Allow me to take the opportunity to address and attempt to clear up a bit of misinformation, a mix-up of sorts, that has come about in regard to a certain piece of West Virginia folklore.
Misinformation unaddressed will fester like an undressed wound, so let’s lay it all out and begin the mending process. Sunlight is the best disinfectant after all.
This is the story of what happens when folklore meets fiction. This is the story of the “Apple Devil” mix-up.
Let’s start at the beginning.
The Priestly and Stover Bigfoot Sightings (1960):
Late into the year of 1960, two purported sightings of hairy humanoid monsters, the kind that folks often call “Bigfoot,” were reported in West Virginia. These cases were the W.C. “Doc” Priestly sighting from October 1960 and the Charles Stover sighting from December 30th 1960. Both of these cases were reported at the time in the local newspress. Charles Stover’s story was printed in the “Charleston Daily Mail” on December 31st 1960, and both stories (Priestly and Stover) were printed in the “Raleigh Register” newspaper on January 5th 1961. We’re not going too in-depth on these specific Bigfoot sightings (that’s an article for a different time), we’re only focusing on the way in which they become relevant to the main topic at hand. [Read More on the sightings here]
In 1970, Fortean author John Keel, known for his later Mothman Prophecies fame, put out a book on monsters entitled “Strange Creatures From Time And Space.” Chapter Ten of the book entitled “Creatures from the Black Lagoon” focused on hairy humanoid creatures seen throughout the United States, including “Abominable Swamp Slobs” of the deep south, as Keel called them. John Keel listed out hairy monster sightings by state, writing, “This material has been collected from many sources, including the files of Ivan T. Sanderson, Roger Paterson, Loren Coleman, FATE magazine, and of course, our own swelling files.”
Loren Coleman at the time was just starting out in the Fortean field. John Keel, in his “Anomaly” Newsletter (No.5, October 1970), refers to Coleman as “our [young] Illinois monster sleuth.” Of course, Loren Coleman would later grow to become an iconic author in the Bigfoot/Sasquatch scene with many influential books and articles, he would appear on countless monster TV shows and documentaries, and eventually establish his own “International Cryptozoology Museum” in Maine.
In his 2009 tribute to the late John Keel, author Loren Coleman writes: “I grew to know Keel after being introduced to him through mutual friends Brad Steiger and Ivan Sanderson. I worked closely with Keel on contributing as yet-unpublished material of mine for his book, Strange Creatures from Time and Space (1970), which would influence my and Jerome Clarkâs first two books, The Unidentified (1975) and Creatures from the Outer Edge (1978).”
Under the “West Virginia” section of the chapter of Keel’s book, three entries are listed. Two of which are of course the Doc Priestly and Charles Stover sightings, but there was also now a third hairy creature sighting purported from the summer of 1960 around Davis, West Virginia. John Keel cites this entry as coming from “a personal letter dated January 7th 1961.”
With this third sighting now added, it would seem that a small cluster of sightings was forming. Folks use words like “waves” or “flaps” to describe several reports coming in from the same location around the same time, though only three sightings might stretch the definition a bit, it was starting to become a pattern.
In 1983, Loren Coleman released another book entitled “Mysterious America.” In this book, the 1983 non-updated version, Chapter 14, he again told the stories of the Doc Priestly and Charles Stover Bigfoot sightings from 1960 .
(Note: There is a spelling discrepancy with the name Priestly being rendered as “Priestly” by some sources, such as the original local newspress, and as “Priestley” by John Keel’s “Strange Creatures” 1970 and Coleman’s “Mysterious America” in 1983. Coleman later used “Priestly” in 2002 as well, as did author Rosemary Guiley in her 2012 book “Monster of West Virginia.” I don’t know which of the two is the correct spelling for this individual. In this article, I went with the Priestly spelling.)
All of this context is building to something, I promise.
John Lutz – The Eastern Puma Research Network (EPRN) (1983) and Loren Coleman’s 2002 Tidbit:
John Lutz, of Maysville, West Virginia, was a Fortean researcher fascinated by purported sightings of large mystery cats such as mountain lions in the eastern United States, where they are supposedly extinct. In 1983, he founded the Eastern Puma Research Network (EPRN) to investigate and catalog these reported sightings. In October 2001, researcher John Lutz and his wife Linda declared they had collected seventy-six reports of supposed black panther sightings in West Virginia from July 1983 to December 2000.
Though his main fascination was the large cat sightings, John Lutz also had a side interest in local sightings of hairy humanoids, often called Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
In 2002, while the Mothman Prophecies movie starring Richard Gere was building up hype, Loren Coleman put out a book to coincide with the release of the film entitled “Mothman and Other Curious Encounters.” The book is partly about Mothman, but the rest of its pages are an interesting assortment of other strange purported occurrences, including The Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia. Some of the material included in this book is reworked from his previous articles and books, including Coleman’s 1985 book which was just called “Curious Encounters (1985).”
Loren Coleman, in this 2002 book, once again included the Doc Priestly and Charles Stover Bigfoot sightings from late 1960 as well as including the Davis, WV story.
He makes an error here, duplicating the Davis sighting. Allow me to explain. In John Keel’s Strange Creatures From Time And Space (1970), Keel listed the sightings in numbered stand-alone bullet points categorized by U.S. state for other researchers to reference from. He lists the Davis sighting chronologically first by date (as entry #60), as it’s purportedly from the summer of 1960. He mentions the details from the January 7th 1961 personal letter that the creature “had two huge eyes that shone like big balls of fire” and that it “stood every bit of eight feet tall [with] shaggy long hair all over the body.”
Then in his entry on the Doc Priestly sighting of October 1960 (bullet point #61), Keel quickly references that previous sighting for context, stating “That summer numerous people around Parson[s], West Virginia, allegedly saw a gruesome eight-foot-tall thing covered with shaggy hair and equipped with two huge eyes which ‘shone like big balls of fire.'” He’s clearly talking about the sighting from Davis WV, which is indeed near the town of Parsons, West Virginia, approximately 17 miles away, roughly a 26 minute drive. The “numerous people” he’s talking about here are the campers from the Davis WV sighting in the “summer” of 1960. He even quotes directly from the January 7th 1961 personal letter again here stating “shone like big balls of fire” as that’s word for word what the Davis WV sighting says above. Keel seems to have been emphasizing that the Priestly story has precedent for those who might not have read the previous bullet point. In fact, the #61 entry is reworked or reprinted from Keel’s October 1969 article in Male magazine entitled “UFOs and Abominable Snowmen,” which might explain the redundancy there and why that bit of text named a different nearby town instead.
Coleman appears to have misread this and duplicated the sighting, thinking it was two separate occurrences, one near Davis WV and another near Parson WV. It’s actually meant to be one occurrence that was just repeated or summarized for context, just with a different nearby town named. (I truly never noticed that until doing the research for this article.)
Sandwiched between these 1960 hairy humanoid sightings, there was an odd tidbit, only a sentence long, that many readers might glance over without a second thought.
A most curious sentence indeed.
It read as follows: “Around the same time [1960], according to Fortean researcher John Lutz, when he was working at WFBR Radio, he and his boss, Lou Corbin, investigated the Pocahontas County ‘Apple Devil,’ a creature that would take bites out of apples in the orchards around the town of Marlington.”
Note that Loren Coleman only describes it here as a “creature” with no further detail. It’s not even stated if the creature was seen by someone, or if this is just being assumed or inferred based on apples in orchards having bites taken out of them. Who witnessed it, if so? Was it just one sighting? Who named it the “Apple Devil”? Lastly, the town in West Virginia’s Pocahontas County is called Marlinton, not Marlington, which is most likely a typo.
The fact that this sentence is sandwiched between two Bigfoot sightings leads the reader to possibly assume that this “creature” must have been a hairy humanoid Bigfoot-type creature as well, but it’s not directly stated. If so, this would bring the grand total of West Virginia Bigfoot-type sightings in the year 1960 up to at least four. Thus making it even more of a wave. The sentence is a quick tidbit lacking any detail. The “Apple Devil” mention was not included in John Keel’s “Strange Creatures From Time And Space (1970)” or Loren Coleman’s “Mysterious America (1983 version)” (both of which mention the Priestly and Stover Bigfoot cases) or even within Loren Coleman’s “Curious Encounters (1985).” I searched through Coleman’s books, some manually page by page (such as The Unidentified, 1975, and Creatures From The Outer Edge, 1978) and some digitally with the e-book search functionality (such as his monster field guides, books on Bigfoot, Mysterious America 2007 updated version, and his A-Z encyclopedia book). I didn’t find anything about the Apple Devil.
