The Lansingburgh Wild Man of the Woods (Troy, New York, 1870)

In 1870 Lansingburgh was a separate Rensselaer County village, now part of Troy, New York. East of Rensselaer Park, in the bosom of the hills, a stream dashed down a deep gorge from the lakes at Oakwood. Table Rock was a shelving of rocks in that gorge, and the ravine ran back toward Oakwood Cemetery. The Troy Daily Times called it "just such a spot as would naturally be chosen as the retreat of gnomes and goblins." In December 1870, someone was living there.

The first to meet him were schoolboys who were "constantly rambling about the hills." They came home "breathless and with their hair on ends." He "appeared like a crazy man, and was in a semi-nude condition," and he was "frightful in appearance and action." He carried a large knife. The Lansingburgh Gazette of 8 December reported talk that "a veritable gorilla" was prowling about the hills.

Then came the old Bacon house, under the hill. He frightened the occupants nearly out of their senses with "hideous yells and grimaces." Police gave chase, and "the pursued ran like a deer and disappeared."

On 12 December he was seen near the upper entrance to the cemetery. Capt. King went up with a posse of men to capture him if possible. A small fire, supposed to be his, had frequently been seen. Some declared they had found places dug out in the earth where he had apparently made his resting place.

The next day the Troy Daily Whig reported that the men building the cemetery fence had seen him. "He was plainly seen by a large number of them, and was entirely nude. He had a bundle under his arm." The Times placed the encounter at a small building where tools were stored. "With a whoop or rather a shriek and a bound he disappeared," the paper wrote, "the men being too frightened to follow him."

A mare was found hanging by the neck near the Bucklin farm, its throat cut. George Storms reported it. The animal, worth $100 to $150, was first suspected to be the wild man's work. The Whig soon reported that the owners had killed it themselves, because of a "dangerous and incurable disease."

Who was he? The Times suggested an "escaped lunatic, whether from Marshall Infirmary or some private place of confinement." By 15 December the police had another idea. He was "a resident of that village who has a penchant for going up into the cemetery and then disrobing himself and dancing a breakdown."

The Gazette played it for laughs. In its version a village official set out with "Mexican muskets, Sharpe's rifles," and powder and shot. He found a "poor half-idiotic and harmless individual almost naked," devouring "a pound of Switzer cheese and a half barrel of Fox's farinas."

On 21 December the Times announced the capture. "He has located himself in Jimmy Adams's show-window." The next day the Gazette set it straight. "The Wild Man has not been caught yet." No one in 1870 called it a hoax, and the Times and Whig reports read as straight news.

The story travelled. On 14 December the Albany Morning Express wrote: "A wild man has taken up his quarters in the Troy Cemetery. He was entirely nude." The Syracuse Daily Standard followed. Locally he was the Wild Man of the Woods, and the Hermit of Diamond Rock, after a crystal-studded rock on the hill above the village. In 2018 the Lansingburgh Historical Society gathered the clippings. Every account describes a man, not a beast. He belongs to the 19th-century American tradition of newspaper wild men. His name was never learned.