The Beast of Barrington: the Bay State's First Bigfoot?

Recently, I've seen a few posts claiming that something called the "Beast of Barrington" was the first Bigfoot ever seen in Massachusetts. This idea has even started to find its way into a few books, like John O'Connor's The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster (2024). 

According to some online sources, the Beast was captured in the western Massachusetts town of Great Barrington in 1765, placed into a cage, and shown to an audience in Cambridge. Maybe the people who captured the creature wanted the professors at Harvard to see it? It's not clear.

What did the Beast look like? Well, according (again) to online sources, it was a bearlike humanoid with a head like a gorilla. That sounds pretty scary to me, and very memorable. You'd think a creature that like would be much better known! The description is also a little strange, because Europeans and Americans didn't really use the word gorilla until the 1840s... 

A 15th century engraving by Martin Shongauer

You can see why I found the story interesting, and also why I wanted to find the original source. My friend David Goudsward helped me find it: the July 4, 1765 edition of The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter. 

The Beast in described in an article titled “A Description of an Uncommon Animal Found at or near Great-Barrington.” The author writes that the Beast was being displayed in a cage in Cambridge, where “all whose curiosity lead them, may have a sight of this uncommon creature.” It was supposedly captured by armed men in Great Barrington, where it had allegedly broken into houses in search of food. Strangely for an animal, the creature also had stolen silver, linens, and other “white or glittering” objects, which it seized with its “obscene paws.” I like the phrase "obscene paws." It's very creepy!

Stealing silverware and linens sounds like something a person would do, not an animal, and the article goes on to describe what sounds like a person wearing a costume. “This animal has a power of metamorphosing itself into various forms, such as blackness of face, much resembling that of an artificial mask, also upon a near view, it has been observed to be vested with a kind of robe, having the appearance of the hide of some huge bear. This vestment seemed to be the production of art, rather than nature.” 

I'm going to pull out some key words: "artificial mask," "robe," and "production of art, rather than nature." The article's author is using sarcasm and humor, but he's clearly describing someone wearing a costume. The Beast of Barrington wasn't a Bigfoot or a mysterious animal, it was just someone dressed as a monster or wild man, and exhibited to make money from spectators. 

 Painting of a wild man by Albrecht Durer

To make the point even clearer, the same article in The Massachusetts Gazette describes another fake wild man who appeared in Boston around the same time. This one came from Georgia and seemed to have had a criminal record, because after only “two public exhibitions, he was discovered by several that had seen the effects of his voracious appetite in other parts… Whereupon yesterday morning early he thought proper to remove to some place where he was less known, and set out for Providence, with his companion, a Black lady, who attended him from Georgia.” 

Again, although the author is being sarcastic, he's clearly writing about a human who's pretending to be a monster. It's someone performing for an audience - preferably an unwitting one. 

Although The Beast of Barrington isn't the Bay State's first Bigfoot sighting, it is an early account of a fake wild man, which is just as interesting, because there's a long history of fake wild men in Massachusetts. For example, on April 1, 1839, The Boston Times published an article claiming that a wild man captured in Mississippi was going to be exhibited in Boston. The hairy wild man supposedly was over eight-feet-tall with a powerfully-built frame, clawed doglike legs, and hair like a horse's mane.  

Thousands of people waited in line on April 1 to see this terrifying creature, but when they entered the room where he was held they saw only a mannequin with a sign reading "April Fool." Most audience members took the hoax in stride, but a small group of angry young men stormed the newspaper's offices and yelled at the editor. 

In the summer of 1861, concerned citizens reported a wild man roaming through the woods between North Adams, Massachusetts and Stamford, Vermont. He was heard shrieking at night, and people who saw him said he was terrifingly ugly. In fact, an armed posse of Vermont men tried to capture him, but the wild man “so frightened his pursuers by his hideous appearance that they could not shoot straight and he escaped harm” (Bangor, Maine, Daily Whig and Courier, August 19, 1861, quoted in Arment, The Historical Bigfoot). 

When the creature was finally captured, hundreds of curious people lined up to see the monster that had filled them with terror. They saw a strange, almost ape-like being with vacant, glassy eyes and an extremely long beard. Was it a man, or an animal?

In reality, it was just a Williams College student “who assumed the gorilla guise in a frolic which might have cost him his life” at the end of a hunting rifle. The whole thing had been a prank.

