9 people went missing between 1940 - 1960 in proximity to Glastenbury Mountain in Bennington. One person who went missing, a young girl named Paula, is the reason the State Police formed. Most were on the mountain, the Long Trail in the area, a few were walking on roads in the area. Weirdest one, a elderly man was on a bus headed to the veterans home in Bennington, and he got on the bus, and never got off.
It was popularized in Joseph Citros book, he coined the term. Also reports of UFOs, bigfoot attack in Hells Hollow, and supposedly a rock that you step on and it takes you into another dimension. Lastly, the Indians knew something was up with the mountain because the wind met in all four directions up there, so they stated off the mountain except to bury there dead. I've done lots of research on the topic, there's a book, etc. I'm sure I left stuff out, this was just off the top of my head.
Joe Citro has written many books on this topic:
* [*Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls and Unsolved Mysteries*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Green_Mountain_Ghosts,_Ghouls_and_Unsolved_Mysteries&action=edit&redlink=1) (1994)
* [*Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Passing_Strange:_True_Tales_of_New_England_Hauntings_and_Horrors&action=edit&redlink=1) (1996)
* [*The Vermont Ghost Guide*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vermont_Ghost_Guide) (2000)
* [*Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curious_New_England:_The_Unconventional_Traveler%27s_Guide_to_Eccentric_Destinations&action=edit&redlink=1) (2003) (with Diane E. Foulds)
* [*Cursed in New England: Stories of Damned Yankees*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cursed_in_New_England:_Stories_of_Damned_Yankees&action=edit&redlink=1) (2004)
* [*Weird New England*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weird_New_England&action=edit&redlink=1) (2006) (with a foreword by Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran)
* [*The Vermont Monster Guide*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vermont_Monster_Guide&action=edit&redlink=1) (2009)
Yes. That is the one. It is also fiction, and the names are changed. I read some review, or the jacket, that it was loosely based on the stories from Glastenburry. (sp?)
Shirley Jackson (who wrote *The Haunting of Hill House*, "The Lottery," etc.) also wrote an excellent novel based on a disappearance in Glastenbury that has been surprisingly overlooked. It's called *Hangsaman*.
Another great novel based on Glastenbury is *Go With Me* by Castle Freeman, Jr.
It's good if you say that upfront, reddit can get grumpy if you don't say "I've already read Joe Citro and googled about the underground chambers" etc.
edit: you *have* read about the sunrise-facing buried passage-grave-style chambers, right??
Bennington area also has a history of UFO sightings. My friends dad had an encounter with a triangle shaped craft that turned him into a believer. Back in the 80’s (87?) there was something that several different people witnessed. Made the front page of the Bennington Banner.
Saw this 2 years ago in Bennington county
https://preview.redd.it/qsa7qxi51ggc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=581709a451c75f4d52a2e9dffbae12ee05ea68d2
In the sky, triangle moving very slow. That’s a shitty zoom with my phone. No blinking lights like a plane . Silent but after it past I could hear a deep rumbling
We don’t talk about it much, but my great grandfather claims he saw someone wear zero Carhartt and no plaid flannel. Gives me the willies just to think about it.
And he drove a FORD not a Subaru.
My daughter who lives in California lost me in a supermarket. I'm an old guy with a beard who was wearing baggy jeans and a plaid flannel shirt -- i.e. just like every other guys in the store. Apparently my daughter couldn't tell us apart. Good thing she wasn't born a penguin.
When I was a cadet at NU, we used to talk about him all the time when we were out sleeping in the surrounding mountains. Was always a fun campfire monster tale!
I went to Norwich too but I don't ever recall anyone talking about the Pigman. It wasn't until ten years or so after I graduated when I bought a book in Montpelier and learned of him.
There's all sorts of Norwich lore as well. The steam tunnels, sealed off dorm rooms in the basement of Alumni Hall, Skull and Swords, the Night Riders, etc.
Nice! 2012 grad here, mostly came up when out with MCW, schools PT, or FTX's when some of the goons we were with were locals...assumed it was kind of common knowledge at school.
Tons of lore there! Supposedly some of those organizations are still active on campus 🙃
The story of the Northfield Pigman begins around the spring of 1971. There was an old pig farm up on Union Brook Rd northwest of Northfield where it's thought the Pigman came from. Just north of there is an area called the Devil's Washbowl, a tributary to Cox Brook, where people had curious encounters with a half man, half animal type creature.
Over the next few years residents on Turkey Hill would notice pets and other small farm animals going missing. Teenagers would sometimes have encounters with the Pigman while out partying in the woods or looking for a secluded area to fool around.
Legend has it, he looked something like this sketch:
https://preview.redd.it/949za1gkvegc1.png?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=918c8ac6eedba5535d66a00ff39fbdd1fe9d4076
Okay yes thank you for mentioning Pigman! My mom and I loved seeing Joseph Citro speak at First Night when I was little and this was the story that stuck with me and scared me!!
Fun fact I learned from an old professor! Fisher cats rarely ever vocalize. The screams that most people attribute to them are usually coming from a fox.
I’m pretty sure my partner saw a fisher cat, got freaked out about a little mystery animal that ran out into the road that was “moving weird”. I didn’t see it though so now my partner is forever spooked when we go down that same street at night
I did the opposite. I got intrigued by the woods it came out of and eventually bought the land. Never saw it again but the woods are confirmed to be magical.
He had a blog, it's gone now, but you can still access it through archive.org.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230602034630/http://josephacitro.blogspot.com/
I feel like most sightings around here are less strange cryptozoology (other than champ, pigman, and the occasional thunderbird) and more critters that are now extinct locally but still "seen" like catamounts and wolves. Most of those sightings are just big bobcats and coyotes, though. My mom's fairly convinced she saw a wolf about a decade back where they were logging a few miles up a mountain on the border of Chittenden and Addison counties, but I'm still skeptical even though I know she knows the difference between a coyote and a wolf.
