A Werewolf in Natick? A Story for the Wolf Moon

On Monday, January 17, the Full Wolf Moon will rise at 4:13 pm and cast its lupine light across New England. Get out there and howl, folks! We're supposed to have a lot of rain here in Boston, so the moon may not be visible, but it will still be up in the sky even if you can't see it. 

In honor of the Wolf Moon, here is a story about a possible werewolf I found on Phantoms and Monsters. Phantoms and Monsters is a great site if you enjoy reading about paranormal encounters - check it out if you like weird tales.

The story goes something like this. In the spring of 2006, a group of friends from Natick decided to go camping. Rather than drive up to New Hampshire or out to western Massachusetts, they decided to camp closer to home. They chose a patch of woods behind some apartment buildings near an old, abandoned factory.

Oliver Reed in The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

My first thought on reading this was, "That's probably not an official camp site." My second thought was, "Camping near an abandoned factory sounds like it would be spooky." My second thought was definitely correct.

The person who submitted the story wrote:

Now before I go further I must say that my area has experienced very weird sounds. Although in my opinion, they are very un-wolf like. They sound like a woman screaming crossed with long dog barks. A very indescribable and terrible sound. They come from various directions, though usually from the apartment area. (Phantoms and Monsters)

Coyotes? Maybe, or maybe not. But strange sounds in the woods just add to the spooky vibe.

The friends set up their tents and settled in for the night. After everyone had fallen asleep, one of the campers left her tent to urinate. She felt like she was being watched, though, so she woke up her boyfriend and asked him to come with her. He also felt they were being watched as they stepped away from the tents. 

As he stood watch, the boyfriend saw something moving through the trees away from the tents. It was tall, grey, and covered in fur:

He could see it through the brush... a large (approximately 6.5-7 foot in height) man-shaped figure, covered in grayish fur, sporting wolf-like features and a bushy tail swaying behind it. He was shocked and ran into the tent, leaving his girlfriend who came running in a moment later, after hearing the rustling of the creature.

They spent the rest of the night awake in their tent, occasionally hearing strange cries in the woods. They and the other campers quickly left the woods once the morning came.  

That's the end of the story. Like most monster stories, it's pretty simple. People see monster, people freak out, monster leaves. It's as if the monster just wants to be seen and acknowledged. Maybe the monster just wants to remind us that there are still weird things lurking out there in the world, even in a patch of woods near an abandoned factory.

An abandoned factory in the woods behind some apartments sounds like a liminal space to me. A liminal space is someplace that isn't quite one thing or another, a zone between one place and another. Liminal spaces are thresholds. 

It makes sense that the campers would see a werewolf in a liminal space. A werewolf is part human and part animal. It's both these things, and yet neither. The campsite was forested but formerly industrial, it was suburban and yet wild. It's the type of place where teenagers go to do forbidden things, and where campers would see uncanny creatures. It makes sense.

Did they really see a werewolf? I can hear some of you asking that question. I am a little skeptical that there are large, physical monsters roaming around our woods. (Of course, I don't go into the woods late at night!) I don't think that means the campers made this story up, though. There are lots of middle positions between hardcore skepticism and total belief. Maybe the campers inadvertently conjured up something from deep inside their psyches, or maybe they glimpsed the spirit of that land, what the ancient Romans would call a genius loci.

Happy Wolf Moon everyone!

Stomping through the Snow with Bigfoot in 1976

We had a nice storm last Friday, getting around 10 inches of snow here in the Boston area. I made sure to strap on my boots and stomped around in the snow while it was still fresh.

Forty-five years ago, in December of 1976, someone stomped through the snow near Robinson State Park in Agawam, Massachusetts. Someone who apparently did not wear shoes. Residents of the town found bare footprints, and each footprint was 27 inches long. Someone, or something, quite large had been walking in the snow.

Many people assumed the tracks were made by Bigfoot. It was 1976, after all, and Bigfoot was a popular topic in the mass media. Bigfoot tracks were being seen all across the country. A documentary about the mysterious humanoid, In Search of Bigfoot, had played in movie theaters around the US, and a bionic Bigfoot (from outer space!) had been featured on The Six Million Dollar Man, a popular TV show.  So perhaps it was inevitable that Bigfoot would even appear in Massachusetts. 

Ted Cassidy as Bionic Bigfoot in The Six Million Dollar Man

The Agawam police took the footprints seriously, sending out a "Bigfoot team" to investigate. Bigfoot hunters, who were less common in 1976 than they are now, also came to town. At least one of them, Lee Frank, was invited by a concerned Agawam citizen.

"The prints look good - but "Bigfoot" tracks are a dime a dozen...we really need to see him," said Lee Frank, who reportedly travels all over the United States investigating sightings of the legendary animal.

Frank and other trackers spent Wednesday night camping in zero temperatures beside the footprints in the snow, but failed to spot a 7 to 12-foot monster on the prowl by Westfield River. "Bigfoot" investigators also planned to spend Thursday camping in the woods in hopes of spotting the big fellow.

"Whatever the tracks are, they merit further investigation," Frank said, adding that it is impossible to determine at this point how the tracks were made." ("'Bigfoot' Eludes Team On Overnight Campout", Morning Union (Springfield, Massachusetts), December 31, 1976, from Bigfoot Encounters).

The Agawam police were unsure if the footprints were really made by Bigfoot, or if they were a hoax. It turns out they were a hoax. In early January, the police confiscated two large plywood feet from David Deschenes, a 16-year old Agawam resident. 

"I did it as a joke for the little kids around here, but it got out of hand. The next thing I knew the police were out at two in the morning looking around, taking it seriously. I didn't feel like going out to tell them I was 'bigfoot'", Deschenes said. ("Bigfoot Sorry About Stepping On Law," Kenosha (Wisconsin) News, January 6, 1977, from Bigfoot Encounters).

I find hoaxes really interesting, because even if they are not strictly true, they illustrate what people think might be true. So while Bigfoot was not really running around Agawam, people were willing to think he was. David Deschenes was just enacting something his neighbors thought might be possible. The people in 1976 weren't that different from previous generations of New England residents, many of whom also believed large hairy humanoids were running around the region. They called them "wild men" instead of Bigfoot, although, if real, they were equally tricky and elusive as their modern counterpart. 

