Finding Bigfoot in Maine and New Hampshire

This month Animal Planet aired two episodes of Finding Bigfoot that were filmed right here in New England. I'm not a regular viewer of this show, but how could I resist these two episodes?

If you're not familiar with Finding Bigfoot, here's how the show works. The show has four Bigfoot experts (three true believers and one designated skeptic) who travel around the world searching for everyone's favorite hairy hominid. They meet with a group of locals who share their Bigfoot sightings, and then follow up with a few in-depth interviews/investigations. These usually include re-enactments of the sightings, complete with CGI Sasquatches running through the woods. Awesome!

  

The show's experts also go out into the woods, usually at night, and try to find Bigfoot. This involves lots of night-vision cameras, and people knocking on trees or making howls that supposedly sound like Bigfoot. Let's hope they don't accidentally issue a Bigfoot mating call.


In the episode "Maine's Bigfoot Event," the experts visit the Pine Tree state for the first time. They visit Loren Coleman's Museum of Cryptozoology in Portland. Loren Coleman was writing about weird monsters before the Finding Bigfoot experts were even born, and his museum looks like a lot of fun. I should really take a field trip up there one of these weekends!

 

After looking at Coleman's map of recent Bigfoot sightings the experts hold a town-hall style meeting with local residents. Dozens of people raise their hands when asked if they've seen a Sasquatch, and we see a few people tell their stories in more detail. I wonder how long these meetings last in real life? There's no such thing as a boring Bigfoot sighting, but I'm assuming the producers edit out the parts they think are dull.

On this episode we only get to see two re-enactments. In one, a couple feeding chickens behind their house see something large and hair run down a ridge. In the second, a father and son walking in the woods behind their house encounter a gigantic hairy humanoid. When shown how wide the creature's shoulders were, one of the experts says something like, "You saw a big stud." Again, let's hope no mating calls are accidentally issued.

The rest of this episode consists of the experts out in the woods looking for Bigfoot. One of the premises behind the show is that Bigfoot are just very intelligent animals that communicate with each by knocking on trees and howling. The experts try to lure Bigfoot out of hiding by knocking on trees and howling.

I don't think that Bigfoot is large undiscovered animal, but I do find it interesting that the show's experts usually get some kind of response, whether a distant animal cry or a mysterious knocking sound. The skeptic in me thinks that the woods are always full of noises if you listen hard enough, so it might just be coincidence that they often hear responses. The less skeptical part of my brain is reminded of seances, where the spirits communicate by knocking on tables or blowing out candles. There's always something lurking out there in the dark giving hints that it exists, but it very seldom shows its face.

I liked the Maine episode, but I loved "Grand Bigfoot Hotel" which was filmed in a lot of places I've been. The experts stay at the Omni Mount Washington Hotel, which I've stayed at and is famously haunted. They don't mention the ghost, but they do go wandering at night on the trails behind the hotel. I saw an otter and a huge woodpecker when I stayed there, but sadly the experts don't see Bigfoot.

The Mount Washington Hotel

The local re-enactments include a snowboarder who saw a giant thing walking through the snow, a couple who saw two Bigfoot shaking trees behind their house, and a couple who saw something weird cross the road in Franconia Notch. I've driven through the notch many times, and it is a very dramatic place with huge cliffs and unusual weather. Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by a UFO just down the road, so there's a history of strange things happening in that area.

The experts go looking for Bigfoot evidence near the Frankenstein Cliffs, another place I've visited, but I think the high point of the show is when they recruit a local alphorn player to wander in the woods with them to lure Sasquatch out of hiding. Alphorns are those gigantic horns they play in the Swiss mountains.

Calling for a Ricola or Bigfoot?

Did anyone really think that Bigfoot would show himself after hearing someone play a giant wooden horn? Of course not. But maybe that's not what this show is about.

I'll suggest that perhaps Finding Bigfoot isn't really about finding Bigfoot. Maybe it's really about giving local people across the country their 15 minutes of fame. Maybe it's about showing strange and interesting local places, like a big spooky hotel and a cool little museum. And maybe it's really about giving viewers hope that they too might glimpse a strange creature wandering through their own backyards.