The Wild Men of Borneo (Syracuse University Library)

Wild men were also big attractions in sideshows and circuses. The famous showman P.T. Barnum showcased a variety of fake wild men in his circuses and museums, including the What-is-it (played by a series of performers wearing furry costumes) and the Wild Men of Borneo, who were two very short but very strong brothers from the Midwest. The Wild Men of Borneo lived in Somerville, Massachusetts for a while, and spent the final years of their lives in Waltham, with one passing away in 1905 and the other in 1912. 

Fake wild men continued to appear in Massachusetts during the 20th and 21st centuries, although now they're more likely to be called fake Bigfoots. For example, in 1976, an Agawam teenager created a sensation when he put on giant plywood feet and created mysterious tracks in the snow. And during the Snowmageddon winter of 2015, a Somerville man donned a Yeti costume and gained fame as the Boston Yeti. The Boston Yeti returned to the spotlight again this year in January, lured by the heavy snow. 

Hoaxes aren't as exciting as a real wild man or Bigfoot, but they're still interesting. They illustrate what people think - or hope - is lurking out there in the dark woods. Clearly, people think a large, hairy humanoid might be hiding somewhere in Massachusetts. The Beast of Barrington wasn't real, and neither was the Boston Yeti, but maybe someday a real Bigfoot will be captured and fulfill our wild-man dreams.  

Wild Men Invaded Connecticut in 1888

Things always feel a little weird when the days grow short. The circle of civilization contracts and the wilderness encroaches with the growing darkness. Who knows what might be lurking out there in the gloom? Wild animals, criminals, ghosts... or maybe even wild men. We don't hear too much about wild men these days, but they were a popular topic in the 19th century press.

For example, the January 4, 1888 issue of The Boston Daily Globe, ran this shocking headline:

Lonely Regions Infested by Wild Men Who Terrorize All.

Connecticut Now Overrun with These Weird Creatures, Who Scare Children, Fight Men and Scream All Night. 

Cow Hill Forests and the Man with the Bearskin

Mr. Dunham's Midnight Fight by the Light of A Lantern

That's a really long headline, but I would say an effective one, since it certainly drew me in. Tell me more, Boston Daily Globe!

The article describes a variety of "wild men" who were causing trouble in Connecticut. For example, in Willimantic, a "well-dressed, wild-man who was about 40 years old" ran down the street screaming "Chloroform!" After several citizens tackled him he said his name was John Mullin, that he had deserted from the Italian Navy, and that government officials were pursuing him with the intent of chloroforming him. He ultimately escaped his captors, screaming "Chloroform!" as he ran off.

Someone dressed as Bigfoot during a 2015 snowstorm in Boston. Photo from the New York Times. 

Much creepier was the wild man who terrorized women in Spofford, Connecticut. This particular wild man, who was was "very tall, garbed in funereal black," would silently sneak up on women, grope them, and then disappear into the darkness. This wild man stopped his molestations after one of his victims, a Mrs. William Brown, emitted an ear-piercing shriek and collapsed onto the ground in terror.

One of the wild men was not a man at all, but was actually a young girl who leapt out of the bushes at some hunters in a swamp near Madison. She laughed hysterically at them and the hunters fled in fear.

The fourth wild man the Globe mentions seems like the wildest, and by wildest I mean least connected to civilization.

At Cow hill, near Mystic, there is a wild man of the woods. He wears a big black bearskin, and he looks hideous. His other clothes are not worth much. He says not a word, but he glares with a wild, determined stare. He advances on a man who approaches his lair in the forest of Cow hill, glares straight in the man's eyes once and then runs...

A man named George Dunham encountered this wild man while chopping wood and struck him on the head three times with his axe handle. The wild man ran off into the woods.

Meanwhile, outside of Norwich, a brawny man with a red face would appear in the woods at night. Carrying a lantern, he would shout "Murder!" and then dig a hole in the ground with a shovel. When confronted by a group of locals he disappeared into the dark forest.

A similar wild man haunted Monet's Valley on Rhode Island's Block Island that winter. He too would dig a hole late at night accompanied by a lantern, and when people went to investigate he would vanish with his light, leaving only a hole behind. Block Islanders were of mixed opinion about their wild man, with some thinking he was just a treasure hunter and others that he was a ghost from either the shipwrecked Palatine or Captain Kidd's pirate crew.

Wow! There's a lot to digest in that article, starting with the concept of the wild man. Although wild men appear frequently in 19th century American newspapers, the wild man is a cultural archetype who has been with us since the beginning of Western civilization. In the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic a hairy wild man named Enkidu dwells outside the city walls and frees prey from hunters' traps. Ancient Greeks and Romans thought the woods were filled with half-human satyrs and fauns, while art from Medieval Europe depicts hairy, club-carrying men lurking in the forests. When you leave the boundaries of civilization you enter the wild man's domain.

