Northfield Pigman
By Cole Herrold
Cryptids come in all shapes and sizes,
from colossal ape-men to slithering serpents to winged entities, but there's
one variety of these anomalous animals that seem to pop up around areas known
for romantic rendezvous, and these creatures tend to resemble human versions of
barnyard beasts. The most famous of these farmyard fiends are the infamous
Maryland Goatman and the trestle walking Pope Lick Monster. These caprine
creatures have the heads of a goat and the body of men and are known to attack
would-be lovers or any who would dare enter their dark domain. In Northfield,
Vermont, a similar creature is reported, but unlike those creatures seen in the
Billiwack Dairy, Pope Lick Trestle, or Prince George County, this creature is
an entirely different barnyard breed.
Northfield is a small college town in the
middle of the state Vermont that many would feel upon first glance that nothing
truly happens outside of a potential frat prank or some other youthful
misdemeanor, but much like almost every small town in America, be it Enfield,
Loveland, Bishopville, there is rumored to be a resident whose behavior is much
more eccentric than the incoming student body. This resident has been rumored
to of prowled around Northfield and the eerily named Devil's Washbowl area
since at least 1971, with some whispering dating back to 1951. The entity is
something that seems to echo other residents reported around the country is
that it seems to be a cross between a known animal and a human but just what
this human side is to be crossed with is something much rarer than the goat,
ape, or wolf type creatures that plague the hills and hollows of the united
states. This creature is said to have the peculiar feature of bearing the head
of a pig.
The Northfield Pigman, also known as the
Vermont Pigman, is a creature shrouded in a lot of legend with few official
facts about the case; most of what we do know about the creature comes from a
flap of sightings during the 1970s and into the 1980s, but details regarding
witnesses and even some of the events are secluded in anonymity or altered via
folkloric retellings, yet some points remain constant. The origin of this
creature, at least from a traceable standpoint, starts in Spring 1971 with the
disappearance of a young man. This young man, as the account would state, was
about twenty-one years of age and was the son of a group of farmers. From what
can be pieced together, he had his own pig farm on Darby Hill but proved to be
a sadist towards his swine, often abusing the plumped porkers to the point of
bleeding. It was said that on one specific night, while out slopping the
animals that he began to poke at them and cause them pain to the point that
they began crying out into the night. Their squeals could be heard for miles
and, in turn, reached the ears of some secluded savior in the dense woods
around the Devil's Washbowl. As the man continued his assault, he soon heard a
peculiar sound that seemed to bellow behind him as the man turned as legend
claims he encountered the Pigman who proceeded in killing the man in a gruesome
enough fashion as not to be reported. Now the man seemingly disappeared off his
property, never to be seen again, his parents began searching the area for the
man, but no sign of him could be found in either the Devil's Washbowl or
anywhere north of Northfield. Some whispers of the time claimed that the man's
body was devoured by the very pigs he abused, whereas others felt that
something they had yet to decipher the identity of took the man's body away to
the woods to devour.
After this alleged disappearance about six
months later, farmers and residents around the area soon began noticing that
something was taking their pets and small livestock. Cats, dogs, chickens,
rabbits, and geese were all going missing in the night their enclosures smashed
or the doors hanging wide open as though something had gone and opened the
cages with hands. While the identity of this abductor plagued the community, it
would soon be revealed one late night when a man whose home was on nearby Turkey
Hill heard the heavy clanking sound of trashcans being knocked over and the
scuffling sound of them being rummaged through. The man expecting stray dogs,
raccoons, opossums, or cats simply meandered over to the outside light switch
and turned on the flickering exterior porch light. He peered out of the window
on his door and saw something kneeling down by his trash can, yet he could not
make whatever the figure was. He stepped out of the house and stared at what
seemed to be a large pale object that was too big to be a typical animal from
the area. The man instantly felt this must be some homeless man or some
drunkard searching for something in my trash. He stared at the shape and soon
yelled, "Get the Hell out of Here!". As he yelled at this form, there
was a brief silence as the form turned its head towards him and slowly began to
rise. There standing in front of him was something that was clearly not human.
