FIELD FILE · HIDEBEHINDOTHERFOLKLORE
Hidebehind
Also known as Hide-behind, Ursus dissimulans
A lumberjack-camp “fearsome critter” that stalks woodsmen but can never be seen, because it always slips behind a tree – or behind you.
The hidebehind is one of the eeriest of the “fearsome critters,” the comic monsters of North American logging camps. Its defining trick is in its name: whenever someone turns to look at it, it slides out of sight behind a tree trunk – or behind the person looking for it. No one, therefore, has ever had a proper look, which is exactly why the lumberjacks who told the tale could describe it however they liked.
In camp lore the hidebehind was a patient, deadly stalker. It was blamed when a logger went off alone into the woods and never came back, and it was said to drag its victims away and feed on their innards. Fortunately it had one weakness: it could not stand the smell of alcohol, so a woodsman with a flask – or a skinful – was safe. Storytellers clearly enjoyed that loophole.
The creature turns up in the printed collections that preserved camp storytelling in the early 20th century. Luke Sylvester Kearney included it in The Hodag and Other Tales of the Logging Camps (1928), the book best known for Wisconsin’s hodag; Wisconsin folklorist Charles E. Brown listed it in his Paul Bunyan Natural History pamphlet (1935); and Henry H. Tryon gave it a mock-scientific name, Ursus dissimulans, and a portrait in his illustrated field guide Fearsome Critters (1939). Jorge Luis Borges later carried American lumberjack fauna into world literature in The Book of Imaginary Beings.
Like the hodag and the squonk, the hidebehind was never a serious cryptid. It belonged to a tradition of tall tales told around bunkhouse stoves to entertain the crew and tease greenhorns. In recent decades it has found a second life in fantasy fiction, games and animation, from J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World to the cartoon Gravity Falls.
- Type
- Other
- Status
- Folklore
- First reported
- 1920s
- Best-known location
- Northern logging country, especially Wisconsin’s lumber camps
- Also called
- Hide-behind, Ursus dissimulans
- Reported in
- Wisconsin
What witnesses describe
Usually imagined as a slender, upright, bear-like animal covered in long dark fur, able to make itself thin enough to hide behind a narrow tree. Since no one can ever see it, its true appearance is part of the joke.
Where and when it’s seen
Deep conifer forests of the northern lumberwoods, lurking just behind the nearest tree, especially at night and around lone woodsmen far from camp.
Notable sightings
- 1928In print among the logging-camp tales Upper Midwest logging country
Luke Sylvester Kearney’s collection of camp tales, best known for the hodag, includes the hidebehind and its aversion to alcohol.
- 1935Paul Bunyan Natural History Madison, Wisconsin
Folklorist Charles E. Brown of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin included the hidebehind in his pamphlet cataloguing the mythical animals of Paul Bunyan lore.
- 1939Tryon’s Fearsome Critters Cornwall, New York
Henry H. Tryon’s illustrated field guide gave the hidebehind a mock Latin name and a famous drawing by Margaret R. Tryon of a black, shaggy creature peering around a tree.
What could explain it?
- The hidebehind is a tall tale, not a reported animal: it was invented and embroidered by loggers to amuse each other and to unnerve newcomers.
- It neatly “explained” the very real feeling of being watched in deep woods and the real dangers – getting lost, accidents, exposure – that sometimes kept men from returning to camp.
- Its alcohol weakness is a joke at the expense of hard-drinking camp culture rather than a genuine belief.
Legend, culture and tourism
The hidebehind belongs to the fearsome-critter tradition of American lumber camps alongside the hodag, squonk and agropelter, and is a favorite of modern fantasy: it appears in J.K. Rowling’s writing about the American wizarding school Ilvermorny, in Disney’s Gravity Falls, in Manly Wade Wellman’s Appalachian stories and in many tabletop games.
Where it’s reported
Hidebehind in the news
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