The Northfield Pigman - podcast episode cover

The Northfield Pigman

Mar 11, 202428 minSeason 2Ep. 49
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Episode description

Welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party! This week I am joined by a very hungover Nick Einstman to discuss some good old-fashioned New England urban legend coming out of a small town in Vermont, the Northfield Pigman! Definitely a fun story to tell around the fire next time you go camping to truly traumatize your kids. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome back- I had a fucking bubble in my throat. Let's take that again. You gotta stop sucking so much dick. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party Show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I am your host Dave and today I am joined by the wonderfully mustachioed, very hungover, Nick Eitzman. I'm very hungover. I look hungover. I'm like looking at myself in the webcam, I'm like fuck.

You don't look that bad. It might just be the lighting, I don't know. My face is all blotchy, look like a liver spot man. You're more backlit than anything so I think that might be probably what it is. But besides being hungover, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good. I got a frosty in hand. I wish they would have given me a spoon instead of a straw. Yeah dude, that's wild. It's very bizarre but the Nadja is here, my cat Nadja, lovingly named after the vampire from what we do in the shadows.

Nadja, say hello to your uncle Dave. Wait, so not the tiger from Aladdin? I always assumed it was the tiger from Aladdin. Oh, that's Raja. Fuck. That's Raja. I honestly didn't even think of that. I can't tell you the last time I saw Aladdin.

Yeah, I mean the last time I saw Aladdin was the live action one. Was that directed by Guy Ritchie? No. One of the new live action Disney movies was directed by Guy Ritchie and I just assumed it was going to be super British and it wasn't and I was very disappointed. Why do I feel like it was Little Mermaid? I almost said Little Rascals there for a second. I kind of want to see like a Guy Ritchie Little Rascals movie. Oh, that'd be so good. I'm going to feed that to my AI later.

Well, I'm glad you're doing good. I'm glad the cat's good. I'm glad you got your frosty. Again, I don't think dairy is the best thing for your stomach when you're hungover. Listen, I have already coated it with wawa egg rolls this morning when I left the casino. Very black coffee, some chicken nuggets. I got a five dollar piggy bag at Wendy's and then I decided that I wanted ice cream because ice cream always makes me feel better personally, but not physically.

Just mentally, I feel a little bit better. Yeah, a little bit better. I mean, I guess maybe the calcium from the dairy would help, but I don't know, man. Anyways, well, why did you have a good time, judged by how you're feeling today? I'm assuming you had a good time. Oh, I had myself a time and a half, buddy. A time and a half. Let's let's run into what he got for me, Dave. Oh, God. Well, it's been a while. I know.

You know, just to remind listeners at home, you don't know what we're going to be talking about today, right? You also didn't know you're going to be a guest until about an hour and a half ago. Yeah, I honestly I feel really bad because every time I say that I'm going to be a guest, I get sucked up into like 10 million other things. Yeah, but you're here today. So, you know, it doesn't matter. I'm really glad, really glad to be here.

All right, Nicholas. Well, today, our story today brings us to the quaint New England town of Northfield, Vermont. It's settled in 1781. Northfield is a very small town. It's roughly like 40 square miles and as of 2020 has a population of close to like 6000 people. So not the biggest town. Right. It's home to the oldest private military college in the world and not a lot else.

If you go on by like what like TripAdvisor has said, I tried to look it up on TripHobo, our favorite travel destination site, but Northfield's not on there. It should be a sponsor of the show, honestly. But according to TripAdvisor, TripAdvisor, three out of the top six attractions are, can you guess what they are? All right, I'm going to say a place where people get maple syrup. Nope. No. Okay. All three of these are the same type of thing, too. Oh, okay. Can I get a hint? No.

Covered covered bridges. Oh, God damn it. Which is like the most like my so stereotypical small town New England bullshit I've ever heard. Legitimately have memories like of my grandmother making my poor father drive like 15 miles out of his way to go look at a fucking covered bridge while we're like at storybook land or story land and like north, whatever that you know what I'm talking about. North Conway. Yeah, North Conway. Yeah, like, and then, by the way, he almost hit a moose.

Like in the ass. Yeah, my love of New Hampshire goes back deep, you know, almost hitting moose, breaking an elbow, waking up where Betty and Barney Hill apparently got abducted and Laconia and Tilton. There's a sweet gas station up there. You got to check it out. There's an alien painting on the wall. Fucking love New Hampshire. I fucking love it. Well, we're talking about Vermont, but either way, it's the same thing.