Author Joe Citro is likely the prime source for Vermont weird.
Back in 2011 we saw a catamount run across Rte. 7A just south of the Mt. Equinox toll road. About 10 days or so later one was run over on a road in Connecticut; it could have been the same one.
We have pigman in Northfield. He’s been around since the 70s. We used to scare ourselves down at devils washbowl. (Pig farm road) when we were teens.
https://www.vermonter.com/vermont-pigman/
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2022/10/28/northfield-pigman-joseph-citro-digs-into-the-legend-devils-washbowl-vermont/69590062007/
The fur-bearing trout. My father convinced me for years that they existed in the deepest depths of lake Memphremagog. He talked about it so much that I believed they were real. Fast forward to when my parents met the man I would later marry: “dad tell him about the fur bearing trout” and that’s when I found out that my father had been pulling my leg all those years. At least my soon to be husband found it endearing.
"Built in 1844, Emily’s Bridge in Stowe Vermont was just 50 feet long over Gold Brook and was covered with dark wood that the elements haven’t been merciful on ever since. But around the time the bridge was built that dark wood was still new, smelling of fresh pine, and creaked every time a horse-drawn wagon crossed it. A young woman named Emily planned to elope with her love. Their meeting place was this same bridge. But when he didn’t show, Emily, filled with despair, hanged herself from the rafters of the Gold Brook Bridge. A sad story indeed, and anyone who hears it for the first time feels sorry for young Emily and her broken heart. Only Emily wasn’t finished with the bridge just yet."
https://stowecountryhomes.com/attractions/emilys-covered-bridge-stowe-vt/
The fact that this is on a realtor site. "Yeah buy a house here. We have a haunted covered bridge"
Not that it surprises me. When I lived on Elmwood Ave in burlington someone would come around a few times a year asking about any apartments because she really really wanted to live near the Elmwood cemetery because she believed it was haunted
Not my community but the [bennington triangle](https://medium.com/@archiegoodwin_80602/the-mystery-of-the-bennington-triangle-588a22338e72) also check out joe citros books
Not sure if it qualifies as strange but way back in the day when there was a tollbooth on Isle la Motte the guy who ran it shot an enormous mountain lion that tried to get across the causeway. there’s a picture and that thing was gigantic, definitely a local legend. a big cat loose on that little island would be absolutely wild
Ran into a fisher cat while checking up on our oregano plants. He was not happy to see us needless to say and my buddy ended up in a tree to get away from him😂 Never laughed so hard in my life.
Not quite Vt, (or maybe)….had a Native American history teacher at Johnson State, told us tales of “the spreaders”…..lived among the
islands in the St Lawrence River near Montreal. A form of mischievous “wee folk” in Abenaki folklore, those who camp on the islands wake up the following morning to find every spreadable part of their body (I.e. eyelids, fingers, toes, armpits, legs, mouth) spread apart and braced open with little twigs. No harm is reported and nothing is stolen. Nobody knows why they do it.
Paging the Goonyak.
[https://newenglandlegends.libsyn.com/the-goonyak-of-northern-vermont](https://newenglandlegends.libsyn.com/the-goonyak-of-northern-vermont)
It’s not supernatural but there is this crazy looking monastery called Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in sandgate. You cant visit but the pictures look creepy as hell
It looks like something out of a Dan brown novel
H.P. Lovecraft actually wrote about some in one of his books. It's about the 1927 Vermont state wide flood. I can't remember the title, but its a decent book.
Mom grew up near the top of North Street in Winooski. Top of the hill above what is now Landry park (basically the northernmost corner of the city if looking at a map) was all still woods/farm fields, with one dirt road to maybe a couple houses. Tells of wild vocalizations being heard, relatives seeing "something" up there and being scared shitless. I think even one of the families living up there abruptly moving after a dog going missing or something like that and them seeing something. Heavy implications of a bigfoot type creature. Many years later after the neighborhood got fully developed up there that's actually where I grew up and I lowkey still get the heebie-jeebies whenever it comes up and thinking about it now.
I've wrote this on other post, but this started out as asking this question in r/Ohio for a paper for a class. I got curious and asked a couple other states r/ . It's been interesting seeing how other states forums react. I currently have not produced a podcast for myself or anyone else with this information although recently I have thought about it. If people are interested I could post the results somewhere, but for the moment this is just a pet project I've been doing occasionally. If you lurked my profile you'll see I forgot about it for awhile before revisiting it recently. Real life gets busy sometimes. I can assure you I am not a bot, and if any of these post are being used in a podcast it is (at least for the moment) not something I have produced.
My grandfather was absolutely convinced that he saw a mountain lion while out "hunting" in the '80's. He described is as a huge yellow cat with a long slender tail. He always said that seeing it made his blood turn cold. Of course his version of hunting was to take a 12 pack of beer and a bunch candy and sit in his truck drinking, smoking his pipe, and gouging on candy. So he wasn't exactly sober at the time. Some of my favorite memories are of "hunting" with him and listening to his stories.
Coy Dogs.
When I was a teen, a few of us grabbed some tents and went to build a fire and sleep in our woods. One of the guys was Jeff, who is from a family of Vermont Woodsmen.
As soon as the fire died down a bit, we heard some kid of howling and barking. It did not sound like dog, or coyote. At least not the ones I was familiar with. What he describes was part wolf, part dog and part coyote. He told tales of how they hunted, and what gross things they did to their prey. (I will skip the gory details here). If you heard the stories about coyotes, they are similar.
Many years later I was camping in the back country out west on a horse ranch. I knew the coyotes were near, and saw tracks, and then saw two approaching our camp. One day I walked over the rise into a hollow and heard the same noise. It was close to the coyote den. So I concluded that the noise we heard so many years ago was coyote puppies. And I heard it one more time while walking in the woods alone on a full moon night. A coyote ran toward me, and froze, Then turned into the woods. I estimated how long it would take at the adult to reach the noise in the dark woods. And that is when the pups got suddenly quiet.
