Cryptids of North America #3: New Hampshire

Source: Aleksandar Petakov of Petakov Media

It’s that time again! It’s time to examine more legends of more anomalous creatures supposedly roaming around the great state of New Hampshire.

Unfortunately, the list here is much thinner than the offerings presented by New York and Vermont. None of the artists on Etsy I’ve been sourcing these lists from has made a dedicated entry for New Hampshire. The best I could find was this map of the entirety of New England made by Alexsandar Petakov for his blog Petakov Media. Therefore, I’m only including five cryptids in my list. I could probably get more if I counted misplaced grey wolves and mountain lions, but I don’t count those as cryptids since they are animals recognized by science and, by all rights, should exist in those areas because that’s how healthy ecosystems work, you stupid humans!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get heated there. Anyway, let’s see what kind of mysterious beasts are gallivanting around the Granite State.

The Betty and Barney Hill Abductors

I already went over the Betty and Barney Hill case in some detail in my second paranormal triangles article in the entry on the Ossipee Triangle. It is not only the incident that popularized the very concept of alien abductions; it is also the origin of one of the legend’s most common recurring characters: the grey alien.

Here is my original text from the Ossipee Triangle entry:

Indeed, one of the most famous alien abduction incidents in UFO history occurred around the north edge of the triangle in 1961. Portsmouth residents Betty and Barney Hill were returning from a vacation in Canada on September 19 when they spotted a strange light just outside Lancaster around 10:30 in the evening. The craft, which they later described as “pancake-shaped” and covered in red lights, followed them until it caught up with them around Indian Head, near Franconia, and hovered about a hundred feet above them. They observed several humanoid figures in the craft’s windows.
Suddenly, the Hills realized they had lost two hours and were driving near Ashland, about thirty-five miles south. They later recalled that the aliens had taken them on board their ship and physically examined them. When Betty asked the beings where they came from, they showed her a map that astronomers later identified as being near the Zeta Reticuli constellation. Some astronomers have argued that the Hills inadvertently discovered a new star system in the process, although some skeptics, most notably Carl Sagan, disagreed. Indeed, a fair number of skeptics have argued that the whole incident was a hallucination triggered by the stress of being an interracial couple in the early 1960s (Barney was black, Betty was white).

While I could just be a lazy bastard and leave it at that, I feel it would be worthwhile to add some extra details. For instance, one of the reasons the Hills were driving so late at night was that a hurricane was bearing down on Portsmouth, and they wanted to get home before it touched down. When Barney first realized that the occupants of the strange craft were trying to capture them after the Hills stopped the car to take a look, he tried to floor it, only for the couple to lose consciousness as a beeping sound rang out from the car’s trunk.

In the months between the incident and their first hypnosis sessions, the Hills suffered from physical and mental health problems. Betty was suffering from vivid nightmares, and Barney had developed anxiety and an ulcer. The Hills recalled that the alien craft stopped their car by landing on top of it, and they were led up a ramp by the occupants.

The examinations involved the Hills being stripped of their clothes. The aliens removed hair, fingernail, and skin samples. They probed the couple’s arms, legs, heads, and spines with needles and inserted a large 6-inch syringe into Betty’s stomach. The examinations were overseen by an apparent supervisor that Barney, a WWII veteran, later described as somewhat resembling Adolf Hitler. The aliens were shocked to discover how easily Barney’s teeth could be removed and only reacted with confusion when Betty tried to explain the concept of dentures to them. When Betty later asked where the aliens had come from, the leader said, “If you don’t know where you are, there wouldn’t be any point in telling you where I am.” However, he did show Hill a star map that she later recreated under hypnosis.

Since the story became public, many skeptics have tried to demonstrate how easily the incident could have been constructed from false memories. The 2023 book The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America by Matthew Bowman is the most recent edition of the theory that the Hill’s memories are the product of race relations in the United States at the time. Not only were they an interracial couple, but they were also activists active with the NAACP. Therefore, Bowman and several others before him have argued that the alien encounter was manufactured out of Berney trying to grapple with the slow progress of the civil rights movement in the early 60s.

Whatever one believes about the story, it has certainly captured the public’s imagination. It would later be dramatized in a 1975 television movie titled The UFO Incident, starring Estelle Parsons as Betty and James Earl Jones as Barney. Barney died of a cerebral hemorrhage only eight years after the incident at the age of 46. Betty died in 2004, aged 85, having never remarried.