It's interesting to see how broadly this Globe article applies the term wild man. The bearskin clad man and the young girl seem the most archetypal, the first wearing an animal skin and the second scaring hunters from their prey. They also both seem to live outside of any town in the woods and swamps. But some of the wild men discussed just behave outside cultural norms and don't actually live in the wilderness. The "chloroform!" man (who sounds mentally ill) and the sexual predator who wore black fit in that category. We would use other terms to describe them today, but in 1888 they fit in the catch-all category of wild man. 

I'm not sure what to make of the two nocturnal hole-diggers, and it sounds like people in 1888 weren't either. Heck, one of them might have been a pirate's ghost, but I suppose they were also living outside cultural norms. The Norwich digger was described as "brawny," and this is a description often applied to other wild men of the time. An 1879 wild man spotted in Truro, Massachusetts was powerfully built and shirtless, while Connecticut's Winsted wild man was large, muscular and capable of breaking iron chains. I guess all the fresh air is good for your health.

An image from the 1974 TV show Korg: 70,000 BC.

Our own modern version of the wild man is Bigfoot. He's large, he's hairy, he lives in the woods, and like the 1888 Connecticut wild men is very elusive. Some wild men described in 19th century newspapers are described as ape-like and actually sound similar to Bigfoot. For example, the Winsted wild man was described by some witnesses as looking like a gorilla, and many cryptozoologists consider this an early Bigfoot sighting.

Is the wild man human, or is he a monster? Were early reports really Bigfoot sightings, or were they some kind of hoax? It's hard to say, and personally I don't think the wild man can be pinned down so easily. It just goes against his wild nature. He'll continue to elude capture and haunt the spaces outside the boundaries of civilization. Just be careful when you go out walking in the woods at night!

Uncategorizable Weirdness: Aliens, Mummies, Fairies, and Dark Swamps

When I write this blog I always enjoy categorizing the stories I tell. That one's a Bigfoot encounter, that one's a ghost story, that one's a witch story. Humans like to categorize our experiences, and those of us who write about legends and the paranormal are no different. We want to put things into neat little buckets.

However, reality doesn't always fit into neat little categories. We try to impose order, but strange phenomena are much less orderly than we want. They can be downright slippery. Here are a couple stories that illustrate this.

STORY ONE: LITTLE MUMMIES IN THE WOODS

The year was 1974. It was the night of August 20. Around 9:30 pm a man was driving near Derry, New Hampshire on Route 42. We'll call him Joe R., since his real last name isn't known.

As Joe R. was driving down the wooded road he saw a large object ("as big as a house," he later swore) flying across sky ahead of him. It flew from east to west. It was bright like the sun, white, and somehow blurry. It went down behind the trees between Exit 4 and Exit 5. Several similar smaller objects flew down after it.

Curious about what he had just seen, Joe R. pulled over and walked into the woods. He didn't find the shiny object, but he saw something even stranger: two small "mummy-like" humanoids walking in the woods. They were about 40 yards away from him. When he saw them Joe R. became scared and ran back to his car.

Joe later told his story to two UFO investigators, and their account was later found by Albert Rosales, the great collector of humanoid encounters. I found the story on a UFO site, and it is truly a UFO sighting in the literal sense of the term "unidentified." What was the bright shiny object? When I read the story my first assumption was that it was some kind of extraterrestrial craft, but that isn't really specified. Joe never saw a spaceship for flying saucer, but simply a glowing white light that flew across the sky and disappeared into the woods. There is no indication of where it came from.

And what of the two little mummy creatures? I suppose if the light were spaceship they might be aliens that came out of it, but again it's not clear if that's what happened. Joe R. saw a light go down behind some trees, then he saw two little creatures walking in the woods. The two phenomena seem connected but it's not clear how.

I am particularly hesitant to label this as an alien encounter because of the location. Derry has a long history of strange humanoid creatures. For example, folklore from the 19th and early 20th century claimed the area was the home of a fairy named Tsienneto. Derry was settled by Scotch Irish immigrants and they clearly brought some of their fairy lore with them. Tsienneto was supposed to be a beautiful fairy queen, but in 1956 a man named Alfred Horne saw a small green humanoid while cutting Christmas trees in the woods. The creature had floppy ears like a dog, eyes with a reptilian nictitating membrane, and stumpy toeless legs. Horne tried to capture the creature but fled when it let out an earth-piercing shriek.

