The Strange and Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit

[Esmeralda]

30 years in the Maine woods with just a tent and no fire?

Can't see a tent or sleeping bag last that long.

Or his clothing. The story is not a true one.

 

[Gracie]

He stole clothes and bedding and whatnot from cabins in the area.

 

[Esmeralda]

He stole clothes and bedding and whatnot from cabins in the area.

Oh, okay. I still don't like the story. I think it's very manipulative, not quite sure it is true, and it doesn't help the liberal perspective, not imo.

Stealing in order to survive in the woods really isn't any different than stealing in the city in order to survive. Let's make it clear: this is not the story of Jean Valjean in the novel Les Misérables, who stole a loaf of bread in order to survive and ended up spending many years in prison for it. Jean Valjean did not choose to be without a job or any means of support. A true hermit may have a home in the woods, but he/she supports him or herself with gardening and hunting, making his own clothing, etc. A true hermit doesn't steal in order to survive. If you want to understand the true liberal perspective, read Les Miserables, not some, most likely untrue (parading as truth), story on the internet.

 

[Gracie]

I think he has mental issues. Asbergers or however its spelled. Its in the link if you read the whole story. He just took off at 18 years old and stayed gone. He IS a true hermit.

 

[Esmeralda]

I think he has mental issues. Asbergers or however its spelled. Its in the link if you read the whole story. He just took off at 18 years old and stayed gone. He IS a true hermit.

I didn't read the link. This kind of false information stuff is boring. I don't read internet blogs. I disagree that he is a true hermit. A true hermit is also not mentally ill. If this guy's excuse is that he is mentally ill, then that is what the story is about, not about being a hermit. I also question if he is really mentally ill if he has the wherewithal to regularly burglarize people's homes.

You, I and Pogo will probably have to agree to disagree on this one, but I believe you are being manipulated.

 

[Pogo]

This is not a blog; it's an article. Real reports of real people. And he never said he was mentally ill, nor did anybody else, nor did he make excuses. He calls himself a "thief".

Geez.

And just to nip this in the bud before it starts, Asperger's is not a "mental illnesss". I have it myself. Lots of people do.

 

[Gracie]

I disagree with ya, yep, but I won't use the disagree button, lol.

 

[Esmeralda]

Debbie Baker, whose young boys were terrified of the hermit—

From the article.

A hermit does not steal. A hermit does not terrify children. This is someone who made the choice to live outside of society yet remain dependent on society. He is not to be admired, not in my opinion.

The World Health Organization defines Asperger syndrome as one of the autism spectrum disorders or pervasive developmental disorders, which are a spectrum of psychological conditions that are characterized by abnormalities of social interaction and communication that pervade the individual's functioning, and by ...

It is a psychological syndrome or disorder then. Semantics.

Sorry, but my impression is that the whole article is meant to cast a positive, almost spiritual, light on this guy who did nothing more than hide in the woods and steal. Not someone to admire, and the article is manipulative. If he is ill, then he is to be pitied, not admired.

Even the title of the article attempts to give it a literary tone: what horseshit.

 

[Gracie]

hermit
[hur-mit] Spell Syllables

• Synonyms
• Examples
• Word Origin

noun
1.
a person who has withdrawn to a solitary place for a life of religiousseclusion.
2.
any person living in seclusion; recluse.

 

[Esmeralda]

hermit
[hur-mit] Spell Syllables

• Synonyms
• Examples
• Word Origin

noun
1.
a person who has withdrawn to a solitary place for a life of religiousseclusion.
2.
any person living in seclusion; recluse.

He was not doing if for religious purposes. He was not living in seclusion as long as he depended on society to support his lifestyle. What if this were some able bodied man living in the Bronx in an apartment funded by the social welfare system, living on food stamps, living on social security or welfare payments, stealing from his neighbors, but not interacting with anyone or going out of his apartment except to 'forage' from the system: cash his checks, use his food stamps, steal from his neighbors, etc.? One's to be admired and the other to be excoriated? Why? Both have rejected society and both are using society to survive.