It was covered in long whitish hair and was noticeably naked (it can be assumed
that genitalia was seen). The figure appeared man-like in almost every respect,
including its height, except that as the man scanned the creature over, he
realized that the creature had instead of the human-like head one would expect
ahead, which looked identical to a pig's. The creature he had seen was
apparently eating out of the trash can and was kneeling down much as a man
would have. The creature, in a fight or flight instinct, soon began running
down the driveway and down the hill entering the adjoining woodlands as though
it thought the man might take a shot at it or simply out of concern of being
spotted. The man would later claim that "it was definitely naked" and
"It ran on two feet." Thus, eliminating the usual suspects.
Several days after the trash can incident,
the creature was seen in one of the most unassuming of locations, the local
Northfield High School. Four unnamed teenagers decided to leave the sobriety of
the dance and venture off behind the school to go and party on in the fashion
of angsty teens. The group had gone near the school's sandpit, which was near
the cemetery, an area that was not too far from the local woods, and had begun
in passing out the beer that they managed to score for this night. The group
had heard some strange sounds coming from the woods, which they would describe
as a kind of squealing. The group began to walk over towards the darkened
forest. One friend had the foresight to bring along the flashlight as the group
meandered over towards the cropping of trees. The flashlight beam bounced over
the bark and the expected foliage of the area, but after a little while, it hit
something they never would have expected. There kneeling down on the ground,
was a white form that seemed to be eating something in its hands. The group
stared in amazement as there was the creature feasting on what they were sure
was fresh roadkill. The creature seemed to notice them as they stared and
continued shining their light at it. The group who was still in the non-wooded
section of the area watched as the creature rose it's human like form appearing
more and more in the soft glow of the flashlight. The creature continued to
stare at these voyeurs as it tentatively began approaching them. As the
creature came closer, they could see it clearer; it was a bipedal creature with
the face of a pig. This is all the teens needed to see, and in the heat of the
moments left their brews behind and raced back to the safety of the school, the
15-16yr olds physically crying in front of their peers about the monster they had
witnessed.
Everyone in attendance knew that these
fellow students had to of been telling the truth. In a time where showing off
one's masculinity and maturity was overly important, crying in front of
everyone had to mean that what they were saying was true. As a group gathered
around to listen to the group's tale, several of the students left the dance to
go and search for the Pigman. One of these investigators would be Jeff Hatch,
someone who would forever be entwined with the case. Jeff and the other students
searched the area, and Jeff, when he came to the area, would later state,
"The grass was beat down. Something had been there". Yet this
evidence simply piqued his interest even more to the point that he rallied the
students and any who would believe the tale or listen in a good old fashion
monster hunt. It was also from this sighting that the name Pigman took root for
the pale predator that appeared in the woods around the area.
Jeff knew the area and knew that this
creature had some alternative connection to swine outside of its appearance.
So, Jeff decided to search a very specific pig farm near Union Brook that had
since been left abandoned in the hills around Northfield. When Jeff arrived at
the farm, he saw the dilapidated barn and the several outlining buildings that
made the farm. The area was in dire need of repair and certainly needed some
excessive maintenance. Yet as he mosied around the property searching for
anything unusual, he noticed that the farm was not entirely unoccupied. There wandering
around were countless numbers of pigs. These pigs, however, were not small or
even wild boars but what appeared to be farm-raised pigs of gigantic stature,
some seemingly 500-600lbs. These animals seemed unperturbed by their visit to
the farm and simply went about their business as Jeff and those with him
searched the area. Jeff instinctively went to the largest barn on the property,
and as soon as he entered, he noticed that this was not a place of life but of
death. There, on the ground littered around him, were countless bodies of dead
semi-eaten animals and countless bones. The area stank of death, yet as he
wandered into the abattoir, he could tell that something had been living there.
In one section, there was an area of hay that was formed and laid out, not
unlike a bed that he claimed, "Seemed to be sleeping here in the same room
as the dead animals." There was even the impression that something
relatively recently had been nestling there. Jeff was bamboozled by this and,
when retelling this account in the book Weird New England, could not
help but get goosebumps even in recounting it.
