Vermont is a state in the northeastern United States in the New England Region and it is bordered with the nation of Canada and the US states of New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts. The state capital is Montpelier, which is the least populous of the US state capitals and the largest city is Burlington, it is also the least populous of the most populous US state cities.
Most of Vermont is covered in forest mostly made up of conifer and hardwood trees and most open land is used for agricultural activities. The Green Mountains can be found running from north to south from the Massachusetts border to the Canadian border.
One of the highest contributions to the economy are Government followed by numerous business services, durable goods manufacturing, healthcare, construction and various other services from there.
Now let’s get to the strange and the unexplained of Vermont.
First up we have a water cryptid called Champ who is said to reside in Lake Champlain, a body of water that lies on the New York/Vermont border and also some of which stretches into Canada’s Quebec province. The official Lake Champlain Region website gives a brief history of the legend and some descriptions. The lake itself is 107 miles long and 14 miles in width with an average depth of 64ft and the deepest being 400ft.
It claims that belief in a large creature living in the lake has been in existence since Native American times of who have their own legends about the creature and have described it as being a large, horned serpent or giant snake and apparently the Abenaki tribe called it the Gitaskog. It is said the Abenakis would warn French explorers not to disturb the waters of the lake as to not anger the serpent.
The lake today is named after Samuel de Champlain and he in the legend of the serpent is often credited with being the first person to have reported seeing it, although this isn’t directly true and there is a fake quote out as well, his true quote is more ambiguous where he talks about fish described by the Natives and also tells of him seeing a fish five feet long and as large as his thigh, with a head as large as two fists and a two-feet and a half long snout, double row of very sharp teeth, its body shaped described similar to a pike, protected by silvery gray scales of which are so strong that not even a dagger can pierce them.
Historians and skeptics believe that the Champ lake monster could possibly be a garfish, which is a type of sturgeon, with Champlain’s description sounding like a larger than usual garfish.
There have since been many, many other sightings of the creature since then with many people calling it America’s version of the Loch Ness Monster and it is possibly one of the most famous water cryptids within the United States of America.
Another famous sighting took place in 1819 and was reported by the Plattsburgh Republican newspaper, the sighting was made by a Captain Crum who was onboard a scow in the Bulwagga Bay area of the lake, the Captain reported seeing a black monster which was that he described being about 187 feet in length with a head that looked like a seahorse, he claimed the beast reared 15-feet out of the water and on the beast in its mouth the Captain saw three teeth, eyes that looked like the colour of a peeled onion, a white star on its forehead and apparently a belt of red around its neck.
Another interesting sighting took place in 1875 that was reported in the New York Times where a crew on a railroad claimed to see the head of an enormous serpent in the lake and that it had bright silvery scales that beamed in the sun.
Even more crazy in 1875 was two further very interesting sightings, one reported by a sheriff of Clinton County called Nathan H. Mooney who also reported an enormous snake/water serpent in the lake which he believed to be 25-35 feet in length. Finally, another crazy sighting later that year had a steamboat called the W.B Eddy apparently ran right into the creature with tourists on the boat even claiming that it nearly caused the boat to tip over.
Many, many hundreds more sightings took place from the 1990s onwards which even included a number of alleged photos of the creature as well which continue to be up for debate today.
Next up is an urban legend about something called the Northfield Pigman, a terrifying and evil paranormal beast said to roam about the woods of the small town, specifically around an area known as the Devil’s Washbowl which is surrounded by caves and waterfalls and is often where teenagers go to hang out. There have been many stories of reporting seeing the pigman, which is described as humanoid, standing on two legs, a naked body covered in white fair and of course having the head of a pig.
The urban legend most popularly says that the pigman is a 17-year-old boy called Sam Harris who went missing in 1951 during Halloween after going out with some eggs to do some trick or treating but that he never returned, apparently getting lost out in the hills near to the town, one of the legends claims that the boy was possessed by the Devil, making him kill pigs and eat all of them apart from their bones and that he hollowed out their heads and wore it on his head, making him the pigman.
The legend also claims the boy revisited his mum at their house and sat on the porch eating entrails of a pig, which lead to the mother committing suicide.
There have been many claimed sightings of the pigman out in the woods and the nearby caves, one such sighting took place during a school dance when a group of teenagers were outside at a sandpit and claimed that the pigman came up to them from out of the woods, causing them to run off into the school, panicked and crying, many thought they were simply playing a prank when they explained what they claimed to see, on further inspection it is claimed there were tracks leading from the forests.
To me it all simply seems like a big urban legend and I also won’t be surprised if the areas residents use the monster a sort of boogie man to scare kids who may misbehave or to try and get them to return home before a particular time.
Going back on to the topic of water cryptids the state also has a number of others as well outside of Champ and so I think we should visit one of those before moving on to the next ground-based cryptid. I am actually quite surprised how many cryptids Vermont seems to have in its legends.
One such water cryptid was said to be in Lake Willoughby which is located next to the town of Westmore in Orleans County, the lake is 5 miles in length and 1 mile in width with a surface area of 1,687 acres and an average depth of 185 feet and a max depth of 328 feet.
The interesting thing about this monster though, which has been named Willy, is that it was claimed to be killed by a 12-year-old boy called Stephen Edmonds, which was claimed by the Caledonia Newspaper in 1868. The monster was described as a large and very long black eel or snake-like creature with several humps on its back. It has been speculated by many that the creature is or was simply just a large eel in the lake, divers who went into the lake back in the 1950s claimed to witness eels that were 8ft long on the bed of the lake, which if true/accurate would be one of the largest recorded.
Despite a beast having been claimed killed in the waters some residents and visitors still claim to see a similar creature or perhaps the very same creature in the waters of the lake which they still call Willy or perhaps it is just simply very large eels that they are witnessing that come up to the surface briefly from time to time.
Next up is one of the more interesting cryptids/paranormal entities that I have come across, many seem to run across a similar theme but then you do tend to get some unique ones such as what we are about to go over.
It is known as The Awful and its description is like something from a fantasy novel. Its sightings took place in and around the towns of Richford and Berkshire in the state and the common description was that it was a large winged creature looking like a Griffin, having grayish-wings that stretched as far as 20ft in length, with large claws and a very long serpent-like tail. I have been listening to an audio read of Harry Potter lately so you can imagine this is bringing my mind to that.
The first sightings took place pre-1920s with very little sightings if any since that time.
One of the first apparent sightings happened to two men who worked at a sawmill in Richford, the story goes that they were crossing the Main Street bridge when they saw the creature glaring down at them from a rooftop of the Boright building in menacing fashion.
After that there were a few further claimed sightings by some residents in the two towns, but not to any significant degree.
Sightings of the creature did manage to inspire the famous auther H.P Lovecraft who even visited the towns to learn more about the creature. Outside of that the creature isn’t very well known and is quite obscure with other more common cryptids such as the usual suspects including Bigfoot and water cryptids being way more popular.
Well that shall do for Vermont, next up we will be looking at the strange and the unexplained of the US state of New York.
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