(Side Note: Fortean author Rosemary Guiley, in her later book “Monsters of West Virginia, 2012,” repeats the classic Doc Priestly, Charles Stover, and Davis WV Bigfoot sightings, even including Coleman’s accidental “Parsons, WV” duplication, she directly cites Coleman’s “Mothman and Others, 2002” book in the bibliography pages, but she doesn’t mention the Apple Devil.)
I haven’t been able to find any mention of this story at all prior to the sentence being published in Loren Coleman’s Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (2002). I’ve checked the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America online newspaper archive and also had fellow researchers check Newspaper.com, but we found no results for the Apple Devil story. It most likely wasn’t printed in the newspaper and was just something John Lutz and his boss investigated into on their own.
This 2002 sentence seems to be the first time this story was ever in print.
According to Loren Coleman via Twitter/X in 2026, when asked where he first heard of the “Apple Devil,” he wrote simply:
“I [met] with, corresponded with, and was given files directly by John Lutz before he died. John mostly held onto […] his mystery cat files and weeded out his unknown hominoid data.”
There are still many lingering questions, including what the Apple Devil supposedly looked like and if it was ever printed anywhere else prior to that, which I haven’t come across. (He does use the word hominoid here, which is very noteworthy, but there’s also another potential reason for that which we’ll get around to near the end of the article.)
Fictionalization Begins – The Turner-McKinnon Story booklet (2011):
In 2011, a small illustrated children’s storybook entitled “Monsters & Ghosts of West Virginia (2011)” by Erin Turner and their middle school aged son, Isaac McKinnon, was published. The story booklet was openly partly-fictional, or fictionalized, noting in the opening pages that they took “plenty of artistic license.” Though you do have to read the introduction closely to catch that phrase. The stories are clearly and self-evidently telling stories based off West Virginia monsters from the perspective of fictional characters such as children, their targeted demographic. (Note, for example, that they added a fictional “Jason” main character to the Flatwoods Monster tale and the story is told from their point of view.)
In one of this book’s stories, section three, page 11-13, there were creatures labeled “Apple Pickers,” which were described as dark red hairy bipedal Bigfoot-types with a foul smell, that steal apples from apple orchards. Though the booklet uses “Apple Pickers” and never says “Apple Devil,” this fictionalized tale still appears to be based on the one sentence from Loren Coleman’s 2002 book about West Virginia apple orchards, which was of course sandwiched between two Bigfoot sightings, but with no detail given for the “creature.” The story contains the same structure of a West Virginia orchard being raided by an unknown creature, and the storybook was printed years afterwards. The book also covers many of the same monsters Coleman’s book would cover, such as The Mothman and The Flatwoods Monster. A researcher of West Virginia legends gathering sources in 2011 would most likely come across Loren Coleman’s book. I suppose it’s possible that this is a strange coincidence and that the story isn’t connected or inspired by it, but it sounds a bit far-fetched.
In the introduction, Erin Turner writes: “It was a fun project for both of us. Writing and illustrating stories about common and uncommon West Virginia monsters, we researched all the information we could find. Armed with our notes, names, and dates, Isaac and I began giving ourselves plenty of artistic license.”
This 2011 semi-fictional children’s story book looks to be the first source of the claim that “local farmers had complained about broken branches, torn-down fences and the apple trees being stripped of their fruit” as well as the overall description of the appearance and smell. These aspects do not seem to be from some other source with more detailed information on the case, it seems that these added details were fictionalized by the two authors. Loren Coleman’s 2002 tidbit said the undescribed creature took bites out of apples, but in this 2011 fictionalized story, the creature is tall, hairy, bipedal, and steals the apples instead. A foul smell is a common part of Bigfoot storytelling, which appears in the Turner-McKinnon version but not in the original Coleman sentence. Another addition from Turner-McKinnon is that the creature ran “fast as lightning.” Fast movement is another common attribute in Bigfoot sightings that once again wasn’t in the 2002 Coleman version. It would seem that the artists, taking the creature to indeed be a hairy Bigfoot-type like the other surrounding stories in Coleman’s book, may have simply fleshed it out with potential Bigfoot behaviors or attributes.
The booklet features an illustration of a tall hairy Bigfoot-like creature running away while carrying an arm-full of apples. It has a certain cartoonish Dr. Seuss style to it.
The author Erin Turner seems to be a ghost, they have no social media or internet presence that I’ve been able to find, and I’ve never seen them attending or associated with any West Virginia folklore event or festival. I don’t even know their gender, though from the often more feminine “Erin” spelling rather than Aaron, I could guess that they might be a woman. Turner also put out a straight-forward coloring and puzzle book entitled “Kids’ West Virginia Activity Book” in 2020, which has nothing to do with monsters.
In May of 2026, I managed to get an email forwarded to Erin Turner via their publisher in which I asked the author about their sources or inspiration for the “Apple Picker” story, if it was based on Coleman’s “Apple Devil,” and if they had any additional sources beyond simply adding fictional details, but as of now, they have not yet responded or commented.
“Apple Devil” On The Web – The Mothman Wikia (2016):
In 2016, some long-haired weirdo from West Virginia came along, going by the name “Mothman Historian” (that’s me, if you didn’t know), and created The Mothman Wikia. This lone weirdo had spent way too many hours poring over all the paranormal and folklore books that the school library had at its disposal and had thus collected many tidbits on West Virginia’s folklore of monsters and UFOs. Two of those books from the library, among the many others such as books by John Keel, Rosemary Guiley, and Jeff Wamsley, were indeed Loren Coleman’s “Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (2002)” and Erin Turner and Isaac McKinnon’s “Monsters and Ghosts of West Virginia (2011).”
The Mothman Wikia collected information and summaries on well known Fortean and UFO folklore like The Flatwoods Monster (1952), Indrid Cold (1966), and The Mothman (1966-67) as well as cases lesser known at the time such as The Grafton Monster (1964), The Vegetable Man (1968) (Told in 1976), and of course, the topic of this article, the so-called “Apple Devil” (1960.) The West Virginia Pantheon, as I called them.
The Wikia page I made on the “Apple Devil” in 2016 had two sources for the case, Loren Coleman’s 2002 tidbit from Mothman and Other Curious Encounters, and unfortunately, the fictionalized 2011 Turner-McKinnon storybook, which at the time, being a newcomer to the Fortean world, I didn’t realize just how fictionalized the book’s description of the creature was. I perhaps assumed that Turner was basing this information on some other prior source, or that even if the story booklet was partly fictionalized to be told from an invented character’s perspective for children, the physical description and the broken fences part were not. Their physical description of other monsters, such as Mothman, seemed standard to how they’re typically described. Thus, I included the Bigfoot-look and the part about the broken fences as well, not fully knowing of the dubiousness of this source, or at least of this description.
The “Apple Devil” moniker was very cool to me at the time and I really enjoyed the idea. The striking image of the tall Bigfoot-like creature carrying off an arm-full of apples really stuck with me, so much so that I eventually forgot that Coleman’s book only said “creature” as a description and assumed that it was an apple-stealing hairy Bigfoot-type (which it might’ve been, but Coleman didn’t state a description at all in 2002). Consider this a journalistic mea culpa for my error. I should’ve stuck with just the Coleman source and never included anything from the Erin Turner book. I’ve certainly learned a lot since then and I’m much more careful about such things. My sincerest apologies.
Upon first posting the entry on July 14th 2016, my Apple Devil page on the Wikia was just the quote from Coleman’s 2002 book, including the Doc Priestly and Charles Stover Bigfoot sightings surrounding it as well. Then, on October 18th 2017, I changed it to a quick summary I wrote. For full disclosure, and because it’s relevant, I will render that Wikia page’s section on the Apple Devil as it appeared in October 2017 here in full:
“In 1960 there were reports of hairy human-like beings that would take bites out of apples in the orchards around the town of Marlington, West Virginia. The creatures became known as “Apple Devils” or “Apple Pickers.” Local farmers complained about torn down fences, broken branches and the apple trees being stripped of their fruit. People claimed to be seeing a dark, hairy creature, walking upright like a person at the scenes. They were said to run extremely fast and have a foul odor. According to Fortean researcher John Lutz, when he was working at WFBR Radio in 1960, he and his boss, Lou Corbin, went to investigate the creatures in the Pocahontas County, WV. The state of West Virginia, in general, seemed to be in the middle of a wave of strange hairy monsters sightings at that time.”