The story of Joe R.'s encounter fits into Derry's weird history of weird humanoids. I have no idea what these creatures are (if the stories are true). Are they fairies? Are they aliens? Are they renegade Christmas elves? Are they all different beings that just happened to find their way to Derry? They don't seem to fit into any clear category.

STORY TWO: A DRIVE THROUGH A DARK SWAMP

Here's another case of a strange, unidentifiable humanoid sighting, this time from 1990. Two residents of Bridgewater, Massachusetts were driving down Route 138 en route to a dog track in Raynham. As they drove down the road they saw a strange man standing next to the guardrail:

His clothes were old-looking, dirty and dusty, his skin was pale gray and the detail that stood out most was his hair, very dry looking, thin and brittle, sticking off from the sides of his head in a strange manner. 

The two Bridgewater residents went past him to the track, but when they reached their destination they realized it was not open that night. They turned around and drove back the way they came. They  were surprised to see the man was no longer by the guardrail. They had only been gone a few minutes, and Route 138 at that area goes through a very dense swamp. There was no place for the strange man to go, unless he went into the dark, night-time swamp.

I found that story on the same UFO site where I found Joe R.'s story, so someone thought there was something weird about the man near the swamp, but what? He could have just been a homeless person living in the swamp. But once again the location is important.

Route 138 goes right through the infamous Hockocmock Swamp, which is a hotspot for paranormal encounters and is itself smack in the middle of the even more infamous Bridgewater Triangle. Given the location, this story's inclusion on a UFO site makes a little more sense. UFOs are often seen in the Bridgewater Triangle, although there wasn't one in connection with this story. The human mind wants to make connections. There must be something strange about a strange man in strange location. Maybe he was a ghost? A swamp spirit of some kind? A fairy there to lure people away from the road and into the darkness?

I don't think we'll ever know the answers to these questions. We have an urge to give order to our world, but sometimes the world has other, weirder plans.

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.

Howling In The Woods: A Terrifying Tarzan In Wellfleet

Imagine yourself alone in the woods on a late autumn evening. The leaves are down and bare tree branches rattle in a chill wind blowing off the nearby ocean. It's quiet. All you can hear is the sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot. Maybe the smell of snow is in the air.

Suddenly, in the deepening gloom, you hear a howl. You can't tell where it's coming from but it sounds close. You pause. Maybe it was just a dog?

Then you hear it again. It sounds closer this time. It's definitely not a dog. Is it a human? Maybe, or maybe it's something you don't want to face alone in the dark woods.

The thing howls again, even closer, and fear overpowers curiosity. You run for home like the Devil himself is behind you. For all you know, maybe he is.

In December of 1939, the Cape Cod town of Wellfleet was plagued by someone (or something) that screamed and howled in the night. It was a season for strange apparitions on the Outer Cape, for the this was the same time that Provincetown's more famous Black Flash was running amok a few miles down Route 6. Unlike the Black Flash, though, no one ever saw the source of the strange howls that were heard in Wellfleet. He, she, or it remained unseen.

The noises were focused in Wellfleet's Paine Hollow neighborhood, and were heard only at night. Some locals jokingly said they were being made by Tarzan, but others took the noises seriously enough to form an armed mob:

‘Tarzan’, in case you don’t know, is the name of our local phantom, a sequel to Provincetown’s ‘Black Flash’, maybe. Anyhow, the people were out the other night, armed with clubs and hammers and shot guns to track down the source of the strange noises that had tormented them for days. They combed Paine Hollow with minute precision, but ‘Tarzan’ remained elusive. (The Provincetown Advocate, "Tarzan Is Making Wellfleet Uneasy", December 14, 1939)

I suppose the noises were most likely made by a hoaxer, but The Advocate also suggests it was a local bull unhappy that his owner had locked him up during deer hunting season. Whatever it was, it's never a laughing matter when armed people go stomping through the woods looking to find a monster. Anxiety was running high that year on the Outer Cape. A sea serpent had been found in January in Provincetown, fishermen were afraid Nazi U-boats were lurking under the waves, and the Black Flash had terrorized Provincetown a few weeks earlier. People were stressed and ready to shoot something.

