Hunt for the elusive Moehau Man
Filmmaker on quest for fabled creature on the Coromandel
Does a bipedal creature, perhaps the cousin of North America’s famous Bigfoot, dwell 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 he devotes his spare time to capturing evidence of the 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,” said Coppell.
But after experiencing what he calls “strangeness in the wilds of New Zealand,” and reading a book published in 1930 called Legends of the Ma¯ori by Sir Maui Pomare and James Cowan, he was hooked.
“According to Ma¯ori, 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.
“In the documentary, you can see what the terrain is like, you can trip and break your leg — it’s not a touristfriendly 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 credible witness — a former soldier — who claims to have heard unworldly sounds, seen ponga trees shaken and heard bipedal approaches which chased him out of the bush in the Waita¯kere 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 very 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