(Note that this page also included sections on the Doc Priestly and Charles Stover Bigfoot sightings of 1960, and the seal-skinned Grafton Monster of 1964, but all of those were told completely accurately and without error. The “Apple Devil” being described here like the Turner-McKinnon story and the “broken fences” claim was the only error.)
The Artist Ballyraven and the Buzzing Bee – Mothman Festival 2017:
From 2016 to 2019, I attended every Mothman Festival in September and would often talk to the vendors and guest speakers.
In those days, I was a buzzing bee, eager to share obscure folkloric tidbits with anyone who would allow me to talk to them. I had the habit of somewhat rambling on the subject. I was also a stickler for details on artwork (not that I’m much different now) and a bit of a completionist. If I saw posters with various West Virginia monsters, I’d ask about the other ones not featured, such as the Grafton Monster, the Veggie Man, or the Apple Devil. Whenever I thought of “West Virginia Bigfoot,” I always thought of the mysterious-sounding “Apple Devil” name and their mischievous apple thieving ways, obscure to most but iconic to me, and so it was always on the tip of my tongue for any Bigfoot discussions. It seemed like our own fun and kitschy regional version or name for a Bigfoot.
In 2017, I first saw a particular booth at the Mothman Festival with several sketches of monsters in plastic sleeves hung up on poster boards. They also had a coloring book with many of their monster drawings collected all in one place. I bought the coloring book and featured it in a YouTube video I did, titled “Items From The Mothman Festival 2017,” which I posted on October 11th 2017. I also had video footage of this booth in my YouTube video called “Mothman Festival 2017: Vendors,” posted on October 1st 2017. I saw that this artist also had an online Etsy store where they sold their sketches, which were labeled “The West Virginia Bestiary,” and I kept an eye on it over the years. Her sketch art was essentially a form of “speculative biology” for folkloric creatures, imagining what they would be like biologically if they existed in real life, which was kind of funny. My 2016, 2018, and 2019 Mothman Festival videos didn’t seem to have any footage of the same artist’s booth, and I didn’t buy anything from her the following years, having already gotten the collection book.
The artist’s name was Kristen Puckett, but she would later go by BallyRaven.
I often have a pretty good memory, especially for weird West Virginia folklore stuff, and I very distinctly remember talking to her about the Apple Devil. I remember looking at all of her art hung up on boards around us while having this conversation, and I know that at some point this artist sold a speculative biology sketch of the Apple Devil, which I thought was really cool. But the thing is, she actually did her sketch of the Apple Devil in 2018, and our talk was very clearly from when I got the coloring book back in 2017. So, it seems that what actually happened, is that in 2017 I looked at her artwork of various West Virginia folklore monsters and said something along the lines of “What about the Apple Devil?” or “Have you heard of the Apple Devil?” then explained what it was. That seems very in character for me, I must say.
I reached out to BallyRaven via email in 2026 and asked her about her sources for her sketch or how she first heard of the Apple Devil. She gave me permission to quote from our email correspondence. According to her, “The Apple Devil was told to me the first time I worked at the Mothman Festival in 2016 or 17.” She continued, “There were also several extra details on the Mothman Wikia.” She of course didn’t know at the time that I made that Wikia. She wasn’t familiar with the Coleman quote or the Turner-McKinnon storybook, commenting on the Turner illustration, she said, “I feel like I would remember seeing a Chewbacca style recreation lol. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.” She had obtained those details directly from my Wikia, referencing it instead.
According to BallyRaven, “The Apple Devil drawing was done on Aug. 18, 2018.”
I included a picture of me from the 2017 Mothman Festival in my next email to see if she remembered this, it was a long shot, but it was worth a try.
She replied: “I do recognize you, actually! I don’t remember having a conversation about the Apple Devil with you specifically, but it does make a lot of sense and probably did happen. My first year [2016], I had only one cryptid field sketch drawing; it was the Loveland Frogman. I think the next year [2017] I brought ~16 or so, whatever could fit in two large poster frames.” She continued, “Before 2020, I would write down everything from a conversation in a little notebook when a lull in the crowd occurred.” In my vendor footage video, she can indeed be seen writing something down on a small notepad while I film the booth. She concluded, “I would say you were probably the first person to tell me about the Apple Devil. It is such a deep cut that it isn’t likely to be a coincidence, I think.” I concur with this.
I suppose a bee pollinating flowers, in this instance moving bits of folkloric information from one place to another, is unaware of the unintended consequences of what they might grow into.
Further Fictionalization: The BallyRaven Drawing Inspiration (Late 2017-2018):
For a moment, let’s get into BallyRaven’s artistic philosophy and more of how her August 2018 Apple Devil sketch came to be.
In her email replies to me, she stated very clearly: “My cryptid work is an art project not to be taken seriously. Over the almost decade I’ve been working on it, I’ve tried to be explicit about it and its intentions, but that has been sort of a lost cause. I’m more interested in stories and their evolution. Personally, there are no cryptids I believe to exist, aside from maybe ABCs [“Alien Big Cats”] or those that could be explained as nearly extinct animals. The project’s goal is a celebration of storytelling and Appalachia, as well as commentary on belief, skepticism, taking these tales as truthful, real accounts, envisioning them, and asking the viewer if they thought that they could plausibly work in the real world, somehow evade concrete proof and discovery.” (Ironic, since large mystery cats are exactly what Mr. John Lutz, who brought us the Apple Devil via Coleman, studied!)
“My work is largely fictional. The process I use when creating these cryptid illustrations is to find whatever bits of history and lore, stories, etc. (regardless of its truthfulness) first. I list them out as ‘facts,’ which just mean to me the rules the creature must live/be built by for the drawing. There are often contradictions, and I take those on a case by case basis. I’ll then imagine the creature, as best as I can, based on these ‘facts’, adding extra details as if it were an animal being encountered and studied.”
A bestiary is a collection of illustrated images of real animals like foxes, lions, birds, and fish, as well as mythological creatures, such as unicorns, dragons, or griffins, accompanied with detailed information and sometimes a moral lesson or religious fable in text. These artworks were popular in Medieval Europe. BallyRaven’s artwork is partly inspired by this tradition, making elaborate encyclopedic information on local folklore creatures as if they were real-world animals in a bestiary. Her bestiary is intended to be an outright fictional or novelty take on these folklore creatures.
Along with the 2018 Apple Devil sketch, BallyRaven’s website featured a short fictionalized and speculative writeup of the supposed creature which she said was not meant to be taken at face-value at all and it also included an alleged “modern sighting” from Hillsboro, West Virginia which she collected herself from a man identified as “L.M.” whom she had met at a Bigfoot convention some time after learning about the Apple Devil in 2017.
According to BallyRaven’s timeline of events, she heard about the Apple Devils from me at the September 2017 Mothman Festival, read about it from The Mothman Wikia, then attended other conventions where she talked with various attendees about the Apple Devil as a Bigfoot-type creature, mistakenly thinking that it “dwelled in trees” rather than just stole from trees or bit apples, she got artistic feedback on what the size of such a creature would “make sense” to be, heard an alleged sighting from one named “L.M.,” and then finally drew the sketch on August 18th 2018.
She wrote to me via email: “I had talked to several other attendees at bigfoot conventions over the next year or two, but most had never heard of it, but did bring up Albatwitch. There were some who thought (maybe 2-3 individuals) they might have heard about it, but weren’t sure; they whole-heartedly believed that whatever it was was real and probably a young bigfoot. They didn’t think it could be a big bigfoot, because how could a tree branch hold a 8 – 9 ft tall and massive thing’s weight.”
“The Hillsboro story comes from an old guy I saw a few times in 2017, [L.M.]; I saw him at several bigfoot events (he attended them). He is not a reliable source of information for many reasons, but, to not get too into it, his stories are inconsistent and he will inevitably tell you a story about every creature, if you gave him enough time. Very nice, entertaining guy, though, and he always came with his own blurry yard photos to back him up. I never could find anyone else who claimed to know much else, nevertheless have an actual experience.”
