I think the Grafton Monster is a hoax. Now, not that I believe any cryptids actually exist, but I mean a hoax in terms of culture and folklore.
In recent years the subject of cryptids from West Virginia has grown in pop culture, but there's one that stands out to me - The Grafton Monster
Originally sighted in 1964 near the Tygart River in Grafton West Virginia, it's described as a lumbering hulk with no head and white seal-like skin. There are buzzing and humming sounds associated with it, but it doesn't really do anything bad.
Except - I live in West Virginia, I have family in Grafton going back to my great-grandparents. I grew up and still live about 30 minutes from Grafton. Nobody I know has ever heard of this thing. Not as a folk tale, not as a hoax, not at all. Seems to me the whole story was dreamt up in recent years.
In 2014 there was a TV show called Mountain Monsters that did an episode on the Grafton Monster. They interviewed local people, actually did film in Grafton, it was rather a subject of local news that there was a TV crew in town.
Except the people they interviewed definitely weren't from Grafton. It's a small enough town that you kind of know everybody, and those folks definitely weren't locals. My uncle owns a business in Grafton and he knows frickin everybody, he could recognize whose farm they were on but that was not the guy who owns that farm.
Nobody, I mean nobody from Grafton knew they ever had a monster until a TV crew came into town and told us we did.
So I think it's bullshit.
Everybody knows the Mothman. I didn't think stories about The Flatwoods Monster made it outside of WV and apparently that's popular now too, but I've heard of that since I was a kid. These are established folklore, tall tales passed down the generations, and culturally relevant.
The Grafton Monster though, no, at least don't think so. Almost everything I try to read about the tale circles back to that TV show. There's a book that was published in 2019, numerous cryptid hunters have done stories on the subject in recent years. But I can't find anything on the subject prior to 2014.
Now, part of the story goes that the first sighting was made by a guy who worked for the local newspaper The Grafton Daily Sentinel, and he published a story on June 18th, 1964. That was a real paper (now defunct) but there's no online resource for back issues of it, maybe it could be found in physical copies somewhere. If I were to see that, then I would believe this was actual WV folklore and not some script from a reality TV show writer.
In the absence of evidence dating before the 2014 TV show, I have to presume The Grafton Monster was made up for that show and is now counted among WV's well known cryptids.
Like I said at first not saying I think any of these exist, but I strongly believe that folk tales of this kind have great cultural value. They're all "made up" but the others have history, Grafton Monster does not.
For real, me and a friend went to a costume party as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton back in college. It was hilarious, we even acted the parts. I'll admit I was a little nervous walking into a frat house dressed like that, but the cheers we got made it all worthwhile.
This is normal human behavior that the people he's with want to criminalize.