David Deschenes may have been a hoaxer, but he was also a trend-setter. In 1977, the company K-Tel produced and marketed plastic Bigfoot snowshoes for children. Kids all across the nation were soon leaving Bigfoot tracks in the snow, just like David had. I wanted these as a kid, but never bought them! I should have followed David's lead and just made my own.

A Werewolf in Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Many, many years ago when I was a small child I saw Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) on some local TV station. Although this movie is a very broad comedy, I was still really scared by the monsters in it, particularly by the Wolfman. I was probably five years old so maybe this is understandable, or maybe I was just a really cowardly kid. Regardless, the Wolfman was portrayed by Lon Chaney Jr., and his transformation from a mild-mannered human to a hirsute and ferocious monster terrified me. 

Lon Chaney Jr. in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein

He was also the most sympathetic of the movie's monsters, though, so I was also fascinated. Once I got over my fear of werewolves I learned to love stories about them. Sabine Baring Gould's The Book of Werewolves (1865) is a good source for European legends, as is Montague Summers's The Werewolf in Legend and Lore (1933). Both of those are easily available, but sadly, there isn't too much written about New England werewolves. Maybe that's because we don't have a lot of werewolves here, which could be a good thing depending on how you feel about ravening monsters.

The word werewolf comes from an Old English term, werwulf, or man-wolf, and refers to a human who can transform into a wolf. The reasons for this ability vary in old legends and include things like curses, deals with the Devil, or witchcraft. The idea that someone can become a werewolf after being bitten or scratched by one is a more recent pop culture innovation. Lycanthropy (the fancy term for werewolfism) was originally considered a moral condition, not an infectious disease. 

There are lots of New England legends about people transforming into animals, but they're usually about witches, and witches don't like to change into wolves. Witches prefer to transform into more discrete animals like birds, cats, and even horses. It's easier to cause mischief that way. No one suspects an innocent-looking bird but people are pretty suspicious when a wolf shows up. Still, during the Salem witch trials Tituba confessed to seeing cats, birds and wolves in the company of witches, implying that these were either demons or witches in animal form. 

That's not the only local connection between witches and wolves. There is also an obscure legend that one of Cape Ann's Dogtown witches, Daffy Archer, may have been a werewolf or had one at her command. You can read more about the Dogtown werewolf here. 

Some of New England's other werewolf legends come from French-Canadian immigrants, who brought stories of the loup-garou with them from Quebec. A loup-garou is someone, usually male, who has signed a deal with the Devil and can transform into a wolf. They are scary and dangerous, but happily can be repelled by prayer and religious symbols, as this tale from Vermont shows. 

Those stories are over a hundred years old, but I just read another werewolf account, and it's relatively recent. It appears in Albert Rosales book Humanoid Encounters: 2000 - 2009. According to Rosales, on December 16, 2008, four students in Pawtucket, Rhode Island decided to take a walk in the woods after finishing their exams. They followed an old waterway deeper and deeper into the woods. As they walked it became increasingly quiet. 

Noticeably quiet. No birds. No squirrels. No breeze.

Scarily quiet.

The students suddenly became aware that they were not alone. Someone - or rather something - was in the woods with them. The creature was about six feet tall. It stood upright like a man, but had the head of a wolf. The students stood still in terror, petrified that the creature would approach them. 

The wolf creature looked around, sensing it was not alone, but did not see the students. Finally it ran off further into the trees and was lost to sight. After waiting to make sure it was really gone the students left the woods. One of the witnesses was convinced the creature was a werewolf. 

What did the others think it was if not a werewolf? Rosales's book doesn't say. It also doesn't include some details that would be useful, like how old the students were or their names. Still, I'm happy to find another local werewolf story to add to my collection. This reads like a classic paranormal encounter: the journey out of consensus reality into the woods, the eerie expectant stillness, the advent of a strange entity, and the return back to the normal world. 

The moral aspects of older werewolf stories are missing here. There's no witchcraft or deal with the Devil. Instead, we just have some young folks who have an encounter with a monstrous being in the woods. The lesson is not a moral one, but rather an ontological one: there are still monsters lurking out in the trees. 

Slipperyskin: Bear, Monster, or Spirit?

If you've ever encountered a bear out in the woods you know they can be pretty scary. But do you know what's even scarier than a bear? A super-intelligent bear. One that is sly, tricky and really hates humans.

People in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom were supposedly harassed by such a creature in the 1700s. The Wabanaki Indians called him Wejuk or "wet skin" because he always slipped away when they tried to capture him. Following the Wabanaki lead the the English settlers called him Slipperyskin.

Slipperyskin caused a lot of trouble. He knocked over fences, terrorized livestock, and ruined cornfields. Those are probably things any ordinary bear might do, but Slipperyskin was no ordinary bear. He was a very intelligent and tricky bear, so he also put rocks into maple syrup buckets and farm machinery. He once rolled a log at hunters who were chasing hime. He even threw stones at small children walking to school. Bears don't have opposable thumbs so I'm not sure how he accomplished this.

It was pretty obvious Slipperyskin didn't like humans. The feeling was mutual and many attempts were made to catch or kill the pesky bear. None were ever successful but at least one was quite humorous. In the early 1800s Vermont governor Jonas Galusha came up with a scheme to trap Slipperyskin. The governor doused himself with female bear scent and walked into the woods, hoping to lure Slipperyskin into a clearing where hunters waited with rifles. Mere minutes after heading into the woods the governor ran into the clearing chased by an amorous Slipperyskin. The hunters fled in panic at the sight of the giant lustful bear. Governor Galusha escaped with his life but sustained severe damage to his dignity.

Although he was quite a terror Slipperyskin never killed anyone but he was once accused of eating a minister. One day a group of ministers were picnicking on the shores of Westmore's Lake Willoughby when the bear emerged from the bushes with a furious roar. The holy men fled in all directions as the ursine horror attacked their picnic lunch.