Allow me to give some context on what the “Albatwitch” she mentioned is. Pennsylvania newspaper articles from the 1920’s, including one from August 24th 1920 in the Lancaster New Era newspaper entitled “Y. M. C. A. Boys At Corn Roast Hunt Elusive Animal,” tell of young boys on camping trips being made to go on “Albatwitch hunts,” very similar to the famous “snipe hunts,” which is a light-hearted prank or “fool’s errand” involving sending a person into the woods to look for something that isn’t there, often carrying a bag to capture it. This is a well-known type of social phenomenon or tradition for young boys camping. In February 2002, Rick Fisher, a paranormal investigator from Pennsylvania, reportedly saw a short, 4 or 5 ft tall, thin hairy Bigfoot-type creature with yellow glowing eyes while driving at night. After searching for what to call the creature he purportedly saw, he landed on the Pennsylvania-Dutch word “Albatwitch.” The name was reportedly thought by Fisher to mean “apple snitch” or “apple thief” in Pennsylvania-Dutch, though this is not clear. According to researcher Timothy Renner, co-host of the “Strange Familiars” podcast, as explained in Episode 18 (October 9th 2017), the word “Alb” translates to elf in Old German, while “atwitch” could relate to the German word “entweichen,” meaning to escape, therefore “an escaping elf.”
In 2014, inspired by the success of The Mothman Festival after attending it himself, Rick Fisher co-founded Pennsylvania’s own “Albatwitch Day” festival with Chris Vera of the Columbia Historical Preservation Society. The festival has received much publicity and tourism. Other supposed witnesses have since come forward with their own local sightings, which have been collected by Rick Fisher. Modern sightings of “Albatwitch” in Pennsylvania are purportedly of a small hairy Bigfoot-like creature thought to eat apples. Despite the unverified claims of connections to the 1800’s or to Native American traditions, this seems to be a modern phenomenon, or at least witnesses coming forward is modern. The description given for this modern folkloric creature is incredibly similar to what BallyRaven then ended up drawing in 2018 after hearing the sizing feedback. So, if that’s the kind of creature you’re looking for, there you go, the Pennsylvania Albatwitch. (We won’t go too in-depth on that creature here, since it’s not the topic of the article.)
Because BallyRaven asserted that the Apple Devil lived in trees and used feedback from festival goers on size, she therefore shrank the Apple Devil down to being a small Bigfoot, for better apple-stealing, which once again was not at all in Coleman’s 2002 tidbit or even the Turner-McKinnon 2011 fictionalized version. This change incidentally made it very similar to the “Albatwitch” of the nearby state of Pennsylvania, which could therefore confuse people more. BallyRaven had essentially conflated or syncretized the Apple Devil with the more known Pennsylvania Albatwitch. Viewed through this lens, you could say that she had thus basically drawn a modern Albatwitch in her art and labeled it an Apple Devil (of which there was no known description.)
BallyRaven depicted the Apple Devil in her fictional artwork as a short Bigfoot-like creature with reddish brown hair that carried off stolen apples. The notion of them being Bigfoot-like creatures of course came from The Mothman Wikia entry, regrettably citing that detail from the 2011 Erin Turner book, which described the creatures as tall dark red hairy creatures. The notion of them being “short” BallyRaven originated herself with feedback from convention attendees in an attempt to make the creature make more sense biologically and essentially be better at stealing apples. She even gave an exact fictional height and weight in the sketch (4-5 ft tall, weighing 100 to 150 pounds.) She also depicted it dwelling in treetop nests. Another interesting fictional addition that she invented for her sketch was the Apple Devil being depicted as having no pupils. Text written on the sketch mentions the creature having “very reflective” pupil-less eyes that “glow slightly in the dark.” She later removed this detail from the accompanying text entry on the creature, but it can still be seen in the sketch itself.
She wrote on this subject via email: “I later removed this lore detail, as I thought it didn’t make much sense and was silly. The idea was from a group conversation about bigfeet and eyeshine; a few people were talking about how they think some cryptids’ eyes must lack a pupil because of the way they’re described after dark. That isn’t how it works, but it was silly enough for me to include it at the time[.] […] I took that part out, as there are real animals with similar nocturnal eyeshine to reference and describe, and I found that more interesting.”
I’ll remind again that this creature had no known description or physical appearance beyond Loren Coleman calling it a “creature” in 2002. But between the 2011 Erin Turner storybook and the 2018 BallyRaven sketch and fictional write-up, the creature now had a specific look, invented by creative writers. But what was the original Apple Devil supposed to actually look like? We still don’t know.
The Problem With Semi-Fiction:
The problem, I suppose you could call it, is that BallyRaven’s well-drawn art is very popular, prone to being taken out of context, and spread around everywhere. Popularity or reach plays a massive role here. Since the Apple Devil is a lesser-known folkloric creature of no currently known description, her fictional artwork often introduces people to the concept, and, since a picture is thought to be worth a thousand words, that’s often as far as people end up looking into it, or simply that’s all that they remember. Accessibility, replicability, and iteration, frequently drives folklore.
For example, Apple Devil begins with the letter “A,” and BallyRaven often lists her artworks alphabetically, meaning that it’s high up on the page. If it were a more well-known folkloric creature, while it still might mislead or confuse some people, many would be able to spot that the depiction is inaccurate. Like “Mothman” being incorrectly depicted as Moth-like in some art when the original November 15th 1966, witnesses instead described him as a light-grey bird-like humanoid. The name of course is a newspaper misnomer, Mothman aficionados know this well. With the Apple Devil it seems, folks can’t tell what is fictional because they aren’t sure what it’s supposed to be like or what the original was.
There is also this phenomenon where something openly stated as fictionalized, or semi-fiction, will still lead people astray because they can’t tell where real sourcing ends and imaginative additions begin. (This seems to have been the case for me in the past with the Apple Devil description details in the 2011 Erin Turner storybook.) When these genres blend into semi-fiction, folks don’t know where the fictionalized aspects start or stop, especially when it comes to lesser known cases. People will of course use information that is there, or most easily accessible, and images seem to stick with people more. Like how the very clearly-defined fictional “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)” Christmas special depicted the legendary Abominable Snowman as having white fur and thereby accidentally influenced public perception on the matter, when in actuality, the Himalayan natives described them as having brown fur. Most researchers of course know this, but for the average person, it’s like a fifty-fifty chance if they do. People sometimes wrongly assume, “Oh, it’s fictional, but it’s based on that folkloric creature, so it must’ve been described something like this as well.” That’s the problem with even well intentioned semi-fiction and it’s a problem BallyRaven has run into.
She wrote, “The cryptid community could use some help with media literacy. It is only getting harder and harder to tell truth from fiction on the internet. I don’t want to fool or trick anyone and it does make me sad. I had been running an over-the-top ARG podcast for a while, but recently stopped making it as people were taking it very seriously. I get emails semi-regularly about the drawings, too. It’s one of the reasons I don’t vend at bigfoot events anymore and think about retiring cryptids entirely from my art every year.” She also stated, “A lot of my older work has been stolen and republished so many times all over the internet, I’m sure they have lost much of their context.”
I had also suggested the idea of a very clear “fiction” disclaimer for her webpages, which might help at least with those seeing it in context, to which she wrote: “As for the disclaimer, I will have to figure something out and put it on my website; maybe a banner on each article’s page.”
BallyRaven then updated her webpage and added a more clear and unequivocal disclaimer to the main page of her website stating: “Fictionalized pieces are added to encyclopedia articles for entertainment. Sources are not checked for legitimacy; the goal of [BallyRaven Cryptid Wildlife Protection Agency] and its mythical/cryptid-content is primarily to celebrate Appalachian culture, monster lore, and storytelling – not prove or disprove anything. Enjoy with discretion and skepticism in mind.” She also changed the name of the “Field Report” section on her monster Field Guide entries, which contained fictional speculative biological information on each monster, to instead read “What If?” making it much clearer that it was meant to be an embellished or over-the-top speculation about the creature as if it was real in the style of those old school medieval bestiaries. She also added a pop-up which states that the website uses “allegory, metaphor, & imagination,” telling readers to be “be wary, skeptical, [and] smart” with the material. I think these changes will help greatly.
