Community Corner

Boston Yeti Reveals his Identity

The Boston Yeti is in fact a resident of Somerville.

The mystique of the Boston Yeti is now over.

The mystical beast who wandered the Somerville streets this past winter has revealed his identity. In a tell-all interview with The Improper Boston, Somerville resident John Campopiano, 30, revealed that he is in fact the infamous Boston Yeti. When he is not making national headlines dressing up as a yeti, Campopiano works for WGBH-TV’s Frontline.

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The legend of the Yeti started with a recycled Halloween costume, reports The Improper Boston.

Campopiano, who loved Bigfoot and UFO stories as a kid, initially bought the suit as a Halloween costume in 2014. When the first monster storm of the season approached on Jan. 26, he decided to don the costume again and roam the streets. After seeing an NECN request for viewers’ wintry photos, he asked his girlfriend (now the soon-to-be Mrs. Yeti) to take some shots. Then he set up an email address, claimed a Twitter account and waited.

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“In a matter of minutes, people were picking it up. It was surreal,” Campopiano recalls. “The rest of that night, I just sort of sat and watched Twitter.”

Within hours, he was fielding a request from Good Morning America. He shared headline space with Tom Brady in The Guardian. Childhood idol Pee-Wee Herman tweeted at him. His girlfriend’s family in Germany saw it in their local paper. There were radio requests from places as far as Japan. The Today Show asked to come to his house.

While he has only recently removed his yeti garb to the world, Campopiano did give the world a sneak peek into the life of a Yeti as the winter of 2014-2015 came to a close. He engaged in a hilarious twitter Q&A session in March with NECN.

Campopiano did let his twitter followers know that while the mystique may be over, the legend is not.

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