A Pukwudgie Sighting in Massachusetts

Sometimes people write to me about strange experiences they've had. Just a few weeks ago, a woman I'll call Mary sent me an email about a weird encounter she had while walking a dog. 

Mary lives in Norwell, and was taking care of a friend's large Labrador retriever while the friend was traveling. The dog would wake Mary up every morning between 4 and 5 am to take it for a walk. Mary would usually bring the dog to a small nearby watershed - a patch of woods and swamp - for its morning perambulation. 

Mary and the dog went on these early morning walks for a few weeks without anything strange happening, but that changed on March 1. It was pitch black, and as they walked on a road near the watershed the dog stopped in its tracks and let out a low growl. Had it seen a raccoon, or maybe a coyote? Feeling nervous about being alone in the dark with a wild animal nearby, Mary looked around to see what startled the dog. It was not a raccoon, or a coyote. It was something much stranger. 

Crouched near the woods was a small humanoid creature. It was covered in what looked like matted, black fur. Mary thought the creature stared at her with glowing green eyes, but isn't sure if she just imagined this detail. Whatever the creature was, it was something she had never seen before. She and the dog ran home. 

A few days later the dog went home to its owner, and Mary thought that was the end of her strange experience. But on the night of March 13, Mary heard some unusual sounds coming from outside her house. It sounded as though something were quietly but insistently tapping on the side of her house, or possibly on the window. At first Mary thought maybe her daughter had locked herself out of the house, but that was not the case - she was safely inside. Nervously, Mary's thoughts then turned to the small humanoid she had seen near the woods. Was it outside her house, tapping on the walls and windows?

The next day she talked with some people at work about what had been happening, and one of them suggested she had encountered a pukwudgie. Pukwudgie is a one name for the small, hairy, magical humanoids that are said to live in the woods in New England. Basically, they are a type of fairy. Not a pretty, tutu-wearing fairy like Tinkerbell, but a scragglier, rough-around-the-edges fairy. They're the type of fairy you'd expect to see in the woods around here, which are rough, rocky, and filled with poison ivy. 

Pukwudgie is something of a modern term, at least in New England. The Native Americans in New England had other names for these beings, like makiawisug, mekumwasuck, or mikumweswack. Pukwudgie was originally a word used by the Ojibwa Indians of the Midwest to describe the small magical beings they encountered, but it has since became a popular word in New England, and particularly in Massachusetts. (You can read more about the history of the term pukwudgie here.)

Pukwudgies are believed to be mischievous at best, and malevolent at worst. Traditionally, the local Native Americans believed that the little people would help humans if treated with respect. That is not the case with pukwudgies, who supposedly like to shoot people with darts, lure them off cliffs, and in general lurk around and frighten anyone who encounters them. If I can speculate, perhaps this change in behavior is because most New Englanders don't know how to treat them with the respect they deserve? 

Mary's encounter is similar to several other well-known pukwudgie encounters. For example, in 1990 a Raynham, Massachusetts man named Bill Russo was walking his dog late at night near some woods when he saw a small hairy humanoid creature, which tried to lure him into the woods. He declined the offer. And Christopher Balzano describes a very similar situation in his 2007 book Dark Woods: Cults, Crime and the Paranormal in the Freetown State Forest. A woman named Joan was walking her dog in the Freetown State Forest when she noticed someone watching her. It was a small, grey-skinned humanoid with hairy arms and a hairy head, and it stared at her with deep green eyes. After encountering the pukwudgie in the woods, Joan noticed the pukwudgie lurking around her house several times. Apparently it had followed her home. Creepy!

After I got the email from Mary, I asked Balzano if he had any advice for people who encounter pukwudgies, particularly if the pukwudgie seems to be lurking around their house. He said the best thing to do is just ignore them. Eventually, they'll go away and the strange phenomena will stop. That sounds like good advice to me. I think that the more attention you give to weird phenomena, the more of it you'll notice. You can just get sucked down the rabbit hole!

In a subsequent email, Mary told he that she had some lucky things happen to her on the day she encountered the creature in the woods. So maybe seeing it had been a fortuitous event, even if it was spooky? In the end, the situation was oddly ambiguous, much like the pukwudgies themselves. 