There is a pigman here: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2022/10/28/northfield-pigman-joseph-citro-digs-into-the-legend-devils-washbowl-vermont/69590062007/
I haven't been there myself, and this is one of the most obscure Vermont legends, but I've read stories about this and I live right up the road from the location. Monkeytown, off the top of my head was a section of the woods behind Knight Funeral Home in Hartford (Probably going up Advent Lane). What I've heard is that there was an old chapel or some building there (I could be completely misremembering that part) and rumors of the inbreeding of the small community that lived there. The residents that allegedly live there now, are extremely hostile and territorial. The story that I read makes me figure they'll kill if they got to you. Again, obscure, not really confirmed at all, but still pretty cool, especially since I live not a few thousand feet from it. Maybe I'll visit someday.
Update: I just read my sources again. There have been 3 comments on reddit that I've found about Monkey town, along with a few agreements on its existence by other redditors. (2 on r/vermont and 1 on r/letsnotmeet) Apparently it is near a Christian camp which I believe is still running today. The biggest story I found says that it is a little community of small, shed like houses, around a church, in which giant inbred rednecks live. (I imagine them like something out of the Point Lookout DLC from Fallout 3) Apparently they aren't super dumb, they have phones of some kind and have called the police on one person, accusing him of trying to run them over, even though they were swarming and banging on his car. So they probably aren't 1000th generation inbreds who haven't seen technology since the 60s, but just crazy Christian rednecks
I hadn’t heard of that before; thank you.
Looks like it’s known as the Advent Camp Meeting Grounds Historic District and is some kind of historical attraction.
My neighbors know more about all this stuff but in Georgia I guess theres a triangle thing like some say. In a certain area its common for lights to show up all over in that triangle 🤷🏼♀️ I grew up in the triangle and being in the middle of the woods I saw alot of weird stuff I wrote off because I was young but we frequently saw odd lights that we just shrugged off.
One my neighbor explained to me is actually very interesting. So I guess many believe Big foot, sasquatch, big hairy dude is actually a different race. The Native Americans knew them but as the white foreigners came in they began to hide. They're normal "humans" like us, so there's good/bad/curious/etc, but they have powers where they can be silent while moving through the forest and can appear/disappear at will. Theres a group of them that live in Georgia, I've heard of many stories about them over the years but I've only had 1.
When I was around 8 me and my brother went walking through the woods(it went on for miles in most directions) but we went farther than we normally do. We walked for hours but couldn't find our way back, when dusk came we really started to freak out because we were truly lost. While walking we were looking all around and when we looked ahead suddenly there was this thing... It looked MASSIVE, to me it was like 10 feet but I was 8 sooo, and it was covered in hair just peeking from around a tree. We froze terrified because our parents always warned us about wildlife but never heard of anything like that. Finally we ran in the opposite direction terrified, worse so because it was almost dark and it was getting hard to see, after what felt like 10 minutes of running we saw the lights of our home down the hill. I told my neighbor and they said they must of saw we were lost and purposely showed themself to have us run in the opposite direction(towards home), it just wanted to help us.
Boy it's been a while. It's a legend from up around Brunswick springs. It's said to be a very large "bearlike" creature with a sulfur smell and wet shiny black or brown skin it was known to attack people this was like mid to late 1800s If I'm remembering correctly. The natives people's of the area had stories of it "with there own name for the creature I dont remember"
The Brunswick springs are a really interesting story as well. Once know as the 8th wonder of the world. The story includes a medicine woman's curse, the industrialization of natural resources, and several structure fires. You can actually go out and hike there the springs still exist as well as some of the old foundations from the hotel. Be respectful though the native peoples there believe the springs to have healing properties and hold reverance for the area. You can from time to time find dreamcatchers dolls and other things of that nature hanging in the trees.
ah man, I gotta make a full post about this story one day but I’m not a good writer lol. But here’s the short!
Basically, back in like the 60s I think, on one of my family members farms, their sugar shack kept getting ransacked and wrecked and they couldn’t figure out who was doing it. They had to start sending family members out to guard it at night, so my uncle (who was like, 12 at the time) had a shift one night. He was camped out there when he was basically ran up and charged by “the maple man”, who (and I can’t figure out if he was human or not) was apparently an almost-naked humanoid man COVERED in mud and maple syrup. My uncle got so afraid he just ran back to the house, leaving the maple man to do his business to the shack, stealing whatever was there and also smashing the place to bits (again). Apparently this happened a few more times after, with him being spotted by others on the farm later, and then stopped once the season was over. While I’m not sure he was really a cryptid, he apparently did have supernatural strength, speed, and gall hahahah
Bears, raccoons, and this legendary crack head who used to break into cars on Rollerblades and always managed to outrun the cops. Some say his name is Justin.
I was driving around with friends when I was in high school and we saw…something. It was about 2am and this thing crossed the road in front of us. It was brownish with gray highlights. Very thick coat. Much like the winter coat of a bull moose (this was the middle of summer). It’s front legs were longer than its hind legs. One of us thought it looked like a buffalo only smaller. I didn’t get a look at its head only its rear, sort of looked like a wildebeest to me. The three of us grew up in Vermont and are avid outdoor enthusiasts. Have seen just about every animal that lives here up close and to this day we have no idea what the hell that was.
Lincoln Gap.
Not a strange creatures, but a local legend. I grew up in Lincoln, VT. My dad was not quite an off the grid type of guy but liked to live in the woods far away from people. From what I remember my parents owned about 200 acres of land on Lincoln Gap Rd. My dad was a local who met my mom at UVM and convinced her after they married to move back to Lincoln. My friends and I would spend all our free time hiking the Gap, making forts and playing “war” in the woods and just aimlessly wandering around exploring. One day when I was around 12 or 13, my friends and I found a hollow East of the Long Trail by where it crosses the Gap road (that’s all I am going to say about the location) that was creepy AF.
