The fictional places to visit in Vermont you won’t find in any travel guide, because even the locals don’t know they don’t exist. Find more Vermont Extended Universe stories including When the Devil Came to Georgia, Vermont here.

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The Man Cave on Humpback Whale Road

Soon after I revealed the location of the Shelburne Tunnel, I received a call from Ed—the man responsible for tipping me off in the first place. I didn’t answer, of course, since I’ve been conditioned by years of telemarketers to avoid unknown numbers like the plague. But three weeks later, curiosity finally got the better of me. I hit play on the voicemail.

“Yo, Vermont Universe Guy. This is Ed. I sat next to you at the keto beer cheese tasting at the alpaca farm. You probably think I’m angry you wrote about the tunnel. I’m not. I didn’t realize I was sitting next to a ‘journalist’” (he said ‘journalist’ with the kind of sarcasm that only a man who wears flannel every day can muster), “or I would have also told you about a house we’re working on right now. Still can. You’re gonna wanna write about it. Call back and we’ll talk.”

You don’t ignore cryptic invitations in Vermont. So, I called him back. Ed told me to meet him in Newport, of all places. No details, just an address—82 Humpback Whale Street. A weird concession for a housing development requiring streets to be named after endangered animals.

The drive was a nightmare—icy roads, poor visibility due to the salt-caked on my windshield, the everyday perils of Vermont winter. Newport looked like it was built to withstand the end of days—bleak, unforgiving. When I finally arrived at the address, I was greeted by a McMansion. An unholy patchwork of architecture that should have been left on the cutting room floor. How a state so fanatically against billboards allowed these architectural abortions to pop up is beyond me. Plastic Santa was lounging on the front lawn, half-buried in the packed snow, likely cursing the day he got dragged into this mess.

Ed was there, waiting for me at the end of the driveway like a ghoul. “Alright, here’s the deal,” he said as I pulled myself out of the car. His breath came out in thick, visible clouds, like exhaling fumes. “You’re gonna have to pretend you’re one of my crew, or this is a no-go.”

Without waiting for an answer, he slapped a tool belt into my hands. “Family’s home. We’re going into the sub-basement. The dad’s down there. My guys are installing new air ducts.”

I stopped. “Why is the dad in a sub-basement?” I asked though I wasn’t ready for the answer. “And what is a sub-basement anyway?”

“It’s the basement under the basement,” he muttered like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I worked on all the homes in this neighborhood, but this one’s got something special. A real man cave.”

Man cave. The phrase hung in the air. I was expecting a pool table and giant TVs. We marched into the house, past the normal-looking family sitting around the kitchen table. Mom and two kids are playing Connect Four, like a modern Norman Rockwell painting.

I was halfway through an internal monologue about the futility of Connect Four when one of the kids piped up, “You fixing Daddy’s cave?” His eyes are wide and glowing.

Before I could open my mouth, the mom—who looked like she’d been up for three days straight but was somehow holding it together—interjected. “Oh, don’t bother them.” She spoke with the polite condescension.

Ed pulled me forward with a grunt. “We got work to do.”

Down we went, into the basement proper. It was fully finished, but sterile like a dentist’s office. The air already felt different. Then Ed led me into the laundry room, where I saw the entrance to the sub-basement—a spiral staircase that looked like something out a horror movie.

Ed crept down the stairs like a burglar, though the sound of our boots clanging against the iron steps betrayed us immediately. I tried to follow suit, but my attempts at stealth were laughable. He shot me a murderous glare and motioned for silence.

The sub-basement was dimly lit, and the soft strains of classical chamber music drifted from unseen speakers. The kind of music that felt so out of place in the home. The hallway stretched out in front of us like a tunnel to nowhere, the wood-paneled walls lending it the unsettling air of an underground funeral parlor. Ed and his tunnels.

Family photos lined the walls, a gallery of the same man in different sizes. In one, he was so obese he barely fit into the frame, his body pressing against the borders of the Thanksgiving table. In another, he was lean, practically gaunt. Halloween: he was the Kool-Aid Man. Easter: thin as a toothpick. His size fluctuated like the stock market on a drunken bender.

At the end of the hall was the pièce de résistance—a large window that looked into another room, like the observation tank at some backwoods radio station. The kids’ crayon-scribbled artwork was taped haphazardly to the glass. Next to it was a stack of electronic equipment straight out of a hospital, including an EKG machine.

“Four beats a minute,” Ed whispered, pointing at the monitor.

I stared at the green line, bouncing with eerie precision. “Four beats?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, but the creeping weirdness was starting to take hold.

Ed just nodded. “Man’s heart beats four times a minute while he hibernates.” He pointed to a small screen just above the EKG. There, in grainy black-and-white footage from a baby monitor, was the dad himself—curled into a fetal position on a massive bed, hibernating like a goddamn grizzly bear.

Ed leans in. “He’s the only human on earth capable of hibernation”

And there he was fifty feet underground in a McMansion in Vermont.

“Hibernation? Like chipmunks and bears?” I asked. “How long?”

“All winter,” Ed explains. I forgot we were supposed to pretend to work. “Spring comes and they throw a big party when he emerges. He eats a six-foot-long sandwich, a gallon of ice cream, a half-dozen burgers.”

I heard of people who don’t participate in Vermont’s harsh winters but this was on another level. I snuck my phone out and took a photo, the flash went off, and I panicked seeing the hibernating man stir slightly.

“No pictures,” Ed said softly through gritted teeth.

But I had questions. Thousands of them. Ed was in no mood for answers. I think he regretted bringing me. “Let’s go,” he said, his gravelly voice cutting through the quiet. He hustled me back to the stairs before I could process the surreal scene I just viewed. I didn’t even know the man’s name.

As we left, the mother caught my eye for a moment. There was something in her gaze— likely resignation. Or maybe relief? It was hard to tell. I wondered what it was like to live with a man who slept through the winter like a fat, hibernating god, waking only to gorge himself on ice cream and hamburgers, preparing for another long, dreamless slumber. Maybe it was a blessing. Maybe she liked the quiet. Her husband seemed so far away.

I drove back to town, and the image of the sleeping man burned into my brain. Bears hibernate out of necessity—to survive the cold and lack of food. But this guy? Was hibernation a choice? He missed every Christmas, every snowstorm, and most school mornings—trading it all for the dark, womb-like comfort of his man cave.

Was this an exile? A strange, self-imposed exile. But for what? I wanted to wake him up and ask him.

For those of you curious enough to check it out, don’t bother looking for Humpback Whale Road. The street name has been changed to Borneo Pygmy Elephant Boulevard since the whale is no longer endangered. But the man—well, if there’s snow on the ground he’s sleeping down in that sub-basement. Waiting for the spring thaw.