After Slipperyskin departed they returned to the picnic ground. All of the ministers were present expect one. The ministers looked with dread upon the picnic blanket where a mass of torn clothes and amorphous biological matter hinted at the grim fate of their missing companion. It was clear the bear had killed and devoured him. However, closer examination later showed the disgusting mess to be half-eaten cheese and not a human corpse. Their missing companion was later found alive and well. Under the cover of the bear attack he had secretly fled an unhappy life in Vermont and set up a new one in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Vermonters stopped seeing Slipperyskin in the early 1800s but his legend lives on. Some of the stories about him, like those with the governor and the ministers, are pretty humorous and I wonder how seriously we're supposed to take the stories about this clever and infuriating bear. Was he even real? After all, bears don't normally do the things Slipperyskin did. 

Some Bigfoot researchers think the stories are really garbled accounts of Sasquatch encounters but I'm not entirely convinced. I think the Wabanaki would be able to reliably identify a bear, as would the English frontiersmen who were settling in Vermont. And besides, does it make sense to explain away a legendary bear with a legendary hairy humanoid?

There's a big chance Slipperyskin might just be a tall-tale people told to amuse each other. Still, folks in New England have been encountering weird things in the woods for centuries, and often those weird things throw rocks and cause mischief. They ruin farm machinery and cause trouble in bars. At different times people have called them witches, demons, poltergeists, Bigfoot, or even Slipperyskin. Maybe they're all just different manifestations of some strange phenomenon associated with this corner of the country.

Think of it this way. Perhaps Slipperyskin was just one manifestation of the New England genius loci, which is a Latin term meaning "spirit of a place." Maybe this clever bear was just a particularly cranky version of the spirit of this stony and wooded corner of the country. Then again, does it make sense to explain away a legendary Vermont bear with a concept from ancient Roman religion? Maybe not but it's interesting to consider. 

*****

I first learned about Slipperyskin in books by Vermont's Joseph Citro. A great source of information about him is this article in The Northland Journal. 

From Monster to Mer-Bro: Four Centuries of New England Mermen

The more things change the more they stay the same. Yes, it's a cliche, but there's a grain of truth in it. Sometimes things seem like they are new but they are actually not. 

Take Gorton's Seafood, for example. Gorton's was founded in Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1849. The company is still going strong and their longtime mascot, a fisherman wearing yellow rain gear, is widely recognized. But in recent months the company has tried appealing to a younger demographic by airing humorous ads featuring brawny mermen (a.k.a mer-bros) and a laid-back Neptune, god of the sea. Has Gorton's lost touch with its historic New England roots with this new advertising campaign? Not really. Although salty fishermen are an important part of our culture, mermen and their kin have also been reported in this area for hundreds of years.

An old-school merman. 

Mer-bros eating Gorton's fish sticks.

One of the earliest written accounts appears in Englishman John Josselyn's 1674 book An Account of Two Voyages to New England. Josselyn visited New England in 1638 and 1663, and on one of those trips he hear the following story from a colonist in coastal Maine:

One Mr. Mittin related of a triton or merman which he saw in Casco Bay. This gentleman was a great fowler, and used to go out with a small boat or canoe, and fetching a compass about a small island (there being many small islands in the bay), for the advantage of a shot, was encountered with a triton, who laying his hands upon the side of the canoe, had one of them chopt off with a hatchet by Mr. Mittin, which was in all respects like the hand of a man. The triton presently sunk, dyeing the water with his purple blood, and was no more seen.

A triton is a type of merman from classical mythology. They are named after the god Triton, son of Poseidon, and like the sea itself are fickle and sometimes dangerous. Perhaps Mr. Mittin was well-read in Greek myth and unwilling to see if this particular triton was friendly or not. Interestingly, in one of the Gorton's commercials a mer-bro sheds purple tears. Coincidence?

The Puritans who colonized New England did not look fondly upon ancient Greek gods or aquatic humanoids, apparently thinking both were demonic in nature. This outlook can be seen in their response to the song that Thomas Morton wrote for the raucous May Day celebration in 1628 at Merrymount Colony in Quincy, Massachusetts. It invoked Neptune and Triton, along with more overtly erotic gods like Priapus, Ganymede (Jupiter's young boyfriend), and Hymen, the god of marriage. After learning of Merrymount's pagan-themed celebration the Pilgrims at Plymouth dispatched armed troops to arrest Morton and burn down his colony. Morton was trading furs and arms with the local Indians, which threatened the Plymouth colony's economy, but his pagan and libertine tendencies were a threat to morality.

You can burn down a rival settlement, but the mer-folk are not so easily eradicated. In 1714 a minister named Valentyn sailing past Nantucket's Great Point glimpsed a merman in the water. At first Valentyn and the ship's crew thought he was human:

We all agreed he must be some shipwrecked person. After some time I begged the captain to steer the ship more directly toward it. … We had got within a ship’s length of him, when the people on the forecastle made such a noise that he plunged down, head foremost, and got presently out of sight. 

The man who was on watch at the masthead declared that he had… a monstrous long tail.

That story is quoted in Edward Rowe Snow's book Legends of the New England Coast. Snow also claims that years later, in the early 1900s, a lighthouse keeper at Great Point saw something humanoid emerge from the ocean and crawl into the nearby woods. Other local residents also said they saw signs that something not quite human had been among the trees. Gorton's mer-bros are goofy and fun; the Great Point merman sounds a little bit spooky to me.

Speaking of spooky, Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's 1931story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" centers on a race of monstrous aquatic humanoids called the Deep Ones who live off the coast of Massachusetts. The citizens of the decaying port city Innsmouth have made a deal with the Deep Ones. The Deep Ones give them plentiful fish harvests and golden treasure from their aquatic realm. In return, the people of Innsmouth give the Deep Ones human sacrifices and have conjugal relations with the scaly monsters. Yikes! In Lovecraft's 1926 story "The Strange High House in the Mist," various sea-gods, including Neptune and a band of tritons, pay a visit to the titular house. At least in this story they aren't demanding sex or human sacrifice. 

