Bigfoot: Man, Myth or Monster?

Our friends and associates, Paul and Bob Bartholomew have been engaged in Bigfoot research for decades. Bob, who emails us from Australia, has just passed along full permission to reproduce his new, following essay on Cryptomundo.

It wasn’t until 1803 that a majority of scientists were forced to accept the existence of meteors. Until then, stories of stones falling from the sky were widely ridiculed as tall tales by the ignorant and impressionable.

A hulking hair-covered figure, initially thought to have been a prankster in a gorilla suit, is spotted by scores of people near Bennington. If you think we are referring to the now famous case of the Bennington “Monster” in the fall of 2003, you would be mistaken. It’s actually a series of sightings from 1861. That’s right, 142 years earlier, during August, a gorilla-man scare swept through southern Vermont as hunting parties were formed to track it down. Several residents reportedly shot at the creature, but it managed to elude its pursuers as if it had supernatural abilities. No zoo animals were reported missing and no body was ever found. Rumors circulated that the beast was a college student in a suit. If it was, he was taking an enormous risk by continuing the escapade even after being shot at.

A similar series of sightings occurred near Glastenbury Mountain in the autumn of 2003, when Ray Dufresne reported seeing a huge hairy creature lumbering into the woods while he was driving on Route 7. His first thought was that it was someone in a gorilla costume. He estimated the weight at 270 pounds. Other witnesses soon came forward with descriptions of a similar creature in the area. Again, if it was a man in a suit, he was taking a big risk. The parallels between these two cases, separated by nearly a century and a half, are eerily similar.

Readers may be surprised to learn Vermonters have a long history of sighting large, hairy human-like monsters. In his book “The First Vermonters,” former University of Vermont anthropologist William Haviland observes that the Abenaki recounted stories of “The Forest Wanderer,” a giant humanoid creature that occasionally left footprints behind. These accounts parallel Algonquin tales of the windigo or “giant cannibalistic man.” The windigo legend of hulking, hairy man-beasts can be found throughout New England in all Algonquian-speaking people. According to one modern-day Native American description of the windigo, it is “a giant thing, swift … and covered with hair, and has eyes like two pools of blood. And there’s this smell, like rotting meat.” This description is similar to Bigfoot reports today.

During the latter 18th and early 19th centuries, European settlers in what is now northern Vermont heard tales of “Slippry Skin,” an extraordinarily large bear that always walked on two legs. Tales of this Bigfoot-like creature figured prominently in many oral and written traditions of the region, especially Essex and Orleans Counties. As early as the 1750s, a scout for Roger’s Rangers wrote that Native Americans of the region were known to have described this legendary creature as “Wet Skin.” Also referred to as “slippryskin” and “Old Slippry Skin,” his nickname was apparently given on account of its remarkable ability to elude hunters. In her book, “History of Lemington,” Vermont historian Marion Daley writes that the creature moved about in a swift, ghost-like fashion that bordered on the supernatural. “Before a hunter could lay his gunsights on him, the old bear would vanish into the woods silent and swift as a drift of smoke.”

The creature was described as an extraordinarily large bear that always walked on two legs. Slippryskin was more mischievous than malevolent and routinely teased the inhabitants of the Essex county towns of Lemington, Victory and Maidstone, and was credited with ripping up gardens, pulling down fences, stampeding cattle and trampling cornfields. Its calling card: a trail of huge prints in the snow and mud. “Wet Skin” was said to have been especially adept at throwing hunters off its trail. Historian Paul Rayno recounts the story of a party of hunters who left the town of Morgan in Orleans County, with the intention of killing the creature. As they were walking along a logging road leading to the top of Elon Mountain, a loud thumping noise could be heard from above. The men quickly hid in some nearby bushes in expectation of ambushing Slippryskin. The creature backtracked on his prints, then rolled a large tree down the mountainside, narrowly missing the hunters as they were lying in wait. Shaken, the hunters promptly abandoned the chase — or so the story goes.

Similar accounts of Bigfoot-like creatures abound in Vermont today. For instance, in 1983, a middle-aged Vermont couple reported an extraordinary encounter while on a leisurely drive in rural Tinmouth. The husband noticed a giant human-like figure walking swiftly along a rocky ridge. He said, “The man was very nimble. I couldn’t believe how quickly he was moving among the rocks toward the high point on the ridge … My wife and I were suddenly stunned when he stopped and turned facing us. His arms were much longer than a normal man’s and he appeared to be much bigger — especially taller — than any man either of us had ever seen.” The man was so moved by what he saw that he wrote a letter to the late Castleton State College anthropologist Warren Cook. He told Cook that at first he tried to rationalize away what he was seeing as a prankster in a suit, but quickly ruled it out after what happened next. “Suddenly he raised his giant arms above his head and waved them several times … (then) turned and continued along the ridge with the agility of a gymnast. I was convinced that this was no ordinary man.” The sighting lasted for several minutes before the figure disappeared over the ridge.

In October 1986, three Castleton State College students were traveling on Route 4A on their way to West Rutland when their vehicle nearly struck a huge creature on the roadside. Everyone saw the figure which stood 6-1/2 to 7 feet tall. After the driver, Kerry Bilda, swerved to avoid hitting it, the trio looked back to see the creature still walking west. By the time they had turned around and went back, it was gone. A passenger, John Bradt said if his window had been down, it was close enough to reach out and touch. He said the body was covered in collie-length hair, but the face itself was nearly hairless. It had deep-set eyes, high cheekbones and a white skin tone. The trio also made a curious observation that is common in Bigfoot reports: The creature seemed oblivious to them and didn’t flinch or attempt to get out of the way of their car. The encounter happened just 100 yards from an incident that was reported the previous year, almost to the day.

A more recent sighting occurred on the evening of Oct. 8, 2005, when a father was “moose spotting” with his two daughters near Ludlow. Suddenly, a huge creature crossed the road 50 feet in front of their vehicle. He said it was about 8 feet tall, covered with hair, and crossed the road in only two strides. It had a cone-shaped head, a heavy build and was “covered in short dark hair.” The arms had a pronounced swing as it moved, and the hand that was visible was massive.

When it comes to assessing whether Bigfoot exists, one is faced with the lack of physical evidence: a body, fossils and bones. Somehow, it always manages to elude capture. On the other hand, perhaps an even more important questions is: Are there precedents in nature? There are many remarkable examples of adaptations enabling creatures to survive. Chameleons change color to blend with their surroundings and become seemingly invisible. The peregrine falcon can spot small animals up to 5 miles away. Most incredible of all is the sooty tern. This small bird can stay aloft for more than three years without landing and sleeps while flying. Is it too far-fetched to think Bigfoot could have evolved unique mechanisms that allow it to elude humans?

In recent years, over two dozen Bigfoot organizations have even been formed across the country in hopes of proving the creature’s existence. New England groups include: The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and The Northeast Sasquatch Researchers Association. Bill Brann, the president of the Northern Sasquatch Research Society based in Hudson Falls, N.Y., has conducted frequent investigations in Vermont, writes on his Web site that his goal is to determine “what its purposes are, how to contact and communicate with it and to ultimately obtain an indisputable photographic or video record of its existence.”

Whether real or imaginary, Bigfoot is a legitimate part of Vermont history: a kind of living folklore that continues to frustrate and fascinate.

As new sightings are recorded, the question remains: what should they be recorded under — folklore or zoology?

Source: “Bigfoot Man, myth or monster?” by Robert Bartholomew and Michael Pluta, The Rutland Herald, Rutland, Vermont, October 31, 2008.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •