The legend of Hairyman

By Heather Rule

The legend of the Hairyman – a sasquatch-like figure – sightings around Vergas dates back decades to the 1970s. There used to be a lot of sightings of the larger-than-average, hairy man walking around near the Vergas trails known as the Klondike areas.

Sherri Hanson is one of the people who witnessed the Hairyman in the area years ago, when she was a kid, and the sightings have turned into a folklore legend among those in the Vergas community. When word spread of these Hairyman sightings, Hanson said people drove into the Klondike areas at night to try and see him for themselves.

The Hairyman is a large person, with a full beard and completely covered with hair. He also roams around barefoot. Hanson and her cousin, out on snowmobiles, saw Hairyman decades ago coming out of an abandoned shack near where they were snowmobiling.

There were certain areas of the Klondike where Hairyman was seen, within about a five-mile stretch off a gravel road past County Hwy. 130. There’s another sighting area along County Hwy. 17, going off into the Vergas Trails. When Hanson had her sighting as a child, the area was pretty remote with no one living back there and very limited traffic on low-maintenance roads.

“The way that I rationalize it now is the fact that people that used to own large portions of land back there, maybe they were scaring people away,” Hanson said. “Maybe that’s why there were so many sightings. Maybe the fact that they were selling out their land, and it started getting developed made the Hairyman get on the move and got to a more secluded area.”

There haven’t been as many sightings in recent years, with the last one probably coming back in the 1990s. Some of that could be because of the development of land, homeowners moving into the area or roads being redone, Hanson said. Some people have said they “could’ve sworn” they saw something back in the Klondike area. Is it just imagination or the legend? Or is Hairyman still roaming around? Hairyman could always be on the move.

Does Hanson believe the Hairyman is still roaming the woods 40 or 50 years later?

“Probably not,” Hanson said. “But the legend of always wondering ‘could it be?’ That’s always in the back of people’s minds.”

The legend of the Hairyman is still there.