Happily, no one was shot and I couldn't find any information about the Wellfleet Tarzan beyond that one article. Maybe the hoaxer quit when he learned about the armed mob, maybe the cow stopped complaining, or maybe Tarzan swung back to the jungle. Either way, Tarzan made an impression on the people of Wellfleet:

The residents scoff at the thought of a phantom ‘Tarzan’ swinging through the tree tops South Wellfleet, yodeling like a sick sea-clam to scare little boys. But the good neighbors look beneath their beds before retiring these nights - I betcha! (The Provincetown Advocate, "Tarzan Is Making Wellfleet Uneasy", December 14, 1939) 

Something Monstrous Is Out There: The Truro Wild Man of 1879

I am fascinated by old stories about wild men in New England. What is a wild man? Well, I'm sure you're familiar with Sasquatch, who is said to be large, hairy and humanoid. Before the concept of Sasquatch caught on in the 20th century, though, folks in these parts reported seeing wild men. And yes, I just used the phrase "folks in these parts." It makes me feel like I should be smoking a corn cob pipe, but it's a good gender neutral descriptor and I'm letting it stay.

Anyway, back to the wild men. Unlike Sasquatch, who is supposedly a distinct species of animal, wild men are a little more ambiguous. The term was used to describe all sorts of strange beings: apelike monsters, humanoids covered in hair, and even people with mental illness who lived in the woods. A wild man was basically any human (or human-shaped) being who dwelt outside the boundaries of society. Invariably they elicited a terrified reaction from anyone who saw them.

Cornhill Beach in Truro

For example, citizens of Truro, Massachusetts were terrified when a wild man appeared in that Cape Cod town in May of 1879. I spend time in Turo every summer, and even though it's now a beautiful vacation town there are still a lot of big empty spaces. You can walk in the woods for hours and not see anyone, and even the beaches are devoid of other people at certain times of day. I suppose it's not surprising that a wild man would appear there.

The Truro wild man was first seen crawling in and out of the windows of an abandoned house by a group of school children. They of course reacted with terror and ran home to tell their parents they had seen a monster. The children described the wild man as gigantic and shirtless.

At first the adults in town didn't take the story seriously, but the children continued to see the wild man for several days in the vicinity of the abandoned house. Fear spread through the neighborhood and a search party was finally formed to find the wild man. They searched the abandoned house and the area around it but did not find the monster. It seemed that he had escaped.

The identity of the wild man was revealed a few days later. He was not a monster after all, but was actually a "well-disposed" man of Portuguese descent who was interested in buying the abandoned house. Apparently he had been climbing through the window so he could see what the interior looked like before he purchased the property. I don't know why he was shirtless.

That information comes from the May 29, 1879 issue of The Provincetown Advocate. Although in the end there was no actual wild man, I find it fascinating that both children and adults thought there could be a monstrous hairy humanoid wandering through town. Even if a real wild man was not in Truro there were wild men lurking in the shared Truro subconscious.

It's also interesting that the wild man in question was really someone Portuguese. People of Portuguese descent now compose a big part of the population in southeastern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, but there was a time when mostly people of English ancestry lived in those areas. The kids in Truro were basically freaked out by someone from a different ethnic group. It's good that the story had a happy ending and that the "wild man" was not shot by a search party.

Wild Men In The Woods: Strange Creatures Seen In Haverhill, Massachusetts

I was born and grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Like most classic New England mill towns, it was big enough to qualify as a city but small enough so I felt like I knew everything about it. I was wrong. Something I didn't know when I lived there: it was also home to a couple of hairy wild men. Hideous subhuman monsters lurked in the woods surrounding the city.

Maybe I suspected this even as a child. When I was quite small I saw Lon Chaney Jr. in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Chaney of course played the Wolfman in this low-budget 1948 comedy. The movie also featured Frankenstein's monster (Glenn Strange) and Dracula (the great Bela Lugosi himself), but somehow only Chaney's lycanthropic anti-hero managed to worm its way into my brain.

Lon Chaney Jr. in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein

After seeing Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein I had a nightmare where I looked into a mirror and saw myself as a werewolf. I woke up screaming. Later I had a dream that I was in my backyard when two hairy hands grabbed me from behind. Again, I woke up screaming.

Around the same time I saw a movie called Dinosaurus (1960). The plot involves construction workers accidentally awakening hibernating dinosaurs and a Neanderthal caveman. The dinosaurs didn't scare me, but the caveman did. A scene where the Neanderthal looked into a house's windows haunted my dreams, and I had a nightmare where a caveman was peering into my family's living room through the windows.

Perhaps these were just the dreams of a little kid who was easily terrified by bad movies, but maybe I knew deep down that something weird, hairy and humanoid was lurking around Haverhill. Recently my childhood suspicions have been confirmed: two wild men have been seen there in the past.

A still from Dinosaurus

In the summer of 1826, a Haverhill man named Andrew Frink came down with a heavy fever. His family treated it the best they could, but he grew worse and worse by the day. Eventually Frink became completely delirious. While his family was not looking he climbed out of bed and ran from the house.

Several days later, people reported seeing a "wild man" at the edge of town. Hoping that it was really Andrew Frink, a search party scoured the woods. Much to their surprise, the wild man was not Frink, but was "literally a wild man from the woods."

The story comes from George W. Chase's The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts (1861), and Chase goes on to write:

It was supposed from his appearance he was some unfortunate, who, having perhaps met with some disappointment in life, had, in a fit of insanity fled from society.

Chase doesn't say what happened to the wild man. Perhaps they just let him go back into the woods. Poor Andrew Frink was found several weeks later. His body was found in a stream where he had apparently drowned while delirious.

A wild man reappeared in Haverhill in July of 1909. Here is an article from the July 14, 1909 issue of The Boston Post:

WILD MAN HUNT ON IN HAVERHILL

Haverhill, July 12 - The police of this city have been searching the woods near Gile Street and towards Newton, N.H. for a wildman who has been terrorizing the residents in that vicinity. He appears at dusk, very lightly clad. 

That's it. I couldn't find any more information. Did they catch the wild man, or did he escape to have lightly-clad adventures elsewhere?

Wild man stories were common in nineteenth century and early twentieth century newspapers. Sometimes the wild men were described as apelike beings similar to Bigfoot, as was the case with the Winsted wild man from Connecticut. At other times the wild men seemed more human, as if they were primitive forms of mankind that had yet to emerge from the wilderness. Or perhaps they were civilized humans that were devolving to a more animalistic state.

Wild men have been part of Western civilization for thousands of years. Somewhere out there, where the fields turn to forests and the roads end, strange animalistic men have always lurked. In the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh, the gods send a wild man named Enkidu to harass King Gilgamesh. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed the forests were full of satyrs, wild half-human creatures, and they are even mentioned in the Bible.

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. (Isaiah 13:21)

John the Baptist, who roamed the wilderness wearing animal skins, also has some characteristics of the wild man archetype, although he's portrayed more positively than the satyrs that Isaiah fulminated against. In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, wild men were believed to haunt the forests, and nobles often covered themselves with leaves and hair to impersonate them during masquerades. Today, Americans see Bigfoot or Sasquatch hiding among the trees.

If wild men can be found in so many places, why not also in Haverhill, Massachusetts? Now that I'm an adult I'm not frightened by scary movies (well, maybe a little), but I do still wonder if there are wild men out there in the woods, waiting for the right moment to show themselves and peer into the living room window.

The Winsted Wild Man: A History of Connecticut's Hairy Humanoid

Before there was Bigfoot, there was the Wild Man. Like Bigfoot, he was large, hairy and often naked, and he lurked in the woods and lonely meadows, emerging only to terrorize and amaze those who witnessed his emergence into the civilized world.

One particularly famous Wild Man has haunted part of Connecticut for nearly a century. His name? The Winsted Wild Man.

Here is a timeline of his appearances:


August 28, 1891 - People riding a coach through Winsted, Connecticut see a large animal run across the highway and leap over a fence. It stands on two legs. The passengers think it may be a gorilla. The New York Times speculates it is a gorilla that escaped from a circus several years ago and was sited in nearby South Norfolk the previous winter. However, the Times also notes that some Winsted residents think it might be a wild man known to live in the area.

September 8, 1891 - A Mrs. Culver of Colebrook, a town near Winsted, frantically reports that the wild man/gorilla spent the night sleeping on her porch. Six police and many civilians search the area but nothing is found.

August 21, 1895 - Winsted Selectman Riley Smith is out picking berries with his dog in Colebrook when he sees the wild man emerge from a clump of bushes. The wild man, who yelled loudly as he ran past Smith, is described as "a large man, stark naked, and covered with hair all over his body." Both Smith and his dog were terrified and fled the area.

Winsted in 1877, from Wikipedia.

August 23, 1895 - Passengers on the coach through Winsted once again see the wild man on the isolated road between Winsted and Colebrook. The North Adams Transcript reports that the wild man may be one of several who were seen in the area several years earlier, and that farmers in the area believe the wild man is stealing their small livestock. The Transcript also notes that a large hunting party is being planned for Sunday, August 25.