Lovecraft wrote fiction; he never thought the Deep Ones were real. But even during his lifetime some of his acquaintances thought he was writing about real occult practices and entities. That movement only grew after his death and some occultists have even claimed the Deep Ones are actual beings. For example, the British occultist Kenneth Grant claimed that he successfully summoned the Deep Ones to appear during a ritual. (Note: they weren't particularly pleasant!) Similarly, the American ceremonial magician Michael Bertiaux claims he has contacted the Deep Ones at an isolated lake somewhere in Wisconsin. Lovecraft based the fictional Innsmouth on Depression-era Newburyport, so perhaps the Deep Ones really are lurking in the waters just off our coast.

Unlike the Deep Ones, Gorton's mer-bros are cheery and goofy. Is this just an advertising gimmick or are there other happy mermen in New England's past? Yes, there are. Elizabeth Reynard's 1934 book The Narrow Land contains several stories given to her by Mashpee Wampanoag Indians. One of these stories tells of Matilda Simons, a widowed Wampanoag woman struggling to feed her three children. When the Christian god doesn't answer her prayers she turns to the old Indian gods. In response, the sea god Paumpagusnit sends several aquatic giants from the ocean to help her. They speak in "the guttural voice of the sea" and save Matilda's family from starvation by bringing gifts of fish. 

So perhaps the mer-bros are not as newfangled as they at first appear. While they are part of the current trend to use folkloric creatures in advertising (like those beef jerky ads starring Sasquatch), these fishmen are also have deep roots here in New England. 

Speaking of deep New England roots, recently I was a guest on Jeff Belanger's fantastic New England Legends podcast. Jeff is a font of weird knowledge and we had a great time chatting about witches, monsters, and why there are so many strange legends from New England. I hope you'll listen if you can!

A Christmas Elf (or Alien?) Sighting in the New Hampshire Woods

Well, it's the Christmas season, which is one of the few times in the year when we are allowed to believe in all sorts of strange things. Flying reindeer? Check. Large man with a sack who sneaks into your house at night but doesn't steal things? Check.

Christmas elves? Check. Lots of people (mostly children) believe that Santa Claus is helped in his yearly labors by a gaggle of elves who live at the North Pole. This is mostly taken on faith, since I don't think there have been many Christmas elf sightings reported around the world. However, one may have been seen in the wintry woods of Derry, New Hampshire on December 15, 1956.

That was the day that Alfred Horne was out alone in the forest, chopping down Christmas trees for the impending Yuletide holiday. As you all know, weird things can happen when you're out in the woods by yourself in any season, but late fall and early winter are prime times for weirdness. The days are short, the sun is low in the sky, and those entities that like the darkness are more likely to make an appearance.

After a while Horne he realized that he was not alone. There was someone (or perhaps something?) standing nearby watching him as he worked. The entity was about two feet high. It had a large head with big floppy ears. In place of a nose it just had two nostril slits, and its eyes were covered with nictitating membranes like a snake's. To make things even stranger, the entity was bright green, stark naked, and had stumpy arms and toeless feet.

Photo from Tumblr (and ultimately Henrik Vind).

Horne watched the entity for twenty minutes. In turn, the entity watched Horne. Finally, Horne decided to capture it. He realized that no one would believe him unless he had the little green humanoid as proof. But as he tried to grab the entity it emitted loud, blood-curdling shrieks. Horne fled from the woods in panic, leaving the little green man behind.

What exactly was this entity? Because it was seen ten days before Christmas, and Horne was out chopping down Christmas trees, I like to think it was a renegade Christmas elf. Perhaps it had wandered down from the North Pole and got lost in the New Hampshire woods, as so many hikers still do.

Alfred Horne seemed to think the creature was an extraterrestrial of some kind. After fleeing the woods that December day Horne didn't tell anyone about the creature until six years later, when he wrote several letters to the astronomer and UFO investigator Walter Webb. The story has appeared in several publications and books since then, including Joseph Citro's Passing Strange, which is where I first read it. 

I still think the little green man could have been an elf, though. For one thing, the line between extraterrestrials and fairy-folk is blurry (at least in my opinion). They both tend to be small, they both often have disproportionately large heads, and they both like to abduct people. But more importantly, Derry, New Hampshire has a tradition of fairy folklore. The town was settled by Scotch-Irish immigrants and they seem to have brought their fairy lore to America with them. Written legends about a "Derry Fairy" date back to the early 20th century. Descriptions of the fairy are vague - in some stories she is a beautiful lake-dwelling fairy queen named Tsienneto, but in other stories a wizened, wrinkled wood nymph appears. So perhaps Horne's little green man was actually a little green woman?

I don't think the strange little entity has been seen again since that day in 1956, but maybe if you stay awake on Christmas Eve this year you might find out Santa's little helpers have eyes like snakes and green skin. Make sure to leave out extra milk and cookies just in case. 

Satyrs in New England? Three Encounters with Goatmen

Are there satyrs in New England? It doesn't seem like the type of place these mythical goatmen would like. They're usually associated with warm Mediterranean regions like Greece or Rome. It's cold six months of the year here. Satyrs were notorious for their drunken antics, but our Puritan-inspired culture is notoriously opposed to frolicking. And there aren't any reeds to make pan-pipes out of. Despite all that, there may indeed by some satyrs lurking around here.

1. A Goat Monster in Vermont

The other day while looking for werewolf stories I opened up Joseph Citro's Vermont Monster Guide. This a great book, particularly for kids, and I remembered seeing a couple werewolf stories in it. But what caught my attention was an illustration of a very scary satyr-like monster opposite the title page.

The text reads as follows:

"In the early 1960s, residents of the Mt. View development in Jericho reported a half-man, half-goat monster... It peeked in windows and lurked around themes, scared everyone - and vanished! Some say it fled to nearby Mt. Mansfield, where it still lives among the rocks and trees."

Sadly there's no other information about this creature in the book. It might just be an urban legend, but did remind of a similar story I found on the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization website a few years ago, which goes something like this...

2. Who's That Looking in The Window?

Back in the late 1970s, an eleven year old boy was home alone in Sandwich, Massachusetts watching TV. It was a grey December day, there was snow on the ground, and his parents were out doing some errands.

