Nova Scotia’s Bigfoot?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 21st, 2007
During the 1960s, I shared what I was researching and discovering, in terms of old and new articles, with fellow researchers John A. Keel, Ivan T. Sanderson, Jerome Clark, Bernard Heuvelmans, and John Green.
In 1970, Keel compiled a book, Strange Creatures From Time and Space, which contained Bigfoot-type stories, a third of which I’d passed along to him. I was reminded of one of them about a Nova Scotia sighting of a “giant” when reading a recently located archival article found by Clark.
Here are the two:
Berwick, Nova Scotia, sounds exotic and faraway. Actually it is on the Canadian peninsula lying just off the coast of Maine. In April 1969 a giant eighteen-foot-tall figure was seen by many residents on the outskirts of that little town in the Annapolis valley, according to the Evening News. It was allegedly a “tall, very dark form” seen striding about the landscape at a speed of about twenty miles per hour. After the initial witnesses reported the “Phantom,” as it became known, local police had to assign two cars to the area to control the bumper-to-bumper traffic. John A. Keel. Strange Creatures From Time and Space, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1970, pages 10-11.
The people of Cole Harbor, N[ova] S[cotia], were much excited and terrified about a strange animal that, so they say, appeared in the woods near that place. The animal was “seven feet high, and looked like a gorilla.["]“All Sorts and Sizes,” an excerpt, Davenport Morning Tribune, Davenport, Iowa, April 5, 1892.
Cole Harbor is a community of Halifax Regional Municipality, southeast of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, at the western end of the province. The Annapolis Valley and Berwick are located on the southern shore of Nova Scotia. The two sites are about 78 miles (about 125 kilometers) distance from each other. There are 77 years between the two incidents.
Thanks for this historical item from
- Similar Phenomena:
In the book “Montgomery Co. (PA) Ghost Stories”, author Charles J. Adams III writes of a “giant spectre that took his walks across the bleak surface of the hill from one woods to the other, chiefly in the nights of autumn and winter, but at nearly all hours”. The spectre is described as dark in color, between 10-15 feet tall, and accompanied by a “fearful rustling din”. This story hails from the 1880s, and variations of this story can be found in other writings from around this time. Sounds like the “Phantom” legend has been around North America for quite awhile.
…WHOA WHOA WHOA!!! 18 FEET TALL Bigfoot???!?!?!?!?! EIGHTEEN FEET???!!!
Am I seeing it right? EIGHTEEN FEET TALL SASQUATCH?
uhm, 18 feet tall, 20 mph, get real, that seems to be a bit stretching it, unless we’re talk about a modern day king kong, or some mutated species
My ancestors were from this area of Canada. Specifically from the Annapolis Valley. It is a beautiful province. If this real estate was attached to Massachusetts or Maine it would be as pricy and developed as Cape Cod. But that’s a story for another day.
I never heard any stories of Bigfoot or Monsters from my relatives. However most of the development in Nova Scotia is on the coast. Go ten miles inland and it is truly primeval. Plenty of room for an animal to live for generations and not be discovered.
Regards
Hmmm..I’ve been lurking here for over a year now and this post has compelled me to sign up and comment. I was born and raised in Cape Breton (The upper Island portion of Nova Scotia) and I’ve never heard of these stories until now. Cape Breton is a rugged place surrounded by the Ocean and boasts an impressive highland landscape.
I might relate a story of a camping trip myself and 2 friends went on several years ago now, probably in 2004 or so. We hiked to a place called Pollet’s Cove. (This person’s site has some great photos of the area)
Anyway, on our second night there just a few minutes after sundown my friends and I were tending a small campfire on the side of the hill and just talking. We suddenly heard a shocking scream that none of us had ever heard the like of before. It wasn’t a coyote or cow or moose. I know what they sound like. It was followed by a different scream some 5 to 10 seconds later that was the most spine chilling blood curdling noise I have ever heard. Much more frightening than the first. 20 or 30 Seconds later in silence now I made the comment ‘OK..something just got attacked and killed’. Now I am 95% sure the second howl/scream was that of a coyote, having heard these countless times since the animals made their way here in the late ’80’s from the mainland Canada/USA. The cove is a large are with about 20 or 30 acres of grassland surrounded by boreal forest and the ocean. So the noise was inside the treeline but not that far in. I would say some 300 yards perhaps.
I’ll never forget that scream.
I’m not saying it was a bigfoot, but the thought sure crossed my mind, and remained there.
I slept with my hand close to my blade that night.
I note the newspaper article gives a more believable size for the creature - a seven-foot “gorilla” puts us in sasquatch territory. I’m quite convinced anything taller than eight or nine feet is exaggeration, mistake, or hoax territory for primates. It’s hard to imagine how a knee joint, even one “redesigned” by natural selection, could handle the strain unless the animal moved very carefully and never tried to run (a restriction not likely to enhance survival in the wild). The tallest of humans, Robert Wadlow, approached nine feet, but he was an unhealthy pituitary giant who needed leg braces to walk, and a robust primate his height would probably be considerably over Wadlow’s 400-lb weight. Nineteenth-century strongman Angus McAskill (spellings of his last name vary) proved you COULD have a very healthy and strong upright primate at 7 feet nine inches and 400 lbs, providing a reasonable model for an 8-foot sasquatch, but that may be around the limit for a creature with an upright-primate body plan.
John Keel once wrote a superb article on the part “monsters” play in our culture and psyche, and I’m a big fan of his work on the Roswell UFO case. However, his book on strange creatures never struck me as a reliable source. He gives few original sources in the text, and there’s a dearth of footnotes or endnotes that would allow the reader to backtrack to other original sources. Not very helpful if you are trying to track down, or prove the existence of, real animals.
Good points Matt. MacAskill was a renowned figure born only 30 minutes from my home. His displays of strength are legendary in the local area. I believe his undoing was when he was challenged to lift an anchor weighing almost 3000 lbs.
Apparently he did it but was injured in the task.
It appears that there are two separate stories in this post - one of an 18- foot giant (no characteristics other than “tall, very dark” and fast) in 1970 and a seven foot “gorilla” in 1892. That’s why I first posted about the giant spectre from PA - sounds like the first story is more of a generic legend and the second, well, that’s much more intriguing!