In a perfect world, people like BallyRaven could be fun and creative with no ill-consequence but in a world where sources aren’t always vetted, and powerful images can often implant themselves into people’s brains more than any text-based information or well-researched resources, fun light-hearted artwork like hers can become misinformation. It’s terrible that someone like BallyRaven would feel like hanging up her hat over the lazy habits or honest mistakes of others. There is a place for fictional writers and artists in the monster folklore community, we should be able to co-exist.
If even fiction depicted Mothman as described by the original 1966 witnesses, that’d probably be better for researchers and for keeping the folklore accurate. If even fiction depicted the Yeti as brown, that’d probably be better in my mind as well. (A lot of websites nowadays unfortunately use very inaccurate AI depictions of monsters too. So that’s also a thing, which we won’t even go into here.) Folks like me can just be sticklers for details after all. But BallyRaven says her art project isn’t going for accuracy, and it’s just meant to be light-hearted, fun, and colorful. Which it is. So, who are we to tell the artists how to draw or paint? Ultimately, it’s not the responsibility of the artists to be accurate, it’s the responsibility of the viewers and the researchers. We, as researchers, need to better educate and inform viewers or readers. If people will listen that is. That’s the hard part in this conundrum.
I will say though, one thing that very much is the responsibility of these artists is to make it very clear and direct when their material is fiction or fictionalized, otherwise it starts to blur the line into hoaxing territory, knowingly trying to pass off something fake as real or true. Fictional art and storytelling need to be properly labeled as such, and visible or understandable disclaimers are important for that. Artists of this material need to respect researchers and those who take this stuff seriously as anomalies, just as much as researchers need to respect artists being creative in their own right.
As you can see, there’s no real bad guy here. Just artists trying to express themselves, not looking to fool anyone, as well as viewers and researchers who often misunderstand these things and once again aren’t trying to deliberately deceive or misinform either. The problem it seems is that a lot of people, including researchers, see the artwork, don’t look too in-depth or think twice about it being fictionalized or speculative, and just run with it, which essentially leads to misinformation, especially about lesser known cases where information isn’t widely accessible or apparent. People are often more visually oriented. The answer is to try to inform them about the accurate folklore, which can often be a losing battle, and to of course not fall into this ourselves as researchers.
This Apple Devil mix-up is a call for us all to be better and more diligent researchers.
The Apple Devil Takes A Journey To Monsteropolis (2024):
In 2019, I made the effort to cover more of the lesser known West Virginia monster and UFO cases in documentary-style videos. First I made a video project on my YouTube channel about the Grafton Monster of 1964, in which I traveled to the town, and I intended to cover the Vegetable Man UFO case of 1968 and the Apple Devil of 1960 as well. All of which were in write-ups on my website at the time of course and occasionally mentioned in discussion videos like interviews. Then the pandemic happened and I wasn’t able to travel. In 2024, I hit the road again. I did a video about the first ever Grafton Monster Festival held in June 2024 and then did a video about Fairmount West Virginia’s Vegetable Man, which had its own special event day that year in July, which gave me the opportunity to cover that creature as well. Despite trying, I never got around to making the Apple Devil video over the years, my travel was limited and other projects always came up or took priority, but maybe it was for the best because of all that I’ve been able to learn since, which might not have made it into the video if I had made it earlier.
Something else happened in 2024, the Small Town Monsters crew, a project I greatly enjoy, mentioned the Apple Devil on their Monsteropolis podcast, though I wasn’t aware at the time. BallyRaven off-handedly mentioned the episode to me in our email correspondence.
Back in 2018, I had talked with Seth Breedlove at the “Flatwoods Monster: A Legacy of Fear (2018)” documentary screening in Sutton, West Virginia and I rattled off a bunch of West Virginia monsters. Two of which were The Grafton Monster of 1964 and the Apple Devil of 1960. He seemed interested by the seal-skinned nature of the Grafton Monster. With the Apple Devil, I recall Seth saying something along the lines of “Yeah, there’s a lot of Bigfoot creatures with devil names, like Mountain Devil, ect.” He was referencing the Ape Canyon case from Washington in 1924. He didn’t seem to think much of the Apple Devil. Seth actually remembered the Grafton Monster bit, when Monsteropolis covered that topic on the podcast (Episode 67: The Grafton Monster, March 27th 2020), he mentioned to his co-host Mark Matzie that he first heard of it from me (as the Mothman Historian), which was very neat to hear. The Apple Devil was covered much later in 2024, so he very understandably didn’t remember me mentioning it by then.
I have immense respect for the Small Town Monsters (STM) team, including the Monsteropolis podcast which is comprised of Seth Breedlove, Mark Matzie, and Heather Moser. Small Town Monsters makes great quality documentaries. Seth has great artistic vision and a respect for local culture, odd newspaper clippings, and rural small town life. Mark and Heather are really good at deep-diving and researching into folkloric subjects and monsters. Aaron Deese, their producer, a more recent addition to the STM crew, has written some very fascinating books on the subject of Werewolves and Sasquatch. I was less familiar with his work at the time, but I have since corresponded with him via email while writing this article. He seems like a very passionate guy who really cares about this material. They’re all great, so please don’t get me wrong as we cover this next part, I feel this article would be somewhat incomplete if I didn’t go over the podcast mention. It’s a mix-up that could happen to anyone.
The November 11th 2024 episode, featuring Seth, Mark, and Heather, entitled “Monsteropolis 176: Appalachian Monster Hunt,” was based on a pre-prepared list of topics with research done by STM member Aaron Deese. In the opening Mark Matzie says, “Aaron very kindly did the research.” Seth Breedlove repeats, “I do wanna give a shoutout to Aaron for doing our research for us and giving us very detailed notes.” The Apple Devil portion of the research was unfortunately based on BallyRaven’s fictional description, seemingly without knowledge of her work on the topic being fictional. A common mistake at this point it seems, and not something for them to feel too bad about. The Monsteropolis crew, having not heard of the Apple Devil before this, were unaware that the description of the creature as a short Bigfoot-type was from a fictional source. They also didn’t seem aware of the 2002 Loren Coleman source or the John Lutz connection.
Seth Breedlove opens by saying, “This is just a Bigfoot that eats apples, or is seen eating apples? I did not know it had its own moniker in Appalachia.”
They naturally see the similarity to the Pennsylvanian Albatwitch, one inspiration for BallyRaven’s fictional artwork, and then spend much of the time giving commentary on the general notion of short Bigfoot. Seth makes the point that it seems short creatures are more likely to garner the “devil” name, but his point is undercut by the “short” description here being fictional. There is no reason to think that the Apple Devil is short or not short, as we have no description of its height, or anything else. They also discuss how the tall hairy Bigfoot-types are indeed known in stories and reported sightings to eat apples and other fruit. Mark Matzie astutely points out that “There is a whole body of literature describing Bigfoot and like figures being sighted around natural fruit-producing areas.” Seth says as well that “I think this is just, like, a sort of typical Bigfoot that we have ascribed the Apple Devil moniker to because Bigfoot are seen in orchards really commonly. Like, that’s a very common thing.”
Prompted by Mark, they briefly discuss “devil names” and their folkloric implications, another favorite topic of author Loren Coleman, interestingly enough. Seth Breedlove makes the point that regional names for Bigfoot are kind of pointless, giving the example of the “Ohio Grassman” name of the late 1990s, and saying that it’s essentially just Bigfoot in Ohio. He says, “Why do we have to ascribe a specific name to something and try to create something else out of it? […] You know what I mean?” A very fair point, and one that I’m starting to agree with more and more.
The team grows skeptical of the Apple Devil story as presented to them, thinking it’s probably more modern, back-dated, or from the internet. They wonder if it was indeed called that back in 1960.
At one point, the notion of there being a “wave” of West Virginia sightings in 1960 was brought up, but the crew didn’t seem to know the context that the “wave” was of tall hairy humanoids (aka Bigfoot-types), namely the Priestly, Stover, and Davis WV Bigfoot Sightings of 1960. Mark Matzie, reading from Aaron Deese’s Apple Devil write-up for the podcast topics, noted that next to the phrase “first documented in the 1960s,” a question mark (?) is written. Once again, they weren’t aware of the 2002 Loren Coleman tidbit sourced to John Lutz in 1960.