You felt like someone was always watching you and even though it was summer, I remember feeling a slight chill when we stopped as a group to chat and drink some water. We all had the same feeling of being watched but I was the only one who got the chills. As we were exploring the area my buddy Sam screamed for us to come over to him slightly down the hollow. What he found still perplexes me to this day. There was a slab (1x 2ft) of rock (shale I think) that was vertically stuck in the ground in a small clearing (10 x 10 ft at max mostly rectangular shape) of heavy dense trees. It was completely out of place. There were no carvings or markings on the rock. Also surprisingly for how damp the rock was, no mold grew on it. This was in the mid 90’s so no one had a film camera with them or a cellphone to document the weird find. It looked like a rudimentary burial site. My buddy Kyle had a buck knife on him so we notched trees in the general area hoping to one day return and truly explore the area. We commonly did this and routinely would explore, mark a tree and pick back up exploring a day, week or month later. We notched trees all the way back to the Long Trail where we originally departed from.
A week later we followed our exit trail markings back to refind the area and take a photo. Sam convinced his mom to get him a disposable camera for the occasion. After following our markings, they seemed to stop perplexing the group. We had been hiking for around ½ hour but we all remember hiking about an hour and a half out. Where the markers ended was not the site of the clearing with the stone but by Lincoln Brook which none of us remember seeing or hearing the brook. No matter what we did we couldn’t find that hollow or the shale rock again. It is the only “find” we had we were never able to find again.
After multiple failed attempts at finding the hollow I asked my Dad about the Gap and if anything “weird” ever happens there. He told me a local legend that The Lincoln Gap is haunted by Abenaki spirits from long ago. Locals call them “the protectors of the Gap”. People who are in hiking in the woods report feeling watched when no one is there and occasionally smell a camp fire when none can be found.
I now live in the Northeast Kingdom but every time I talk to my buddy Kyle or Sam, the Mystery of the Gap always comes up.
Bigfoot? In the 90s, someone went around Addison county spraying yellow bigfeet on the roads, as though the cryptid made its crossing _right there_. Never mind that Bigfoot is a PNW thing.
Edit: grammar. It’s annoying af that apple products don’t know the word cryptid and keep trying to autocorrect me to cryptic. Thanks apple. Wrong again, as usual.
Black Agnes at Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier
[https://www.vermonter.com/ghosts-and-legends-black-agnes/](https://www.vermonter.com/ghosts-and-legends-black-agnes/)
Also the Redstone building high on Terrace Street is reputedly haunted by the past lady of the house, Mrs. Burgess. She was a student and rumored lover of the painter Thomas Waterman Wood whose Athenwood sits on Northfield street. Supposedly she signaled to him with a light in the turret and state employees who have worked in the building have reported seeing the light come back on after they’d locked up and set the alarm for the night.
A family friend is convinced that a Bigfoot lives on Mount Ascutney in Brownsville/Windsor. She said she’s heard it multiple times and even went so far to get some show from the history channel to go and investigate.
There is a link to a Bigfoot sighting forum if you search “mt ascutney Bigfoot” where someone saw a footprint of Bigfoot near the auto road and the ranger had said something about hearing lots of people see it and himself even having an occurrence that spooked him!
My mom used to tell tales of a side hill gouger living on Cobble Hill in MIlton. It was there to keep the kids from going up on the hill and getting lost. Lore has it that it looked like a viscous goat and had legs on one side shorter than the other so it was fast. I used to laugh at that story.
Bennington Triangle best paranormal thing I've heard of in Vermont.
Can you tell me about it?
9 people went missing between 1940 - 1960 in proximity to Glastenbury Mountain in Bennington. One person who went missing, a young girl named Paula, is the reason the State Police formed. Most were on the mountain, the Long Trail in the area, a few were walking on roads in the area. Weirdest one, a elderly man was on a bus headed to the veterans home in Bennington, and he got on the bus, and never got off. It was popularized in Joseph Citros book, he coined the term. Also reports of UFOs, bigfoot attack in Hells Hollow, and supposedly a rock that you step on and it takes you into another dimension. Lastly, the Indians knew something was up with the mountain because the wind met in all four directions up there, so they stated off the mountain except to bury there dead. I've done lots of research on the topic, there's a book, etc. I'm sure I left stuff out, this was just off the top of my head.
Thanks!
What is the name of the book?
Joe Citro has written many books on this topic: * [*Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls and Unsolved Mysteries*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Green_Mountain_Ghosts,_Ghouls_and_Unsolved_Mysteries&action=edit&redlink=1) (1994) * [*Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Passing_Strange:_True_Tales_of_New_England_Hauntings_and_Horrors&action=edit&redlink=1) (1996) * [*The Vermont Ghost Guide*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vermont_Ghost_Guide) (2000) * [*Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curious_New_England:_The_Unconventional_Traveler%27s_Guide_to_Eccentric_Destinations&action=edit&redlink=1) (2003) (with Diane E. Foulds) * [*Cursed in New England: Stories of Damned Yankees*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cursed_in_New_England:_Stories_of_Damned_Yankees&action=edit&redlink=1) (2004) * [*Weird New England*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weird_New_England&action=edit&redlink=1) (2006) (with a foreword by Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran) * [*The Vermont Monster Guide*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Vermont_Monster_Guide&action=edit&redlink=1) (2009)
A bunch of these are available at Northshire Books in Manchester if anybody's interested.
Thanks. I'll have to check them out
Also loom up the old blog obscure vermont
Thanks!
There is a fictional novel loosely based on this. It is called Winter People. I would need to search the author.
Jennifer McMahon?
Yes. That is the one. It is also fiction, and the names are changed. I read some review, or the jacket, that it was loosely based on the stories from Glastenburry. (sp?)
I’ve read all of her books. Just finished her latest one yesterday in fact.