Anyone down in Philly has no idea. Vermont, where upside down New Hampshire. It honestly is. Yeah, but the states got lazy. But legend around town has it that hidden away in the lush forests behind all the glitz and glam of all their fucking fancy ass covered bridges and historical society museums, something more terrifying lurks in the shadows, a creature so hideous. Some say it's an abomination of God, a terrible homunculus, a cross between a man and a pig.

This week, Nicholas, we're going to be discussing the pig man of Northfield, Vermont. Are you familiar? No, I honestly thought you were going to say vermin supreme, and I was going to be very disappointed. That actually wouldn't be a bad episode. Just like the lore behind him. The lore of vermin. I feel like not enough people know who he is. I will send you a clip that I saw the other day of like him doing D&D or like someone mocking him as D&D.

It's the best thing in the world. So give me the details on this pig man because I pig men scare me. Do they? Yeah, I have a thing against like not against. I have a coming off as a little bigoted here. I have a strong dislike of pigs. I don't know what it is. Like they're the little snouts kind of like freak me out like all pigs. Most pigs were like the cute little teacup pigs you see like on Instagram. They're sitting. Yeah, that's fine.

Like a boot came to mind. They just have like giant open nostrils and their nose. Their snout just freaks me out. And like a hybrid. You're talking about like state like state fair. Yeah, like hogs. Yeah. Like a hogger. Yeah, you're not talking about your average run of the mill like babe. No, I'm not. Well, first off, babe and what was the Charlotte's when Wilbur. Fuck Wilbur. He killed Charlotte. That pig got what he deserved.

All right. I think I'm glad that he's fucking dead as a doornail and he didn't win the so bad. But it's the saddest book in the world. The whole the whole point is making friends. Oh, by the way, the friend dies. That's fair. Give a shit about. I don't give a shit about Charlotte's babies. You want the first off the fruit. The fact that there's thousands of Charlotte baby spiders. Terrifying. Terrifying. Who writes that? It's like, oh, this is a great book for kids.

It's going to launch like a lifelong fear of pigs and arachnophobia. I'm I think I might still be drunk. Oh, my God, dude. Oh, all right. Now, Nicholas, the origins of pigmen are a bit murky, but the consensus of how this like Al Gore monster came to be seems to stem from what I'm pretty sure is just an urban legend. Obviously, I didn't look up to see if the basis for the legend is real or not. But for the story's sake, let's just go ahead and say that it's real.

So the story goes that the night before Halloween in 1951, 17 year old Sam Harris left his house with some eggs and toilet paper to go cause a little mischief. It's the night before Halloween. It's Devil's Night. It's Mischief Night. That's what it's for. Also, I found out in New England it's called Cabbage Night. The fuck is that? We're both born. Yeah, no, no, I know. We're both born and raised doing it. It's not called Cabbage Night.

No, it's Devil's Night or Mischief Night. It's one of the two. They're interchangeable. Yeah, they're interchangeable. And so that's what that night is for. From what I read, though, Sam was known around town for being just kind of like a little shit, pulling pranks, causing trouble with his neighbors, just small town teenager type shit. So it's basically so this is an out of the ordinary for Sam. But the next morning, Sam hadn't returned home.

His parents reported to missing and the whole town launched a massive weeks long search that involved hundreds of locals and police. But unfortunately, neither he or his body were ever found. Now, some people in town believe that Sam had just simply run away. He was a 17 year old shithead. Kind of makes sense. Others think he was possibly kidnapped or killed or both. I mean, back then, if you ran away or were kidnapped, there's no way you just never found again in 1951. You're gone.

But others believed that something more sinister and maybe otherworldly took place. Some say that Sam had accidentally stumbled upon something they described as evil in the woods around Northfield, something that may have consumed his very soul or transformed him into a hideous monster. Those people think that he came across an ancient ritual site where Satanists or maybe even witches performed black magic sacrifices and summoned legions of demons.

Just normal, just normal Vermont. Just normal New England. Just normal New England woods. Yeah. Normal New England woods. Now, my question there to kind of sidetrack you there, is there any like folklore or history of the town before that, like dealing with witches or like having any issues or anything along those lines prior?

I read said anything like that. But I mean, again, this is 1951 that they're saying this. I'm assuming their whole fucking like I'm going to say, yeah, like a small farming town in New England. I'm going to assume 100 percent. Yeah. That even if there wasn't, they said there was. Well, yeah, they're not like they're not that far from Massachusetts. Like, no, no. I'm sure those stories all they travel.