Ironically, the version they’re hearing is indeed from a modern internet artist. BallyRaven is mentioned by name, Seth Breedlove states he’s a big fan of her work, but as he reads the hyper-detailed description after pulling up her website, he seems somewhat unaware that she makes speculative “What If” semi-fiction. Though he does point out how very specific the description on her webpage is, stating, “Wow, this gets real in-depth.” He skim-reads a line from BallyRaven’s webpage at the time as an example, which states: “An entire troop of approximately three to six adults with offspring share one domicile but only the dominant Bigfoot’s musk is applied to the construction.” This kind of nature-documentary narration is purposely exaggerated by BallyRaven, the kind of information that typically signifies it’s openly fictional or speculative style when dealing with the topic of monsters specifically. Bigfoot sightings are often vague and more folkloric encounter-based material, as they aren’t dealing with a known animal for which we have such clear biological facts of. Seth appears to be skeptically highlighting this or pointing out the overly detailed nature of it for this exact reason.
“So, yeah, the Apple Devil, I don’t know what else to say about it. It probably doesn’t exist,” says Seth with a nervous laugh.
To which Mark Matzie jokingly replies, “Put an apple out on your back porch and see what happens.”
With nothing else to really go on, the team aren’t quite sure. They seem understandably skeptical of the whole thing. They move on to the next topic. Given the information they had to work with, and the misconceptions they were under about the BallyRaven entry, their commentary wasn’t bad all things considered. They made some interesting points about Bigfoot sightings near apple orchards and about regional naming for creatures. Near the end of the segment, they even seem to identify that the case needs more or older sources. They simply weren’t aware of the original Coleman source, and they didn’t realize the BallyRaven artwork was fictional. It’s just an unfortunate scenario or mix-up, and one that I’m hoping to avoid with others in future by making this article and trying to lay out all the information in a comprehensive way.
The artist BallyRaven commented on the matter of the Small Town Monsters podcasts to me via email, “They had asked if it was alright to cite my page, but I assumed they would have more than just mine as a source […] I haven’t listened to their episode yet, so I’m not sure what all they have on it. STM are aware of my art project and its fictionalized nature, so they should not be referencing the artwork or anything like that.”
From my read of the situation, it would seem that the Small Town Monsters team might not have truly understood what BallyRaven meant when she said her work was “fictionalized.” Perhaps they just thought that she was being modest in her artistic ability, saying the Bigfoot that she draws aren’t one hundred percent accurate down to the last detail, slight artistic-license, when in reality what she’s saying is that much of the description she uses is simply creatively made up, speculated using real-world animal behaviors as reference, or in the case of [L.M.], based on the dubious claims of a suspected hoaxer who knew exactly what kind of creature sighting she was looking for.
Yet Another Fiction Form: Invisibility? (2024):
On December 2nd 2024, another Small Town Monsters podcast hosted by Aaron Deese, “House of Monsters,” posted an episode entitled “Volume XVIII (18): The Appalachian Apple Thief.” The description of this podcast read: “There is a small, mischievous, bigfoot-like creature lurking somewhere in the Appalachian mountains. And it likes apples. And it can turn invisible. But does this Appalachian folk tale have connections to a broader concept – one which spans oceans, and even centuries?”
Aaron Deese described the Apple Devil, basing his description on the fictional BallyRaven entry and artwork, as a “short” and “demur” version of Bigfoot, then added the peculiar statement that the creature “when so prompted” possesses “the ability to turn invisible.” He stated the creature “could just be the next big thing in cryptozoology” and said, “so interesting and entertaining are its exploits, one has to wonder why we don’t hear more about it.” Of course, the main reason for that would seem to be that the source is a sparse one-sentence entry from 2002 and then fictional artworks later adding on. He thanked BallyRaven for bringing it to attention, describing her as an “artist and folklorist,” and linking to her website.
Aaron then said that “according to the BallyRaven Bestiary,” the creature allegedly has the ability to “turn invisible,” which “hints at a more supernatural nature.” This was also very quickly mentioned in the Monsteropolis 176 episode, Mark Matzie read aloud from Aaron’s prepared show notes that the creature is “supposed to be able to turn invisible,” but none of the team commented on this or seemed to notice it. In his “House of Monsters” podcast episode, Aaron Deese focused on this purported “invisibility” element. Now, when I first heard this, I was wondering where on Earth he was getting this notion from. It took me a moment to figure it out. On the BallyRaven website, the circa 1990’s Hillsboro, West Virginia story from the uncredible tall tale teller L.M. states that “I tried to find it again with the light, but it almost seemed to vanish into thin air.” The words “almost” and “seemed” do a lot of heavy lifting here. BallyRaven then repeats this in her fictional webpage art description, stating, “Having been attracted by easily obtainable produce, the creatures would feast until detected, quickly fleeing and shrilly yelping before disappearing into thin air.” My read of the situation was that Aaron Deese must’ve mistook this turn of phrase, meaning that the creature got away very fast, as instead meaning a literal disappearing or going invisible.
In an email from BallyRaven, she confirmed that getting away very quickly was indeed what she meant by that, but then she threw another curve ball.
She revealed that in her encyclopedia art book entitled “In The Land of Cattawampus (2020),” featuring various monsters including the Apple Devil, published on May 29th 2020, she did indeed include the detail that her fictional version of the Apple Devil could turn invisible. Her book states: “It is unknown how the [Apple Devils] exactly do it, but they do have the extraordinary ability to become invisible when frightened or threatened. It is hypothesized that their bodily oils act with light (or absence of), their skin, and adrenaline to contract their cells into bending or altering the light around them.” Not having a copy of the book, I didn’t know this was in there.
She then included this “invisibility” element for the Apple Devil again in a Dungeons and Dragons-style tabletop Role Playing Game (RPG) book she published on October 16th 2020 featuring Appalachian monsters. BallyRaven had really let her creativity fly it seems. An Appalachian RPG Monster Manual is a pretty neat novel idea. When only thought of as fiction and never mistaken for anything else, it sounds like a cool tabletop RPG. According to BallyRaven via email, she included that the Apple Devil could “become invisible” as a fictional element in her Encyclopedia and RPG books because she “wanted representation for all the different beliefs/views of cryptids, folklore, the paranormal, when applicable.”
According to BallyRaven, “Since 2018, there have been a lot of edits to my work, such as making things make more sense […] I remember this [element] was, creatively, an issue, as it didn’t seem to really fit in the bigfoot category, but I wasn’t sure where else to put it. It went under extensive edits several times.” So, it’s possible that Aaron Deese saw a version of BallyRaven’s website that included the invisibility element that’s present in her 2020 encyclopedia and RPG book. The invisibility attribute that she creatively assigned to it was later removed from the webpage.
Just to be clear, I myself am very interested in the paranormal or spiritual Bigfoot side, including cloaking or invisible-turning ones, but the Apple Devil just isn’t an example of this. The original Apple Devil from Loren Coleman’s 2002 mention was not physically described and did not turn invisible. It also of course did not mention anything about it getting away very quickly either. I have to state very clearly that those elements are fictional and not from the original source in 2002.
Back to the House of Monsters podcast episode, Deese then compares and contrasts the Apple Devil with the Orang Pendek legend of Indonesia, attempting to point out any potential similarities. Once again, unaware that the “short” description is fiction from BallyRaven. At the end of the episode, he stated, “As this episode is being produced on a holiday week, I decided to solo this ‘investigation’ and not encumber any of my colleagues with another to-do on the week of Thanksgiving. However, the Apple Devil was recently discussed on another podcast I have a hand in producing, Monsteropolis[.]” This is noteworthy because it’s a potential reason that this might’ve fallen through the cracks. If he had another set of eyes on his work at the time, they might’ve caught the mistake.
Aaron including BallyRaven’s fictional work on the Apple Devil in the research for Monsteropolis and House of Monsters seems like an honest mistake on his part, and it’s understandable given the context of someone never having heard of the creature, we all make mistakes and misread things after all. Though once again, I must point out, this kind of misattribution being applied to a little known case can be very misleading to audiences who haven’t heard of it before and who might walk away with only that perspective. (Like my Wikia with the Erin Turner 2011 book description.) Folks are often more likely to see a claim than a later correction. That’s my overall reasoning for wanting to do this article, to clear the air, so to speak, or attempt to fix or mend any such misconceptions. I’m looking to separate the original folkloric tidbit from the fictional artists fleshing it out later on. To highlight the origin of the Apple Devil, sparse as it may be, so that these mistakes don’t continue, or if they do, folks can refer back to this article.
