I’m reading Bigfoot in Maine, by Maine author Michelle Souliere. I love monsters, and knowing these are local is so fun for me. It’s a well-written and fabulously researched book. World-renowned cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman, wrote the forward. I met him when I bought it, and he signed it for me!
I’ve always wondered why there aren’t many Sasquatch sightings in Maine. The state is more than 90% forested, with vast tracts of wilderness and lots of woodsy folks to witness the creatures, after all. We also have the highest black bear population in the eastern U.S., so if bigfoot is no more than legend and mistaken identity, you’d think we’d rival Appalachia in sightings. As it turns out, bigfoot has been spotted a lot more often in Maine than I thought. Including a few miles from my childhood home!
I was very skeptical of the Durham/Brunswick sightings before reading the detailed account provided by Souliere’s interview with one of the witnesses. Growing up only three miles from where the first sighting occurred, I spent most of the ’90s in the woods and fields in and around Durham. I rode my freestyle bike all over that town, including down the road where the sightings occurred. I never caught a hint of bigfoot. Don’t get me wrong, the area has its rural, spooky weirdness (how could it not when Stephen King grew up there?), but it isn’t the Maine wilderness you find so much of to the north. It didn’t feel like Sasquatch country. Granted, I pedaled those roads twenty years after the sightings. Things change. That area has sure as hells changed a lot since they were my stomping grounds. Then again, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear if the region was more forested in the ’90s than in the ’70s. In the ’70s, many more farms were probably hanging on and fewer fields had had the decades to grow back into forests.
But regardless of how bigfoot-y the habitat, I’m intrigued by the accounts. Having seen something unexplained myself as a kid, I believe people when they say the same. I can picture myself riding ahead on that road, stopping to straddle my bike, waiting for a friend or sibling to catch up, then glancing into the woods. I wish I had known about these sightings as a kid. You can bet I’d have been looking for bigfoot!
Hilariously, one of my brothers, our friend from up the road, and I perpetrated a bigfoot hoax as young teens. We were upset that the farm across the street had been shut down and subdivided to make way for the construction of extravagant homes. What better way to protest than to create a monster to scare people off? We wrapped my friend in trash bags in the woods and tried to take a blurry picture. Now I can’t help imagining a real-life creature in those woods, watching as we took pictures and wondering what those mangy monkeys were up to.
The picture was, let’s say, less than convincing. I don’t think we showed it to anyone (until now!) or tried to spread our rumor of the short, shiny, dangerous beast, but we did name it. We called it Torborg—a name I’ve recycled. Torborg morphed from a hairy beast in Durham into a young, orcish man in Aven. For now, he lives only in unpublished works, but I’m sure you’ll meet him someday.
Another tie to bigfoot and Durham is my 7-year-old’s report from over the holidays. She stayed with my mom for a few days over her winter break and called one night to tell me she saw “him”. The kiddo spotted bigfoot walking down the road. Disturbingly, she also reported a big face watching her from the woods. I’m 97% sure she concocted both sightings to mess with me.
Personal ties and nostalgia aside, Bigfoot in Maine is an excellent read. Souliere’s historical bent, objectivity, and palpable respect for eyewitnesses set this work apart. I highly recommend it to Mainers, folks who want to visit the north woods, and anyone interested in bigfoot.
K.W. Bernard 