Labor Day weekend was special for me this year; I traveled to Maine to take part in the International Cryptozoology Conference hosted by Loren Coleman in Portland, and then visited a friend who is a long-time Bigfoot observer and who had promised to take me to the area in central Maine where her encounters took place. I wasn’t disappointed on either count.
Robert Schneck and L. Godfrey
The conference was a superbly planned event with wonderful people in the speaker and vendor lineups and a standing-room-only crowd of attendees. Loren and Jenny Coleman and their volunteer staff did themselves proud. In addition, I got to meet long-time online friends like Robert Schneck in person, reconnect with others and make new ones such as Snuffy Destefano, wood sculptor supreme, who created my new Bigfoot carving pictured above (see his Facebook page).
My online friend, “Suzy,” who is of part Wabanaki ancestry, and I headed north the next day. We’ve corresponded for several years. Suzy had only told a few people about her mid-60s to early 70s childhood experiences with a Hairy Man she calls “Wabou” and two smaller creatures that may have been his mate and child, or two juveniles. Her story is amazing, however, and she finally decided to go public with some of it in a new video in order to show people that these creatures should not be killed. (You can see the film at this Maine community TV station here.)
It’s Suzy’s story to tell, as I’ve always said to her, and she does a good job on the video. She and I visited the property she discusses in the film, and it tallied in every way with what she had originally described to me, as did the adjoining woods where she spent so many days beginning at about age 7 and continuing to her early teens when she and her mother moved away. We received a fascinating corroboration from a nearby resident whose property was adjacent to the woods where she spent much of her youth, after we asked him if he had noticed anything strange around the property. He said that beyond the blood-curdling screams at night there was one other thing.
His house was on a small lake, and he said he was puzzled at finding large piles of open clam shells near the shore. Some looked crushed or bitten, and he could not think of any animal known to inhabit that area that ate clams or would leave a huge pile of them. He showed us where the piles had been–they were recently washed away by some severe storms, although a few shells did remain to mark the spot.
Bigfoots have been observed eating clams by other eyewitnesses. Suzy said that Wabou, who was over seven feet tall and covered with very dark, mahogany-colored hair that lightened to reddish tones in summer, would sit in the water with his big legs splayed out in front of him and eat clams as fast as he could chomp them out of their shells.
Suzy reveals many more observations on the video, but I can mention a few other things she has told me. Their teeth, she said, did not have overbites or underbites when the jaw was closed. Instead, they were very square, all the same size and met on edge rather than overlapping. When they grinned it looked more like a grimace, and Wabou would grin at her often, perhaps in imitation of her own smiles. Wabou also taught her to swim, she said, by carrying her into the lake on his shoulders until they reached the deep part, and then pushing her off into the water. He would then reach up to support her as she splashed and learned to stay afloat.
In return, she brought a deck of cards and attempted to teach them to play a simple game or two, but didn’t have much luck. She also brought them white bread, their favorite, and fruits as treats. Most of their days were spent in a simple structure of tree branches bent and twisted together so that pine boughs could be laid over the top. They rested a lot in daytime, said Suzy, because they were mainly out at night. In the dark, she said, their eyes glowed red and she could always find the small one that way when they played hiding games in the trees.
The woods where Suzy encountered the Hairy Man.
And no, they did not smell pine-tree fresh. She said after a day with them, she always needed a bath. Her parents were preoccupied with their own problems, and allowed her to roam at will. When she had to suddenly leave her beloved friends, she wanted to give them something to remember them by, so she tossed a pair of purple, hip-hugger jeans into their nearest day-hut while they were out. “It was all I could grab in the few minutes I had,” she said.
On our trip, Suzy took me to the nearby woods where her large friends lived, although unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to wait for them properly. She made a vocalization that she said was the call Wabou would respond to when she needed him, but didn’t hear an answer. She also made rock clicks timed in a certain pattern, and twice there was a single, far-off click in return. We each saw something large moving between trees in the distance, but couldn’t make out what it was. She began feeling ill and wanted to leave immediately. I had a weird tightness in my stomach but I stayed a few minutes longer to take a few pictures. Suzy had gone straight back to the road where her car was parked. I turned around to head back too, but soon realized I was not headed toward the car, but in the direction of the rock clicks and whatever we’d seen moving in the distance. Luckily Suzy called for me and I was able to turn correctly and pick my way through the underbrush. After I made it back onto the asphalt road, Suzy heard footsteps crashing through the woods in our direction. We decided to go. She believes we had definite “company,” but that it was probably not her Wabou. But there was one more corroboration…
After the video–which doesn’t tell about our trip or reveal where in Maine this all occurred–was shown, the producer received a message from a Micmac man who had seen the video on TV. The producer told Suzy that the man said he had seen a tall Hairy Man in the tree line within a mile or so of those woods. The only date given was “some time ago,” but the closeness to Suzy’s childhood home was a good indication (along with other known sightings in that state) that Hairy Man does exist in central Maine, and that at least the one known as Wabou had a very gentle side!
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