Massachusetts 1879 - Two Men Chased by Wild Man Near Blackinton - Tirademan! (UPDATED)

[Trogluddite]

UPDATE 10 September 2026:  This update was necessitated by a discovery made while trying to synchronize this archive of historical newspaper articles with the original Tirademan archive created by Gigantor.  It is now possible to demonstrate that several newspapers used the same story while changing the facts to make it appear like a local news event.  Tirademan apparently found one of the later news articles, which was incorrectly attributed to being an encounter in California.  Tirademan's article can be found at https://bigfootforums.com/topic/55866-california-18791212-two-men-chased-by-wildman-in-antelope-mountains/.

 

This story is included in Bigfoot in New York and New England by Paul and Robert Bartholomew.  It has also been added to The Bigfoot Forums' Standardized Sighting Record; see SSRID: 7855. 

 

Tirademan found the article below on the left, which was published in a Canadian paper on October 31, 1879.  However, the earliest known version of this article was published in The Sun of New York (NY) on October 17, 1879.  That article is poorly copied and difficult to read.  Therefore, the article (below right) is the one published in the Fall River (MA) Daily Evening News on October 18, 1879.   

 

It wasn't particularly remarkable for one newspaper to copy, largely verbatim, an article from another newspaper in the days before wire services.  However, the story doesn't end in Massachusetts.  By mid-November 1879, newspapers had moved the hunters to either the Antelope Valley (California) or the Antelope Mountains (?) and claimed that the originating newspaper was in Nevada.  An article with the Nevada version of this story was published in The Daily Picayune of New Orleans (LA) on December 1, 1879.  It can also be found at the link above.  While some names and small details were changed to protect the innocent the plagiarist, the stories are unequivocally the same.  

 

 

        

Edited 10 hours ago by Trogluddite
See update in body of post.