The Derry Fairy

This strange little humanoid is known from a single encounter in the woods outside Derry in Rockingham County, as described to Boston astronomer and UFO researcher Walter H. Webb in a pair of letters he received in the early 60s from a man named Alfred Horne.

Horne claimed he was out in the woods on December 15, 1956, looking for potential Christmas trees, when he was startled to see a greenish humanoid-type creature that stood 2 feet tall. Its skin was wrinkled like an elephant’s, its ears drooped off its dome-shaped head like a basset hound’s, and it had no eyes, just black holes covered by a transparent film. Its hands were stubby, and it had no toes on its feet.

Horne and the little green man stared at one another for twenty minutes before Horne, apparently thinking this was the best way to prove that he really saw the thing, jumped on the creature and tried to capture it. The thing then unleashed a scream so terrifying that Horne ran away in terror, and the little man was never seen again.

In his efforts to find the truth behind the story, local historian Richard Holmes was able to dig up records of a Derry resident named Alfred Horne, who lived on Berry Street in the 40s and 50s. He wasn’t able to find out much else about the man, though.

What he did uncover was another story involving fair folk in the Derry region, this time dating to a 1907 pamphlet written by Robert Richardson centering on nearby Beaver Lake. Richardson claims he was napping on the shore of the lake when a nearby jack-in-the-pulpit flower suddenly transformed into a wood nymph that looked like a little old lady.

She then told Richardson the story of a Native American hunter, traveler, and magician named Tsienneto, who had retired to a lodge he had built on an island in the middle of the lake. He was distrusted by the local Pawtucket natives, who captured him while he was out on a hunt and dragged him before their chief. He then uttered a prophecy warning that “a peculiar people with pale-faced hues” would arrive on their land and destroy the environment. He then demonstrated his magic powers by hurling a massive boulder at his island and sinking it beneath the waves. The boulder remains where it landed, today called Point Rock.

Holmes found an alternate version of the tale in a 1945 book by Mary MacMurphy. In her version, Tsienneto is a fairy queen who lived in the woods around Beaver Lake and “performed deeds of friendly service to those in need.” According to MacMurphy, one famous individual who received the fairy queen’s help was Hannah Dustin, a Puritan woman from Puritan Massachusetts who was kidnapped along with 27 other colonists by an Abenaki war party, who allegedly murdered Hannah’s six-day-old daughter by smashing her head against a tree. She later took her revenge on an island on the Merrimack River, killing and scalping ten Abenakis, including six children, and made her escape. MacMurphy claims that Tsienneto helped Dustin escape by putting a spell on the Abenaki to put them in a deep sleep and then guided the escaped colonists home.

Devil Monkeys

A devil monkey, as depicted by DeviantArtist TheMorlock

Devil monkeys are part of a class of cryptids labeled as NAPES, or North American apes. The term NAPES was coined by the illustrious cryptozoologist Loren Coleman in the 1960s to describe ape-like cryptids in North America that don’t quite fit into the same description as the large and bipedal Bigfoot or Sasquatch, often being closer to chimpanzees in appearance. Devil monkeys, on the other hand, are often described as resembling a cross between a baboon and a kangaroo, with sharp, canine-like fangs, powerful back legs, long bushy tails, and three-toed feet with razor-sharp claws. They stand anywhere from three to seven feet tall and have been spotted as far north as Alaska, although they’ve mainly hung around the South and Midwest ever since the first documented sighting in Tenessee in 1934.

The one we’re concerned with here, however, stalked the streets of Danville in Rockingham County for two weeks in September of 2001. It began with strange howls that resembled no animal that the locals were familiar with. The first person to glimpse the strange invader was Fire Chief David Kimball, who saw the creature near the intersection of Pleasant Street and Kingston Road. He described it as dark brown with a red hue, eight feet long, and hopping around in the middle of the street until Kimball’s approaching car scared it off.

The creature was spotted several more times, and the locals even organized a search party on the 9th to hunt the monkey down. They didn’t find it, though, and soon after, the animal disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

These days, most Danville residents tend to agree that the devil monkey was nothing more than a zoo animal or exotic pet that escaped. Indeed, Kimball, based on a documentary he saw on the Adventure Channel, believes the creature was a common woolly monkey, a species native to the upper Amazon basin, with a natural range centering on southern Colombia.

