Within the lore of the many types of bizarre humanoid creatures spotted throughout the world there are many apparent “species” of such phenomena. From hairy hominids such as Bigfoot, to reptilian beasts, to everything in between, humanoid encounters occupy a larger portion of cryptid and paranormal sightings. Throughout history one particular type of frequently seen entity is that of that of the horned variety, taking a form that seems to almost be fitting with the common image of a devil, demon, or Satan himself, and here we will look at some modern day accounts of such cases.

Modern sightings of strange horned humanoids go back decades. In 1952 there was an account in the Moscow newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, from a place called Belgorod-Dnestrovskiy, in the rural Odessa region of Ukraine, and which in this case seems to be possibly tied to supposed UFO activity in the area. Here there was said to be an ancient fortress with a vast network of subterranean passageways fanning out from it in all directions. A local legend was that within the murky confines of these caverns and tunnels was hidden a UFO that had crashed landed here decades before.

The report goes that an elderly local man one evening found himself unable to sleep, and looked out of his window to see some rather striking figures skulking about in the yard of the neighbor’s house. These otherworldly entities were described as being remarkably tall, and as having noticeable protruding horns atop their heads. The man ended up cowering in his room to wait for morning, after which it was found that all of the apple trees of the nearby orchard had been robbed of every single one of their apples. In the following days there would be several more reports of these very same horned humanoids wandering the area stealing food, before the accounts just stopped, leaving us to wonder just what they were and what connection they have to the lore of UFOs and lost underground worlds here.

From the site Weird New Jersey comes an enigmatic account from 1976, involving a woman calling herself Olivia, who claims to have been out horseback riding with her daughter in August that year in the Lakeland area by Blackwood, New Jersey, when they had had her brush with the bizarre. At some point they came to an area where the normal sounds of the forest ceased to exist, leaving them in a zone of uncomfortable quiet. As they waited there trying to adjust to this sudden veil of silence the horses became inexplicably nervous and unruly, and that was when something would appear from out of their worst nightmares. The witness says:

And then up in front of us, about one hundred feet or so, we saw this “thing”! It was about six feet tall. Its back, which it was scratching against a tree, was facing us. At first to me it looked like a large dog on top of a horse. I asked my daughter, “What is that?” It started walking along the path we were riding on, and we slowly followed it up the hill, but the horses were reluctant to stay calm. They started to go wild. The thing turned around, and I could better see what it looked like. It had whitish hair, with black spots on its hips. It had horns coming out of its head and red, slanted eyes. Its nose had a pig-like snout. It stood on two feet that ended in cloven hooves; its hands were tipped with large claws. And it looked like it was slobbering all over. It jumped into the path with its arms opened wide, lowering its head like it was going to charge us. At the time I felt as though I was in some kind of trance, like I was in a movie or something. Only when my daughter yelled, “Let’s turn around and get out of here!” is when I realized we might be in danger. We were certainly afraid of whatever it was. Then it did charge at us, tucking its arms in and running like the Bionic Man. It tried to grab one of the horse’s tails, but we took off. When I looked back I noticed it had stopped in the spot we had taken off from. Like in the movies, after we got away from this thing, we saw a Washington Township police car by the junkyard and told the policeman driving it that there was a strange creature in the woods that came after us, and we described it to him. The policeman said, “Well, I hope to hell we don’t catch it!” and started to fill out a report. But amazingly, this thing showed up in the junkyard and we all saw as it hopped over the eight-foot fence, galloped in front of the police car and then ran into the woods! After that, we took the horses right back to the stables. The policeman wanted my address so he could speak with me later, but I didn’t make it home in time. He had already come and gone. I never found out if he filed the report. Maybe he didn’t want to report it. Later on, the owner of a local ranch told me one time he found one of his horses dead in a field, with its stomach ripped open. I am telling you: I believe there is something out there. There were three witnesses that day and my daughter and I can recall vividly every moment of our encounter with this thing even after 40 years. I’ll never forget it.

What in the world could this thing have possibly been? What connection did the report have to that dead horse? We will probably never know. In 1997 there was a similarly weird report from the Gulf Coast Regional Bigfoot Organization (GCBRO). The witness says that in June of that year he was out hunting at around 1 AM with a friend in the area of Johnson City, Tennessee, when they came across some sort of massive, horned humanoid prowling the forest. It started with the crashing sounds of something very large moving through the brush, and only sharply veers into bizarre territory from there. The witness says:

