Virginia's broader pattern of cryptid encounters.
The creature was never definitively seen again, though occasional reports of strange sounds and large, unidentified figures along the Tygart Valley River have surfaced over the decades. Unlike Mothman, which produced hundreds of sightings over a sustained period, the Grafton Monster remains primarily a single-witness event -- but that witness was a trained journalist whose account was specific, consistent, and never retracted.
For decades, the Grafton Monster existed as a footnote in West Virginia cryptid lore, overshadowed by its more famous cousins in Point Pleasant and Flatwoods. That changed in 2018 when the video game Fallout 76, set in a post-apocalyptic rendering of West Virginia, included the Grafton Monster as an enemy creature. The game introduced the cryptid to millions of players worldwide and sparked renewed interest in Cockrell's 1964 encounter.
By the 2020s, Grafton had fully embraced its monster. The town launched the inaugural Grafton Monster Festival in June 2024, timed to the 60th anniversary of Cockrell's sighting. The festival featured exhibits, speakers, and community celebrations centered on the creature that had briefly terrorized -- and permanently defined -- this small Taylor County town. The sighting area along Riverside Drive near the Tygart Valley River remains accessible to visitors, though what they might encounter there on a dark night is anyone's guess.
West Virginia is arguably America's cryptid capital, home to Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, and the Grafton Monster -- three of the most famous creature encounters in paranormal history, all occurring within a single state over a span of just eighteen years. The state tourism board has embraced this identity with an official Paranormal Trail, and the Grafton Monster stands as proof that not all of West Virginia's mysteries require an explanation to endure.