This is all a perfect example of how myths can evolve. Just look at how one vague sentence from Loren Coleman in 2002 about an undescribed “creature that would take bites out of apples” sourced from John Lutz in 1960 could sprout into something so vast from just a small seed. By the 2020’s, according to BallyRaven’s creative artwork at least, the Apple Devil was instead a short Bigfoot-type creature that can turn invisible. This goes back to something BallyRaven was saying in her first email, she wrote, “I generally assumed (and still assume) with each retelling, a story changes a little – something is added, misspoke, or removed, either on purpose or accidentally.”
With BallyRaven’s permission just to be sure, I emailed Aaron Deese to clarify the fictional nature of BallyRaven’s work, to share the 2002 Loren Coleman source with him, and to tell the winding story of how the fictional artwork came to be. I felt it would be remiss of me to not include him or not inform him as well. I told him that I was working on an article clearing up any misinformation on the Apple Devil and asked if he had a comment on the matter that I could quote and include in the article. As a big fan of Small Town Monsters, I of course didn’t want anything to come off as rude or in any way one-sided, so I wanted to have a direct statement to make sure this part of the article about the podcasts was very overall fair, respectful, and evenly presented. I wanted to hear Aaron’s thoughts on the matter as well.
Here is part of the email he sent back, posted with permission:
“Thank you, very kindly, for going out of your way to bring all of this to my attention. You absolutely didn’t have to and it’s very appreciated. What I’ll probably do once I have a little spare time is record addendums for both of those episodes and replace the uploads clarifying some of this information. A very important reminder for me to read all the fine print in the future I suppose, haha. It would seem that at whatever point I ran across [BallyRaven’s] bestiary I neglected to read the part that explains it’s a fictitious work, and took it as an oral tale local to the area. An embarrassing mistake to no small degree. Once again, thank you! Please don’t ever hesitate to reach out in the future for whatever reason. I’m always glad to make the acquaintance of folks like yourself[.]”
It’s not a big deal to have mistaken BallyRaven’s entry on an obscure case for accurate details, in fact, that’s exactly why I wanted to write this article clarifying the Apple Devil details, because it can be easy for people to mistake. These podcast mentions are just an interesting section or late-addition to the article that I wanted to include as an example of the confusion, since I happened to have heard about the episode from BallyRaven herself. Aaron seemed to understand the spirit of the article, which is great. He also wrote, “I think instances like this are a great object lesson[.]”
The fact that Aaron intends to add an audio addendum is a great example of these misconceptions being cleared up. It shows that he takes accuracy to be very important, even when the hosts already showed their skepticism of the material in the episode itself. Suggesting an audio addendum, rather than a simple added note in the description or a brief clarifying mention in a future episode, really goes above and beyond, which is a good positive thing. Anyone who might attempt to use an honest mistake that’s freely admitted to, and even updated or clarified, as some sort of “gotcha” against them is not really a person to take too seriously, in my view.
Chasing My Own Tail And Hitting The Wall (2026):
In January of 2026, I wrote an article about purported mountain lion sightings in West Virginia after I received a report of a large mystery cat. Mountain lions are of course not supposed to exist in the region according to officials. While doing research on the subject of these Alien Big Cats (ABCs), I came across John Lutz’s organization, the Eastern Puma Research Network, and I recognized his name. Searching through my notes, I discovered that he was the same researcher from the Apple Devil case. I hadn’t known he was a public Fortean figure with an organization like that. I had never considered trying to email what I thought to be just a random name from Coleman’s book, introduced as a Radio DJ. I didn’t know if John Lutz was still living, but I saw his group’s email and decided to try to contact either him or his team if they were still using the email address. Maybe they would have more information on the case or could give me a quote about it, I thought. In the message, I explained that I was interested in the case and would love to know more information about it if possible. I now know that John Lutz has unfortunately passed away. His team did not respond to the email, but it also didn’t bounce back with a mailer demon error message. I don’t know if anyone runs that email since his passing.
Around March and April of 2026, I also began diving back into research on Sasquatch/Bigfoot yet again, including local West Virginia cases. After all these years, I again wanted to do a project, like an article or a video, on the subject of the Apple Devil. I was filled with renewed interest in the case and a newfound determination to really track down its origins as thoroughly as possible.
That’s when I decided to try to ask author Loren Coleman, the only person who might know, since there seemed to be no other source other than his 2002 tidbit. I sent messages to two email addresses I found associated with him, but both bounced back with error messages that they were no longer in use. I asked other researchers how I could contact Coleman, and they said he uses Twitter/X. This would be difficult for me, since I deleted my Twitter account back in 2023. I asked a group of researchers if any of them could ask Loren Coleman for me via Twitter, and a fellow researcher who focuses on monsters, “Truth is Scarier Than Fiction,” who runs the popular account “Legendary Cryptids” (@BestCryptids), offered to do so. The perfect person to reach out to Loren, since Cryptozoology is his main interest.
Legendary Cryptids sent a tweet on May 17th 2026 asking for more information on the Apple Devil he mentioned in 2002. Loren Coleman responded that same day by posting the BallyRaven sketch, crediting her by name of course, and using a fictional text description from a website called “The Red Caboose” which hosted her art. I of course recognized this text source as fictional, though Coleman didn’t seem to. This to me indicated that he likely didn’t remember anything about the case itself, which is totally understandable with the case being from so long ago. It seemed that he had just quickly searched online and found the sketch and description. Coleman is a busy man running a museum after all, and the case isn’t that well-known or even memorable to most people, besides West Virginia Forteans with a special interest in the case, such as myself. With no more sources given by him, I was left with just the sketch posted from Coleman on my screen to stare at, so I figured I should look into that more as well. I then sent my first email to BallyRaven on May 22nd.
Through my email correspondence with the artist, I soon learned that BallyRaven’s artwork was most likely inspired by my own mentioning of the case to her back in 2017.
It had all come full circle. I was chasing after my own tail.
I had Legendary Cryptids then ask Coleman where he first heard of the case and if he had any other sources. He wrote, the next day on May 18th, “Are you aware of any newspaper clippings or articles they were mentioned in prior to 2002? The researcher is wondering how you learned about the case.” To which Coleman later replied, on June 15th 2026, “I [met] with, corresponded with, and was given files directly by John Lutz before he died. John mostly held onto […] his mystery cat files and weeded out his unknown hominoid data.”
It would seem that John Lutz was the only source, and Coleman got the information from him directly. I still wanted to know if there was more information beyond the quick 2002 tidbit, especially what the “creature” looked like, since no description was given. By saying “hominoid data,” Coleman seems to be implying that the creature was a Bigfoot-type, but then again, he could just be going off the fictional BallyRaven artwork without remembering the case. John Lutz, it seemed, had never published the case before, nor had the newspress, making Loren’s 2002 tidbit the first and only.
BallyRaven, in our email conversation, said this about Loren Coleman posting her sketch and fictional description: “That is a small joy that Coleman has even seen one of my drawings lol. I am sad that he didn’t [seem to] remember anything about the creature – but, also, yeah, I get it.”
I decided to bite the bullet and make another Twitter account just to ask Loren Coleman more about the Apple Devil case.
On May 21st, I replied to the tweet thread between him and Legendary Cryptids and asked him, “Do you know if any other book covered the Apple Devil before yours in 2002? Did John Lutz publish about it? I’ve been looking for primary sources.” But received no response. I waited a while and then asked similar questions again on May 30th with a new tweet sent to him featuring a photo of the 2002 tidbit, but again received no reply. On June 19th, I explained that Kristen Puckett (aka BallyRaven) had “told me that her artwork and description was fictional and not meant to be taken seriously,” mentioned how his 2002 book “simply says ‘creature’ with no further detail and cites John Lutz,” again asking Coleman, “Do you have any additional or primary sources for this case?” I then waited some more.
On June 23rd, I made a longer multi-tweet thread explaining things more thoroughly. Something I know Coleman can relate to, as a lifelong Fortean researcher, is trying in vain to find very specific sources that most people don’t care about or that simply can’t be found. Sometimes you feel like you’re beating your head against the wall.