While this was an eerie development, Jeff
felt that the creature no longer lived on the Union Brook farm and had since
moved elsewhere, probably in the Devil's Washbowl. The Devil's Washbowl had
tons of caves and caverns that were suitable places for something large and
bizarre to remain hidden. So, gathering as many as he could, he proceeded in
getting a full-on assault of the Devil's Washbowl. For those unfamiliar, the
Devil's Washbowl is a bizarre natural area that has various anomalist effects
adding to the sinister name. The Washbowl has a single dirt road that passes
through, which ultimately as if mercifully ends in a U-turn returning you from
whence you came. The area of the Devil's Washbowl is pure darkness; it's
completely covered by the canopy of trees along the road. These trees make it
so that even natural lighting like sunlight, starlight, and moonlight are
completely unnoticeable. The area, however, even though this lack of light
where one would think would chill the area down, is actually warmer than
anywhere else in the area while still maintaining the moistness of a wetland.
The group of teenagers clamored into their
cars and began driving towards the dirt road of the Devil’s Washbowl. The group
in pure James Whale Frankenstein or Invisible Man fashion began
beating and searching every inch of the Devil's Washbowl in pure angry mob
fashion, and this led to the mountainous region and its infinite caves and
caverns. As the group searched the dripping caves, one group led by Jeff Hatch
came to one of the largest caverns in the Washbowl. The area stank to high
heaven, but as the group looked around, they noticed that this area was almost
a mirror image of the farm that they had previously investigated. The area was
filled with the dead remains of countless animals, and more noticeably, the
middle was filled with a hay bed that was almost identical to what they had
seen in the Union Brook Farm. Jeff holding his nose felt that this was evidence
of the fact that the creature had since moved since last they investigated.
Jeff would reflect the following about the site "There was no sign of
fire, but there was bedding in the cave-hay, probably from the pig farm." This was not the only evidence found at the
site, however, as there in the soft soil in the area were bizarre impressions
that seemed to be like cloven hooves. Jeff Hatch, in the Weird New England
book, readily admitted that he was not a skilled tracker, but the footprints
definitely gave off the impression of being either cloven or hoofed.
Since the search in the caves, the Pigman
had since staked out an official claim of the Devil's Washbowl as most of the
sightings after the search almost entirely occurred in the area. Rumors that
howls and screams could be heard in the Washbowl have occurred that since been
reported implying that something anomalous had been claimed to reside in the
area. Drivers along the Devil's Washbowl would report claiming to see a white
form cross in front of their cars which almost always seemed to get away before
they could make out the figure entirely. Rumors of the cavern findings spread
like wildfire, and it was because of this other groups decided to go and search
for the elusive entity in the caves and caverns of the Washbowl. It was on one
such occasion that a couple out on a little romantic evening went with a group
up into the caves and, in pure horror movie fashion, proceeded to split up to
cover more ground. The couple did not get far as they entered a particularly
large cavern when they noticed a ghostly white form coming closer to them from
the surrounding shadows. The creature leapt on the boyfriend, who was closer to
the creature, and the two began tussling on the ground. The creature was
apparently evenly matched with the young boy and perhaps might have been taken
in if the creature's horrendous hands happened to reach down alongside its body
and feel the cold hard form of a nearby rock. The creature, in its porcine
grip, proceeded to grab the stone and, lifting it up to the boy's head, began
striking him until he ultimately was knocked away. Clearly wounded and weakened
from the fight, the boy could do nothing as the pale predator proceeded in
grabbing him and taking him deep into the cavern from whence it came. His
screams echoed through the caves, and his girlfriend, who was so terrified by
this event, merely curled up into a ball on the ground and was screaming and
sobbing. The sounds of fear caused the rest of their group to stop their search
and come to their aid, but it was too late; nothing could be found of the
boyfriend except the bloody rock that laid near the entrance to the cavern's
path. The boy nor his body were ever seen again.