Luckily I had with me a Ruger 10-22 rifle and approx. 150 rounds of ammo clipped and stacked and ready to go. I could barely make something out coming towards us. I did have the rifle equipped with the night vision scope and I could make out an outline of what appeared to be a man. Upon further inspection I found it was not. There were two large walnut trees about 25 ft in front of us and whatever came from the woods was using these trees for cover! But as it stepped out for what I took as a charge I opened fire. Within 2.5 seconds I emptied my 1st 25 round clip into the “creature” and was starting on my next. After all was said and done and round #151 was entering the target I suggested that we start a retreat to the house, about 65 ft behind us. No more ammo in the 22 so I went for my 380 auto that I had as a spare on my leg. The thing that was freaking me out the most was that after all that shooting, 95% of which I KNOW hit it, the creature was weaving back and forth between the trees. No screams no apparent pain no anything. The creature was 7-8 foot tall approximately 450-500lbs. Covered with thick black fur. It did in fact resemble the “ever so popular Bigfoot image” that each and every one of us are quite familiar with, except for the fact that it was slimmer in shape. Almost skinny. And it did in fact have a neck. Also protruding on either sides of it’s head, (i.e. location of the ears) were long tapered “horns” also black in color. On the top of the head also resided a “horn” pointing straight up. All horns were approximately 5-6 inches in length and were the same dark color as the creature. We finally made it to the house and after a sleepless night we got up the next morning to see if we could find anything. All we saw were a lot of spent shell casings, between the two walnut trees there were only about 7 or 8 bullet holes in both of them meaning I HAD struck my target numerous times, and the ground looked like it had been “danced upon”. Upon that, this concludes my TRUE story of how, one night, I did indeed dance with the devil. Upon later inspection we were shocked to discover that each trap had been sprung and ALL the bait had been extracted. Having seen this we returned home to double check the traps to make sure they were set correctly and that they operated properly. I was looking for my pre-teenage cousin to be my “Ginny Pig”. But after careful consideration I found a stick that was almost as good. The traps were then placed at different locations around the previous activities and we received the same, disappointing , results. No further traps were set. But a hike up the eastern most ridge revealed a quite large “system of tunnels” made up of brush and various sizes of tree limbs, vines and leaves. These catacombs were obviously NOT made by man as revealed by their construction. They were approx. 2 1/2 ft. tall by 4 ft wide and was made up into 3 passageways intertwining into a main “chamber” in the center. When we discovered these I was convinced we had found the lair of the beast. We all got that same “Were being watched in the woods feeling” and decided to rather quickly, return home.

From 2002 there is a report from the site Phantoms and Monsters, concerning what can only be described as some sort of hoofed, horned humanoid abomination. The witness would explain that he had been walking home late one night in Norway, Iowa, when he began to hear what almost sounded like footsteps behind him. The evening was frigid, with snow all upon the ground, so each distinct crunch of the footsteps could be crisply heard, although the sound was somewhat subdued. When he turned to see who it might be he expected to see someone else walking along, but what he saw was far stranger. There in the gloom stood what he describes as an entity that looked like “the Devil himself,” with a bipedal humanoid body, goat hooves, and a horned, slightly muzzled head. The witness clearly remembers the snow actually melting under this thing’s feet, and he says that it had been heading in his direction. The man then screamed and ran, but when he looked back the creature was just gone.

In April of 2016 there was a caller to the popular show Coast to Coast AM, from a witness who said that he had seen his own horned humanoid 10 years prior in the area of Ventura, California. He and his friend were walking along one evening when something rather unexpected came hurtling down from out of a tree, of all places. The witness says:

So we just kept talking and it sort of jumped out of the tree and it like landed right at the base of the tree. And it straightened up. It was about 6 feet tall. It was pure black. (Noory asks if it was a monkey) It looked more like a really tall thin human but it had like a canine face. It was terrifying. And it had these big, like, those mountain goats, it had big horns, like mountain goats and it had these really long fingers. It was kind of hunched over but I could just like feel it look into my soul. I honestly don’t know what it was. I have for the longest time thought that it could have been a demon but it gets scarier from there. So my brother and I, we both see it and we both just like lock our eyes on the ground, we don’t want to make eye contact with it. So we start walking up a little bit faster and we are talking about whatever we could talk about to not even acknowledge it and so we turn the corner and right at the corner where we were going, there’s this building that had a tin roof and we could hear it land on the top of the roof and as we were turning the corner, we could hear it turning the corner of the roof with us. And as we just sort of looked at each other and we both just started running all the way home. I don’t put a lot of merit into religious things personally but I always thought that that could have been a demon.

Is that what this was? A demon? Or was it something else entirely? Also from Coast to Coast AM, on an episode in July of 2014, we have a witness who says he had heard about encounters in 2013, at none other than the very odd and much talked about Skinwalker Ranch in Utah. He rambles on about some UFO sightings in the area he had heard of from some native kids, and then hits with quite the bizarre one, telling of one series of very intriguing events that started with some kids out having a good time and seeing a strange light in the sky. The caller said:

