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Every fall I cast a net over the northern plains to see
what legends of the prairies I can catch. Well, actually, I just ask my
students, and they tell me what’s going around. They tell me where
in the country they go in search of creepy good times, and what happens
out there.
“I have a tale about a certain area near where I live,” one
of my students from western Minnesota writes. “Back home there is
a set of minimum maintenance roads called the Vergas Trails. They wind
all over the place and are very narrow roads with many ruts and bumps
and trees encroaching right up to the edge of the gravel. There are many
different tales told about the trails.
“Some say there are cults that walk around in the woods with altars
off in the trees.
“There also is the story of a hermit called Hairy Man. He lives up
in the woods near one of the trails and likes to be by himself. He will
come out and chase you and all those creepy things.”
Now this story of the Hairy Man is one often told around the Vergas vicinity.
The sort of nut cases who go looking for Bigfoot have taken notice of
the local legend of the Hairy Man and tried to tie it to their hapless
quest. So far as I know, though, none of the local legend-tellers of Vergas
considers the Hairy Man to be kin to Bigfoot. The Hairy Man is their own
legendary character, and some have had close encounters with him.
“A friend of mine was driving by the trails,” another student
tells me, “and saw a large hairy being stand up on its hind legs
aside the road and slammed his fist in the back of my friend’s truck
as he drove by.
“The dent, just behind the cab of the truck, was about the size of
a basketball and would take an extreme amount of strength to make. My
friend insists that it was the Hairy Man of Vergas alongside the Vergas
Trails as he drove past that night.”
The dent proves it, right? The story has to be true. Plus, there are lots
of other strange encounters on the Vergas Trails to be accounted for.
There is, for instance, that cemetery, the one that has a mysterious effect
on automobile electrical systems.
“There is a graveyard up on top of a small hill way back in the trails,”
one of my reporters begins. “I have been there three times and never
had anything happen to me, but I have heard stories of people pulling
up in their car and they left the lights on. When they strolled through
the gate, the car’s headlights shut off. They ran back to the car
and tried to turn on the lights, and they wouldn’t turn on. So they
began to drive down the tight, twisty roads in the dark with no lights.
Fifteen minute later the headlights turned back on, and they never had
a problem with them since.”
Another student described a visit to the haunted cemetery by a whole carload
of teenagers. “All of a sudden,” she recounts, “our lights,
inside and outside of the still running car, shut off. You can image how
all of us girls went crazy at this moment as we kept following the road
by moonlight. Pretty soon, with about a half mile left until we hit tar,
the lights came back on.”
Her fellow storyteller sums up, “There may be nothing there, but
the atmosphere is definitely one that brings about tales and legends.”
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