While this encounter is perhaps the most
aggressive encounter of the Pigman, it would not be the last, and the incident
surprisingly did not stop anyone from traveling the Devil's Washbowl. Cars
frequently traversed the narrow path, many of whom were curious of this porcine
phantom. Many of them ultimately seeing something cross the road that was
ghostly white in color and would only be noticed for a brief second as the
headlights hit the creature as it crossed the road. While most of these
sightings were far away on one especially dark night, a man would have an all
too close encounter with the beast. The man was driving down the dark road
thinking all about the events that currently had been happening in Northfield
and his life. These thoughts swirled in his mind preoccupying his attention,
and so it was in this moment of oblivion that as he glanced back at the
windshield, he noticed some pale white figure was only inches away from being
struck by his car. The figure, however, before ultimately being a victim of a
hit and run, proceeded in leaping onto the hood of the car and stared at one
can only think was rage at the man behind the wheel. The man stared right back
at the entity and noticed that it was the same creature said to of stalked the
Washbowl. Its appearance matched it to a T, for it was completely naked yet
covered in long blonde or whitish hair. It looked human-like, however, except
for the face, which looked exactly like that of a pigs. The creature continued
to stare until, eventually, it shifted its body and vaulted off the car,
running away from the road and into the woods.
While sightings of the Pigman became
almost regular in frequency and rumors of the creature's violent behavior were
well known in the town, this did not stop romantic rendezvous to the area, and
the area of the Devil's Washbowl became another infamous Lover's Lane. Much
like Partrick Road in Napa or the TNT Area in Point Pleasant, the area was a
hotbed not just for monster reports but for a place that young lovers could go
"parking." These youthful rituals were almost always followed by
whispering tales of the mysterious creatures that were said to roam therein.
Northfield resident Dick Severy would state that during this time, "young
fellas would take their girls up there and tell 'em about the Pigman. So, the
girl's would cuddle up a little closer". While this can be a pleasant
evening of amore for some would-be monster hunters, on one occasion, there was
a third wheel to the evening that not only destroyed the mood but also almost
destroyed one of the wheels.
Another unnamed high school couple was out
parking in the Devil's Washbowl; the two had sat there for a while and so it's
not implausible to suggest what had been going on. Halfway through the session,
the couple's embrace was ultimately ended by nature's call. The boyfriend had
to go relieve himself and left the girl in the car to go by a tree near the
trunk of the car. As the boyfriend had assumedly finished, he felt the strong
hands of something grab him by the shoulders and begin to throw him around like
a ragdoll. The creature let him go flying straight into the bramble and brush. Yet
this would not be the end as the unseen assailant began unleashing squealing
sounds and began coming towards him again, grabbing him once more and throwing
him into the opposite direction. The boy's form, however, did not hit the soft
earth or plants around, but his wounded frame went barreling into his car. The
boy slumped on the ground and finally saw his assailant there coming towards
him was a 5'8" to 5'10" creature it was covered in long whitish hair,
it had a human-like body, as opposed to hands or hooves it had two long
razor-tipped talons for claws that were dripping with blood from its earlier
assault. The creature's head was, however, like that of a pig. The creature
charged at the boy again and proceeded to lift him up, scratching the boy's
chest and arms and causing deep gashes, all the while throwing him repeatedly
up against the car. The girlfriend still in the car could hear the sick
thudding of his body against the car and his cries of anguish and help. She
peered out the window and saw the porcine phantom pounding her lover to a pulp,
and so she let out a scream. The creature, hearing this unexpected sound,
seemed to of been startled and frightened by the noise and instantly dropped
the boy before running away back into the darkness of the woods. The boyfriend
slowly got up and noticed the various hoofprints around, and began to head back
towards the driver seat bleeding from his chest and arms. He began as soon as
he sat down to start up the car and head straight back home. The police
eventually were called, and now with someone actually physically hurt that
claimed the injuries were caused by the creature, felt the need to investigate.
The officers searched the hills and hollows of the Devil's Washbowl but did not
find anything.
Sightings of the Pigman as time went on
became more and more sporadic after the police searched the area. Perhaps this
was out of fear of the creature after the attack on the boy or that the
creature itself wanted to be left alone, becoming more and more secluded. Yet
occasionally, a sighting or strange occurrence linked to the creature would
come forward; Chad Clarke and three of his friends Jesse, Pete, and Mark were
just some of the last people to officially come forward and claim to hear the
Pigman. Chad was from South of Montpelier and lived in a rural town near
Northfield in the 70s. He managed to go and convince three of his closest
companions to go and look for the Pigman in the Devil's Washbowl. The group
drove the long winding desolate road and came into the heart of the Washbowl.
