For this week’s haunted story, we are going to venture up to Connecticut. This isn’t a haunted place or ghost sighting. Instead, we’re going to learn about the Bigfoot of Connecticut.
Connecticut has its very own Bigfoot known as the Winstead Wildman who has terrorized the citizens are two different occasions, which took place 80 years apart. Everything started back in August 1895 with a report from the “Winstead Herald.” Somebody had reported seeing “a large man, stark naked, and covered with hair all over his body, ran out of a clump of bushes.”
Riley Smith, the town selectman, witnesses this. He and his dog were out in the woods while he picked berries when this creature came out of nowhere. Both he and his dog was badly frightened. He said the man was six feet tall and that he was covered in thick black hair. During the following two weeks, the creature was seen by two others. Their descriptions matched up with Smith’s.
The “Winstead Herald” stated that the creature could have been that of an escaped mental patient from Litchfield Sanitarium, known as Arthur Beckwith. But, as quickly as they started, the sightings stopped and the Winstead Wildman disappeared back into the woods, at least for a while.
In late July 1972, nearly eight decades later, two young men saw a strange creature near Crystal Lake Reservoir. They said the creature was nearly eight feet tall and covered in hair. People suggested it could have been a bear, but they assured them that it most definitely wasn’t. The Wildman was seen again two years later. This time he was seen around Rugg Brook Reservoir. The couple who spotted him said he was six feet tall and around 300 pounds, covered in dark hair. After this report, he has not been spotted again.
Whether or not people actually saw this hairy creature, or it was a figment of their imagination, remains to be seen. The only way we will know if the Winstead Wildman really exists is if he comes out of the woods to share his side of the story.
Pen to Paper 