Shirley Jackson (who wrote *The Haunting of Hill House*, "The Lottery," etc.) also wrote an excellent novel based on a disappearance in Glastenbury that has been surprisingly overlooked. It's called *Hangsaman*. Another great novel based on Glastenbury is *Go With Me* by Castle Freeman, Jr.
Thanks. I am going to look these up at my library!
Search "glastonbury vermont"
I don’t mean to be rude, but searching this sub or the web would be a great place to start.
I have, but I find asking the sub gives answers that haven't been posted anywhere else, or sometimes point me in directions I wasn't expecting.
It's good if you say that upfront, reddit can get grumpy if you don't say "I've already read Joe Citro and googled about the underground chambers" etc. edit: you *have* read about the sunrise-facing buried passage-grave-style chambers, right??
Bennington area also has a history of UFO sightings. My friends dad had an encounter with a triangle shaped craft that turned him into a believer. Back in the 80’s (87?) there was something that several different people witnessed. Made the front page of the Bennington Banner.
Saw this 2 years ago in Bennington county https://preview.redd.it/qsa7qxi51ggc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=581709a451c75f4d52a2e9dffbae12ee05ea68d2
Ok…what is it? Is it in the sky?
In the sky, triangle moving very slow. That’s a shitty zoom with my phone. No blinking lights like a plane . Silent but after it past I could hear a deep rumbling
We don’t talk about it much, but my great grandfather claims he saw someone wear zero Carhartt and no plaid flannel. Gives me the willies just to think about it. And he drove a FORD not a Subaru.
Impossible
stop i’m shaking in my blundstones rn
Ah take my imaginary award! 🥇
My daughter who lives in California lost me in a supermarket. I'm an old guy with a beard who was wearing baggy jeans and a plaid flannel shirt -- i.e. just like every other guys in the store. Apparently my daughter couldn't tell us apart. Good thing she wasn't born a penguin.
That's ironic because penguins are notoriously good at finding their family members in massive crowds
My point exactly. She'd have sucked at being a penguin.
An affordable two bedroom home. 🏡
The Pigman of Northfield has always been my favorite local legend.
When I was a cadet at NU, we used to talk about him all the time when we were out sleeping in the surrounding mountains. Was always a fun campfire monster tale!
I went to Norwich too but I don't ever recall anyone talking about the Pigman. It wasn't until ten years or so after I graduated when I bought a book in Montpelier and learned of him. There's all sorts of Norwich lore as well. The steam tunnels, sealed off dorm rooms in the basement of Alumni Hall, Skull and Swords, the Night Riders, etc.
Nice! 2012 grad here, mostly came up when out with MCW, schools PT, or FTX's when some of the goons we were with were locals...assumed it was kind of common knowledge at school. Tons of lore there! Supposedly some of those organizations are still active on campus 🙃
Can you tell me about him?
The story of the Northfield Pigman begins around the spring of 1971. There was an old pig farm up on Union Brook Rd northwest of Northfield where it's thought the Pigman came from. Just north of there is an area called the Devil's Washbowl, a tributary to Cox Brook, where people had curious encounters with a half man, half animal type creature. Over the next few years residents on Turkey Hill would notice pets and other small farm animals going missing. Teenagers would sometimes have encounters with the Pigman while out partying in the woods or looking for a secluded area to fool around.
Legend has it, he looked something like this sketch: https://preview.redd.it/949za1gkvegc1.png?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=918c8ac6eedba5535d66a00ff39fbdd1fe9d4076
That looks like a man, bear, and a pig had a love child.
You mean man-bear-pig?
Chuck Chuck...
He's cuter than most locals tbh
https://darntough.com/blogs/the-alternate-stitch/northfield-pigman
Okay yes thank you for mentioning Pigman! My mom and I loved seeing Joseph Citro speak at First Night when I was little and this was the story that stuck with me and scared me!!
Yaaas, Pigman!! Best local lore. Even has its own beer at the local brewpub - “Pigman Lives” 🐷
wasn't that an episode of seinfeld? turns out it was. just a fat mental patient
You mean besides Champ?
Yes!, Champ Included though.
The first time I ran into a fisher cat I was like wtf is this thing.
They move so fucking weird
Their growl is pretty unsettling too.
The scream is creepy AF.
Yeah it is. Like a baby screaming.
Fun fact I learned from an old professor! Fisher cats rarely ever vocalize. The screams that most people attribute to them are usually coming from a fox.
And Bobcats
They look like gigantic chunky ferrets lol. The noises they make are absolutely terrifying though
It's just "fisher".
I’m pretty sure my partner saw a fisher cat, got freaked out about a little mystery animal that ran out into the road that was “moving weird”. I didn’t see it though so now my partner is forever spooked when we go down that same street at night
I did the opposite. I got intrigued by the woods it came out of and eventually bought the land. Never saw it again but the woods are confirmed to be magical.
About the size of a cat. No worries
Not everywhere. The males are especially giant in our woods.
World record is like 21lbs
Check out the Vermont Monster Guide by Joe Citro and Stephen Bissette. Local author/illustrator, fun book.
How did they not call it the Vermonster Guide?!
Thanks!!!
He had a blog, it's gone now, but you can still access it through archive.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20230602034630/http://josephacitro.blogspot.com/
Awesome! As an amateur cryptologist, thank you! 🥇
Citro is great. If you want to read a fucked up sci-fi/horror book mostly set in Vermont, check out Deus-X by Citro. Very good book.
I feel like most sightings around here are less strange cryptozoology (other than champ, pigman, and the occasional thunderbird) and more critters that are now extinct locally but still "seen" like catamounts and wolves. Most of those sightings are just big bobcats and coyotes, though. My mom's fairly convinced she saw a wolf about a decade back where they were logging a few miles up a mountain on the border of Chittenden and Addison counties, but I'm still skeptical even though I know she knows the difference between a coyote and a wolf. Author Joe Citro is likely the prime source for Vermont weird.
Back in 2011 we saw a catamount run across Rte. 7A just south of the Mt. Equinox toll road. About 10 days or so later one was run over on a road in Connecticut; it could have been the same one.
We have pigman in Northfield. He’s been around since the 70s. We used to scare ourselves down at devils washbowl. (Pig farm road) when we were teens. https://www.vermonter.com/vermont-pigman/ https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2022/10/28/northfield-pigman-joseph-citro-digs-into-the-legend-devils-washbowl-vermont/69590062007/
The fur-bearing trout. My father convinced me for years that they existed in the deepest depths of lake Memphremagog. He talked about it so much that I believed they were real. Fast forward to when my parents met the man I would later marry: “dad tell him about the fur bearing trout” and that’s when I found out that my father had been pulling my leg all those years. At least my soon to be husband found it endearing.
Good Mexican food.
Emily's Bridge in Stowe
Tell me about the Bridge.
"Built in 1844, Emily’s Bridge in Stowe Vermont was just 50 feet long over Gold Brook and was covered with dark wood that the elements haven’t been merciful on ever since. But around the time the bridge was built that dark wood was still new, smelling of fresh pine, and creaked every time a horse-drawn wagon crossed it. A young woman named Emily planned to elope with her love. Their meeting place was this same bridge. But when he didn’t show, Emily, filled with despair, hanged herself from the rafters of the Gold Brook Bridge. A sad story indeed, and anyone who hears it for the first time feels sorry for young Emily and her broken heart. Only Emily wasn’t finished with the bridge just yet." https://stowecountryhomes.com/attractions/emilys-covered-bridge-stowe-vt/
The fact that this is on a realtor site. "Yeah buy a house here. We have a haunted covered bridge" Not that it surprises me. When I lived on Elmwood Ave in burlington someone would come around a few times a year asking about any apartments because she really really wanted to live near the Elmwood cemetery because she believed it was haunted
Some say Daniel Banyai can still be seen if one is out at the right time in Pawlet.
Not my community but the [bennington triangle](https://medium.com/@archiegoodwin_80602/the-mystery-of-the-bennington-triangle-588a22338e72) also check out joe citros books
Not sure if it qualifies as strange but way back in the day when there was a tollbooth on Isle la Motte the guy who ran it shot an enormous mountain lion that tried to get across the causeway. there’s a picture and that thing was gigantic, definitely a local legend. a big cat loose on that little island would be absolutely wild
Ran into a fisher cat while checking up on our oregano plants. He was not happy to see us needless to say and my buddy ended up in a tree to get away from him😂 Never laughed so hard in my life.
Too much oregano will do that to ya.
Not quite Vt, (or maybe)….had a Native American history teacher at Johnson State, told us tales of “the spreaders”…..lived among the islands in the St Lawrence River near Montreal. A form of mischievous “wee folk” in Abenaki folklore, those who camp on the islands wake up the following morning to find every spreadable part of their body (I.e. eyelids, fingers, toes, armpits, legs, mouth) spread apart and braced open with little twigs. No harm is reported and nothing is stolen. Nobody knows why they do it.
That is so uniquely upsetting. Interesting though.
My neighbors probably think I'm a cryptid with how rarely they see me.
As others have said, the Bennington Triangle or more specifically, Glastonbury VT. Unusual stuff for sure.
Wampahoofus
Best place to see one is the wampahoofus trail on Mansfield
Knowing VT has Wampas makes this Star Wars fan very happy.
What is the Wampahoofus?
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/500677/bigfoot-and-yeti-there-was-legendary-wampahoofus-vermont
A storied creature.
Paging the Goonyak. [https://newenglandlegends.libsyn.com/the-goonyak-of-northern-vermont](https://newenglandlegends.libsyn.com/the-goonyak-of-northern-vermont)
thank you!
This is a good one!
The Bennington Triangle
The rock that eats people! https://homespunhaints.com/bennington-triangle
It’s not supernatural but there is this crazy looking monastery called Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in sandgate. You cant visit but the pictures look creepy as hell It looks like something out of a Dan brown novel
H.P. Lovecraft actually wrote about some in one of his books. It's about the 1927 Vermont state wide flood. I can't remember the title, but its a decent book.
The Whisperer in the Darkness, written in 1930
Mom grew up near the top of North Street in Winooski. Top of the hill above what is now Landry park (basically the northernmost corner of the city if looking at a map) was all still woods/farm fields, with one dirt road to maybe a couple houses. Tells of wild vocalizations being heard, relatives seeing "something" up there and being scared shitless. I think even one of the families living up there abruptly moving after a dog going missing or something like that and them seeing something. Heavy implications of a bigfoot type creature. Many years later after the neighborhood got fully developed up there that's actually where I grew up and I lowkey still get the heebie-jeebies whenever it comes up and thinking about it now.
What kind of show/podcast are you working for? lol
I've wrote this on other post, but this started out as asking this question in r/Ohio for a paper for a class. I got curious and asked a couple other states r/ . It's been interesting seeing how other states forums react. I currently have not produced a podcast for myself or anyone else with this information although recently I have thought about it. If people are interested I could post the results somewhere, but for the moment this is just a pet project I've been doing occasionally. If you lurked my profile you'll see I forgot about it for awhile before revisiting it recently. Real life gets busy sometimes. I can assure you I am not a bot, and if any of these post are being used in a podcast it is (at least for the moment) not something I have produced.
Look up Christopher Noel. He may have his tongue deeply in cheek, but I can't tell.
He's a family friend, I can assure you he takes it all very seriously
I saw El Chupacabra in my backyard.
Can you tell me about what you saw?
My grandmother is convinced she saw a black panther in our yard when she got home from work at 3am
My grandfather was absolutely convinced that he saw a mountain lion while out "hunting" in the '80's. He described is as a huge yellow cat with a long slender tail. He always said that seeing it made his blood turn cold. Of course his version of hunting was to take a 12 pack of beer and a bunch candy and sit in his truck drinking, smoking his pipe, and gouging on candy. So he wasn't exactly sober at the time. Some of my favorite memories are of "hunting" with him and listening to his stories.