Yeah. So so basically the story is either Sam had been like possessed by the devil himself and transformed into this human pig hybrid or the pig man himself was summoned by these witches and killed Sam just because. No, just because he could. Got to make the bacon somehow. Now, no one ever wants to see how you do it, but you got to make it. Exactly. No, no one. I was going to make a bad joke. I'm not going to do it. No, Sam Harris did Sam Harris become the pig man.

Who knows? But it didn't take long for the legend to spread around Northfield and eventually through all of Vermont in the woods outside of Northfield is an area known as the Devil's Wash Bowl, which is a pond surrounded by cliffs and caves and shit.

People reported seeing a strange figure lurking around in the woods and they describe this figure as being covered in a white fur, just straight up butt ass naked and wearing a hollowed out pig's head over its own like some kind of fucked up macabre mask. Fuck that. You said it was the Devil's Wash Bowl. I'm looking it up right now. Devil's Wash Bowl. See what's going on here. Yeah.

It's also said that the pig man had an insatiable hunger for pork, which is kind of fucked up. It would slaughter pigs from nearby farms, eat their insides and entrails before cutting off the head and hollowing it out. Some say it's for a trophy. Others say it's to replace his mask because over time I'm just assuming it gets fucking disgusting. Oh yeah. Well it's got to change it out. Yeah. Other legends say that he would mate with pigs and produce half pig, half pig man offspring.

So at this point it's like 75% pig. Yeah. Dude, could you imagine being a farmer? All right. It's 5 a.m. You're just getting up, put your boots on, you're going out to feed the pigs and you just see this fucking white hairy dude just wearing a decapitated pig's head just fucking going to town on your prized hog. Like that's got to like ruin your day. I mean, you know, there's a couple of different ways you can think about it.

You got so serious for a moment. I didn't know what you were going to say. Like, what do you do? Like, do you shoot it? Honestly, like my given mental and like physical state right now, you know, because of being up till four o'clock in the morning and just going going crazy like a 30 year old man should not be doing. Yeah. I honestly think I'd go back to bed and I would never talk about it.

Just like I see nothing you do, you but I'd go back. Yeah, I go back to bed like my imaginary wife sleeping next to me. I was like, what's the matter, honey? I'm like fucking Larry's fucking going to town on whatever the hog's name is. He's going ham on my hog. He's going ham on my hog. And I have to explain to her not like my hog, you know, but like, yeah, I know the hog that we own. All right. Let's just get into the sightings. OK, are you ready for this? Let's do.

Oh, I'm born, born ready. All right. One of the first sightings of the pig man was in 1971 when a farmer heard some strange noises coming from his backyard, like in the area of where his trash cans would be. Right. Now, me and you both being from this area. Usually when you hear something like this, you know, it's more than likely one of a few things. Raccoon, possum, skunk, or on the rare occasion, a bear. So that's what yeah, yeah.

Like that's what this guy was expecting when he flicked on his backlight and like looked out his window. Unfortunately, none of those were what was staring back at him. So standing just at the edge of where the light was hitting, he made eye contact with a man sized figure. Again, fully nude, just hogged out, covered fully in white hair and wearing the head of a pig. A few seconds of awkward eye contact later, and the thing just kind of darted off back into the woods.

Now, just a few days later, and this is arguably like the most notable sighting of the pig man. This occurred where else but a high school dance. A group of. Sound disappointed. So they feathered a kid and put a pig on his head. Probably, but a group of teens had snuck off to a sand pit that was located behind the school to have a few beers. And since it was 1971, I'm going to go with and say that they're probably drinking Schlitz. I feel like Schlitz was a big beer back in 1971.

I'd say Schlitz or Schlitz. I don't know. Schlitz, Gansett or like Genesee. Oh, yeah. Or PBR. No, I don't think so. I bet it was a Gansett or Schlitz. That's just me. Oh, it's doing that. It's against it. But not too long after the gang got together and cracked open a few cold ones, they saw this thing come out of the tree line. And they described it just as the farmer had walking upright on two legs covered in white fur, just totally nude and with the terrifying head of a pig.

So dudes hogged out on two counts. Now, obviously scared shitless, the group ran back to the school, busted back into the gymnasium where the dance was happening and just full on were like ugly crying and screaming from fear and yelling about what they had just seen.

Now, some of the braver students are stupid, I guess, depending on how you look at it, decided to leave the gym and go out to the sand pit to investigate, but found nothing besides some half empty beer cans and what I assume were massive shit stains in the sand from where the kids were sitting. But it's from this story that the pig man legend was like really solidified, I think. Now, you look upset. I want to know where you are right now.