The group proceeded to pull off the main road and started to go and look around
the area while not going too far from the car. The crew then, after a short
time, began to lean against the car and began smoking cigarettes. As they
smoked in the darkness, they seemed to realize that the area was deafly silent,
much quieter than it should be. It was at that moment that the group decided to
go and do some classic ripping on each other. "You know, he could be
watching us right now," said Chad. "yeah he could be perched up on
any of these hills. Just trying to figure out a way to take us down one by
one," said Jesse. "Screw that, wed take him down and make bacon out
of him!" said Mark. "I don't know about that they say that he's
faster than a man," retorted Jesse. Pete, obviously perturbed by the
eeriness of the conversation, went and said, "Why don't you all shut
up." Pete proceeded to get back in the car; he was noticeably terrified,
and of course, the others noticed. The group, now grinning ear to ear, began to
mock him out of his cowardice, and this went on for some time until Pete said,
"Shut the Fuck Up!". As if on cue, a large high pitch bellowing
squeal rang out in the area. The group sat there listening until it stopped
and, in a matter of three seconds, began driving back as fast as possible.
Chad, driving, looked down at the wheel and noticed he was so terrified his
knuckles had turned white while holding onto the steering wheel. The group
raced back home, and everyone's face, much like Chad's knuckles, was white as a
sheet. That night and for the next couple of weeks, Chad would have nightmares
about the Pigman and would never enter the area ever again.
While Chad and his friends did not see the
source of the sound which they felt came from the Pigman, the same cannot be
said for Amanda Paulger and her friends who, in a similar fashion, also went
out to search for the sinister swine. Amanda was 16 and at a party with several
of her friends. While at the party, the group had talked about going to go look
for Pigman at the Devil's Washbowl. The group was only a short walk from the
Washbowl, and so they decided to head out and walk the dark canopy-covered
area. It was around the middle of the night, and they had only wandered about a
mile into the Washbowl when they began noticing that tree branches had suddenly
seemed to of been dropping right in front of them. One of her friends joked, "oh
it must be the Pigman!" and the group chuckled at this, but there was a
slight breeze, so the group had truly felt that this was caused only by the
wind and nothing more. Yet, almost every 30 seconds, another branch would fall
directly in front of the group. The group soon started to feel uneasy; these
branches were too thick and long to of been knocked down from the trees by the
wind alone, and there were certainly no animals that would throw branches. As
the group contemplated what was going on, one friend soon spoke out, saying
that she just heard a pig's squeal, but the others denied hearing anything, yet
this added to the mystery causing the group to wonder whether their presence in
the area made the Pigman angry and what if he came after them and what if the
creature put these branches in front of them to stop them or even harm them.
The group decided that they could not risk an encounter and began to turn
around to return back to the party. Just as they were starting to leave, one of
her friends, in a manner of hysterics, bursts out, "I swear I just saw
him!" the girl was noticeably upset and tried to get the others to go
faster, and just as she said that out of the woods loomed a strange figure,
Amanda would describe the figure in the following "It looked like a man,
except for a pig head, and he came out of the woods, and he was naked, and he
was white, like really really pale white, and its terrifying." Amanda and
her friends did not wait long to see what would happen with this creature and
began running back, back to the party where they sat there breathing hard and
trying to rationalize the hog humanoid that appeared before them.
While there are no more official accounts
of the Pigman to the point that some researchers feel it has since died or
moved ideas of what the creature was seemed to never end. One of by far the
most interesting theories to what the Pigman is comes from several online
sources who have given the creature an altogether different name. Upon doing
research, I came across the name Sam Harris several times on some articles on
the Pigman, and the name is used to explain the identity of the creature. Sam
Harris was a boy who, on October 30, 1951, allegedly went missing around the
same area as where the Pigman was now cited. Sam had gone out with a carton of
eggs for some pre-Halloween tricking, and when the morning light came over the
trees on the 31st, his parents found that he never came home. Now,
like almost all legends, there are variations to this story; the most popular
one is that Sam was never found and, as time went on, became feral and became
the infamous Pigman. The second variation is a more supernatural take on the
story; this version states that Sam was indeed found, but on that October 30th
night, he became possessed by the Devil. How or why this occurred is anyone’s guess,
but the story goes that when Sam came home, he was fixated on slaughtering
animals, specifically pigs; he would go and eat them raw, eating everything but
the bones. He also would hollow out the heads of the pigs and wear them as a
kind of mask. His mother apparently was unaware of this new macabre habit her
son developed until one night she ventured onto her porch, and there squatting
down was Sam slurping up the bloody entrails of a recent kill. She saw him
eating it with a look of glee that made her sick to her stomach and so
horrified that she never recovered. Ultimately her son's behavior drove her to
kill herself, and her son, now without a family, wears the hollowed-out pig's
head around the Devil's Washbowl and causes the havoc that is reported in
Northfield. Another variation of the Sam Harris legend states that the Devil
did not just possess Sam but that he also transformed him physically into the
Pigman.