Tiny Cavemen, A UFO Abductee, and Fairy Folklore in Massachusetts

Did tiny cavemen live on an island in the Connecticut River in the 1970s? Let's face it, that's a bizarre question to ask. Obviously, the answer is no. And yet that claim was made by Betty Hill in 1998.

Her name may be familiar. Betty and her husband Barney claimed they were abducted by a UFO in New Hampshire on September 19, 1961, and their experiences were made into a book (The Interrupted Journey) and a movie (The UFO Incident). The Hills' story was one of the first UFO abduction narratives in America and helped popularize the concept of alien abduction.

The Hills were active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but are now best remembered for their UFO encounter. Barney Hill died in 1969 at the young age of 46, but Betty lived until 2005, when she died at age 85. She continued to see UFOs throughout her life, and became a beloved figure in the UFO/paranormal community. Many people came to Betty with their own stories of unexplained phenomena.

Image from Pinterest

In 1998, she contributed several of these stories, all focused on Bigfoot and set in New England, to a book titled The Psychic Sasquatch and Their UFO Connection by Jack Kewaunee Lapersitis. (The Psychic Sasquatch is one of those weird and amazing books that everyone should read.) Betty Hill claimed the following happened near Springfield, Massachusetts:

My informant said that at one spot in the middle of the Connecticut River there was a good-sized island that was uninhabited. Then one day it was inhabited by small, prehistoric-appearing people. They don't know how many of them there were, maybe 50. They lived on the island for three years. No one ever succeeded in getting near them. The police had gone out to the island on boats and had gone onto the island. These small, primitive people could outrun anyone. They would take off running and then could not be found... It is not known how they lived or what they did for food. No fires were ever seen on the island, but they lived there year-round for approximately three years. Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, they disappeared.

... Planes and helicopters had flown over the area, hoping to get pictures, but these little people - they're not really tiny people, but maybe four feet tall or so - would take off running at such speeds that no one could even get pictures of them. These prehistoric looking people would be there one instant, then would start running and in the next instant they would just disappear. 

Hill claimed she was given this information by a local police chief, who also told her the little people were naked and covered with "sparse hair."

There is a lot to unpack here. First of all, the only source for this story is Betty Hill and The Psychic Sasquatch. I don't doubt the sincerity of Betty Hill or Jack Lapersitis, but if small cavemen had really been living on an island in Massachusetts for three years I think more people would know about it. Hill claims anthropologists went to the island, and that local residents would stand on the riverbank trying to see the speedy little cavemen. I think someone would have alerted the press if this had happened.

On the other hand, these speedy miniature cave folk reminded me of New England's most famous magical little people, the pukwudgies. When I say "magical little people," I mean fairies. Like these cavemen, the pukwudgies are generally described as being small and hairy. The word pukwudgie originally comes from the Ojibwa, a Native American group in the midwest, and made its way into New England folklore via local 19th century poets like Henry Longfellow, town historians, and Wampanoag storytellers on Cape Cod. Puwudgie is generally said to simply mean "little people," but poet and folklorist John Greenleaf Whittier thought it meant "little vanisher," which certainly is descriptive of the cavemen Betty Hill discusses. 

Vintage brownie illustration found here. 

People who encounter fairies across Europe and North America often say they wear archaic or old-fashioned clothing. It is rare to meet a fairy wearing yoga pants and a hoodie. This may be because fairies represent the past, whether that's an older way of life, a culture that has vanished, or because they are actually spirits of the dead who remain nearby. The tiny naked cavefolk could easily fit into all these categories. 

Some fairies also appear naked. For example, in Scotland the fairies called brownies generally appear as small, naked, hairy beings. Brownies were said to perform chores for the humans whose homes they inhabited, but would disappear if given a gift of clothing. 

I'm not necessarily saying the tiny cavefolk on the Connecticut river were fairies or brownies, but just that the story about them has themes similar to fairy and pukwudgie stories. If there are fairies in New England, and many people believe there are, I can certainly see why they'd appear as small hairy humanoids. It just feels like the right fit for our stony, woodsy biome and occasionally inclement climate. Flowing gowns and diaphanous wings would not fare well here.  

If anyone has more information on this story please let me know in the comments or by email. I would love to know more about this topic.  