Well, I mean, like you have to take especially like drinking sightings with a grain of salt. And obviously that puts a lot of crypto, you know, cryptic sightings kind of in almost the majority of them, almost majority of them into that category. Right. But like I'm Googling them right now and there's fucking still websites dedicated to this guy. So, you know, this has got to be something there.

But at the same time, too, it could also just be like the town drunk or like we'll get into theories of what he is now. The high school dance is probably the most widely known story and the best with because it has the multiple witnesses. But like we were just saying, how true is it?

Fuck if I know. But settings like this and the farmer incident like aren't very common. Most sightings after this were mostly from teenagers who were walking around the woods at night, pretty much actively looking for the pig man or just going out to party. And then mostly again in the wooded areas around the devil's washbowl, they would say that they saw his red glowing eyes, which apparently is a thing, but not referenced in any other descriptions that I've read of the thing.

Others say they have heard his squeals and grunts echoing through the woods. Others claim to have found tracks. But I mean, it wouldn't. So his tracks, wouldn't they just be just normal, like dude footprints? Well, that's that's it. Right. Like, you know, maybe he's got half human feet, half like, like, cloven, cloves, cloves. Clove. Yeah. Cloven hooves. Like the front half is a hoof and the other half is the heel. I don't know. I don't know how they make these hybrids.

I don't. Others have reportedly claimed to have found his lair, which is a cave off of the washbowl where he keeps bones and skulls of his victims. There had been claims of near misses, people saying that they were attacked or chased, but just narrowly got away. There have even been people claiming that they have seen him and his gross pig children and they look just like how you would expect them.

Basically like a David Lynch version of like the Gamorrean guards from Jabba's palace. But like if they were just children's size. So just to be clear, they don't look like Ted Cruz. No, I mean, if you put a tusks on them, then yeah, probably. Perfect. That's all I needed to know. Now, the pig man has never been caught on camera or photographed. And there isn't really any evidence at all of its existence, besides from some kids and a couple of farmers.

So who's to say this thing even exists or if it's 100 percent urban legend, which is pretty much where my money is. But the but this lack of like anything hasn't stopped people from trying to find out just what this thing is. Right. So do you want to dive into some theories? I want to know. I want to know what your theories are first. What do you think? Well, I mean, listen, there's something to be Jesus Christ. Sorry, the cats are going insane.

There's something to be said about like New England folklore. Right. I mean, it's it's where we first settled as Americans. Yes. Like the woods in specifically up in that region, like the, you know, northern kingdom and all that stuff, like there's stuff out there. There's got to be stuff out there. There's no way there's not. Do I think there's like, you know, a six foot, you know, white haired, furred, covered pig man running around? Probably.

It probably was the twist. I honestly thought you were like, no, no, there's not. But like, you know, it's probably not like, you know, it the original sighting was probably just some dude who was like, I hate to, you know, use this word, but like a little challenged. Right. And like worked on a form and like, you know, well, I wasn't going to use the other word, but like, you know, runs is like work that a pig farm would like, you know, people like bones.

You know, I probably liked bones and like, like, like, you know, like a Marcus parts. He just liked bones. And before he knew it, he had like, you know, a pig head with all the flesh. He gets a little drunk. He skins out the head and he puts the head on his head. All right. Well, and then from there, you know, it evolved into the urban legend that we know. Well, that that I like, I like where you're going with this. But let's dive in. What do you got? Let's dive into some theories.

So first is the obvious one that a lot of people believe in that that is that the pig man is an actual flesh and blood cryptid. Just like a nightmare homunculi that lives in the woods surrounding Northfield and preys on pigs and humans alike. Apparently, this thing kills humans, but there's been no reported that I know of murders, possibly like a hills has eyes situation, like a genetic mutation or supernatural in nature. So that's one of the theories.

The second is that the pig man is Sam Harris. The theory is that Sam survived his disappearance, but went insane. According to the website North American cryptids dot com, he could have been traumatized by something he saw or experienced in the woods the night he disappeared. Or perhaps like drugs were involved. Either way, he lost his fucking mind. And to cope, for some reason, he adopted this weird pig like persona and just kind of haunted.

I gotta be honest, I completely forgot about him until you just said it. It was like the first half of the episode. We got it. It's also very likely. I like that. I like that. Another theory that comes from North American cryptids dot com is that the pig man is someone just trying to keep the legend of Sam Harris alive.