The TV was located in the family's den and was situated against the wall between two windows. The windows looked out into the backyard and the woods which abutted the property. For quite a while the boy's attention was captured by a television program, but at one point his eyes drifted upwards to one of the windows. He screamed at what he saw.

A humanoid creature with a very hairy face was staring in the window at him. The boy estimated it was about five feet tall. When the creature heard the boy scream it grunted in surprise and ran off into the woods. The boy was terrified, but when he calmed down he called his friends.

He thought at first maybe one of his friends had played a prank on him, but they all denied it. Two of them agreed to come over - the boy was shaken up and didn't want to be alone. Once his friends arrived the three of them looked around the backyard. The creature had long since vanished into the woods, but they did find its footprints in the snow. They were clearly made by something with cloven hooves.

I like that story quite a bit. It's creepy, and also has a twist ending. When I first read it I just expected the boy and his friends to find standard Bigfoot-style footprints. The cloven hoof prints are surprising and weird since no indication is given that the creature had goat-like characteristics. Given New England's long history with the Devil, I initially thought the person telling the story was implying the creature was demonic. But maybe it wasn't. Perhaps it was a satyr. It certainly didn't do anything particularly devilish. Whatever it was, its voyeuristic behavior was similar to the goatman who had appeared hundreds of miles away in Jericho, Vermont. Perhaps satyrs just like to look in people's windows?

3. A Satyr in The Maine Woods


I've also found a third New England satyr story. It appears in T.M. Gray's book New England Graveside Tales. In the 1950s, a local man was driving his pickup truck through the woods outside Cherryfield, Maine. He had filled up his gas tank earlier that day, so he was confused when the engine died and the vehicle came to a stop on a deserted road.

The man got out of the truck and looked in the gas tank. Although there was no sign of a leak he was surprised to see it was totally empty. As he puzzled over this he saw someone approaching him from the woods. At first he was excited, thinking it was someone who could help with the truck, but he quickly realized it was no ordinary Mainer walking towards him.

The person was male, and like a lot of local Maine men wore a red flannel shirt. But he was naked from the waist down. His legs were not human, but were covered in thick hair and were shaped like a goat's. Two horns grew from his forehead. He had the pointed ears of an animal.

The goatman walked into the middle of the road, smiled at the man standing near his stalled truck, and then crossed over the road into the the woods on the other side. In a panic the man got into his truck and locked the door. Desperately he tried to start the engine. It started, and he drove back into town. When he got there, he checked his gas tank again. It was full.

I think that's another great story. The stalled truck is clearly an indication of the goatman's magical nature. He's no genetic mutant, but something paranormal or spiritual. Stalled vehicles are common themes in UFO encounters as well, placing this encounter with a satyr is perhaps just one piece of a larger paranormal puzzle. Stories like this hint at a continuum of strange experiences connecting the distant Classical past of Greece and Rome with our modern world. 

I like the flannel shirt, which clearly identifies this goatman as a Mainer (it's too cold to be shirtless in those woods) but also ties him in with other flannel-wearing paranormal entities. For example, the ghostly red-headed hitchhiker of Route 44 in Massachusetts wears a similar shirt, and some people have recently discussed a creepy paranormal entity called simply the Flannel Man. There's even an account floating around of a Sasquatch seen wearing a flannel shirt. 

There's some similarity between these three stories. In all of them, the satyr or goatman is seen by a surprised witness and then disappears. In the Cherryfield story, the witness has journeyed outside of the town into the woods, which is of course the natural domain of nature spirits like satyrs and of the god Pan, the greatest goatman there is. In the other two stories, the witnesses are inside houses, enclosed spaces which should be safe from wild woodland entities. But are they? The goatmen look into their windows as if to remind the inhabitants that there is more to the world than human culture. 

What do these satyrs want? Perhaps they just want to be acknowledged, to show themselves to mankind. They've been around for thousands of years, and will probably be around for thousands more. 

A Mountain Lion in Brookline Massachusetts?

If you ever want to read strange things you should look through your town's police blotter. Many unusual occurrences happen every day and most people don't even notice - except for the police. For example, here are a few interesting things reported in the August 16, 2018 edition of The Brookline Tab, the local newspaper for Brookline, Massachusetts.

"Tuesday, Aug. 7 - Suspicious person on Harvard Street: At 7:28 p.m. a caller reported that a man wearing mask, aviator glasses, a skull head necklace and an American flag pin was harassing the caller's girlfriend.  

Wednesday, Aug. 8 - Assault and Battery on Beacon Street: At 5:31 a.m. a caller reported that at midnight  his roommate threw a jar of mayonnaise at the back of his head."

Those aren't the worst of it. Next to the list of police incidents is an article titled "Police: Man wearing nightgown and garter gropes woman." It describes how a "stocky man in his 20s wearing a black dress or nightgown with a lace garter belt" grabbed and groped a woman at the intersection of Washington Street and Salisbury Road early on the morning of August 6. Yikes!

Perhaps the summer heat is driving people to commit weird crimes. But I'm not sure what to make of this report:

"Wednesday, Aug. 8... Strange looking animal on Addington Road: At 10:01 p.m. a caller reported a strange looking animal walking back and forth in the area. The caller thought it might be a mountain lion as it was too big for a fox or coyote."

Brookline has a lot of wildlife (rabbits, geese, turkeys, coyotes) but as far as I know there aren't any large carnivorous cats roaming around. And to make things stranger, Addington Road is in the densely settled Aspinwall Hill area. It's only a few blocks away from the Green Line. It is definitely not a rural area. Could there really be a mountain lion in Brookline?

There are a few possible answers:

1. The caller was mistaken.
If you're a natural skeptic you'll find this the most appealing explanation. Ordinary things often look very different in the dark, and the caller probably really saw some other animal (a dog or coyote). Maybe they just saw a raccoon or skunk which looked bigger in the dark, or misperceived the shadows thrown by leaves and streetlights. 

