Slippry Skin is a Bigfoot-like creature figured prominently in many oral and written traditions of northern Vermont, especially Essex and Orleans Counties.
Etymology
As early as the 1750s, a scout for Roger's Rangers wrote that Native Americans of the region were known to have described this legendary creature as "Wet Skin." Also referred to as "slippryskin" and "Old Slippry Skin," his nickname was apparently given on account of its remarkable ability to elude hunters.
Description
The creature was described as an extraordinarily large bear that always walked on two legs.
Powers
Slippryskin was more mischievous than malevolent and routinely teased the inhabitants of the Essex county towns of Lemington, Victory and Maidstone, and was credited with ripping up gardens, pulling down fences, stampeding cattle and trampling cornfields. Its calling card: a trail of huge prints in the snow and mud. "Wet Skin" was said to have been especially adept at throwing hunters off its trail.
In her book, "History of Lemington," Vermont historian Marion Daley writes that the creature moved about in a swift, ghost-like fashion that bordered on the supernatural. "Before a hunter could lay his gunsights on him, the old bear would vanish into the woods silent and swift as a drift of smoke."
Story
Historian Paul Rayno recounts the story of a party of hunters who left the town of Morgan in Orleans County, with the intention of killing the creature. As they were walking along a logging road leading to the top of Elon Mountain, a loud thumping noise could be heard from above. The men quickly hid in some nearby bushes in expectation of ambushing Slippryskin. The creature backtracked on his prints, then rolled a large tree down the mountainside, narrowly missing the hunters as they were lying in wait. Shaken, the hunters promptly abandoned the chase — or so the story goes.