Then it had even a brighter light and it went over their truck and these kids…well, something hit their truck. These kids got scared so they went down the road to the main road and they got out which is, I’m guessing, about three quarters of a mile. They got out to look at the damage done to this truck and for some reason, the driver decided to be the passenger and then the passenger was the driver. Apparently there are some girls with them in this truck. Well, once they got back in the truck, this is where it gets very unbelievable. A creature grabbed this kid, who was the driver and now the passenger, and pulled him out of the truck. It threw him around like a rag doll, bit him on the butt several times, and clawed him. Long story short, somehow this kid got back in the truck and one of the kids took a picture of this creature. They got scared. They were able to get back in their truck, I mean drove down the road, talked to the youth Indian police because it’s a youth territory over there. The youth Indian police say there’s nothing we can do about it because they’re very well aware of the Skinwalker Ranch. So the next day, which would be Sunday, they contacted my UFO relative and he went down there to investigate. Meanwhile there was a shaman’s wife and the shaman was there blessing the kids that were involved in this. My UFO relative, said that he saw the picture on the cell phone of this creature. He also saw the damage done to the truck. There was also scratched into the truck – DIE – and he also saw the damage done to this kid and the bite marks. Now that was very unbelievable for me to hear. The crazy thing about it is, a few months ago, I work at a hospital, and one of my patients was actually the shaman’s wife and she was the one that was also there at that time that my relative was there to investigate. She told me exactly what my relative said, but in greater detail. The creature that she described, and also my relative said, had to be a tall creature because he would hold this kid out of this window. That’s the 8-foot tall truck and this creature had horns. It had red hair. It had a human-like face but the mouth was distorted and it came out kind of like a wolf. It had claws and it had bat wings. So my question is to you, and I asked my UFO relative, is this the skinwalker? And he goes, “No, this is something totally different.” And I asked also the shaman’s wife and she agreed that it was something totally different.

There are numerous other accounts like these. Form the book America’s Nightmare Monsters, by Phillip L Rife, we have some weird accounts from a local Amish community, of which it is written:

An ungodly looking creature created havoc among the local god-fearing Amish community. Witnesses described the creature as following: The size of a good heifer, gray in color with a white mane. It had tiger like fangs and curved horns like a Billy goat. It ran upright on long legs, and had long grizzly claws. In one incident, the creature sent a team of horses and two brothers flying when it approached their hay wagon. The following day, a man was cutting weeds on his farm about five miles from the previous incident when he heard a fierce roar and turned to see a monster with three horns and a tail charging in his direction. He raised his scythe to defend himself, only to have the implement ripped from his hands. At that point, the man wisely decided to turn both cheeks to the monster and escaped as fast as he could run. A day later a woman was feeding poultry on a farm midway between the two earlier incidents when she heard a commotion and turned to see the creature in the act of snatching a goose in each of its hands. She bravely ran toward the thing, waving her apron. The woman managed to recover one of her geese when the creature threw it at her, knocking her to the ground in the process. The interloper then escaped with the remaining bird in hand.

Finally, we have a report from Phantoms and Monsters that fits in well with the others we have looked at here, and which comes from a world away, over in the United Kingdom, at a place called Gloucestershire. The witness say that he had been hanging out with friends at a place called Severn Bridge until about 2 AM, when they had decided to go home. They took a route through some fields that passed through some woodlands. That is when the witness says he heard something moving about out in the trees and a deep grumble as if from a large animal. The witness say of what happened next:

I turn around and on the path I can see this thing, around 6ft tall skinny as f*ck, head shaped like a dog and had horns.I thought my eyes were playing tricks so I just stood there watching it hoping it was going to vanish. Well to my surprise after around 5 seconds it started to very slowly walk closer and closer until it got to the gate, it was like it didn’t know what to do except just stand there. I was sweating, had red vision and thought I was going to have a anxiety attack. I slowly walked across the field trying to figure out what the f*ck it was. I looked back about half way across the field and it was gone. Sigh of relief, can finally calm down and just take a nice walk home. Yeah that’s what I was hoping for. I was in the last field from my house, house in view. I knew all I had to do was jump over my fence and I was in my garden. I got to my fence and hopped over, I felt safe and secure. I was walking across my garden to get to the back door and behind me my drive light came on. Now this light only comes on if it detects motion or it’s really windy and a branch sways in front of it, it wasn’t windy nor did I walk past it. All of a sudden I had this fear of getting snatched so I quickly run to my back door, open it and run to my attic converted room. My sky light window looks over my drive where the light came on and I stood on my bed and looked out the window. That’s when I seen this werewolf looking thing with horns, stood there sniffing around the cars. It wasn’t a dog, it wasn’t small enough to be a badger or a fox and wasn’t a cow or anything like that. I honestly don’t know what this thing was but it scared the sh*t out of me I won’t go out in my garden past 11pm.

It is an eclectic array of accounts to be sure, and one which leaves us scratching our heads. Just what is going on here? Are these unidentified hairy hominids of some sort, hoaxes, the imagination, misidentifications, or something else altogether? Could these be examples of some sort of interdimensional interlopers crossing over into our world to startle and terrorize before shifting back to their own reality? Are they demons or some sort of evil spirits with inscrutable agendas we’ll never understand? Who knows? All we know for sure is that such sightings continue to come in, and they occupy their very own realm within the world of the weird.