Legends & Lore
For millennia, Native Americans lived along Milford’s shoreline, raising families, hunting game, cultivating crops, and fishing Long Island Sound and the Wepawaug River. On February 1, 1639 Milford’s founders purchased the land that would become the town, and then city of Milford from Ansantawae, Sachem (or chief) of the Paugussets (an Algonquian tribe).
Almost 300 years later, during the early 20th century, an avid archaeologist named Claude C. Coffin spent a great deal of time in Milford searching for Native American artifacts. He found tens of thousands of pieces, and today more than 4,000 of his discoveries reside in a collection bearing his name at the Milford Historical Society. It has long been rumored that during one particular dig, he found something quite unexpected along the shores of Gulf Pond.
While excavating a native encampment legend has it that Coffin discovered an unusually large skeleton, rumored to be over eight feet in height, a humanoid of substantial proportions which the Algonquin people referred to as (ital)Yea hoh. 
Admired and revered as a messenger from the Creator, Yeah hoh was reputed to have powerful psychic abilities. According to the book (ital)Tribal Bigfoot by David Paulides, there is evidence that native Algonquins interacted with Yea hoh.
There have been more than a dozen sightings of the legendary Bigfoot—or Sasquatch—in Connecticut during the past five decades. Two were within a twenty minute of drive of Milford. In 1978 a white sasquatch sighting was reported in Trumbull; tracks were found. There was another sighting that same year, this time in Danbury; a 25-inch footprint was reportedly cast in plaster by police and sent to an anthropologist at Yale. Just this year there was a sighting in January in the northern part of the state.
According to the book, Bigfoot on the East Coast by Rick Berry, “It appears that the Eastern Bigfoot is not so streetwise as its Western equivalent…there are several reports of car/creature collisions. 
There are also a few cases of their being seen swimming underwater.”
There are few cryptozoologists who are willing to unequivocally confirm they believe the legends. It is rare that evidence is found, and the few who are willing to speak do so knowing their colleagues will use their hypotheses to discredit them, negating their other work.
BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) researcher Tim Vogel investigated an August 2016 sighting near Mystic. According to his report on their website, www.bfro.net, “The siting is unique in a way because its located very near coastal Connecticut and just on the outer fringes of the local settlement. Located on private property and abutting a headwaters and swamp literally in the back yard that leads to a local river is where this happened. The landscape is broken up with scattered houses, swamps, creeks and woods.”
According to the report, “Around 5 pm [the observer’s] dogs started barking and wouldn’t stop. There were two deer that had just ran past where he was standing. That’s when he saw it about 20 feet away. He said it was a large arm covered in jet black hair, 3 to 4 inches long, pulling on small cattail-type plants. It was mostly hidden by a large clump of beach grass type plants in the swamp. All he saw was a long (4 foot) skinny arm from the shoulder down to the fingers. He said the hand was about 12 or 14 inches long, palm to end of the fingers.”
The website lists the dozen reported sightings of Bigfoot in Connecticut over the past decades (miniscule compared to the 631 sightings in Washington State alone), in addition to photos, recordings, and hundreds of media articles.
Although evidence is sketchy as to whether Claude C. Coffin actually discovered the remains of a sasquatch, there have been several large species that have returned to Milford in recent years, including one of the largest mammals on earth—the humpback whale. So, if you happen to hear a strange howl, screech, or rocks clacking together—get your phone ready to record. You may catch a glimpse and capture Milford’s mythical Yea hoh for all to see.
—Susan Carroll-Dwyer
