I think the Grafton Monster is a hoax. Now, not that I believe any cryptids actually exist, but I mean a hoax in terms of culture and folklore.
In recent years the subject of cryptids from West Virginia has grown in pop culture, but there's one that stands out to me - The Grafton Monster
Originally sighted in 1964 near the Tygart River in Grafton West Virginia, it's described as a lumbering hulk with no head and white seal-like skin. There are buzzing and humming sounds associated with it, but it doesn't really do anything bad.
Except - I live in West Virginia, I have family in Grafton going back to my great-grandparents. I grew up and still live about 30 minutes from Grafton. Nobody I know has ever heard of this thing. Not as a folk tale, not as a hoax, not at all. Seems to me the whole story was dreamt up in recent years.
In 2014 there was a TV show called Mountain Monsters that did an episode on the Grafton Monster. They interviewed local people, actually did film in Grafton, it was rather a subject of local news that there was a TV crew in town.
Except the people they interviewed definitely weren't from Grafton. It's a small enough town that you kind of know everybody, and those folks definitely weren't locals. My uncle owns a business in Grafton and he knows frickin everybody, he could recognize whose farm they were on but that was not the guy who owns that farm.
Nobody, I mean nobody from Grafton knew they ever had a monster until a TV crew came into town and told us we did.
So I think it's bullshit.
Everybody knows the Mothman. I didn't think stories about The Flatwoods Monster made it outside of WV and apparently that's popular now too, but I've heard of that since I was a kid. These are established folklore, tall tales passed down the generations, and culturally relevant.
The Grafton Monster though, no, at least don't think so. Almost everything I try to read about the tale circles back to that TV show. There's a book that was published in 2019, numerous cryptid hunters have done stories on the subject in recent years. But I can't find anything on the subject prior to 2014.
Now, part of the story goes that the first sighting was made by a guy who worked for the local newspaper The Grafton Daily Sentinel, and he published a story on June 18th, 1964. That was a real paper (now defunct) but there's no online resource for back issues of it, maybe it could be found in physical copies somewhere. If I were to see that, then I would believe this was actual WV folklore and not some script from a reality TV show writer.
In the absence of evidence dating before the 2014 TV show, I have to presume The Grafton Monster was made up for that show and is now counted among WV's well known cryptids.
Like I said at first not saying I think any of these exist, but I strongly believe that folk tales of this kind have great cultural value. They're all "made up" but the others have history, Grafton Monster does not.
Moreover, Alexander H. Stephens and West Hughes Humphreys were never found guilty of a crime, there was no court case or conviction against them.
They participated in an insurrection, rebellion, and gave aid or comfort to enemies. (Stephens was the vice president of the CSA and Humphreys was a judge). Folks in congress didn't want to be sitting next to a guy who just a few months ago was trying to kill them, so they started writing Section 3. It did not require a crime to be tried or a court ruling to be made, they participated in a rebellion and that's enough.
Okay the constitution isn't written for people to wriggle out on technicality.