In Episode 433, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger hike deep into the woods of Coos County, New Hampshire, searching for an eight-foot-tall, shaggy, grey-haired creature locals call: the wood devil. The stories have circulated throughout the 1900s. Could these creatures still be out there?
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CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[HIKING THROUGH THE WOODS]
RAY: We are wayyyyy up here in northern New Hampshire.
JEFF: We are Ray. We’re in the woods of Jericho Mountain State Park.
RAY: We’re not far from Maine, Vermont, or Canada for that matter.
JEFF: This is Coos County. It’s spelled C-o-o-s, but there’s umlauts over the second O. It’s pronounced Co-ahs County.
RAY: One of the many tricky names we have in New England to keep people on their toes.
JEFF: Right… funny you mention “toes,’ Ray.
RAY: Why’s that?
JEFF: Because we’re looking for tracks.
RAY: What kind of animal are we tracking?
JEFF: Well… it might be an animal… but maybe it’s something more unusual than that. We’ve come to the forests of northern New Hampshire to search for the Coos County Wood Devils.
[INTRO]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger, welcome to episode 433 of the New England Legends podcast. We’re on a mission to chronicle every strange legend of ghosts, monsters, aliens, UFOs, and more. If you’ve got a story lead you think we should check out, reach out to us anytime through our website. We love hearing from you.
JEFF: You know what else we’d love? If you join us for our Freak Formal on Saturday, February 14th at 6:30PM at the DoubleTree Hotel ballroom in Milford, Massachusetts! Tickets are just $25 and all proceeds go to benefit Project Just Because—a 501C3 charity that helps families in need with food, clothing, even school supplies. Come hang out with me and Ray, DJ Neato Neato will be spinning tunes. We’ll have yard games, raffles, a cash bar, food, it’s 18+. Come dressed as your favorite monster or weird thing, bring a date, come alone, or bring friends. It’s always a blast. You can buy your tickets in advance – there’s a link in the episode description or on our website. You can also pay at the door.
RAY: We’ll go searching for the Coos County Wood Devils right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: Okay, as we mentioned earlier, we’re in a remote section of northern New Hampshire.
JEFF: We are.
RAY: To give you some idea of how remote this area is, Coos County is just over 1,800 square miles of land with a population of about 31,000 people.
JEFF: There are towns in other parts of New England with larger populations than the entire county.
RAY: It’s rugged country up here. Mountains, forests, some lakes. Just a few towns scattered along Route 3, Route 26, and the Stark Highway.
JEFF: Plenty of room to get lost, or not be seen.
RAY: Plenty. And we’re looking for wood devils up here?
JEFF: We are.
RAY: That sounds scary. What is a wood devil? Are we talking something satanic?
JEFF: No, not really. The Wood Devil legend has been around for about a century. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, this region was home to various logging camps where men swung axes all day long. At night in the camps, they sometimes shared stories about things they saw in the woods… some might even call them monsters. Let’s head back to 1948 and go on the hunt for the wood devils.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s mid-November of 1948 here in northern New Hampshire. Harry S. Truman is president of the United States, World War II ended three years ago, and everyone is grateful to be getting back to a new kind of normal.
JEFF: Here in northern New Hampshire, for George Lavoie, that means hunting. Heading deep into the woods with his rifle, spending some quiet time in nature, and looking for deer.
[WALKING THROUGH THE WOODS]
JEFF: George has been walking for hours moving between some of his favorite hunting spots. He’s seen a few deer here and there, but nothing worth shooting. Still, for George, a bad day of hunting is still better than a good day at work.
RAY: That’s true. With the sun starting to set, George makes his way back to his camp.
[RUSTLING IN THE TREES]
RAY: What… what is that?
JEFF: I don’t know. There’s something nearby in the trees over there. It seems big. (BEAT) George is creeping closer to get a better look.
[SLOW FOOTSTEPS]
JEFF/RAY: Woah! What IS that?
