In North Adams, Massachusetts, there’s a cliff-face that overlooks the town. It’s called Coca Cola Ledge, because decades ago the Coca Cola Company painted a large logo on the cliff as a billboard. The cliff is easily accessible from either side, and the top is said to be home to a monster — a Bigfoot-type creature who lurks up there to scare away anyone who gets to close.
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I personally ran into the Coca-Cola monster thing a few years ago walking my dogs
I only told a couple of family members bec I don’t want people going up there and harming it
I visited North Adams in my younger adult life, sometime in the early 1980s. I was never a religious believer of any kind; in fact, my upbringing almost ensured that I wouldn’t be. My parents would often punish me as a child for asking questions about religion, even the most innocent ones that came from school, questions like, “Who is Jesus?” or “Why do people pray?” Those moments shaped me into someone who rejected anything that couldn’t be explained by reason or reality.
When my travels eventually brought me to North Adams, I was not searching for belief, salvation, or meaning. I was simply drifting through a quiet town, detached and curious in the way only young people can be. I spent many days walking down Eagle Street, my thoughts wandering as I passed by storefronts and strangers, until I found myself drawn toward the edge of town, toward Coca-Cola Ledge.
There was something about that place I could never rationalize. Even from a distance, standing near the base of the cliffs, I felt something stirring deep inside me, an emotional current that I couldn’t explain away with logic or science. My body reacted before my mind could catch up: a rush of energy, an almost spiritual pull that both fascinated and frightened me. I would stand there for hours, thinking about what it meant. Was it some kind of repressed emotion or desire? A symbolic confrontation with something buried inside myself? Or was it, perhaps, an encounter with something beyond what I understood, something that could only be called religious?
I never climbed up to Coca-Cola Ledge. Whether it was fear or pride, I can’t be sure. But I often wonder what might have happened if I had. Maybe I would have found answers to the questions that haunted me in those years, questions about purpose, belief, and the unseen threads that tug at our lives. Instead, I turned away and carried that unease with me into adulthood.
Now, looking back, I realize that moment, my hesitation, became a turning point I didn’t recognize at the time. I live with the quiet fear that I missed something important, something that could have given my life meaning. I blame, in part, what some call the “Coca-Cola Ledge Monster.” To others, he’s an urban legend. But to me, he became real, a presence that took something from me, a piece of my courage, perhaps even my faith in possibility.
So when I hear others talk about the legend of Coca-Cola Ledge, I can’t dismiss it as just a story. For me, it represents an encounter with the unknown, a brush with something that demanded belief. Whether it was real or imagined hardly matters anymore. The consequences were real enough.