Either like a jolly old prankster or just like a straight up mentally ill person who decided to take on the mantle of Sam and just like scaring people and killing animals, which is kind of close to what you were saying. Yeah, like exactly. But like I liked I actually like that theory a lot. Right. Like it's you know, there's probably a few different people doing it. And it's probably it started off like all in good humor.

It's like, oh, we have a pig man. And then some sick fuck was like, I am the pig man. And then like before you know it, he's like jumping around squealing and he becomes like like a weird delusional type of thing. Yeah, like a weird delusional like pig cryptid vigilante. That's just like fighting pigs for whatever reason. Does that become like if they truly believe they are the pig man, does that make it a cryptid?

Well, but you can say the same thing about the guys that go around and like are dressing up as Bigfoot. Right. Like they're doing it to keep the you know, keep the thing alive. Right. To bring you know. Yeah. But does that do more harm or good to the idea of cryptid? That I feel like that doesn't help. I feel like if anything, that hurts cryptozoology. I kind of think that that has a double, you know, a double edged sword kind of effect. Right. Like, yes, it does hurt.

You know, the it does have, you know, extremely right. It could actually really hurt the actual study of it. But at the same time, it could also bring in a lot of new like interests like, oh, my God, like, yeah, it was some guy in the in a pig man suit. What the hell is the Northfield Pig Man? And then they start looking it up and then they start doing their own research. And it brings more hobbyists in, which I think is pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't know.

But the most likely answer is that all of this is just an urban legend, just a story to kind of like tell your children to not to not be dumb and go into the woods alone or like be an asshole on Halloween or something. Right. Yeah. It's even just like people in the woods who hear or see something and their imagination gets the best of them and they exaggerate what they experience could also be like what's going on. But who knows? But, you know, what do you think?

I know. I know what you think. But no, I mean, I think that, you know, it's you really hit the nail on the head there, too. Right. It's definitely, you know, it's most definitely a bedtime story for kids. Right. It is very much it's a campfire story. It's a campfire story, which is awesome. And you can say a lot of that a lot of you can say that about a lot of different cryptids, too.

At the end of the day, their folklore that is turned into, you know, sightings and turned into campfire stories and turned into sweet merch like there's pig man socks. I'm looking at them right now. They're pretty great. What website are you on? Darn tough. Darn tough sucks. Yeah, they do. There's also they had an artist do a print of the pig man and it looks fucking dope and I might have to buy it. Pig man lives. Pig man lives. I like this story a lot. This is cool.

This is a good story. But yeah, but that's that's that's it. That's pretty much all there is to know about the pig man of Northfield, Vermont. It was a pretty good story. It was cool. I hadn't I had actually never heard of it until I was scrambling to find something to do an episode on. And I think it worked. I think I read a lot. I mean, again, I just read the same thing like 15 times. But yes, you just read didn't read a lot of different material.

That's read the same material. I got you. I smell what you're stepping in. Yeah, there's not a lot to go off of, if that makes sense. All the sources are pretty much all the same thing, but it's all it's all awesome. Exactly. Exactly. Well, Dave, thank you for having me on the show, buddy. Yeah, but anytime I miss you, I'm glad you could make it. I'm glad you're not dying. I mean, you're dying. I'm actively dying. I'm honestly going to take a very nice little nap on my couch. Yeah.

As soon as we're done. You're on dark crystal. Your insides are probably failing you systematically. My insides match my outsides right now. Yeah. Oh, shit. Well, before we go, do you want to do you want to plug anything? No, at the moment, you know, just if you want to learn about watches and see some terrible memes, we somehow went viral the other day with Jesus with a Lego Bruce Wayne. Or Lego Batman meme hit like one hundred thousand views and still climbing.

Follow me on Instagram at Neo Vintage Nick or you and LTD time for funny watch content. And you can learn about the watch on your wrist. Hell, yeah, brother. All right. So follow him at Neo Vintage Nick. And was it limited time? Yeah, unlimited time. Unlimited time. I'll put a link when I when I tag in all this stuff. Follow him. Go to he has a YouTube channel, too. I believe you can go follow that as well. And then if you want to follow us, go to Instagram. Crypto cocktail. Go to tick tock.

Crypto cocktail party. We have a patron if you want to support the show. Five dollars a month. Not really anything too crazy going on over there. We do have a discord if you want to join it. The link is on our Instagram. But yeah, with that, Nick, do you want to say goodbye to everyone? Adios. You.

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