The Pigman of Northfield, Vermont

The time? 1971.

The place? A high school dance in picturesque Northfield, Vermont.

I'm sure you can imagine the scene. Crepe paper streamers, teens dancing to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", bell bottom jeans, mediocre orange punch. A scene of small town serenity.

However, small towns often have weird secrets, and Northfield's most shocking secret came to light that night when a group of students ran into the dance. They looked scared, and some of them were in tears.

They had been drinking beer in a sandpit behind the school, they said, when something strange came out of the woods. It was tall, naked, and covered in white hair. And although it walked on two legs, it had the face of a pig.

Whatever it was, it scared the hell out of the teens - they even abandoned the beer in their panic! Some of the braver students ventured out of the dance to investigate the sandpit. They didn't see the monster, but did find the grass and underbrush had been trampled down. Something had been there. And thus the Pigman appeared in Northfield.

Artist's rendering of the Pigman from Joseph Citro's Weird New England.

After the dance was disrupted, the locals made some strange connections. A farmer said he had seen a hideous naked figure rummaging through his trash a few nights earlier. More eerily, people remembered how a teenage boy disappeared from his family's farm six months ago. At the time authorities thought he had run away, but now people wondered if something more sinister had happened. Could he have been transformed into this strange monster? Or perhaps been eaten by it for dinner? A monster had to eat, and an awful lot of animals had gone missing recently...

The Pigman was seen in Northfield off and on for years, often around an area called the Devil's Washbowl. Motorists saw him run across the road, and teens who went to make out in the Washbowl sometimes had a surprise guest disrupt their romantic interlude.

Although the creature himself was somewhat elusive, physical evidence suggested he was real. A local man named Jeff Hatch and his friends found some caves near the Washbowl filled with animal bones, and found a similar stash of gnawed bones in the town's only pig farm. Strange cloven footprints were also found in the soft ground.

I don't know if we'll ever know who (or what) the Pigman is. The top two theories are that the missing teenage boy somehow devolved and became feral, or that some lonely farmer and a particularly friendly pig ... well, you know what I mean. I don't think genetics work that way, but try telling that to the teens in Northfield, who still get spooked at night when they go drinking out in the woods.

You can read more about the Pigman in books by Vermont author Joseph Citro, particularly Weird New England and Green Mountains, Dark Tales.

Suspended Animation in Vermont

Once the December holidays are over winter in New England can be tough to get through. Wouldn't it be nice just to sleep through the cold dark months like bears do?

According to an article in the December 21, 1887 edition of Vermont's Argus and Patriot newspaper, some farmers in Calais, Vermont could. They knew the secrets of suspended animation, and used their technique on the old and infirm during those winters when food was in short supply.

To begin the process, the farmers would feed their elderly relatives a special chemical brew (ingredients unknown) which induced a comatose state. After leaving the comatose elders outside overnight in freezing weather, the farmers would build a large wooden box.

When this was completed they placed about two feet of straw in the bottom; then they laid three of the frozen bodies on the straw. Then the faces and upper part of the bodies were covered with a cloth, then more straw was put in the box, and the other three bodies placed on top... Boards were then firmly nailed on the top to protect the bodies from being injured by carnivorous animals that make their home on these mountains.

The box was left outside to be buried in snow. In early May, the farmers would open the box and thaw their relatives out with hot water and hemlock, just in time to help plant the corn.

Sadly, the story doesn't seem to be true. In his book Green Mountains, Dark Tales Joseph Citro explains that Allen Morse, a Calais farmer and teller of tall tales, told this story to his daughter one day to entertain her. She worked at the Argus and Patriot, and arranged to have the story printed as a gift on his 52nd birthday. Its title? "A Strange Tale"!

However, Citro says he isn't 100% certain "A Strange Tale" was a hoax. He claims the University of Vermont still fields questions from scientists asking about the technique. I don't know how they answer.

I guess in closing I'll just say that no matter how tempting this sounds you shouldn't try it at home!