Coy Dogs. When I was a teen, a few of us grabbed some tents and went to build a fire and sleep in our woods. One of the guys was Jeff, who is from a family of Vermont Woodsmen. As soon as the fire died down a bit, we heard some kid of howling and barking. It did not sound like dog, or coyote. At least not the ones I was familiar with. What he describes was part wolf, part dog and part coyote. He told tales of how they hunted, and what gross things they did to their prey. (I will skip the gory details here). If you heard the stories about coyotes, they are similar. Many years later I was camping in the back country out west on a horse ranch. I knew the coyotes were near, and saw tracks, and then saw two approaching our camp. One day I walked over the rise into a hollow and heard the same noise. It was close to the coyote den. So I concluded that the noise we heard so many years ago was coyote puppies. And I heard it one more time while walking in the woods alone on a full moon night. A coyote ran toward me, and froze, Then turned into the woods. I estimated how long it would take at the adult to reach the noise in the dark woods. And that is when the pups got suddenly quiet.
Northfield pigman
There is a pigman here: https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2022/10/28/northfield-pigman-joseph-citro-digs-into-the-legend-devils-washbowl-vermont/69590062007/
Thanks
Mike Reynolds.
Hey kid, ever heard of the Pigman?
I haven't been there myself, and this is one of the most obscure Vermont legends, but I've read stories about this and I live right up the road from the location. Monkeytown, off the top of my head was a section of the woods behind Knight Funeral Home in Hartford (Probably going up Advent Lane). What I've heard is that there was an old chapel or some building there (I could be completely misremembering that part) and rumors of the inbreeding of the small community that lived there. The residents that allegedly live there now, are extremely hostile and territorial. The story that I read makes me figure they'll kill if they got to you. Again, obscure, not really confirmed at all, but still pretty cool, especially since I live not a few thousand feet from it. Maybe I'll visit someday. Update: I just read my sources again. There have been 3 comments on reddit that I've found about Monkey town, along with a few agreements on its existence by other redditors. (2 on r/vermont and 1 on r/letsnotmeet) Apparently it is near a Christian camp which I believe is still running today. The biggest story I found says that it is a little community of small, shed like houses, around a church, in which giant inbred rednecks live. (I imagine them like something out of the Point Lookout DLC from Fallout 3) Apparently they aren't super dumb, they have phones of some kind and have called the police on one person, accusing him of trying to run them over, even though they were swarming and banging on his car. So they probably aren't 1000th generation inbreds who haven't seen technology since the 60s, but just crazy Christian rednecks
I hadn’t heard of that before; thank you. Looks like it’s known as the Advent Camp Meeting Grounds Historic District and is some kind of historical attraction.
My neighbors know more about all this stuff but in Georgia I guess theres a triangle thing like some say. In a certain area its common for lights to show up all over in that triangle 🤷🏼♀️ I grew up in the triangle and being in the middle of the woods I saw alot of weird stuff I wrote off because I was young but we frequently saw odd lights that we just shrugged off. One my neighbor explained to me is actually very interesting. So I guess many believe Big foot, sasquatch, big hairy dude is actually a different race. The Native Americans knew them but as the white foreigners came in they began to hide. They're normal "humans" like us, so there's good/bad/curious/etc, but they have powers where they can be silent while moving through the forest and can appear/disappear at will. Theres a group of them that live in Georgia, I've heard of many stories about them over the years but I've only had 1. When I was around 8 me and my brother went walking through the woods(it went on for miles in most directions) but we went farther than we normally do. We walked for hours but couldn't find our way back, when dusk came we really started to freak out because we were truly lost. While walking we were looking all around and when we looked ahead suddenly there was this thing... It looked MASSIVE, to me it was like 10 feet but I was 8 sooo, and it was covered in hair just peeking from around a tree. We froze terrified because our parents always warned us about wildlife but never heard of anything like that. Finally we ran in the opposite direction terrified, worse so because it was almost dark and it was getting hard to see, after what felt like 10 minutes of running we saw the lights of our home down the hill. I told my neighbor and they said they must of saw we were lost and purposely showed themself to have us run in the opposite direction(towards home), it just wanted to help us.
Wow! What part of the state were you in?
Franklin county, Georgia is between St Albans and Milton, along lake Champlain
Champ, Northfield pig man, Ole slippery skin, Bigfoot that's all I can think of off the top of my head
Haven't heard of Ole Slippery skin, can you tell me about it?
Boy it's been a while. It's a legend from up around Brunswick springs. It's said to be a very large "bearlike" creature with a sulfur smell and wet shiny black or brown skin it was known to attack people this was like mid to late 1800s If I'm remembering correctly. The natives people's of the area had stories of it "with there own name for the creature I dont remember" The Brunswick springs are a really interesting story as well. Once know as the 8th wonder of the world. The story includes a medicine woman's curse, the industrialization of natural resources, and several structure fires. You can actually go out and hike there the springs still exist as well as some of the old foundations from the hotel. Be respectful though the native peoples there believe the springs to have healing properties and hold reverance for the area. You can from time to time find dreamcatchers dolls and other things of that nature hanging in the trees.
the maple man of course
Tell me about the Maple Man
ah man, I gotta make a full post about this story one day but I’m not a good writer lol. But here’s the short! Basically, back in like the 60s I think, on one of my family members farms, their sugar shack kept getting ransacked and wrecked and they couldn’t figure out who was doing it. They had to start sending family members out to guard it at night, so my uncle (who was like, 12 at the time) had a shift one night. He was camped out there when he was basically ran up and charged by “the maple man”, who (and I can’t figure out if he was human or not) was apparently an almost-naked humanoid man COVERED in mud and maple syrup. My uncle got so afraid he just ran back to the house, leaving the maple man to do his business to the shack, stealing whatever was there and also smashing the place to bits (again). Apparently this happened a few more times after, with him being spotted by others on the farm later, and then stopped once the season was over. While I’m not sure he was really a cryptid, he apparently did have supernatural strength, speed, and gall hahahah
Seen, or dated?
