The Winsted Wild Man

MOST PEOPLE IN Connecticut would never associate the fabulous, giant man-beast made famous by wilderness legends from around the world with their own heavily populated, highly urbane state. Unlikely as it may seem, however, reported sightings of a creature much like the "Abominable Snow Man" (yeti) of the high Himalayas or the elusive "Bigfoot" of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington have a long tradition in the Nutmeg State. And since these reports have for almost a hundred years, now, concentrated on the Winsted area of Winchester, the mysterious, man-like monster has been dubbed "The Winsted Wild Man."
One of the earliest published accounts of the wild man appeared in the August 21, 1895, edition of the Winsted Herald. Written by editor Lou Stone, well-known in the area for his fund of tall stories about unusual events, the article described what happened on one recent day to Selectman Riley Smith when he went to Colebrook on business. Along the road, according to Stone, Smith stopped to pick blueberries and "his bull-dog, which is noted for its pluck, ran with a whine to him and stationed itself between his legs. A second afterward, a large man, stark naked, and covered with hair all over his body, ran out of a clump of bushes, and with fearful yells and cries made for the woods at lightning speed, where he soon disappeared." Selectman Smith estimated that the odd creature was at least six feet tall and ran upright, like a human.
While the wild man may have made intermediate appearances between 1895 and the early 1970s, he again attracted press attention in late July, 1972, when reports came from Winsted that a strange, man-like creature had been spotted early one morning by two young men, on the Winchester Road near Crystal Lake Reservoir. It seems that Wayne Hall, 19, of the Winchester Road, and his friend David Chapman, 18, were at Chapman's house, sitting up late and talking, on the night of July 24. Early the following morning, the young men were startled by "weird noises outside." "It sounded like a frog and a cat mixed together," said Hall, "a real weird sound like when a frog blows up and makes a lot of noise." The two friends looked out the window in the direction of Crystal Lake and at some dis-tance saw what both described as a figure "about eight feet tall and covered with hair." Because of the distance and the dim light, however, they could make out only arms, legs and a head. No face was visible. As the two youths watched from the window, the wild man came out of the thick woods from the area of Crystal Lake, crossed the road and entered the shadows near a lighted barn where Albert Durant of Winsted kept race horses.
"It was kind of stooped," Hall reported, "but more upright. It was hairy; I would say black. It never crouched down; it was always upright. Once in a while, it would reach up and scratch its head." Asked if it might have been a large, black bear, he replied, "It was no bear." Chapman and Hall observed the monster for almost forty-five minutes as it alternately entered and emerged from the shadows around the Durant barn. Finally, it went back across the road and into the dark woods toward the lake.
A little more than two years later, in late September of 1974, the Winsted Wild Man was spotted again, this time when he came out of the woods early in the morning of September 27 and struck terror into the hearts of two couples who had been parking near the Rugg Brook Reservoir. Press accounts of the sighting quoted Winsted patrolman George Corso, who, while cruising about 2:30 a.m. on Main Street, had been flagged down by two obviously agitated Harwinton men and told about their very recent encounter with a six-foot, 300-pound creature covered with dark-colored hair, at the edge of the reservoir. "They were terrified," Corso reported, and when one of them persuaded the police officer to return with him to the spot where the wild man had been seen, the young man insisted that all the cruiser doors be locked before they left town for the three-mile drive to the reservoir. Although Corso thought that a creature as large as the one described could rip off the cruiser's doors whether they were locked or not, he humored the Harwinton youth anyway. "He was really shook," Corso explained.
As they drove toward the reservoir, the informant told the policeman that earlier in the evening, he and his friend and their dates had decided to park for a time by the lake. It had been a bright, moonlit night. After they stopped, one of the men got out of the car. Suddenly, he saw the creature emerge from the nearby woods and start to walk toward the car, its eyes eerie in the reflected moonlight. The young man leaped back into the car and the badly frightened foursome beat a hasty retreat.
When the squad car finally reached the reservoir embankment where the monster had last been seen, the young man suddenly shouted, "There it is now. Don't stop." Corso quickly turned the cruiser around, and though he carefully searched the area to the water's edge with his spotlight, saw nothing. Although he finally gave up the fruitless night search, after sunrise Corso returned to the scene of the sighting, along with a newspaper reporter. Neither could find any sign of what the couples had witnessed, not even a giant footprint in the brush-covered, hard-gravel surface of the reservoir bank. The police concluded that the parkers had probably seen a black bear, but everyone agreed that they had seen something very unusual. Winsted desk sergeant David Gomez remembered that the young man who made the initial report told him, before returning home to Harwinton, "I will never in my life go up there again."
Hoax? Hallucination? Black bear? Escapee from a zoo or circus? Perhaps. But one thing is sure: no one who has claimed to have seen the Winsted Wild Man seems able to forget it.

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