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A bit different time frame but can be used, I think.

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/ky-vampire/

October 7 – An unknown animal is killing the dogs near Danville, Ky., by cutting a hole in the throat and sucking the blood out of the body. It is said to be an immense white animal, unlike anything ever before seen. It is of the greyhound pattern, but larger in every way, being about four feet high and six long.

How do you intend to run this game? I would guess that you are planning an episodic series of table top adventures.

Off the top of my head, there was the Scaring Crow article in Rifter #44, I think. The article was written by our own Mister Loucifer, and it extensively quoted the journal of a pioneer. I'll post more as ideas come, but I'll have to mull this over for a bit.

By the by, I think most of us would be interested in seeing those monsters when you make them.

Skin walkers.

It's an interesting concept for game.

Okay, limiting oneself to the Pre-American Civil War era (1865), we still have some interesting options. This was the age of the Trail of Tears, Seminole Wars, War of 1812, the Mexican-American War in 1845 (Texas), the Underground Railroad, and the California Gold Rush. Specific location does count for a lot. In Florida around, the Seminole tribes were forming from escaped slaves and refugee Red Stick Creeks. Some of these Seminole villages mastered stealth techniques that would make ninja clans jealous. In Missouri, the Chahokia mounds area was still an undiscovered necropolis over which white settlers were ignorantly building (it was a major metropolis with roughly 1000 people around 1000 A.D.), but no one knew it until they uncovered bodies buried upright and suddenly realized their hills were artificial. Texas has its own mythology. Then gain, you could always set your game in a generic area called "the territory" and draw from diverse folklore.

If you are invoking John Irons, then you could also feature other culture heroes like Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and Davy Crockett.

Native American myth features a lot of talking animals, giants, and tiny people. The Navajo has a series of monsters (some of whom were giants) called the Anaye. Seminole legend has the Sasquatch-like Fsti Capcaki. found a somewhat long Cherokee folktale about two brothers, one of whom was sort of a blood golem, who together grew into the tiny people of Cherokee myth.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/anaye.html
http://www.pantheon.org/areas/folklore/ ... _selu.html
http://www.pantheon.org/articles/f/fsti_capcaki.html

Lord Z wrote:Off the top of my head, there was the Scaring Crow article in Rifter #44, I think. The article was written by our own Mister Loucifer, and it extensively quoted the journal of a pioneer.

You flatter me by mentioning this Z-ster.

Keep in mind that the 1800's pioneer horror was all about superstition and by extention religious superstitions (the more cosmopolitan Easterners were just getting into tales of Madness like Poe's work). Bram's "Dracula" wouldnt be a hit in the states till the 1900's while Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was one of the earliest works of Science fiction and its context was lost to the new west. The Wendingo and the like were more American Indian lore shared with the pioneers. Even Pennsylvania's native monster the "Squonk" didnt really come into play until the early 1900's. Outside of Sea monsters and european creatures of the night, there isnt much to make use of history wise.

The pioneers lived a life of daily fear in a lot of ways, and superstitions has a lot to play in that as the pioneers brought all their ancestry superstitions with them. To many of them, "the evil eye" was a physical monster as much as it was a mental one. Actually, the many superstitions were almost of a "divining" nature to them, For example: If a rooster crows at your front door in the early morning, somebody was coming to visit. But if they crow while its still at night, the stranger would bring a calamity with them. That stranger could have been a bogey man looking for children, Hell hounds on the prowl, Scaring Crows looking for someone to terrify, a posessed stranger could be coming to make trouble, etc.

My advice is to still to the old classics, ghosts, werewolves, vampires, hell hounds, demons, etc and the Indian folklores. The more primal and simplistic, the more it fits their superstitious frame of mind. To "combine the familiar with the uncanny" is the very essence of horror and works well in this setting.

On the other hand, there's a lot of potential for themes like "alienation" and psychological horror when you go the route of "civilization intruding onto the wild west", a place it doesnt belong.

Nearly every John Ford movie is all about protecting the innocent from the corruption of violence, a theme that always works in horror. Using tropes like the medicine man, mournful train whistles, honey bee's encroaching into the west (a sign to the native Indians that the white man was coming soon), and the birth of eventual and inevitable ghost town. Abandoned mine shafts, riverboats (the book Fevre Dream is a great source material for Steam boat horror), even the oriental mystery of San Francisco's Chinatown can be a treasure chest of goodies.

Lastly, the halting of the southern slave plantation culture created a "southern Gothic" atmosphere for awhile and was an inspiration for many "rootless wonderers with psychological scar" characters popular at the time in stories and books.

If you combine the historic report of Kentucky's White Vampire with the recent photograph of the Omagimaakos, one could have an almost feasible new monster from the wilderness of Kentucky.

http://www.lazlosociety.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1687

As all my games take place in the Pacific Northwest (with a Seattle home base), the Argopelter will make a choice addition to the local bestiary.

Actually, with all the timber companies, the Axehandle hound would work in the same area.

I am astounded by the variety of critters you've posted, Rhom. You have everything from the cowardly cryptoids who avoid humans to minor SN monsters who stalk people with magical powers. What do you throw at your players when their PCs become powerful and confident enough to handle these monsters?

Oooh, I really like reusing familiar materials in a new way.

I asked a friend in Tennessee about local folktales and cryptids. He recommended the Foxfire series of books.
http://www.amazon.com/Foxfire-Stories-S ... =1-2-fkmr1

thers a game call deadlands that can wokr for BtS in the Old west.

The Pulp era also wokrs for BtS.

Write it up. It should make for an interesting netbook.

you could even put it together as a multi part rifter submission. if you want play test it run
online in the chat or as a play by post in the forums. i wouldnt mind watching that play out.