I wrote: “I’m the WV researcher who told ‘@BestCryptids’ to ask you. Is there anywhere I could find info about the ‘Apple Devil’ other than your brief 2002 mention or Kristen’s self-described fictional artwork? I’m working on a project and just want the truth on this story. I would greatly appreciate any details other than the admittedly fictional Kristen Puckett art. Was it seen or just apple bites? What did it look like? Who named it? Was it just one sighting? Unless there are other sources somewhere, you might be the only one who knows. If you don’t remember or no longer have those sources, that’s fine too and perfectly understandable. I’d just like to know what is known about this tidbit that I’ve lived with for years. I’m sure you can relate. Much respect to you, Loren. Have a good day/night.”
Again unfortunately, no response.
This time, on June 30th, I retweeted his posting of the BallyRaven art for context and explained clearly, “The artist Kristen Puckett (BallyRaven) told me that her artwork and description was fiction she made up. Your 2002 book only says ‘creature’ with no further detail. Do you have any additional information on this case? What did the ‘Apple Devil’ really look like?”
To my surprise, Coleman retweeted this post, though gave no comment. He was likely retweeting it because it clarified in context that the artwork was fictional, so that his Twitter/X followers would be responsibly updated and informed on that. He didn’t answer the questions posed there, and by then I’d given up on the notion that any other sources existed beyond direct information from John Lutz to Loren Coleman. At this point, I was mainly concerned with if he knew what the Apple Devil really looked like, according to John Lutz. Perhaps he never had that information, beyond just “creature” as a descriptive, perhaps he had that information at one time, but simply doesn’t anymore. As I said, if that’s the case, it’s perfectly understandable, but I’d just like to know if it is. Ultimately, we don’t know currently.
I decided to ask Loren Coleman one more time before finishing this article. On July 17th, with a photo of the late great John Lutz in memoriam and a picture of the 2002 tidbit highlighted, I wrote: “What did the Apple Devil look like? Was it a Bigfoot-type? Your book only says ‘creature.’ I know you got it straight from John Lutz, but was there any other info about it? (Not counting Kirsten Puckett’s fictional sketch)” BestCryptids kindly retweeted it as well. As of writing this, Coleman has yet to respond.
If Loren Coleman responds to clarify or provide more information on the Apple Devil, then I’ll be sure to update this article. For the time being, this is where it stands.
Conclusions:
The bottom line is this, the Priestly and Stover Bigfoot sightings of 1960, as discussed in the beginning of this article, are fascinating early Bigfoot cases from West Virginia. John Keel’s 1970 book added another to that tally with a sighting from Davis WV, making it seem more like a wave or a collection of hairy humanoid monster sightings in West Virginia at the time. The Apple Devil, added by Loren Coleman in his 2002 book and cited to John Lutz, unfortunately as it stands currently at the time of writing this, does not have enough information to really go off of. It has a location, orchards near Marlinton, WV, and a time period, 1960, but it doesn’t have a description beyond “creature,” and it wasn’t known until 42 years afterwards, secondhand from one investigator to another. Therefore, it seems it can’t be responsibly added to the list of West Virginia monsters, despite it having a really cool-sounding moniker like “Apple Devil.” I think it’s fine at least as a footnote for the three 1960 cases, though with the very clear caveat that we don’t know at all what it looked like, and that it wasn’t published until 2002 by Loren Coleman. Like I told BallyRaven in our email exchange, I can’t really hang a folklore case on a one-sentence offhanded mention 42 years afterwards of some apples being bitten by something undescribed and then fiction artists later fleshing it out. Without anything else to go off of, there’s just no “there” there.
I hope I’ve done enough here to explain or clear up the Apple Devil mix-up. Feel free to cite or refer to this article if anyone in future ever has misconceptions about the case.
It’s easy to tie a knot, but often so difficult to untangle it.
There was a time when I hadn’t researched super deeply into local Bigfoot stories. Back then, whenever I thought of “West Virginia Bigfoot,” I thought of the Apple Devil (which I imagined as an Apple-stealing Bigfoot-type like the 2011 Erin Turner version) and thought the name could be a regional banner of sorts. I used to group all those sightings (Doc Priestly, Charles Stover, and Davis WV) together as part of the “Apple Devil” wave. These days, I’ve learned a lot about West Virginia Bigfoot and have pretty thoroughly explored the Bigfoot phenomenon in general, from its origins in the Pacific Northwest to its many varied eastern United States cases, and even its potential UFO overlaps or connections. I’ve collected and cataloged cases, analyzed sighting data from various regions, read countless books on the subject, and even done field-research. So, for me, it’s not all about the Apple Devil anymore, and I think of the case differently. Bigfoot/Sasquatch creatures have long been known to eat fruit, including apples, this story isn’t necessary for that detail, of course. The only thing this sparse 2002 tidbit story really has going for it is a fun kitschy name.
Aside from seeing a big headache, I see it now as less significant, which is probably how everyone else has seen it over the years. If anything, it makes me more greatly appreciate cases like the 1960 Priestly and Stover cases, where the information isn’t so sparse and is there to be enjoyed. Those are early cases, printed just two short years after the coining of the term Bigfoot, and very West Virginia. They are unique and distinctive without needing a funny regional name. Those two cases, and even the Davis WV sighting too, can stand on their own without the Apple Devil addition. Even if the Apple Devil turns out to be a Bigfoot-type, we don’t really need it. There are plenty of Bigfoot stories roaming the hills and hollers of the mountain state just waiting to be archived, shared, and enjoyed for decades to come.
Mountaineers are always free.
Source(s):
The Priestly/Stover/Davis WV Stories: Strange Creatures From Time And Space (1970) by John Keel, Page 120-122 #60-62
2009 Keel Tribute: https://web.archive.org/web/20250320122857/https://cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/keel-obit/
John Lutz EPRN Information: Strange West Virginia Monsters (2015) by Michael Newton, Chapter 1: Phantom Felids (pg. 29-30)
The Apple Devil Source: Mothman and Other Curious Encounters (2002) by Loren Coleman, Page 21, Chapter 1
The FICTIONAL “Apple Pickers” Story: Monster & Ghosts of West Virginia (2011) by Erin Turner and Isaac McKinnon, Page 11-13
The (misinformed) Mothman Wikia post (October 2017): https://themothman.fandom.com/wiki/Writer_Attends_UFO_Conclave?oldid=4662
YouTube Video, October 1st 2017: “Mothman Festival 2017: Vendors” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5AQFyWLlXA
YouTube Video, October 11th 2017: “Items From The Mothman Festival 2017” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbei2nlKxP0
The FICTIONAL BallyRaven Artwork (Drawn August 18th 2018): https://www.ballyraven.com/encyclopedia/apple-devil
(Archived Link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260727064706/https://www.ballyraven.com/encyclopedia/apple-devil)
Albatwitch/Snipe Hunt: “Y. M. C. A. Boys At Corn Roast Hunt Elusive Animal,” Lancaster New Era newspaper, August 24th 1920
Albatwitch Festival: “Columbia To Host First Albatwitch Festival,” Lancaster Intelligencer newspaper, September 25th 2014
Albatwitch: https://web.archive.org/web/20260724174607/https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/albatwitch-lancaster-little-bigfoot
The STM Monsteropolis Podcast episode (Ep 176, November 11th 2024):
https://monsteropolis.podbean.com/e/episode-176-appalachian-monster-hunt/ (BASED ON FICTION)
The House of Monsters episode (Ep 18/XVIII , December 2nd 2024):
https://houseofmonsters.podbean.com/e/volume-xviii-the-appalachian-apple-thief/ (BASED ON FICTION)
(> Archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250118042444/https://houseofmonsters.podbean.com/)
The Loren Coleman tweet of BallyRaven’s Artwork (May 17th 2026): https://x.com/CryptoLoren/status/2056190738170319312
The Red Caboose Page (Archived Link):
Apple Devil – WV Cryptid
The Loren Coleman tweet about the John Lutz source (June 15th 2026): https://x.com/CryptoLoren/status/2066516060153491722
Email Correspondence with BallyRaven (May-August 2026)
Email Correspondence with Aaron Deese (July-August 2026)