 

[Gracie]

See definition 2.

I am a hermit. I don't like being around people. I rarely leave the house any more. RARELY.

 

[Gracie]

He lived in the bush, Esme. His teeth rotted out from living on scraps or what he could steal. He IS a hermit and he does have mental issue. If you would read the report in the link you would understand this.

Anyway..it isn't worth arguing over. Best I mosey to bed anyway, so...goodnight.

 

[Political Junky]

Great story, thanks.

 

[Esmeralda]

I perused the article. As I said, this kind of thing is boring, especially when it is obviously meant to manipulate. Agree to disagree, and I believe you are being manipulated. And you, my dear, are definitely not a hermit--just based on your social interactions here: that's not seclusion or being reclusive.

 

[Skull Pilot]

To think that this guy lived in the Maine woods and never lit a fire is ludicrous. He would have frozen to death in the winter

 

[Esmeralda]

In the article cited in the OP, this guy who hid in the woods for all those years calls himself a hermit and compares himself to Thoreau. In fact, he suggests what he did was better than what Thoreau did, thinking apparently, he is a more successful hermit than Thoreau was.

Well, Thoreau was not a hermit. He didn't even seriously consider himself a hermit. "Thoreau tells readers. “I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar- room, if my business called me thither.”" He is not a hermit because he regularly interacted with the rest of society.

http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2012/septemberoctober/feature/not-exactly-hermit

And he did not steal from or terrorize his neighbors. He lived a secluded life for some years, but did it for philosophical reasons, not because he was afraid of or hated society.

The guy in the OP seems to be a narcissist, to be arrogant, and to be completely misguided about what being a hermit means: it does not mean living off of society. I think he has mental/psychological issues.

 

[Pogo]

Debbie Baker, whose young boys were terrified of the hermit—

From the article.

A hermit does not steal. A hermit does not terrify children. This is someone who made the choice to live outside of society yet remain dependent on society. He is not to be admired, not in my opinion.

The World Health Organization defines Asperger syndrome as one of the autism spectrum disorders or pervasive developmental disorders, which are a spectrum of psychological conditions that are characterized by abnormalities of social interaction and communication that pervade the individual's functioning, and by ...

It is a psychological syndrome or disorder then. Semantics.

Sorry, but my impression is that the whole article is meant to cast a positive, almost spiritual, light on this guy who did nothing more than hide in the woods and steal. Not someone to admire, and the article is manipulative. If he is ill, then he is to be pitied, not admired.

Even the title of the article attempts to give it a literary tone: what horseshit.

"Terrify children"?
"Manipulative"?
"Narcissist"?? A guy who went out of his way to not be seen or even speak with anyone for 20 years??
"One is to be admired, the other excoriated"?? Who suggested either one?

Damn. Somebody need a hug? You're plugging in a whole lot of crap that isn't even there.

Btw I don't think you're qualified to tell me what Asperger's is based on a Google search, K?

smh...

 

[Pogo]

Some follows-up (from later last year when the OP story took place)...

Maine Hermit Will Attempt To Re-Enter Society After 27 Years In The Woods
- check out the picture -- does not look like a happy camper

(Also here from NBC News)

From The Guardian, earlier last year, this is more along the same story in the OP:

>> In his police mugshot Knight is clean-shaven and wears a style of spectacles from the 1980s. It's a contrast with his photo out of the 1984 yearbook of Lawrence high school in Fairfield, Maine. In it Knight is wearing horn-rimmed glasses and has long, thick dark hair as he leans against a tree.
The blurb accompanying the picture says he plans to become a computer technician. But authorities said by the time he was about 19 he had disappeared into the woods.

Authorities say Knight does not show signs of mental illness and they have uncovered no other motive for his seclusion except that he wanted to be alone.

Knight's arrest came a little more than a week after the capture of a self-styled mountain man in Utah who shared some of the same traits. For six years Troy James Knapp ransacked cabins on national forest land for guns, food and high-end camping gear, authorities said.<<
​

Several articles from HuffPo here...