Addington Road in Brookline

Humans have an innate tendency to see living beings in inanimate phenomena. For example, have you ever seen a stick in the grass and thought it was a snake? This psychological trait is called pareidolia and it seems to be an evolutionary survival from a time when humans always had to be on the lookout for predators. It's safer to think something is a mountain lion rather than assume it is just a shadow. You wouldn't want to blunder into a large hungry cougar!

2. It really was a mountain lion. 
Mountain lions were once common in New England but were exterminated by the European settlers. There are still mountain lions in the western parts of the country and in Florida, but none around here. Despite this New Englanders report seeing mountain lions to the present day. For example, in 2014 citizens of Winchester, Massachusetts reported seeing a large feline creature in town, as did people in Rhode Island, while in the 1980s a mountain lion reportedly terrorized parts of Cape Cod. There's even a bulletin board for New England mountain lion sightings.

However, local wildlife authorities claim there are no mountain lions in New England. Well, to clarify, they say there is "no evidence of a reproducing mountain lion population." To quote this official Commonwealth of Massachusetts site:

Mountain Lions became scarce in the East after a bounty system wiped out most predatory animals. Today, Mountain Lions are found in the mountainous regions of the West. There is also a small population in southern Florida. 

Despite this fact, Massachusetts residents continue to report Mountain Lion sightings. It is difficult to know if someone saw a Mountain Lion without any tangible evidence. 

Nowadays, many reports include photographic evidence, thanks to camera phones and trail cameras. There have been only two cases where evidence supports the presence of a Mountain Lion in Massachusetts. All other reports of Mountain Lions in Massachusetts have turned out to be other animals.

In April 199, a hunter found unusual animal scat near the Quabbin Reservoir; lab tests confirmed it came from a mountain lion. In March 2011, a forester photographed animal tracks in the snow near the Quabbin, which were again confirmed to be from a mountain lion. Those are the only two cases of authenticated mountain lion evidence in modern Massachusetts.

Totally excited for monster-hunting - just as long as I never find one!

However, in June 2011, a male mountain lion was struck by an SUV and killed in Milford, Connecticut. DNA testing showed that the animal had traveled all the way from South Dakota to Connecticut, a distance of 1,800 miles. Most mountain lions don't roam that far. Still, I suppose there is a very, very slim chance that a mountain lion made its way from a western state to New England and came into Brookline. 

3. Manitous, witches, phantom animals.
Maybe it was really a mountain lion. Or maybe the caller was totally wrong and mistook something ordinary for a large predator. It was either real or it was not. The answer is either yes or no, right?

I think there is a third possibility, though, somewhere in that weird realm where myth, folklore and psychology collide. People in New England have been seeing unusual (dare I say unnatural?) animals for centuries. For example, the Algonquins believed the forests were haunted by a black fox. The fox was often glimpsed by could never be captured or killed, even by the most skilled hunter. It was a manitou, or spirit-being. 

The Puritans saw equally strange creatures. Puritans didn't believe in manitous, so they associated these strange animals with witches and the Devil. Witches and their familiar spirits were said to assume the shapes of cats, pigs, birds and strange bestial hybrids. For example, on February 27, 1692 Elizabeth Hubbard was walking home from her uncle's house in Salem Village when she realized a large animal was stalking her. She thought it might be a wolf, although wolves were rare even in the 1690s. There was something unnatural about the creature and although it didn't harm her she thought it might be a witch in animal form.

On April 19 of that year, Abigail Hobbs mentioned unusual animals in her testimony before the Court of Oyer and Terminer:

"I will speak the truth," she said. "I have seen sights and been scared. I have been very wicked. I shall be better, if God will help me." 

"What sights did you see?" asked Hathorne.  

"I have seen dogs and many creatures." 

"What dogs do you mean? Ordinary dogs?" 

"I mean the Devil." 

(quoted in Marilynne Roach, The Salem Witch Trials. A Day-By-Day Chronicle of A Community Under Siege, 2002)

Even in our modern, post-Puritan world people continue to see animals. Cryptozoologists and paranormal researchers often call them phantoms since they leave little evidence behind. For example, in 1976 a large black dog terrorized the town of Abington near Massachusetts's infamous Hockomock Swamp. A police officer shot at the beast after it killed two ponies but it ignored the bullets and walked off into the swamp. 

I didn't see a mountain lion, but there were a lot of wild turkeys down this path. I turned back!

Perhaps more relevant to the Brookline sighting, phantom animals of the feline variety have also terrorized towns near the Hockomock Swamp:

In 1972, in Rehoboth, Mass., a "lion hunt" was organized by local police. Residents of the area had been terrorized by what they said was a large cat or mountain lion. Cattle and sheep n the area had been mysteriously killed and carcasses were discovered raked with claw marks. Police took casts of the animal's tracks and used dog and helicopter in an attempt to track it down. Nothing was caught. But similar incidents involving phantom cats have occurred in other places throughout the Bridgewater Triangle and across the nation. None of these mysterious felines has yet been captured. (Loren Coleman, Mysterious America, 2007)

Spirits, witches, phantom cats - I don't know what these strange animals are, but New Englanders have seen them for a long, long time. I think they'll continue to see them in the future. Perhaps the caller who reported seeing the mountain lion on Addington Street was just part of this long tradition. Weird things happen in New England all the time, even close to the MBTA.

Animal graffito in Brookline

The Devil Monkey of Danville, New Hampshire

The other day I was poking around the Web and found references to something called the Danville Devil Monkey. I love that name, don't you? Devil Monkey. Devil Monkey. It makes me want to scream: DEVIL MONKEY!!!

Almost as good as its name is the fact that the Devil Monkey appeared in Danville, New Hampshire. Danville is a classic small New England town. There are some old farmhouses, a couple of churches, and it runs by town meeting. The town's website is promoting a fund-raising spaghetti dinner for the local Boy Scouts. Danville is like someplace from a Thornton Wilder play. So obviously it's where the Devil Monkey would appear.

DEVIL MONKEY!!

The Danville monkey was first seen on August 21 by fire chief David Kimball when the creature leapt into the road in front of his truck. It jumped back into the woods, but Kimball was stunned by what he saw. What was a large monkey doing in southern New Hampshire?