Recent UFO Sightings in New Hampshire

It's easy for me to get lost in New England's old weird folklore. Every now and then I need to stick my head up from the old books and look at what's happening now - New England's new weird folklore.

A lot of people use the word paranormal when they are talking about strange modern phenomena. 'Paranormal' sounds more scientific than 'folklore,' and I suppose it suits the technological era that we live in. But I don't think it's dismissive to lump modern paranormal phenomena with older folklore. Both terms refer to the same thing: weird activity or stories that don't comfortably fit in other more reputable categories like history, science, or religion.

Anyway, regardless of terminology, on December 1, 2014 someone stopped at a traffic light in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and saw a UFO. They didn't see a metallic spaceship or anything of that sort, but instead some mysterious lights in the sky. Shining through the cloud cover they could see a large white circle of lights. Sometimes the lights had a bluish tinge, sometimes pinkish, but mostly they remained white.

There was an additional light that rotated around the circle of lights, but the circle itself stayed stationary.

It stayed in the same place with the bigger light just rotating around the circle of stationary light. I kept trying to see if there was a craft there, but could not make out any shape of a craft as this was just above the cloud cover. My first thought is that whoever it was must have thought they were hiding above the cloud, but the lights were clearly visible.

When the traffic light turned green the witness drive forward and pulled off the road, but when he looked back up the UFO had disappeared.

Carl Jung in 1910 (from Wikipedia)

It's a cool sighting! I don't know what UFOs are, but people have been seeing them for centuries. There are many theories about what they are, but the psychiatrist Carl Jung might be able to shed light (forgive the pun) on this particular incident. Jung claimed there were similarities between UFOs and the many circular holy symbols in world religions. For example, he drew connections between saints' halos, Hindu and Buddhist mandalas, the wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, and modern UFOs. Jung claimed all of these were mystical experiences, and that circular shapes symbolized spiritual wholeness.

I like that theory, but what would he say about the large number of triangular UFOs seen in New Hampshire? Mark Podell, an investigator with MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), investigates 5 - 10 New Hampshire UFO sightings each month. Many people see circular UFOs, but many others see triangular lights in the sky. If you want to see one yourself, you might want to visit Franconia Notch at night. Podell says that's where 80% of the reports come from. I've been up there many times myself, and it is very, very dark at night. It's probably a good place to witness strange phenomena.

You can hear more from Mark Podell, and see a video of a possible UFO seen in Derry, in the video below.


I found the information about the UFO in Portsmouth from the MUFON website, which is always interesting.

Boise Rock!

Tony and I recently went up to northern New Hampshire to visit family, and the trip took us through Franconia Notch near Cannon Mountain. Luckily the weather was good, because when it's bad driving through the Notch is miserable.

In the early 1800s, a local man named Thomas Boise found out just how miserable. Boise was heading through the Notch on a horse-drawn sleigh when a howling snowstorm struck. He tried to drive the horse through to the comparative safety on the other side, but his efforts were futile. There was too much snow, and the horse, sleigh and Boise became stuck in Franconia Notch in blizzard conditions.

The foreboding cliffs of Cannon Mountain seen from Franconia Notch.

Fearful that he would freeze to death, Boise devised a gruesome but ingenious plan. He killed and skinned his horse, and then wrapped himself in its warm bloody hide. A convenient overhanging boulder provided extra shelter during the storm.

His plan worked. The next day a rescue party found Boise alive and wrapped in the horse hide under the boulder. The hide had been frozen solid, and the rescuers had to cut him out of it with axes.

Tony under Boise Rock. Just a light dusting of snow!

Luckily these days most travelers don't need to go to such extreme lengths, but the overhanging boulder (now called Boise Rock) is still around in case you need emergency shelter. It's right off Route 93 and there's a sign guiding you right to it. It's not the most exciting tourist attraction in the area, but I like the legend attached to it.

Thomas Boise's story reminds me a little bit of The Empire Strikes Back, where Han Solo saves Luke from freezing by putting his body into the dead body of a steed called a Tauntaun. Maybe this is a recurring theme in folktales? If anyone has more examples I'd be happy to hear about them!

If you like reading about famous New England rocks, you might like my earlier posts about Anawan Rock and Dungeon Rock.