Paranormal investigator Marc Coppell in the Coromandel armed with his parabolic microphone hunting for legendary cryptid the Moehau Man.
Paranormal investigator Marc Coppell in the Coromandel armed with his parabolic microphone hunting for legendary cryptid the Moehau Man.
Does a bipedal creature, perhaps the cousin of North America’s famous Bigfoot, reside in the surroundings of the sacred Mount Moehau at the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula?
Filmmaker and paranormal investigator Marc Coppell certainly thinks so and devotes his spare time to capturing evidence of the fabled cryptid.
Coppell has turned his investigations in the bush into a new documentary, The X-rated Files: Followed from Skinwalker. The title is a reference to his earlier days chasing paranormal phenomena in the United States which included run-ins with supernatural entities at the famed Skinwalker Ranch - the site of alleged manifestations of bigfoot-like creatures and UFO sightings.
Despite his interest in the unexplained, Coppell said he didn’t know anything of the Coromandel’s own Bigfoot, known as the Moehau Man, and named after the mountain range in which it is said to lurk.
“I had no interest in it, to be honest,” Coppell said, but after experiencing what he calls “strangeness in the wilds of New Zealand,” and reading a book published in 1930 called Legends of the Maori bySir Maui Pomare and James Cowan, he was hooked.
“According to Maori, it was the place of the fairy people and giants and it talked of supernatural beings that kidnapped their people. They had a different physical appearance and this was before Europeans arrived.”
The beings Coppell speaks of are called Patupaiarehe and are said to inhabit the swirling mists of the 892m mountain. Many important chiefs, including Tamatekapua of Te Arawa, are buried on its summit.
Coppell started his intrepid search for the Moehau Man a few years ago armed with some rudimentary camera and detecting equipment, but now uses a parabolic mic to try to pick up unusual sound anomalies.
The specific search area is a closely guarded secret and Coppell is keen to stress he observes all protocols involving tapu within the Moehau range.
“I’ve been followed, had feelings of being watched, stuff thrown at me and come across large footprints in an area with no public access. I’ve seen healthy trees torn down with no lightning marks and damage too small to be tornadoes. Whoever did that is extremely strong,” Coppell said.
Trees torn down in the Moehau range search area that Coppell attributes to the Bigfoot-like creature.
“In the documentary, you can see what the terrain is like, you can trip and break your leg- it’s not a tourist-friendly place, you have to use vines to climb down banks.”
Coppell said he has even picked up deep, elongated and disembodied voices via the parabolic microphone: “They can talk and they mimic humans. In one piece of footage there is something that yells out ‘tree,’ and this is typical of whatever these things are - whether you want to call them paranormal or not.”
The evidence for the existence of the Moehau Man, or men, is not confined to Coppell’s own experiences nor those solely in the Peninsula. In his film, he interviews a former soldier who claims to have heard unworldly sounds, seen ponga trees shaken and heard bipedal approaches which chased him out of the bushin the Waitakere Ranges. Another account from the Coromandel detailed a park ranger and arborist who heard a strange howling sound while harvesting kauri seeds, before being pelted with missiles.
An 1882 account tells of the Moehau Man causing the death of a prospector and the kidnap of a local woman, and in 1903 some large footprints were found in the Karangahake Gorge.
An anecdote from late 2022 tells of a Spanish tourist who fled the area after being approached by a strange creature that threw a series of rocks over a distance of 20m, with one measuring around 15kg.
Alleged photo of Bigfoot: Former rodeo rider Roger Patterson said it showed an American version of the Abominable Snowman. Does a similar creature survive in the Coromandel? Photo / File
“A number of people have been chased off that mountain,” Coppell said, but a “big ridicule factor” contributed to their stories never being conveyed to media.
“I don’t think these things are malevolent,” Coppell said despite picking up a mysterious voice uttering his name, and saying “We scare you” while on one of his investigations.
Coppell is the first to admit he has his detractors and comes prepared for the sceptical inquiries he regularly fields from the general public online and those in the scientific and paranormal community who often rubbish the claims of an undiscovered ape-like creature lurking in the New Zealand bush.
A well-worn story from 1924 is often trotted out as an explanation for the sightings of the hairy man. Legend tells of a pet gorilla or baboon that supposedly escaped from a boat anchored in a bay near the ranges by scaling the rigging after being teased by the crew. The animal subsequently leaped into the water only to swim ashore and escape into the bush.
Another theory is the term Moehau Monster was coined from the name of a Yankee steam log hauler, and over time, the story became exaggerated.
According to Coppell, the creatures leave huge flat-footed human-like footprints. This barefooted glyph impression was found in a remote area.
Unrepentant, Coppell points out the holes in the theory, one being the lifespan of a baboon or gorilla is 35-40 years, which would mean any such creature is long deceased thus making modern accounts of the Moehau Man less explainable.
Secondly, he has documented video and cast evidence of footprints collected from the search area, which he says are huge and “human-like” potentially dismissing the dissimilar tracks of primates and great apes.
“A typical Sasquatch print is like humans but bigger and very flat-footed,” Coppell said.
New evidence that Coppell refers to as “the motherlode” can be seen in The X-rated Files: Followed from Skinwalker allowing true believers and scoffers a chance to look and listen to the evidence he has painstakingly collected over the best part of a decade - and decide for themselves.
Being Auckland-based, Coppell will continue to hunt for the Moehau Man as time allows and said new evidence recorded at night “when there is a different type of energy” has propelled him to keep looking for answers to one of the Coromandel’s unique mysteries.