August 25, 1895 - Two hundreds armed men search the area around Winsted and Colebrook for the wild man. They find a cave on the Beardsley Farm that contains fresh bones and one old shoe. Footprints of bare feet are found outside the cave, which was located about three miles from where Riley Smith encountered the wild man. The wild man himself is not seen. Some people suggest the wild man is really a local man known to be suffering from alcohol withdrawal, but the man doesn't meet the description of the person seen by Smith.

Also on the 25th, picnickers find a small isolated cabin and report it to the authorities, but it is revealed to be the home of Mort Pond, a known hermit.

A Medieval European image of a wild man.

 August 30, 1895 - According to The North Adams Transcript, two women vacationing from New York City report encountering the wild man while passing through Winsted. They claim it was clearly a gorilla, and had "large white teeth, black hair, a muscular form and is about 6 1/2 feet tall." The Transcript also reports that this is probably the same gorilla who menaced Norfolk the previous winter. The Norfolk gorilla was sealed inside a cave by local citizens who covered the entrance with chains, but it broke the chains and escaped. It was also impervious to being shot with bird shot.

September 3, 1895 - Mrs. Culver once again reports seeing the wild man, as does a Mr. E.L. Perkins. Mrs. Culver claims the wild man was clad in rags, had long black hair and a beard, and was about 45 years old. Once again hunters scour the area, and once again they come up empty-handed.

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I got most of this material from Chad Arment's absolutely amazing book The Historical Bigfoot, which compiles hundreds of old newspaper articles about wild men, "gorillas", and other hairy humanoids. It's really interesting to read these old accounts from Connecticut. Some witnesses clearly think they're seeing a man, others think they're seeing a gorilla, and others are seeing something in between. What did these people really see, if anything?

Let's face it, the gorilla explanation is pretty ridiculous. I don't think a gorilla would survive a Connecticut winter, and the story about the gorilla breaking chains to escape from a cave sounds like pure fantasy to me. Arment's book contains dozens of newspaper articles from across the country claiming an escaped gorilla is menacing a particular small town. There just weren't that many gorillas in the United States in the 19th century, never mind escaped ones. Even if a gorilla did escape, it probably wouldn't be able to survive.

Some modern writers have speculated that the Winsted Wild Man was just a hoax created by Louis T. Stone, a Winsted newspaperman known for his tall tales. He did work for the local paper in 1895, but the first accounts appeared in 1891. Perhaps he just helped to shape the story, rather than creating the Wild Man from whole cloth?

Also, Louis Stone died in 1935, so how do we explain the Winsted Wild Man once again rearing his shaggy head in the 1970s?

*****

July 24, 1972 - Wayne Hall, aged 19, and David Chapman, aged 18, are hanging out at Chapman's house near Crystal Lake when they hear a strange noise from outside. It is late at night, but in the murky light they see a large hairy humanoid who is about eight feet tall. The creature emerges from the woods and walks into a neighbor's barn. The two teens watch the creature roam around for about 45 minutes until it disappears back into the woods.

September 27, 1974 - Four teenagers parking in the woods near Rugg Brook Reservoir are terrified when they see a six-foot tall, 300-pound hairy creature walking near the reservoir. Winsted police officer George Corso is stopped by two of the teens while patrolling downtown, and he returns to the reservoir with one of the boys in his patrol car, who insists they keep the doors locked and the windows shut. Corso later described the boy as obviously agitated and believed he had seen something that scared him. At the reservoir the boy claims to see the creature again, but Corso is unable to see what the boy does. The next day the police investigate the area and find no sign of anything unusual.

*****

That information is from David Philips's book Legendary Connecticut. Will the Winsted Wild Man appear again? Probably, but maybe not for another fifty or sixty years. Just like the satyrs and centaurs of the ancient world, I'm sure he's out there just beyond the fringes of town, hiding in the woods outside our consciousness, waiting to surprise us again.

The Cotton Hollow Giant

Here's another great story from a 19th century newspaper. This one is from the June 29, 1898 issue of Connecticut's Naugatuck Daily News.

Late one night, four men from Danbury were walking home from visiting friends. A man named Jerry Wilson was in the lead.

As they passed through a wooded area known as Cotton Hollow a giant sprang up from the underbrush. He was at least twice as tall as any of the Danbury men!

He shouted out to Wilson,"How far is it to the next town?"

Terrified, Wilson managed to stammer out, "About three miles!" The giant ran off into the dark woods, and the frightened men hurried back to their own homes.

