Christopher Thomas Knight

Christopher Thomas Knight (born December 7, 1965), also known as the North Pond Hermit, is an American extreme survival camper and convicted burglar who lived with little to no human contact for 27 years, between 1986 and 2013, in the North Pond area of Maine's Belgrade Lakes. During his seclusion, Knight lived within one mile (two kilometers) of summer cabins in a crude camp he built in a well-drained woodland obscured within a cluster of glacial erratic boulders. Having entered the woods with almost no possessions, he set up a camp composed entirely of items stolen from nearby cabins and camps. He also pilfered from a local family's dairy farm adjacent to where he camped. He survived by committing around 1,000 burglaries against houses in the area, at a rate of roughly 40 per year, to be able to survive during the harsh winters of Maine. Apart from the fear and notoriety his many burglaries created in the local area, Knight's unusual life also attracted widespread international media reports upon his capture. Journalist Michael Finkel wrote an in-depth story about the incident for GQ and later wrote a book titled The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit.