From Voyageurs National Park on FB: Called “Catamaran” by locals, Bert Upton is among the strangest of historical characters on area waters. He lived in a hut built over a dug-out at Squirrel Narrows. Found frozen to death in the 1930s by Kettle Falls pioneer Oliver Knox; Upton was perched lifeless in the snow just a half-mile from his home. Shunning civilization, Upton defined the word hermit. First spotted rowing his crude log raft on Namakan, no one knows how he got there. Upton’s accent implied an English heritage but any personal inquiries brought a stony silence. Some suspected him a man fleeing the law; others saw a bizarre outcast; everyone knew he was peculiar. Just five feet tall and wildly unkempt, Catamaran wore hacked-off pants and walked barefoot with a stick. Winter demanded shoes but no socks, a cast-off Mackinaw, and a trailing cap made from the leg of old underwear. He was oddly religious, and suspicious of being poisoned. Surviving on snared rabbits and fish, he ofte...
Paul Vermeren there's some fascinating Goblin stuff in here too.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading Communion as a tween, and thinking he should have followed all those rape and kidnapping prevention lessons we got as kids. I mean, abduction is abduction, right? =)
ReplyDeleteRelated to that thought, the article touches on how abduction phenomena might be related to 80’s white flight, fear of home invasion, stranger-danger, etc, which I hadn’t really thought of before.
ReplyDeleteScary and still deeply weird even from a publishing POV. What happened to that guy?
ReplyDeleteStill writes books as far as I know. He and Art Bell created the story for that disaster movie "The Day After Tomorrow" about global warming bringing an ice age.
ReplyDeleteHe's got a podcast!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitley_Strieber
en.m.wikipedia.org - Whitley Strieber - Wikipedia