“It jumped out of the trees,” Kimball said. “As soon as he hit the ground, he took a giant leap and went back where he came from. The first thought I had was: That’s nothing that’s native to here.” (Seacoast Online, September 14, 2001, "Residents Can't Stop Monkeying Around") 

Kimball consulted with the town librarian to determine what type of simian he saw. Kimball's best guess was that he saw a Humboldt's wooly monkey. Wooly monkeys are indigenous to the Amazon, not New England, so he was naturally puzzled by what he saw.

Several other Danville residents saw the animal in August and September that year. Scott Velleca saw the animal briefly in his backyard, while his wife Jen heard strange screeching noises coming from the woods. "It was a noise that didn't belong in my woods," she said. (Seacoast Online, September 14, 2001, "Residents Can't Stop Monkeying Around").

A local boy told his mother that peanut butter cookies he left in his treehouse disappeared. She at first thought her son was talking about an imaginary playmate, but after she learned about the monkey sightings she realized his story was probably true. Had the monkey taken the cookies?

A wooly monkey

Locals assumed the monkey was an escaped pet. It is illegal to own a Humboldt's wooly monkey as a pet and the owners (if they existed) never stepped forward. The town mobilized to capture the animal before the weather turned monkey-killingly cold. Denise Laratonda, Danville's animal control officer, partnered with the Humane Society to lure the monkey with female monkey urine. It did not work. Other Danville residents strung up bananas and oranges to lure the monkey into the open. Hunters with tranquilizer darts stood by the ready. A local DJ even dressed up a like a gorilla to entice the monkey.

Nothing worked. The Danville monkey remained elusive, something that was briefly seen, frequently heard, and impossible to catch. The story gained national media attention and Laratonda was scheduled to appear on NBC's Today Show to discuss the renegade simian. The September 11 terrorist attacks occurred before her appearance and the media turned its attention to more pressing matters.

The monkey continued to haunt Danville through September but then disappeared. Did it die? Was it recaptured by its mysterious owners? No one knew.

The creature reappeared eleven years later, when Haverhill, Massachusetts resident Michelle Andino saw a strange animal in her parents' Danville backyard. Andino was out cooking steaks on the grill when she heard the family's dogs barking. She assumed they had seen a deer, and was shocked instead when see saw something climbing a tree:

But what caught her eye was an animal at least two feet long with a 'white bottom' and dark brown over the rest of its body. She doesn't think it had a tail.

'It was really hugging the tree. It was climbing up like a human being,' she said. (Union Leader, September 26, 2012, "In Danville: Hey Hey It's A Monkey?") 

Andino's family had not lived in Danville in 2001, and she was surprised to learn that another monkey had been seen several years earlier. An animal control officer didn't find any signs of the creature.

As far as I know that was the last sighting of Danville's Devil Monkey. Maybe it will show up again in another few years to bewilder the town's citizens.

Did you notice there really isn't anything devilish about the Danville monkey? Maybe it was a little impish to steal a small boy's cookies but that certainly wasn't Satanic. The people who saw it didn't seem particularly frightened. Puzzled, amused, and intrigued but not necessarily scared. No one called it the Devil Monkey at the time, but it seems to have gained that nickname on the Internet in recent years.

There is a cryptid called the Devil Monkey that has been seen in other parts of the country. Devil Monkeys are reputed to be vicious and attack livestock, much like a chupacabra might. This video from Animal Planet gives a spooky overview of the Devil Monkey:


Personally, I don't think the Danville monkey was one of these terrifying monsters, but I could be wrong. Still, there is a tendency in American culture for anomalous things to get classified as scary and evil but sometimes strange things are just strange. Not every unusual animal is a deadly monster.

I also think it's interesting that so many people assumed in 2001 that the monkey had escaped from unknown owners. This is a common trope in stories about cryptids. Giant cats, apelike wild men, and other creatures are explained away as escaped circus animals or exotic pets. It sounds like a reasonable explanation, but the animals' owners almost never show up. If you ran a zoo or circus wouldn't you want to recapture one of your valuable missing animals?

What was the Danville monkey if it wasn't a ravenous Devil Monkey or an escaped pet? Sadly I don't have a better explanation. But I do know that if you're missing some peanut butter cookies you might want to look high up in the trees for an elusive simian with a sweet tooth.

The Monster of Lake Champlain

I recently was up in Burlington, Vermont, which is located on the shores of Lake Champlain. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Lake Champlain is big! Really big! It's over 100 miles long and 14 miles wide. Strange things might lurk in a lake that big.

Well, according to local legends, something strange does indeed lurk in the lake. It's a monster named Champ, and it supposedly has been seen more than one-hundred times.

A lot of books and websites claim the creature was first seen by French explorer Samuel de Champlain way back in 1609, who described as "a 20- foot serpent, with a horse-shaped head and body as thick as a keg." This claim was even repeated by Discover magazine in 1998. Unfortunately, it just isn't true. De Champlain never wrote about a giant serpent in his journal. The story that he had seen Champ first appeared in a 1970 issue of Vermont Life and spread from there.

Lake Champlain in November. It looks like a good home for a monster...

The real first sighting of Champ was reported on Saturday, July 24, 1819. A letter to The Plattsburgh Republican claimed that one Captain Crum had seen a monster while he was on the lake:

Captain Crum took a particular survey of this singular animal, which he described to be 187 feet long, its flat head with three teeth, two in the center and one in the upper jaw, in shape similar to the sea-horse - color black with a star in the forehead and a belt of red around the neck - its body about the size of a hogshead with hunches on the back as large as a common potash barrel - the eyes large and the color of a pealed (sic) onion... (quoted in Robert Bartholomew's The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster)

This account appeared shortly after a wave of sea serpent sightings near Cape Anne in Massachusetts. The letter was titled "Cape Ann Sea Serpent on Lake Champlain," and was signed "Horse Mackerel," so perhaps it was meant to be taken as a joke.

