Maine Police: That Bigfoot Was a Man in a Costume

Main Street, Damariscotta, on a c. 1907 postcard. A historical town image, not the 2026 sighting. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What happened

On Tuesday 1 September 2026, the first day of the school year, police in Damariscotta took a run of calls about a large, hairy figure walking around the mid-coast Maine town. The Boston Globe describes Damariscotta as a coastal village roughly an hour north of Portland. NBC Boston put the number at “about a half dozen calls”. The department’s own Facebook post called it an “unusually high number” of calls about “a Sasquatch, Yeti, Bigfoot, or possibly just a very large and hairy individual roaming around town”.

The figure was seen along Main Street and at the local school during morning drop-off. Officer William Smith found him “sitting peacefully” on Main Street (New York Post) and established that he was a man in a “very convincing” Bigfoot costume. The New York Post says photos taken by residents show him covered head to toe in fur and wearing a top hat. No charges were filed.

Timeline

• Tue 1 Sep 2026, morning: the figure is seen at the school during drop-off and along Main Street. Police take about half a dozen calls (NBC Boston).
• Tue 1 Sep: Officer William Smith speaks with the man on Main Street. Chief Erik Josephson says some people “took the opportunity to stop and take pictures, including while Officer Smith was speaking with him”.
• Wed 2 Sep: the department posts its deadpan write-up on Facebook. Boston.com, NBC Boston and the Boston Globe report it the same day.
• 2 Sep: NEWS CENTER Maine also covers it, but refers to the calls as Monday’s. Every other account says Tuesday.
• Sun 6 Sep: the New York Post picks the story up with the top-hat detail.
• 4 Nov 2026: we rechecked the coverage for this update. Nobody has published anything that changes the police account.

What believers claim

Very little, to be fair to Maine’s Bigfoot community. None of the cited coverage argues that the Damariscotta figure was a real animal. The case matters for a different reason. Several calls were made in good faith by people who saw something big and hairy on two legs in broad daylight, and some reached for their phones, not their binoculars. That’s how a lot of sighting reports start.

What the research found

Police found the man and talked to him. This isn’t a guess from a blurry photo. Chief Josephson said Officer Smith “described their interaction as a great conversation and found him to be very interesting and understanding”. The department concluded there was “no evidence of criminal activity, no indication of anything nefarious afoot, and unfortunately, no groundbreaking discovery of a previously unknown species… Just a guy in a very convincing costume.”