A Giant Woman and A Man-Faced Dog: Strange Encounters in The 19th Century

Today's post is about strange stories and how they don't always make sense. 

People report seeing a lot of weird things, but most of them can be placed into certain categories. Did you see a large hairy humanoid in the woods? We'll categorize that as Bigfoot. Did you see a glowing light in the sky? We'll call that one a UFO. You saw a semi-transparent person in an old house? That was a ghost.

You get the picture. As humans we like our world to be neat and orderly, and that includes even the weird things that are in it. Putting things in categories helps us make sense of the world. If something can be named it becomes less threatening. But not everything can be easily categorized or named. People sometimes report things that are unique, unusual and don't have an easy explanation. And they've done so for hundreds of years. 

I was recently reading John Greenleaf Whittier's 1847 book The Supernaturalism of New England. Whittier was a popular 19th century poet who was born in my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and he had an abiding interest in New England folklore. Some of his most popular poems were based on old legends, but The Supernaturalism of New England is not a book of poetry. It's a collection of legends and what we modern folks would call "paranormal encounters."

Some of these stories are easily categorized: witchcraft tales, accounts of premonitory dreams, haunted houses. But some are much stranger and harder to categorize, including the following story which was told to Whittier by a neighbor who was walking near Haverhill's Kenoza Lake when she witnessed something otherworldly.

It was a warm summer evening, just at sunset. She was startled by the appearance of a horse and cart the kind used a century ago in New England... The driver sat sternly erect, with a fierce countenance; grasping the reins tightly, and looking neither to the right nor the left. Behind the cart, and apparently lashed to it, was a woman of gigantic size, her countenance convulsed with a blended expression of rage and agony, writhing and struggling... Her head, neck, feet and arms were naked; wild locks of grey hair streamed back from temples corrugated and darkened. The horrible cavalcade swept by across the street, and disappeared at the margin of the pond. (Whittier, The Supernaturalism of New England, edited and with an Introduction by Edward Wagenknecht, 1969, p.75)

Whittier notes that "I have heard many similar stories, but the foregoing may serve as a sample of all." Sadly, he doesn't tell any of the similar stories so it's hard to understand what is going on here. Although the cart is old-fashioned I don't think this is just a ghost story. Perhaps the woman is being taken to Hell by the Devil, which was a common theme in New England legends? But if that's the case, why is she gigantic and so enraged? And why is she being dragged into Kenoza Lake? It's a really puzzling story.

Image from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Whittier also includes this next story, which was told to him by a friend who was "a man of strong nerves, sound judgment in ordinary matters, and not particularly superstitious." Still, this unsuperstitious man also encountered something creepy in Haverhill:

... He was standing one moonlight evening, in a meditative mood, on the bridge which crosses Little River near its junction with the Merrimack. Suddenly he became sensible of a strange feeling, as if something terrible was near at hand; a vague terror crept over him. "I knew," said he, in relating the story, "that something bad and frightful was behind me - I felt it. And when I did look round, there on the bridge, within a few paces of me, a huge black dog was sitting, with the face of a man - a human face, if ever I saw one, turned full up to the moonlight. It remained just long enough to give me a clear view of it, and then vanished; and ever since, when I think of Satan, I call to mind the Dogman on the bridge. (Whittier, Supernaturalism, p. 53)

Aaah! That's an unnerving little story. It sounds more like the description of a nightmare than something encountered in waking life. Was this dog-creature the Devil, a vision, or something else? Whittier doesn't really say but he does include it with others about the Devil. Does the Devil normally appear as a human-faced dog? And if it was the Devil why didn't he say or do anything? Again, it's another puzzling story.  

Image from Cryptomundo

Interestingly, there are Japanese folktales about human-faced dogs called jinmenken. These creatures are said to be omens of ill-fortune but not particularly evil. When spoken to they usually say "Leave me alone." The dogman that Whittier describes sounds a little more sinister than that. 

I don't have any big conclusions to draw about these two stories. As I said earlier, sometimes people encounter weird things that don't fit into any clear categories. Giant women being dragged into lakes. Dogs with human faces. People saw weird things in the 19th century and people still see weird things today. And sometimes those things don't make sense. I guess it's just part of being human.

The Devil Tries to Kill A Minister, or Why There Are So Many Rocks in New England

Here in New England we are blessed to live in a landscape filled with rocks. If you like giant house-sized boulders, or even just medium sized rocks, you'll find plenty to love in this part of the country.

But where did all these rocks come from?

Maybe I should rephrase that question as "Where the hell did all these rocks come from?," since folklore lays the blame on the Devil.

Not all of New England is rocky. Although the Cape Cod town of Bourne has lots of large rocks, the outer tip of the Cape - Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown - has almost no boulders at all. Once again, the Devil is to blame.

Boulders!

The story goes something like this. Way back in the 1600s, an English missionary named Richard Bourne was active on the southern part of Cape Cod, helping to found towns and doing God's work in the New World. Naturally, Richard Bourne drew the ire of the Devil. The Devil lived on Cape Cod and didn't like goodie-goodies anywhere near him.

One night while Bourne was sleeping the Devil crept down from the outer Cape to the missionary's hut. He leapt upon the sleeping minister, planning to crush him with his demonic super-strength. To the Evil One's surprise, Bourne successfully fought him off, even though the minister was not particularly large or strong.

"You won this time, Richard Bourne, but I'll be back," the Devil said. "Just you wait!" He stomped away to regain his strength and scheme.

Several nights later he came back to Bourne's dwelling, and once again the minister fought him off.  Once again the Devil stomped off, vowing to return.

This went on for several years, but the Devil was never able to harm Bourne because God was on his side.

