When White America Invented a Fake Monster to Enforce Segregation | Hidden History Halloween

Welcome back to Hidden History Halloween, a two-week series where I uncover the colonial theft, racist exploitation, and cultural erasure lurking behind your favorite spooky season traditions. In the last article, we exposed how America stole and whitewashed Haitian zombies. Today, we’ll explore the story of a monster that white newspapers invented to terrorize Black communities and suppress their votes.

“The Colored People Are in Great Danger.”

That’s the headline that introduced America to the Snallygaster in 1909. Not a centuries-old German legend or an ancient Appalachian folklore, but a newspaper article published by the Middletown Valley Register in Western Maryland. This article was deliberately crafted to terrify Black residents with a fictional dragon that, according to the paper, “will not harm a white person, but lives mainly on colored men.”

White newspaper editors invented a monster and published stories specifically designed to control where Black people could safely travel. For decades, it worked. Understanding how it worked reveals something chilling about how white supremacy operated beyond the violence we’re taught about in history class.

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How the Monster Was Created

Retired librarian Susan Fair made a disturbing discovery while researching her book “Mysteries & Lore of Western Maryland.” She was looking for the Snallygaster’s ancient origins and found that the creature doesn’t appear in “South Mountain Magic,” the definitive 1882 collection of Western Maryland folklore. No German immigrants told stories about it, and no Indigenous legends mention anything resembling it. The Snallygaster simply didn’t exist before 1909.

By 1909, Black communities in Western Maryland had been gaining economic independence and political voice despite Jim Crow restrictions. Black men could vote, Black families owned property, and Black workers competed for jobs. White power structures needed new mechanisms to maintain control, especially in rural areas where Black populations were smaller but increasingly visible in public life.