Groton’s Godzilla & Hearing Things
By Joseph A. Citro
GROTON’S GODZILLA
With Hallowe'en fast approaching, my head is spinning with notions about ghosts returning to take a final look at the Green Mountains. In this case, prehistoric ghosts, monsters that shouldn’t be there, like the mysterious Memphre and that aquatic anomaly in Lake Champlain.
I have long been aware that Champ and Memphre are not Vermont's only resident monsters. We have Old Slipperyskin in the Northeast Kingdom, Bigfoots all over the state, Sidehill Cronchers, and that fearsome giant on Glastonbury Mountain known as "The Bennington Monster."
But – one might wonder – what manner of beast dwells in Groton?
Some years ago, at a speaking engagement in Montpelier, I met a wonderful retired woman named Jane Desorda. She was the sort of decent, salt-of-the-earth Vermonter I'd grown up among, so I had no trouble believing the strange story she told me. It might be titled, “Groton's Godzilla.” And – as we will see – size is important.
Mrs. Desorda's memorable encounter took place near Big Deer Campground during the late nineteen-sixties.
It was late July or August. She and her husband, along with their three children, were going on a weekend camping trip. It was Friday, late in the day, probably between three and four o'clock. She recalls plenty of sunshine.
They were traveling in two vehicles, Jane in front, her husband following with the camper. They proceeded slowly along the narrow dirt road, moving toward the bog.
Suddenly they saw movement at the roadside. As Mrs. Desorda recalled, "I stopped, and he stopped. And here was this huge thing, I don't know what it was. It had come up partway across the road... And I could see it as it went by. It looked just like a dinosaur. It came from the right side of the road. It went slowly across and just kind of slithered down into this swampy, treed, dense area on the other side. Just my husband and I saw it; the kids were sleeping. Of course, the camera was in the trailer."
Though many years had passed, it was the sort of experience that imprints firmly and permanently. Mrs. Desorda was able to give me a vivid description of the creature. "It had a long tail and an arched neck... Its back was very humped. The top of the hump was probably two feet tall. All I could think of was a huge turtle that had lost its shell...
"Its head looked like a dinosaur, you know, the pictures you see. It was kind of a tannish color. A dark tannish color. And it was close to the ground, kind of like an alligator is close to the ground. And not very long legs. It had – all I can think of is – webbed feet. Like duck's feet. Only they were big. It went real slow, down into this swampy area. Into the high grass."
When it comes to dinosaurs, the important issue seems to be size. As we talked, we tried to get an idea of how big this mysterious lizard had been.
She recalled it in relation to the road. "From the end of its tail to its head was almost as long as the road was wide. Two cars could probably get by [on the road] if they went a little to either side."
That seemed to make it fairly sizable. The road would have had to be eight to ten feet wide. And an eight- to ten-foot lizard is a veritable Godzilla by Vermont standards.
"When we got to the campground," she said, "we told them the story, and they said, ‘My God, what have you been drinking?’"
I asked her what other efforts she had made to identify the unusual specimen.
"I called UVM, and I talked to a professor there, and he said I'm not surprised at all, he said, because in Groton there are places no person has ever walked. He said there are some very strange things up there. Over the years, people had called him, apparently."
Unfortunately, Mrs. Desorda couldn't recall the name of the person she spoke with.
With new creatures being discovered every day, all over the globe, I can't help but wonder what we'll find if we just stay right t’home. At this point, who can say if Groton's Godzilla is quarry for a naturalist like Alicia Daniel, or a supernaturalist like me.
HEARING THINGS
I wonder if this is still true.
A few years ago, I did a public radio commentary about some weird stuff that was going on at the time. I wanted to demonstrate that Vermont’s strange events were not all clustered in the remote past.
So now I’m wondering if any of what follows is still going on. Perhaps readers from the locations mentioned can weigh in.
At the time, certain Newark, Vermont residents were hearing a mysterious sound, an elusive low-pitched hum. It was often described as resembling the distant drone of a diesel engine. No one has any idea what it was nor could they pinpoint where it was coming from.
Newark is in Caledonia County, part of our fabled "Northeast Kingdom." But that was as close as anyone could come to determining where the sound originated.
It was equally difficult to pinpoint exactly when people started hearing the Vermont hum. Certain residents said it had been around for eight or more years. It first reached public attention when the Caledonian Record ran a story about it in March of 1997.
Oddly, as if in response to the article, the hum stopped, but only briefly. After a few days, it started again, steadier now, and, reportedly, of a slightly higher pitch.
But Vermont's mysterious hum had other puzzling attributes:
First, no one knew what it was. Suspects included dehumidifiers, blenders, fans, and the like. But it sounded in places where there was no electricity, so we can eliminate them. Some people attributed it to pump motors submerged in wells. But even during power outages, the hum kept humming along.
Second, not everyone could hear it. Those who could often found themselves sitting in the same room with people who could not. To compound that particular bit of weirdness: often deaf people said they could hear the hum as well as those with perfect hearing.
And third, different people described it in different ways. In general, it was perceived as low-pitched, like an electrical motor running in another room. Sometimes it sounded deeper and seemed to turn on and off at unpredictable intervals. Sometimes it faded in and out.
The mystery broadens when we realize this puzzling sonic phenomenon was not confined to Vermont. Similar low-pitched sounds were being heard all over the country: New Jersey, Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, and Maryland. It was also reported in England and northern Europe.
In the old days, speculation might have gravitated toward the supernatural as it did with the famous Moodus noises in Massachusetts. Today we who put our faith in science tend to look toward the laboratory. But this time science let us down. The hum could not be detected by microphones or special low-frequency antennas.
The most thoroughly investigated hum occurred in Taos, New Mexico. It's close enough to the sites of atomic detonations, aircraft testing, and the Roswell UFO mania to suggest it might be of military origin, possibly generated by U.S. Navy "ELF" stations. But a thorough study in the late 1990s concluded ELF could not be the source. In fact, the Taos investigation found no source at all for the mysterious hum.
In the July 9, 1997 edition of the Burlington Free Press, reporter Adam Lisberg, ventured up to Newark, to investigate our local hum. He interviewed a number of people and did a fine story about the mystery. But ultimately, he went away puzzled.
Apparently, thousands of puzzled people could hear the hum, enough to be referred to as "hummers." In fact, two hummers wrote a book called the Mystery of the Hum. Authors Theroux and Vassilatos covered the sound's history and myriad theories accounting for it.
Explanations range all the way from UFO interference to stresses in the earth's crust, to epidemic ear problems. Some scientists even speculated that certain people are hypersensitive to the growing volume of electromagnetic noise from microwave communications, cordless phones, and the like.
But this sound without a source remains a mystery. Nowadays we don’t hear much about it, but I’m wondering if we still hear it. Can we still list it as one of the myriad mysteries of Caledonia County?
If you’ve heard it, or if you hear it, please let me hear from you!
Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont author and folklorist known for collecting New England’s ghost stories, legends, and strange-but-true lore. His most recent book is The Vermont Ghost Experience, available at local bookstores or wherever books are sold. You can also ask your local library to order it for your enjoyment and the enjoyment of other library patrons. In Passing Strange, Citro shares folklore with a curious eye, a storyteller’s warmth, and just enough mystery to make you look twice on the ride home.