Finally, the Devil realized he had to change his plan. He gathered up all the rocks he could find on the Outer Cape and put them in his big leather apron. Then he set off for Richard Bourne's house. He was going to dump all the rocks on the minister while he slept and crush him.

The Province Lands in Provincetown: a lot of sand, but no boulders...

As the Devil slowly waked down the Cape, carrying hundreds of boulders in his apron, a chickadee flew at him from out of the woods. The swift little bird flew around the Devil, mocking his plan to crush the minister.

"Richard Bourne defeated you before, he will defeat you again!" the smarmy little bird sang.

The Devil swatted at the bird, but chickadees are fast and it flew out of his reach. Then from a distant tree branch it sang it's mocking song again.

The Devil does not have a very good temper, and he was furious that such a tiny little bird would mock such a magnificent demon as himself. With a  howl of fury he ran towards the chickadee.

As he ran he tripped over a tree branch and fell. All the boulders he was carrying in his apron spilled out and rolled across the landscape. This area is now the rocky town of Bourne.

With a big sigh the Devil walked back to the boulder-free Outer Cape, where he's remained ever since. Even a fallen angel knows when he's been beaten.

*****

This story appears in Elizabeth Renard's book The Narrow Land (1934) in a section called "Tales of the Praying Indians." Praying Indian was a term that referred to Native Americans in New England who were early converts to Christianity, and the Christian content of this story is quite strong (if you didn't notice). 

It probably has its origins in earlier pre-Christian Wampanoag legends, though. Many stories have survived telling how the Wampanoag deity Maushop, who was gigantic in size and strength, created rock formations and ocean channels. Some of them are even very similar to the one told in Renard's book. For example, in one Wampanoag tale Maushop is building  a bridge to Cuttyhunk when a crab bites his toe. Maushop drops his rocks and storms off angrily. Those rocks now form a sunken reef.

Me and some rocks in the Blue Hills.

However, anthropologist William Simmons notes in his book Spirit of the New England Tribes that Wampanoags on Cape Cod weren't the only ones telling tales about the Devil dropping rocks from his apron. The Reverend William Chaffin of Easton, Massachusetts claimed that the boulders in that town also fell out of the Devil's apron, and I've read something similar in Clifton Johnson's book What They Say in New England. So it seems like Yankees of English descent were also giving supernatural explanations for the rocks that litter the landscape.

Here in the Boston area, we have a type of stone called puddingstone (aka Roxbury conglomerate) that looks like an old-fashioned lumpy pudding with dried fruit in it. In his 1830 poem "The Dorchester Giant" Oliver Wendell Holmes humorously claims it was formed when a family of giants flung their pudding all across the landscape.

They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.

Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.

He wasn't serious, but it's interesting that he also proposed a supernatural explanation.

We know now that New England's rocks were deposited by melting glaciers, but the old myths and legends are as much part of the landscape as the boulders themselves.

The Devil Builds A Barn

Although Halloween has sadly passed, the nights and weather are only going to get darker and gloomier from here on. It's still the season for spooky stories! Here's one from 19th century Massachusetts about the Devil himself.

*****

A poor farmer living out in the country wanted a barn. He had a house and a couple small sheds, but no barn. Unfortunately he was just too poor to build one.

His desire for a barn must have been very strong, because the Devil caught wind of it. One night when the farmer was alone the Devil came to his house.

"I'll build you a barn", the Evil One said. "All you have to do is give me your soul when you die. Doesn't that sound like a bargain?"

The farmer may have been poor, but he was smart. He had heard tales of bargains made with the Devil. The tales usually didn't end well.

After thinking for a while, the farmer said, "I'll give you my soul... if you can build the barn before the first rooster crows in the morning. Deal?"

"Deal," the Devil said. They shook hands to seal it. The Devil's hand was hot like a frying pan.

The Devil immediately set to work. The farmer could hear him hammering and sawing away in the darkness. It sounded like the barn was going to be a good one.

It was just before sunrise, and the Devil was very nearly done. While the Evil One hammered away to finish the barn on time, the farmer snuck out his back door to the shed where he kept his chickens. He crowed like a rooster. This woke up his actual rooster, which crowed in response.

The Devil hadn't quite completed the barn, so he didn't get the farmer's soul. After he angrily vanished in a cloud of brimstone the farmer finished the last remaining details of the barn. He felt pretty good for outsmarting the Devil.

His satisfaction didn't last long. It turned out the roof leaked, the doors didn't close properly, and the whole structure fell apart within a year. But then what else would you expect from a barn built by the Devil?

*****

I like this story. It's short, sweet, and to the point. It was told to Clifton Johnson in the late 19th century, and he included it in his book What They Say in New England (1896).  The motif of cheating an evil supernatural being who's building something for you is much older than the 19th century, though.

When I read this story I'm reminded of the old Norse myth telling how the gods hired a giant to build the walls around Asgard. They made a bargain with the giant. If he could build the wall in only one winter, with the help only of his horse, the gods would give him the goddess Freya, the sun and the moon. They made this bargain because they assumed even a giant couldn't finish a huge wall in just three months. After all, his only assistant was a horse.

Unfortunately for the gods, it turned out that the giant's horse was magical and was able to lay stones and spread mortar with its hooves. Things looked bad, but the trickster god Loki came up with a plan. Just before the wall was done, and just before winter ended, Loki turned himself into a beautiful mare. The beautiful mare lured the giant's horse off into the woods, and the giant was unable to finish the wall on time. Not only did he not get the sun, moon and the goddess Freya, but Thor smashed his head in with a hammer. Ouch! 

The gods got a 98% completed wall, and many months later Loki returned from the woods carrying the magical eight-legged colt that he had given birth to.

That might have been a little bit of a tangent, but I think you can see how the two stories are related.  New England folklore is just a little more bare bones than Norse mythology!

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.