RAY: It’s tall. Maybe eight feet. It’s standing on two legs with shaggy grey fur.
JEFF: Its face looks almost like a horse.
[RUNNING HEAVY FOOTSTEPS]
JEFF: And just like that it ran off.
RAY: George is standing here with his mouth hanging open… Yeah… kind like yours right now, Jeff.
JEFF: I don’t know what to make of it either.
(LONG PAUSE)
JEFF: It’s now October of 1952. We’re now in Dixville Notch, not too far from Lake Gloriette.
[HIKING IN WOODS]
RAY: This time we’re tagging along with another hunter. His name is Robert Goulet. [LETS PRONOUNCE THIS GOO-LET SO THERE’S NO CONFUSION WITH THE FAMOUS ACTOR]
JEFF: Robert is enjoying his hike in the woods as he looks for a good spot to hunker down. Many of the leaves have fallen, so he has a pretty good line of sight through the…
[FAINT SCREECHING ANIMAL IN THE DISTANCE]
JEFF: What was that?
RAY: I don’t know. Could it be a fisher? I know they make some ungodly sounds.
JEFF: Maybe?
[HIKING IN THE WOODS]
JEFF: Robert is curious enough to follow the sound to see for himself.
[ANOTHER SHRIEK LOUDER THIS TIME]
RAY: I don’t like the sound of that. But we’re getting closer to it.
JEFF: Or it’s getting closer to us.
RAY: Right….
[HIKING STOPS]
RAY: Do you see that?!
JEFF: I do! It’s a raggedy-looking creature. It’s really tall. Gray in color. A long face. It seems to be…
[RIFLE SHOT]
RAY: Goulet just shot at the creature!
JEFF: Why did he do that?!
RAY: I don’t know, but it looks like he missed. The creature is running off into the woods.
JEFF: It’s gone.
RAY: Later, Goulet describes his sighting to some of his hunting friends, and they all agree, they believe he saw a wood devil. It matches the descriptions they’ve heard. Stories that have been circulating for decades up here. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: Specific sightings of an eight-foot tall, grey-haired creature with a horse-like face pop up again throughout the 1900s. In 1977 there was a sighting on Route 3 nears Pittsburg, New Hampshire. In 1983 a woman in Colebrook claimed to see the wood devil in her back yard. In 1997 a man in Errol claimed he saw a creature fitting that description.
RAY: So we’ve got decades of sightings of this wood devil. I mean, by most descriptions, it sounds like Bigfoot.
JEFF: Yeah, I get that, though there’s some subtle differences. Bigfoot is usually described with brown fur and a more ape-like head. The wood devil seems to be more slender with a horse-like head.
RAY: But if it quacks like a duck…
JEFF: Or screeches like a wood devil.
RAY: Right. I find it troubling that Robert Goulet took a shot at this creature.
JEFF: Yeah, me too.
RAY: The first rule of guns and hunting is that you don’t ever pull the trigger unless you know exactly what you’re aiming at.
JEFF: So true. I know I’ve told this story before, but one time I was in a Bigfoot costume while we were filming a reenactment for the New England Legends television series. You can see it on Amazon Prime right now. So we’re way out in the woods of October Mountain in western Massachusetts, and I put the costume on. The camera is far away, because duh… Bigfoot doesn’t do close-ups for the camera. I’m standing there alone waiting for my cue, and it occurred to me: Huh, I wonder if this is how I’ll die? Some hunter out there sees me and thinks: no one will believe me unless I shoot him and prove it. Not to ruin the story, but I didn’t die.
RAY: I figured.
JEFF: Still, we have almost a century of strange sightings in northern New Hampshire that are unique to that region. Even the name is unique. They don’t call them Bigfoot… out here… they call them Wood Devils.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we take a deeper diver into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
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To see some pictures related to this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 433.
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We’d like to thank our sponsors, thank you to our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… stay legendary.