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.
Thank for you this. It was a mind-boggling read.
He was 20 years old at the time, not long out of high school. He was now 47, a middle-aged man. 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.
I can’t hope to comprehend what kind of life one must have to end up in this situation.
Knight admitted that everything he possessed in the world, he’d stolen, including the clothes he was wearing, right down to his underwear. The only exception was his eyeglasses.
How careful must one be to not break their eyeglasses when living decades in a forest and moving at night?
A few desperate residents even left notes on their doors: “Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you.” There was never a reply. “I stole. I was a thief. I repeatedly stole over many years. I knew it was wrong. Knew it was wrong, felt guilty about it every time, yet continued to do it.”
This is heart-breaking. It’s obvious there’s something wrong with this guy, and he’s always been unable to get help for it, even if he knows what he does is hurting others.
Chris insisted that he had a fine childhood. “No complaints,” he said. “I had good parents.” After he’d disappeared, his family apparently didn’t report him missing to the police, though they may have hired a private detective.
I’m seeing something wrong in a family that doesn’t submit a missing person’s report.
One book Chris never stole was the Bible. “I can’t claim a belief system,” he said. He celebrated no holidays. He meditated now and then but did not pray. With one exception. When the worst of a Maine winter struck, all rules were suspended. “Once you get below negative twenty, you purposely don’t think,” he told me. His eyes went wide and fearful from the memory. “That’s when you do have religion. You do pray. You pray for warmth.”
This here is an honest Robinson Crusoe moment.
And if he didn’t have food? There were, he said, some very hard winters—desperate winters—in which he ran out of propane and finished his food. The suffering was acute. Chris called it “physical, emotional, and psychological pain.” He hinted to me there were times he contemplated suicide. Why not just leave the woods? Chris said he thought about it. He even kept a whistle in his camp. “If I blew on it in sequences of three, help might come.” But he never used it. Rather, he made a firm decision that unless forcibly removed, he was going to spend the rest of his life behind the trees.
I’m amazed at the human mind’s ability to stubbornly enforce the pathological thinking. The fact that he’s contemplating suicide as a preferrable option to meeting others blows my mind away.
True hermits, according to Chris, do not write books, do not have friends, and do not answer questions.
This sort of relates to that one artist who made a masterpiece in his garage out of garbage, and then died without ever telling anyone about it. It could be argued that, to him, the true purpose of making art is simply making it, not the fame or money.