Image used with kind permission by Pyro Helfier.
The NASA Gargoyle is a cryptid supposedly sighted in Texas during the mid-1980s.
Description[]
This creature was said to resemble, as its name might suggest, a gargoyle, a demonic humanoid complete with expansive wings or perhaps fleshy flaps. The size of the creature remains unknown, but it was said to have been jet black in colour.
Sighting[]
The story of the NASA Gargoyle was related to noted cryptozoological author Neck Redfern by one Desiree Shaw, who told Redfern in 2006 of her father Frank’s 1984 encounter with the beast.
According to Spencer, her father had been an employee at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Johnson Space Center, Houston at the time. After finishing his shift one evening, he was crossing the parking lot on the way to his car when he happened to throw a glance at one of the nearby buildings. Perched atop the building was a monstrous creature which Shaw could only describe as resembling one of the gargoyles which adorn many churches and other buildings dating from Europe’s medieval period. Shaw quickly realised that the gargoyle was staring directly at him, and had the distinct impression that it was taking great pleasure in the terror that it had instilled in him.
After a few moments of staring at each other, the gargoyle began to slowly unfurl its great wings with a sound like dried paper; this act seemed to break the almost hypnotic state that Shaw had been in, and he raced to his car and sped home without a backward glance.
Aftermath[]
Although initially reluctant to report what he had seen to his superiors, the effect of this encounter on Shaw began to get the better of him, and he eventually related his story to one of his supervisors. Much to his relief, rather than being met with the ridicule that he had expected, Shaw was informed that the gargoyle had been sighted by other employees at the Johnson facility, and was in fact believed to have been behind the brutal mutilation and exsanguination of a pair of the bases’ German Shepherd guard dogs. He was also told that a secret file had been opened on the entity, but if such a document exists it has never been made available to the public.
Believing this to be the end of his ordeal, Shaw was surprised when he was soon hauled in front of “NASA security people flown in from somewhere in Arizona,” who proceeded to interrogate him intensively on his experience and make it very clear that he and his family would do well to keep the matter to themselves (see "Men in Black"). This may be the reason why this encounter has taken so long to come to public attention.
To this day, NASA have neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the creature sighted by Shaw and the other employees.