The Sam Harris legend is interesting, but
I believe it is just that a legend. I have searching newspaper articles never
found any reference to a missing boy of that name in 1951 or even 1952, and the
tale itself is similar to countless other folklore stories that are
interconnected with many other cryptids. The Maryland Goatman was said to of
been a scientist who experimented on goats and, in a freak lab accident, became
the axe-wielding monster, the Napa Rebobs of California also had at one point
been said to of been man-made or even super-soldiers who became flying primates
or semi-cyborgs. The tale is also similar to the account from 1971 in which the
21-year-old pig farmer went missing, so perhaps these accounts are the same,
and there is some problem with the timespan. I have, however, also tried to
find a missing person by the name of Sam Harris during that time as well and
came up empty-handed. Now searching back further, there was a grocer by the
name of Sam Harris whose mules had died from eating a delivery wagon in the
December 3, 1901, edition of the News and Advertiser newspaper from
Northfield, but that was the only reference to a Sam Harris I had been able to
find. So more than likely, the Sam Harris aspect to the Northfield Pigman case
and probably the missing 21-year-old pig farmer in 71' are just additional
folklore to the actual encounters.
While Sam Harris is most likely fictional,
the Pigman is still in limbo as to its authenticity. So, if this creature is
real, there are plenty of avenues to take. One of the most favored ideas is that
the Pigman was someone who was born with physical deformities and, being
shunned by society, began living in the Devil's Washbowl. There are tons of
accounts of towns in the woods where individuals with deformities are said to
dwell. They range from everything from the Melonheads to Albino Pigmen, who
also happen to be cannibals, to midget and dwarf communities to those
communities caused by inbreeding. In Sellersville, Pennsylvania, there are
rumors of the pale albino pig-nosed cannibals that live in the mountains
abducting travelers. These accounts have in some cases been confirmed, whereas
others have firmly been rooted in folklore, so it would not be too far off the
board for the Northfield Pigman to have been a human with albinism or some
other kind of genetic disorder. Close in hand to that theory is that the
creature might have been a feral human that simply from living the harshness of
that kind of lifestyle developed some deformities through an accident or
something along those lines.
Another hypothesis is that the Pigman
might be some kind of mutated human much like the genetic defects that we are
aware of something be it pollution or radiation or even natural mutation that
caused a child to be born with features associated with a pig. Much like the
other hypotheses, this could have caused the offspring to run into the woods to
live a feral lifestyle and, depending on the age, not have the same social
skills that a typical person raised in society has. Much like the other
theories, this is pure speculation but a hypothesis that has been brought up
several times.
One of the all-time classic explanations
for any barnyard beast cryptids is that they are the results of farmers getting
too friendly with their livestock. This version, unlike the classic goat or
sheep seen in cases like the Billiwhack Monster or The Sheepman of Waterford
this version features an apparently overly promiscuous pig and a farmer going
hog wild. While in most cases this is certainly an impossibility, I will say
that pigs and humans have many features that are similar to a human's, and some
researchers have proposed that early pig ancestors might have mated with
chimpanzees causing the modern human line to occur. Now there is very little to
support this theory which has come to be known as the Hybrid Hypothesis and has
been mostly researched by Geneticist Dr. Eugene M. McCarthy, but it is
interesting how some cryptids could be explained by this hypothesis if it is
accurate, especially in this case.
