Giant Grasshopper

The Giant Grasshopper is a playful cryptid of American lumber camp folklore, said to leap over entire cabins in a single bound while devouring vast swathes of crops. Tales from the 19th-century Midwest exaggerated the common locust plagues that devastated farms into legends of grasshoppers the size of hunting dogs, with jaws strong enough to shear wooden fence posts. While obviously fictional, these stories helped pioneer families cope with real agricultural hardships by turning insects into almost comical monsters. In local yarns, the Giant Grasshopper sometimes appears as a trickster figure, leaving fields barren overnight and forcing farmers to bargain or appease it. It illustrates how communities often stretch genuine environmental threats into larger-than-life folklore to process fear and misfortune through shared humor and cautionary storytelling.