And this epilogue from a week ago notes he's completed that program and is now integrating into "society" (whatever that means, which is indeed the whole point here) with a job. This was published August 20th. Also shows the surveillance video that caught him.

>> 'I don't think I'm going to fit in,' he said.

'It's too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia.'

Knight has never fully explained why he disappeared into the woods, saying that he didn't have a reason and that it was a mystery to him too.

Knight said that he lost his identity during his years of solitude. 'With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant.

'The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free.'

Despite the physical hardships of living outdoors, Knight said being locked up in the county jail was mentally tougher.

He said: 'I suspect more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods.' <<​

 

[shart_attack]

[Who's to say "last" though?]

For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend—or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest.

... His name, he revealed, was Christopher Thomas Knight. Born on December 7, 1965. He said he had no address, no vehicle, did not file a tax return, and did not receive mail. He said he lived in the woods.

"For how long?" wondered Perkins-Vance.

Knight thought for a bit, then asked when the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster occurred. He had long ago lost the habit of marking time in months or years; this was just a news event he happened to remember. The nuclear meltdown took place in 1986, the same year, Knight said, he went to live in the woods. He was 20 years old at the time, not long out of high school. He was now 47, a middle-aged man.

Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night. He said he didn't know if his parents were alive or dead. He'd not made one phone call or driven in a car or spent any money. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the Internet.

... For close to three decades, Knight said, he had not seen a doctor or taken any medicine. He mentioned that he had never once been sick. You had to have contact with other humans, he claimed, in order to get sick.

When, said Perkins-Vance, was the last time he'd had contact with another person?

Sometime in the 1990s, answered Knight, he passed a hiker while walking in the woods.

"What did you say?" asked Perkins-Vance.

"I said, 'Hi,' " Knight replied. Other than that single syllable, he insisted, he had not spoken with or touched another human being, until this night, for twenty-seven years.

.....

.... We exchanged letters throughout the summer of 2013. Rather than becoming gradually more accustomed to jail, to being around other people, Knight was deteriorating. In the woods, he said, he'd always carefully maintained his facial hair, but now he stopped shaving. "Use my beard," he wrote, "as a jail calendar." He tried several times to converse with other inmates. He could force out a few hesitant words, but every topic—music, movies, television—was lost on him, as was most slang. "You speak like a book," one inmate teased. Whereupon he ceased talking.

"I am retreating into silence as a defensive move," he wrote. Soon he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable."

... Even worse, he feared his time in jail would only prove correct those who doubted his sanity. "I suspect," he wrote, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods."
... He was suffering in jail; the noise and the filth tore at his senses. "You asked how I sleep. Little and uneasy. I am nearly always tired and nervous."
... He explained about the lack of eye contact. "I'm not used to seeing people's faces," he said. "There's too much information there. Aren't you aware of it? Too much, too fast."

.....

... "I drove until I was nearly out of gas. I took a small road. Then a small road off that small road. Then a trail off that." He parked the car. He placed the keys in the center console. "I had a backpack and minimal stuff. I had no plans. I had no map. I didn't know where I was going. I just walked away." It was late summer of 1986.

He'd camp in one spot for a week or so, then hike south, following the natural geology of Maine, with its long, glacier-carved valleys. "I lost track of where I was," he said. "I didn't care." For a while, he tried foraging for food. He ate roadkill partridges. Then he began taking corn and potatoes from people's gardens.


... The victims of his thefts, after years of waiting for a police breakthrough, eventually took matters into their own hands. Neal Patterson, whose family has owned a place on the pond for fifty years, began hiding all night in his dark house with a .357 Magnum in his hand. "I wanted to be the guy that caught the hermit," he said. He stayed up fourteen nights one summer before he quit.

Debbie Baker, whose young boys were terrified of the hermit—to quell their fears, the family renamed him "the hungry man"—installed a surveillance camera in their cabin. And in 2002, they captured a photo of Knight. The police widely distributed the photo and figured an arrest was imminent.