While theories
abound from satanic possession, feral humans, nature has gone completely wrong,
and interspecies breeding. There is, outside of the belief that the whole thing
is a hoax, a more plausible answer even though it itself is just as scrutinized
as any theory above, and that is that the Pigman is, in fact, a Bigfoot. The
reason this hypothesis appears is that the Pigman, outside of it having a pig's
head and long talons, does appear like a typical bigfoot, albeit its one of the
first times where one notices the genitalia, but the long hair and the bipedal
form are all quintessential bigfoot traits. One thing that always interested me
is that too hoof prints were often found at the bedding sites, but when
witnesses would encounter Pigman, hooves were never reported, so perhaps the
creature had typical bigfoot feet, and the other tracks were misidentified
moose or deer or elk tracks. The pig's face too is often ambiguous when you
really break it down since the creature is never exactly described, nor are
there any eyewitness sketches of the creature to get a true feel of what was
seeing perhaps the creature had an upturned pig-like nose which is a trait
sometimes seen in primates. Witnesses do not tend to elaborate on whether it
had pig-like ears or if the nose jutted out or if it had a snout, so it's
possible that this creature could be simply a very strangely nosed bigfoot. The
behavior of the Pigman is also consistent with those who have encountered
bigfoot as there are many similarities between the two. The throwing of branches
seen in the Amanda case, the cave-like lifestyle including the bedding, the
stealing of farm life, the sprinting across the road, the howls the bigfoot is
said to release sometimes sound pig-like, and so on and so on. If the creature
did not have the name Pigman, it would almost be an exact copy of a bigfoot.
Yet while this answer is much more plausible than the others, it still does not
explain the two long talons only on the creature's hands, as well as the
possibility that the creature did, in fact, have more pig-like features
compared to ape-like.
While I'm a big
fan of the Bigfoot hypothesis, there is another possibility to the identity of
the creature, and that is the theory I've come to call the bipedal boar
hypothesis. This hypothesis is the same as Linda Godfrey's hypothesis for the
indigenous Dogman; the concept is that through years of evolution, some species
had developed the ability to walk upright because this, just like with us,
proved advantageous, and in doing so, other features began to change with it.
This concept could be applied to perhaps a group of wild boars who became less
reliant on being quadrupedal and, through the shifting of the pelvis and
vertebrae, managed to become what today we could call Pigmen or Boarmen. There
are several accounts of cryptids in the United States as well as overseas that
seem to be similar or of the same species. The Georgia Pigman, Elmore City Pig
Man, Salina Pig Man, Oklahoma Boarman, The Cannock Chase Pigman, and the
Kinchafoonee Creep all seem to be similar or the same type of creature. Now, of
course, this hypothesis is pure speculation, and there’s no fossil evidence or
a biological specimen to confirm this theory, but there’s still the chance that
this could realistically happen in a small population and then spread over the
United States in small pocket areas.
With all that
said, there has never been a conclusive end to the creature; in fact, the
creature has slowly been weaseling its way up to cult cryptid status as it
gained tons of attention from online sources as well as a brief segment on Monsters
and Mysteries in America. Yet as with many cryptids, the sightings seemed
to of stopped or at least continued to of gone unreported and even the cases
mentioned except for the few where actual witnesses came forward seem to be
examples of variant cases of folklore such as the boyfriend who was attacked
case is similar to the Hookman, Cropsy, or any of the dead boyfriend lovers
lane legends which themselves originate from New England. This case is so
difficult to get a clear feel of because there are so many unknowns to the
point that coming up with an official status of whether this is folklore, a
cryptid encounter, or a hoax is almost impossible. With that said, however, it
is a fascinating case that is something that I would love to investigate some
time in the future. Until then, however, the Pigman will remain as one of New
England's most infamous cryptids and a legend that will go down in the Fortean
literature for some time to come.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Mammal/ Hominid
Location: Devil’s Washbowl, Northfield,
Vermont
Sighted: 1971-Present Day
Works Cited:
Weird New England By Joseph A. Citro
The Vermont Monster Guide By Joseph A.
Citro
Eugene M. McCarthy, Ph.D. "The Hybrid
Hypothesis” http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html.
Megan Borchert “The Pigman of Northfield,
Vermont” Werewoof. https://www.werewoofs.com/monster-stories/pigman-northfield-vermont/.
Accessed September 5, 2021.
“Sam Harris” https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Sam_Harris.
Accessed September 5, 2021.
Monsters and Mysteries in America "Vermont
Pigman, Bridge Where I Died, Project Stargate” Season 3 Episode 5. Destination
America. 2015.
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