Two Encounters with Pukwudgies in Lawrence, Massachusetts

One of the nice things about writing this blog is that sometimes people share strange stories with me. Last week someone I'll call Miss S. wrote and told me about some unusual things that happened to her family thirty years ago. She said I could share them so here they are.

The first incident happened to Miss S.'s brother Bob. He was just a child at the time (maybe seven or eight years old) and was watching TV with some cousins at his grandparent's house in Lawrence, Massachusetts. They were sitting on the couch, which faced the TV but had its back towards a doorway into another room.

As they sat there watching TV Bob felt someone pull on the back of his hair. He thought it was his cousin Sandra and he told her to stop. Sandra denied pulling his hair. A few seconds later he felt it again. Again he yelled at his cousin, who still said she didn't do it. A few more seconds passed and Bob once again felt someone tug on his air.

He turned around angrily, expecting to see one his cousins hiding behind the couch. But his anger turned to surprise when he saw who was there. Instead of a cousin, he saw a little old lady with long white hair. And when I write little, I mean quite small - she was only two or three feet tall. When she saw Bob looking at her she quickly started to run towards the front door of the house. She disappeared into thin air before she reached it.

Bob was understandably surprised by this, but when he blurted out what he had seen his grandmother told him not to worry about it. "Don't worry," she said. "They're friendly.'

The second incident occurred one day when Bob's mother took him and his cousins, including Sandra, out to the movies. After the movie was over they returned to their grandparents' house. The door was locked. No one was supposed to be home so they were surprised to see through the window that a lamp was on in the living room. Sandra peered through the window to see if she could see her grandparents. She jumped back from the window and screamed "I am getting the f***k out of here!"

Bob's mother stepped up to the window and looked inside. She saw a very short old man with long white hair run out of the living room. She gathered the kids together and they quickly left.

Miss S. says that her brother and mother still talk about these two incidents. They say that in retrospect they should have known something odd was happening in the grandparents' home. They would sometimes find the tin of coffee opened and spilled onto the floor, and bottles of Coke stored in the attic opened and half drunk. When asked about these things the grandparents would just shrug and say they had rats, but can rats take the metal caps off glass bottles?

In her email Miss S. wrote that she thought these were encounters with pukwudgies, the magical little people from local Native American lore. The beings her family members saw were short, fast and had very long hair, which certainly matches some of the descriptions from local Algonquin lore. That lore also describes them as being mischievous but shy, which matches these two encounters.

It's important to note that historically Native American lore from New England includes a wide variety of little people known by many names. It was only in the late 20th and early 21st century that pukwudgie, a word of Ojibwa origin, has become widely used to describe them. I use it because it is a convenient term that people are familiar with.

I think it's also important to point out that Miss S.'s grandparents, mother, and brother are of Mi'kmaq heritage. The Mi'kmaq are a Native American group originally from Canada's Maritime provinces and parts of Maine. Mi'kmaq legends tell of small beings called the wiklatmuj or pukulatmuj. They enjoy playing tricks, including tying knots in people's hair. Was this what the old woman was trying to do to  Bob? 

It seems possible that since the grandparents were Mi'kmaq they weren't worried about having the little people in their house. They understood that they were just part of life. A family of European descent unfamiliar with these beings would probably have called an exorcist!

Most local Native American groups tried to foster good relationships with the pukwudgies. Like any neighbor, they could be malicious when treated poorly and helpful when treated right. Miss S. says she has never seen the little people herself, but when she moves to a new house she always does something her mother taught her. She leaves a small spice cake on the back steps the first night she moves in. She says her house is peaceful and her garden very productive.

It may seem strange that pukwudgies would appear in someone's house since they are usually associated with woods and forests. The grandparents' house was in an urban part of Lawrence, so it was definitely not a rural environment. However, I have found at least two other cases where a small, fairy-type being has appeared in someone's home. In one case, a house in Somerville was allegedly haunted by a troll. I've also read about a house in Weymouth that might have been inhabited by a mischievous pukwudgie. Are some accounts of haunted houses actually caused by pukwudgies instead of ghosts? That's probably an unanswerable question.

Halloween Treats: A Big Cat, Monsters in Leominster, and More Ghost Chronicles

It's hard to believe Halloween is only three days away. Here are a few treats to get you through the next few days that I've found in the media. 

ANOTHER BIG FELINE IN BROOKLINE

A few weeks ago I posted about an alleged mountain lion sighting in an urban section of Brookline, Massachusetts. I didn't really know what to make of it, but now I wonder if there really is some large cat roaming around town. On October 5, someone called the Brookline Police to report a bobcat on Shaw Road. Here is the item from the October 11 issue of The Brookline Tab:

Bobcat on Shaw Road: At 10:51 a.m., a caller reported seeing a bobcat cross the road and said the animal was "much, much larger than a domestic animal." The caller thought the area should be checked. 

Shaw Road is several miles from the location of the first sighting, and is also in an area with more open space (cemeteries, parks, and woods). While the first sighting happened at night, this second sighting happened in broad daylight. Bobcats can live in suburban areas so maybe one is indeed living in Brookline?

MONSTERS AND ALIENS IN LEOMINSTER

The Boston Herald ran an article about paranormal activity in Leominster, Massachusetts. The October 21 article titled "Talk of UFOs, ghosts turns Massachusetts City into 'Leomonster'" focuses mainly on Leominster resident Ronny LeBlanc who in 2016 wrote a book about his hometown called Monsterland. LeBlanc collected hundreds of stories for his book, so it sounds like something I should add to my holiday wish list. Here is an interesting quote from the Herald piece:

LeBlanc took the Herald to all the hot spots around Leominster, like St. Leo’s cemetery on Lancaster Street where in the 1960s, a couple witnessed a flying saucer emerge from fog, prompting them to call the police. The man who saw the saucer claimed his hand and body was frozen upon pointing to the saucer, only to be released when it flew away. 

Leominster State Forest, another spot mentioned in LeBlanc’s book, has yielded several reports of Bigfoot prints and Sasquatch sightings. 

LeBlanc said he isn’t completely sure why these encounters continue to happen in Leominster, but “it might be something that we don’t want to know.”

Another Leominster resident, Susan Spuhler, had this to say: “There are certain energetic lines that run around the earth. And Leominster, from what I’ve studied over time, has a certain energetic quality to it,” she said. 

Photo from Boston Herald. 

I applaud anyone who investigates the strange stories and folklore of their hometowns. Books like Monsterland are valuable records of what people in 21st century New England believe about the places they live. They are also good to read on dark autumn nights!

MORE GHOST CHRONICLES

Speaking of spooky books, Weiser Books kindly sent me a copy of Maureen Wood and Ron Kolek's book More Ghost Chronicles to review. Wood and Kolek are paranormal investigators who host a popular radio show called Ghost Chronicles, and their book highlights fifteen recent investigations. 

Twelve of them take place across New England. Wood and Kolek visit old lighthouses, haunted restaurants, charming inns (built next to creepy old cemeteries), and even a few places I've visited like Dudley Road and the Freetown State Forest. 

My trip to Dudley Road was relatively uneventful, but theirs is a little more lively. For example, here is an excerpt where Kolek and Wood try to communicate with the spirits of Dudley Road using a pendulum on a dark night. They are trying to figure out how many ghosts haunt the road.

The pendulum responded quickly, while Maureen continued her questioning. "Are there more than one, more than three? Are there more than five?" 

Once again, the answer was a yes.  

I asked, "Do they know the rumors about the haunting of Dudley Road?" 

Maureen nodded. "Yes. Yes, they do." 

I continued. "Do they play games with the people who come to look for them?" 

The pendulum swung back and forth. She laughed out loud. "Sometimes." (More Ghost Chronicles, p. 30)

Watch out for self-aware ghosts, I guess. Although my trip to Dudley Road was peaceful, I did find the Freetown State Forest to be kind of unnerving when I visited although I can't pinpoint why. Was it the sounds of gunfire from a nearby firing range? The group of drugged-out teenagers we encountered on a secluded path? The sound of dead trees creaking in the wind? All of these?

Or perhaps it was really the puckwudgies, small malevolent fairies who are said to live in the forest. Wood and Kolek have an even more unnerving visit than I did, with Wood becoming briefly and frighteningly possessed by the spirit of a puckwudgie. This is why I only go to these places during the day!

So, if you like good old-fashioned ghost investigations with creaking doors, rosaries that shatter, and misty figures advancing through the dark woods I think you will like More Ghost Chronicles. And at this time of year, who doesn't like those things?

Happy Halloween everyone!