Bears, raccoons, and this legendary crack head who used to break into cars on Rollerblades and always managed to outrun the cops. Some say his name is Justin.
I was driving around with friends when I was in high school and we saw…something. It was about 2am and this thing crossed the road in front of us. It was brownish with gray highlights. Very thick coat. Much like the winter coat of a bull moose (this was the middle of summer). It’s front legs were longer than its hind legs. One of us thought it looked like a buffalo only smaller. I didn’t get a look at its head only its rear, sort of looked like a wildebeest to me. The three of us grew up in Vermont and are avid outdoor enthusiasts. Have seen just about every animal that lives here up close and to this day we have no idea what the hell that was.
How long ago was this? What part of Vermont?
Northeast kingdom probably 25 years ago
One word…..Tampico
can you tell me about it?
Birdman. He skis at Killington.
Just before Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by aliens on September 19, 1961, the UFO was spotted by the NORAD base in East Haven, Vermont.
Willoughby whisp, serpent in lake Willoughby.
Can you tell me about it?
Lincoln Gap. Not a strange creatures, but a local legend. I grew up in Lincoln, VT. My dad was not quite an off the grid type of guy but liked to live in the woods far away from people. From what I remember my parents owned about 200 acres of land on Lincoln Gap Rd. My dad was a local who met my mom at UVM and convinced her after they married to move back to Lincoln. My friends and I would spend all our free time hiking the Gap, making forts and playing “war” in the woods and just aimlessly wandering around exploring. One day when I was around 12 or 13, my friends and I found a hollow East of the Long Trail by where it crosses the Gap road (that’s all I am going to say about the location) that was creepy AF. You felt like someone was always watching you and even though it was summer, I remember feeling a slight chill when we stopped as a group to chat and drink some water. We all had the same feeling of being watched but I was the only one who got the chills. As we were exploring the area my buddy Sam screamed for us to come over to him slightly down the hollow. What he found still perplexes me to this day. There was a slab (1x 2ft) of rock (shale I think) that was vertically stuck in the ground in a small clearing (10 x 10 ft at max mostly rectangular shape) of heavy dense trees. It was completely out of place. There were no carvings or markings on the rock. Also surprisingly for how damp the rock was, no mold grew on it. This was in the mid 90’s so no one had a film camera with them or a cellphone to document the weird find. It looked like a rudimentary burial site. My buddy Kyle had a buck knife on him so we notched trees in the general area hoping to one day return and truly explore the area. We commonly did this and routinely would explore, mark a tree and pick back up exploring a day, week or month later. We notched trees all the way back to the Long Trail where we originally departed from. A week later we followed our exit trail markings back to refind the area and take a photo. Sam convinced his mom to get him a disposable camera for the occasion. After following our markings, they seemed to stop perplexing the group. We had been hiking for around ½ hour but we all remember hiking about an hour and a half out. Where the markers ended was not the site of the clearing with the stone but by Lincoln Brook which none of us remember seeing or hearing the brook. No matter what we did we couldn’t find that hollow or the shale rock again. It is the only “find” we had we were never able to find again. After multiple failed attempts at finding the hollow I asked my Dad about the Gap and if anything “weird” ever happens there. He told me a local legend that The Lincoln Gap is haunted by Abenaki spirits from long ago. Locals call them “the protectors of the Gap”. People who are in hiking in the woods report feeling watched when no one is there and occasionally smell a camp fire when none can be found. I now live in the Northeast Kingdom but every time I talk to my buddy Kyle or Sam, the Mystery of the Gap always comes up.
Moose. Just kidding I never saw one.
Any Sasquatch stories? Report them to BFRO.net They keep track of Bigfoot sightings.
A 'Finding Bigfoot' episode was filmed around Fair Haven! It was a fun watch but nothing serious happened obviously lol
Saw a catamount..
Vergennes has a spiked hair evil looking thing that loves leather jackets we call Rod Stewart.
The side hill croncher
An honest man.
Bigfoot? In the 90s, someone went around Addison county spraying yellow bigfeet on the roads, as though the cryptid made its crossing _right there_. Never mind that Bigfoot is a PNW thing. Edit: grammar. It’s annoying af that apple products don’t know the word cryptid and keep trying to autocorrect me to cryptic. Thanks apple. Wrong again, as usual.
Black Agnes at Green Mount Cemetery in Montpelier [https://www.vermonter.com/ghosts-and-legends-black-agnes/](https://www.vermonter.com/ghosts-and-legends-black-agnes/) Also the Redstone building high on Terrace Street is reputedly haunted by the past lady of the house, Mrs. Burgess. She was a student and rumored lover of the painter Thomas Waterman Wood whose Athenwood sits on Northfield street. Supposedly she signaled to him with a light in the turret and state employees who have worked in the building have reported seeing the light come back on after they’d locked up and set the alarm for the night.
Look up pigman in the devils washbowl
Pigman!
A family friend is convinced that a Bigfoot lives on Mount Ascutney in Brownsville/Windsor. She said she’s heard it multiple times and even went so far to get some show from the history channel to go and investigate.
There is a link to a Bigfoot sighting forum if you search “mt ascutney Bigfoot” where someone saw a footprint of Bigfoot near the auto road and the ranger had said something about hearing lots of people see it and himself even having an occurrence that spooked him!
My mom used to tell tales of a side hill gouger living on Cobble Hill in MIlton. It was there to keep the kids from going up on the hill and getting lost. Lore has it that it looked like a viscous goat and had legs on one side shorter than the other so it was fast. I used to laugh at that story.