The Dublin Lake Monster

Dublin Lake (also known as Dublin Pond) is relatively small for a lake with a monster legend. Located near the southwest corner of the state in Chesire County, it is 0.8 miles long, 0.6 miles wide, and only 100 feet at its deepest. Yet it is associated with a rather creepy monster that allegedly drove the first person who saw it insane.

Depending on which version of the urban legend you listen to, the person in question was either a skin diver or a scuba diver taking part in a diving bell operation in the early 1980s. The scuba diver version states that the diving bell didn’t have enough rope to reach the bottom of Dublin Lake, so the diver set out on his own to reach the bottom. He never returned to the diving bell, but he did turn up several days later in the woods, completely nude and rambling incoherently about hideous monsters that he encountered in a cavern at the bottom of the lake. In a standard urban legend cliche, the diver ended up so traumatized by his encounter that he was institutionalized.

While I can’t deny that this is an incredibly effective horror story, especially with how the monsters are never even described, I highly doubt it actually happened. Not only does it feel too much like a typical urban legend with a Lovecraftian coat of paint, but it’s the only encounter with a lake monster of any kind I could find that’s associated with Dublin Lake. But it’s not the only legend if folklorist Peter Muise is telling the truth. In interviewing locals about the lake, Muise came across rumors of it being bottomless and even hiding a spaceship in its depths. It does seem a bit of a stretch, given it’s only 100 feet deep, but what do I know?

Wood Devils

This unusual population of hominids is rumored to live in the woods of Coos County, which occupies the northern third of the state. They are described as standing seven feet tall, with gray hair and long, pointed faces. They are capable of running at quick speeds and use their thin stature to hide behind tree trunks. Failing that, they stand perfectly still, relying on natural camouflage to hide themselves or, if all else fails, let out a horrifying scream.

Sightings were more common between the 1930s and 70s, especially by hunters and lumberjacks. Some notable sightings from that era include:

-1942: Hunter George Wentworth claims to have shot an eight-foot-tall creature near Dixville Notch. He follows the blood trail but eventually loses track of it.

-1948: George Lavoie fires his rifle at a tall, gray-haired creature with a horselike face that he spots behind a tree near his hunting camp. He later finds large footprints behind the tree.

-1952: Robert Goulet (not to be confused with the actor/musician of the same name) is startled by a loud scream while hunting near Dixville Notch. He follows the sound and sees an eight-foot-tall creature with gray hair running away on two legs. He fires at it but misses.

-1973: A group of hikers on Mount Cabot report seeing a seven-foot-tall creature with grayish-brown hair and a foul odor standing behind a tree.

-1977: Pittsburg resident John Horrigan claims to have seen a seven-foot-tall gray-haired creature cross Route 3 at night.

-1983: Colebrook resident Linda Newton-Perry claims to have seen an eight-foot-tall tan-colored creature standing behind a tree near her home.

-1997: Errol resident Bill Driscoll reports seeing a nine-foot-tall creature with gray hair, long arms and legs, and a human-like face walk out on Route 26, stare at him briefly, and enter the woods.

-2000: Evan Litchnowski and his then-wife Edith are hiking the Drummer Pond Trail when a dark figure suddenly emerges from the trees and runs down the path away from them.

-November 15, 2004: An anonymous witness claims he and his grandfather were hunting at 5 a.m. when a horrible scream shattered the early morning clam. They then saw a dark figure with a pointed head emerge from the brush behind them, standing seven feet tall, and walk away from them down the ridge. The men later found footprints measuring 15-18 inches long with a 4-6 foot stride.

Theories as to these creatures’ identity vary. Some argue they are related to Bigfoot. Others say they are a new species entirely. Some claim they are extraterrestrial in origin, while others argue they are connected to some of the so-called “fearsome critters” of lumberjack lore, especially the Hide-Behind or the Whirling Whimpus. Considering that those creatures are described as violent and predatory in the original legends, though, I find it doubtful.

And that’s all the cryptids of New Hampshire I could find. As I said, the list is short but still enjoyable, in my humble opinion. Next up is Maine, obviously, but that will have to wait for January, as it’s the holiday season, and I have some festive articles from the WordPress archive to get out of the way. Until then, stay safe, stay away from the caves under Dublin Lake, and I’ll see you all again very, very soon. Bye, folks!