Hairyman Legend Endures in Vergas as Sightings Fade Since 1990s

The Hairyman, described as a larger-than-average, hairy man with a full beard who walked barefoot, has been part of Vergas-area stories for decades. Sightings clustered in a roughly five-mile stretch off a gravel road past County Hwy. 130 and along County Hwy. 17 into the Vergas Trails, according to residents who remember the episodes from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Sherri Hanson, who said she saw the Hairyman as a child while out snowmobiling with her cousin, recounted spotting the figure coming out of an abandoned shack near the trail. The appearance prompted others to drive into the Klondike areas at night hoping to see the creature for themselves, creating informal late-night traffic in what was once a very remote and sparsely populated landscape.

"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."

Residents point to several local changes that likely contributed to the decline in reported sightings. Property sales and new homeowners moved into previously isolated parcels, county roads were improved or regraded, and the Klondike areas saw more recreational and residential use. Those shifts reduce the kinds of dark, unused spaces that had fueled both actual encounters and the storytelling that accompanied them.

The social effects were tangible. At the height of interest, rumor-driven night visits raised safety questions and created a minor informal tourism draw, with curious visitors and locals converging on unlit gravel routes. As land was developed and traffic patterns shifted, such nocturnal excursions became less common. The last widely recalled sighting likely occurred in the 1990s, and reports since have been sparse, often framed by uncertainty or secondhand accounts.

Residents say the Hairyman survives most robustly as a question people still ask when walking the trails or watching new construction spread into previously wild parcels. “Probably not,” Hanson said when asked whether the Hairyman still roamed the woods 40 or 50 years later. “But the legend of always wondering ‘could it be?’ That’s always in the back of people’s minds.”

For Vergas, the legend is more than a ghost story. It marks a transition in land use and local identity, from isolated trail country where folklore could flourish to a changing landscape where development, safety considerations and altered traffic patterns have reshaped how residents and visitors experience the woods.