Later sightings were not quite so humorous. In 1826 two men fishing reported that a thirty foot serpent slithered out of a cave. They said it was covered in black and red spots and smelled terrible. In the summer of 1873 a group of men working on the lake's shore claimed they saw a large serpentine monster. According to the July 9, 1873 issue of The Whitehall Times,

From his his nostrils he would occasionally spurt streams of water above his head to an altitude of about 20 feet. The appearance of his head was round and flat, with a hood spreading out from the lower part of it... His eyes were small and piercing, his mouth broad and provided with two rows of teeth, which he displayed to his beholders. (quoted in Robert Bartholomew's The Untold Story of Champ: A Social History of America's Loch Ness Monster.)

Other people also reported seeing the monster that summer, and it was blamed for a rash of missing farm animals.

Help the homeless by feeding Champ spare change in Burlington.

Champ has made many other appearances over the years. For example, in 1915 it disrupted a canoe race:

"The Lake Champlain sea serpent has again appeared to the astounded inhabitants of this place. He was seen at the encampment of the American Canoe Association when, coming to the surface in the neighborhood of a flotilla of cruising canoes, he scattered the occupants in panic." (The Burlington News, April 1915)

I also like this testimony from someone who saw Champ in 1981:

"I said, 'Holy Jesus, look at that thing.' I've seen porpoises and whales when I was in the Navy, but this wasn't like that. It was 40 or 50 feet long, the whole thing." Walter Wojewodzic of Port Henry, N.Y, quoted in The Burlington Free Press, Feb. 10, 1981.

Is there any conclusive evidence that Champ exists? No, not really. If there was you'd read about Champ in biology class and not on this folklore blog. On June 30, 1981 the New York Times published the following photo of Champ taken by Vermont resident Sandra Mansi. Many people take this as the best evidence yet for Champ's existence:

It's a great photo, but no one has ever been able to affirm its veracity. Mansi unfortunately threw away the negative, which prevented experts from looking at the image for more details. She also said she couldn't remember exactly where she took the photo. Several people have taken videos of Champ as well, but they are equally inconclusive.

Is Champ a giant prehistoric plesiosaur that has somehow survived for millennia in Lake Champlain? That seems unlikely. Is Champ just a hoax? I think that's unlikely too. Some Champ sightings may be pranks, but I think a lot of people sincerely see strange things on the lake.

Good benches for monster viewing.

Bodies of water are mysterious and full of latent power. Folklore and legends tell us that water hides secrets, like lost Atlantis, sunken treasure, and mysterious monsters. Maybe the initial Captain Crum story, which was probably a hoax, acted like a magic spell, summoning something people always suspected lurked in the water but had never been named. Champ could be a manifestation of Lake Champlain, given form through local folklore and showing itself to a select few. I didn't see Champ while I was in Burlington, but maybe one day you'll be lucky and see him yourself.

*****

Additional sources: John Bartholomew's excellent articles in The Skeptical Inquirer (here and here), Wikipedia, and this newspaper article: "Just maybe, scientists say, a monster's in Champlain," The Boston Globe, June 28, 1981, p. 1.

Burlington, Vermont: Giant Phantom Cats and the World's Tallest Filing Cabinet

There's something weird and magical about small New England cities in November. A sense of stillness pervades the streets. Old gray houses press up against the sidewalks, parking lots sit half-empty, and bare branches brush against the power lines. All the citizens are hidden away inside but out on the street there's a feeling of strange possibilities.

Tony and I recently visited Burlington, Vermont. You might not think of Burlington as quiet. It has a thriving downtown, with dozens of restaurants and bars and a pedestrian-friendly shopping district. Students from the University of Vermont buzz around. Elementary school students visit the aquarium that overlooks Lake Champlain.

But if you venture outside of the lively downtown area things get much quieter. That eerie sense of possibility emerges. Who knows what you might encounter when you walk around the corner? What strange entity or object will you stumble on? For example, you might encounter the world's tallest filing cabinet.

The world's tallest filing cabinet stands at 208 Flynn Street in what looks like an abandoned lot. There's a supermarket across the street but the filing cabinet stands alone, surrounded only by dead weeds and a shopping cart full of old dishes. It emblematizes the magic you can find in small New England cities. It's weird, impressive and puzzling. It may not even really be the world's tallest filing cabinet, but it's definitely big.

The filing cabinet was created by local artist Bren Alvarez in 2002. Alvarez was inspired by the ongoing delays in building the Southern Connector, a road that would connect busy highway I-89 with downtown Burlington. The filing cabinet's official name is "File Under File Under So. Co., Waiting For...". The Southern Connector still hasn't been built.

Alvarez intended this to be commentary on bureaucratic delays, but I think it has a completely different effect. The sculpture is slowly eroding from rust, and vandals have graffitied as high as they can easily reach. Set as it is in an overgrown field, the sculpture is like an artifact from some post-apocalyptic future revealed when the waters of a swollen Lake Champlain finally recede from the city centuries from now. It is totally worth visiting if you are in the area, and if you collect china maybe you can find something valuable in the shopping cart.

The world's tallest filing cabinet is just one of the strange things you might encounter. In 1988, a Burlington woman named Susan Lily encountered something even stranger. Lily was driving home from work late one summer night when she decided to get a bite to eat at a local Wendy's restaurant. As she drove around the back of the restaurant to the drive-through she noticed two cats lurking around the dumpster. But these were not ordinary cats. They were big (real big!) and oddly shaped:

Susan says, "They were the size of a forty- or fifty-pound dog, but they were real slim and their legs were disproportionately long." 

Susan has always lived around animals and can distinguish among different varieties of cats. These were something unknown. She says, "The largest domestic cat is the Norwegian Forest cat. But these were short-haired. They were much taller than Maine Coons. I have no idea what I saw."

Those quotes are from Joseph Citro's book The Vermont Monster Guide (2009), which I bought in Burlington. Citro goes on to note that after Susan picket up her burger at the drive-through window she looked back at the dumpster. The cats had disappeared, and although she visited that same Wendy's many more times she never saw them again.

A metal monolith made of filing cabinets looms in an empty lot. Giant cats prowl around a dumpster behind a fast food restaurant. Even in the city weird and magical things are lurking!