The next day they returned to Cotton Hollow and found footprints in the soft soil. They were at least 18 inches long and 5 1/2 inches wide. People who lived in Cotton Hollow told Wilson and his friends they had seen the giant in the neighborhood several times before, and estimated he was nine feet tall and weighed around 500 pounds.

That's the end of the newspaper article.

The people over on Bigfoot Encounters, where I found this story, wonder whether the giant was naked or clothed, and whether or not he had shoes on. They also ask if he was covered in hair. In other words, was this giant really Bigfoot as we know and love him today?

I'm not a Bigfoot expert, but I don't think he usually speaks, and I've never read about Bigfoot asking for directions. The fact he asked Jerry Wilson the distance to the closest town seems to indicate he was not your average Sasquatch.

Sleeping Giant ridge in Hamden.

Interestingly, a town near Naugatuck also has a legend about a giant. A large stone ridge in Hamden, Connecticut is known as the Sleeping Giant. Supposedly it is the Indian deity Hobomock sleeping under a spell put on him by a rival deity. The ridge is part of a state park, so you can hike on the petrified body of a major Algonquian manitou. It sounds risky to me!

Cotton Hollow today.

Also interesting is that Cotton Hollow in Naugatuck is now conservation land that has an abandoned mill complex on it. You can find some beautiful photos of Cotton Hollow here, which is where I got the one above. Sadly, there are no photos of the giant!

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Oops! I want to post a correction. Naugatuck resident Julie has told me the mill photo is actually from a Cotton Hollow in Glastonbury, not Naugatuck. Sorry about that! It's a great photo though.

Wild Man of Williamstown, VT

Williamstown, Vermont looks so peaceful - just watch out for the wild man!

Here's a brief article from the October 18, 1879 New York Times about another New England wild man. This time he's not from Haverhill, but from further north in Williamstown, Vermont.

A WILDMAN OF THE MOUNTAINS

Two Young Vermont Hunters Terribly Scared

Pownal, VT., Oct. 17 - Much excitement prevailed among the sportsmen of this vicinity over the story that a wild man was seen on Friday last by two young men while hunting in the mountains south of Williamstown. The young men describe the creature as being about 5 feet high, resembling a man in form and movement, but covered all over with bright red hair, and having a long straggling beard, and with very wild eyes.

That's it. The writer doesn't give any possible explanations. Did the hunters see Bigfoot? Disturb a red-headed homeless man sleeping in the woods? It's up to the reader to decide.

Joseph Citro, who quotes this article in his book Passing Strange, notes that a woman named Arlene Tarantino encountered a similar hairy wild man in the woods of Winhall, not far from Williamstown. He was thin, muscular, and ran like a chimpanzee on all fours.

Immobilized, Arlene watched him for about forty minutes, and later said she felt she had been mesmerized or entranced by his presence. He eventually disappeared, and Alrene ran out of the woods. She never saw him again, but still suspects he may out there in the forest somewhere. Arlene also said she felt he was human, but it seems more than coincidental that witnesses 100 years apart would see someone (something?) so similar.

The Wild Man of Haverhill, Massachusetts

A medieval wild man. A great image, but things didn't get this crazy in Haverhill.

Full disclosure: I grew up in Haverhill, so sometimes I like to write about the folklore of my home town. Here's an interesting little story from George W. Chase's 1861 book The History of Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Back in the summer of 1826, a local Haverhill man named Andrew Frink came down with a fever. Since this was long before the invention of aspirin, his fever grew and Frink became delirious. Eventually, in a fit of madness he ran from his house and disappeared.

Shortly after this, the citizens of Haverhill saw a "wild man" lurking in the nearby woods. (Unfortunately, Chase's book doesn't describe what he looked like.) Thinking he might be Andrew Frink, they formed a search party and set out to find him.

When they caught him, they were surprised to see that it was not Frink, but "literally a wild man from the woods."

"It was supposed from his appearance he was some unfortunate, who, having perhaps met with some disappointment in life, had, in a fit of insanity fled from society."

Chase doesn't say what happened to the wild man, but it seems like was he set free to roam off into the woods again. As for Andrew Frink, his body was found floating in a brook six weeks later, the victim of accidental drowning.

The idea of the wild man living on the fringes of society goes way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Wikipedia notes that medieval Celtic literature features wild men who become that way through insanity, much like the one found in Haverhill. I've seen a few other stories about New England wild men. Some are clearly human, like the famous Leather Man, while others are more cryptic and semi-mythical, like Bigfoot.

It's also interesting that without fever reducers, people would just wander off into the woods and die. If you don't have aspirin, bar the door!