It took eleven more years.

Much more, with pictures, at this link.

Well, lookee here guys:

Pogo's finally learned how to stop taking credit for other folks' work!!!

Amazing!!!

@Rikurzhen

 

[Pogo]

[Who's to say "last" though?]

For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend—or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest.

... His name, he revealed, was Christopher Thomas Knight. Born on December 7, 1965. He said he had no address, no vehicle, did not file a tax return, and did not receive mail. He said he lived in the woods.

"For how long?" wondered Perkins-Vance.

Knight thought for a bit, then asked when the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster occurred. He had long ago lost the habit of marking time in months or years; this was just a news event he happened to remember. The nuclear meltdown took place in 1986, the same year, Knight said, he went to live in the woods. He was 20 years old at the time, not long out of high school. He was now 47, a middle-aged man.

Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night. He said he didn't know if his parents were alive or dead. He'd not made one phone call or driven in a car or spent any money. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the Internet.

... For close to three decades, Knight said, he had not seen a doctor or taken any medicine. He mentioned that he had never once been sick. You had to have contact with other humans, he claimed, in order to get sick.

When, said Perkins-Vance, was the last time he'd had contact with another person?

Sometime in the 1990s, answered Knight, he passed a hiker while walking in the woods.

"What did you say?" asked Perkins-Vance.

"I said, 'Hi,' " Knight replied. Other than that single syllable, he insisted, he had not spoken with or touched another human being, until this night, for twenty-seven years.

.....

.... We exchanged letters throughout the summer of 2013. Rather than becoming gradually more accustomed to jail, to being around other people, Knight was deteriorating. In the woods, he said, he'd always carefully maintained his facial hair, but now he stopped shaving. "Use my beard," he wrote, "as a jail calendar." He tried several times to converse with other inmates. He could force out a few hesitant words, but every topic—music, movies, television—was lost on him, as was most slang. "You speak like a book," one inmate teased. Whereupon he ceased talking.

"I am retreating into silence as a defensive move," he wrote. Soon he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable."

... Even worse, he feared his time in jail would only prove correct those who doubted his sanity. "I suspect," he wrote, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods."
... He was suffering in jail; the noise and the filth tore at his senses. "You asked how I sleep. Little and uneasy. I am nearly always tired and nervous."
... He explained about the lack of eye contact. "I'm not used to seeing people's faces," he said. "There's too much information there. Aren't you aware of it? Too much, too fast."

.....

... "I drove until I was nearly out of gas. I took a small road. Then a small road off that small road. Then a trail off that." He parked the car. He placed the keys in the center console. "I had a backpack and minimal stuff. I had no plans. I had no map. I didn't know where I was going. I just walked away." It was late summer of 1986.

He'd camp in one spot for a week or so, then hike south, following the natural geology of Maine, with its long, glacier-carved valleys. "I lost track of where I was," he said. "I didn't care." For a while, he tried foraging for food. He ate roadkill partridges. Then he began taking corn and potatoes from people's gardens.


... The victims of his thefts, after years of waiting for a police breakthrough, eventually took matters into their own hands. Neal Patterson, whose family has owned a place on the pond for fifty years, began hiding all night in his dark house with a .357 Magnum in his hand. "I wanted to be the guy that caught the hermit," he said. He stayed up fourteen nights one summer before he quit.

Debbie Baker, whose young boys were terrified of the hermit—to quell their fears, the family renamed him "the hungry man"—installed a surveillance camera in their cabin. And in 2002, they captured a photo of Knight. The police widely distributed the photo and figured an arrest was imminent.

It took eleven more years.

Much more, with pictures, at this link.

Well, lookee here guys:

Pogo's finally learned how to stop taking credit for other folks' work!!!

Amazing!!!

@Rikurzhen

Translation:

"I was unable to find your post copied onto a 'Nazi website' and so my plan of poisoning your well is foiled! Curses!"

Get a freaking life, loser.