The Art of Vanishing: History’s Hidden Hermits Who Lived Far From Civilization

Why do people choose to become hermits? Sometimes, the pressures of community are too much to bear; a life lived alone in the wilderness sounds like a far better alternative. Many hermits exist throughout history, but some have managed to gain fame for giving up life around other people despite their best intentions.

The earliest hermits were often drawn into solitude by way of religious vows. Pioneers of self-assumed solitude, like Paul of Thebes, were initially forced into seclusion out of trauma before finding a divine peace in hermitage. Contemporary hermits like Christopher Knight in Maine, however, found themselves at odds with modern life and opted for solitude instead. Today, we will explore some of the most famous, fascinating, and unique stores of hermits throughout history.

To compile an exploration of the lives of the most famous hermits in history, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of entertainment, news, and historical publications including The Faculty Lounge, The Saturday Evening Post, and Fractalenlightenment.com. Next, we selected hermits throughout history with particularly interesting or influential life stories. After that, we confirmed aspects of our research using sites like The Atlantic and Britannica.com.

This post was updated on August 8th, 2025, to reflect additional information.

By all accounts, Christopher Knight grew up normally. He graduated from Lawrence High School in Fairfield, Maine, before working as a home alarm installer. In 1986, however, something compelled Knight to abandon his job and road trip to the South. Upon making it back to Maine, his car ran out of gas and he abandoned it, heading out into the woods. For the next 27 years, Knight assumed a life of utter solitude. He spent years in and around the North Pond area of Maine's Belgrade Lakes. Since he entered the woods without any possessions, Knight survived by stealing from nearby cabins. Indeed, he committed over 1,000 burglaries in the area, collecting supplies to survive the dreadful Maine winters.

To avoid exposure, Knight built a makeshift camp within a cluster of boulders. He used a stolen propane stove to avoid wood-burning fires, canoed the nearby lakes at dawn, and would wake up during the coldest part of the winter nights to pace until he got warm. In all those years as a hermit, Knight claimed to have only one human interaction when he greeted a passing hiker. In the spring of 2013, a game warden caught him breaking into a camp.

During his seven-month stay in jail, the story of the North Pond Hermit grew into one of international renown. When interviewed by GQ journalist Michael Finkel, Knight expressed regret over his constant stealing but offered little in the way of motive for his hermit lifestyle. He did say, "Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable… my perception. But… when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for… To put it romantically, I was completely free."

Upon release, he met with his convicting judge every week, abstained from alcohol, and got a job through his brother. After that, Knight continued to lead a quiet life in rural Maine, where he still lives today. His story has been compared to other hermits and authors like Charles De Foucauld and Thomas Merton. He resented comparisons to hermit author Henry David Thoreau, however, calling him "a show-off who went out there and wrote a book saying 'Look how great I am.'"

Of all the hermits throughout history, Paul of Thebes can be considered something of a pioneer in solitary lifestyle. He was born around 227 AD in the Thebaid region of Egypt. When his parents died, his sister's husband tried to sell Paul out to the authorities in hopes of acquiring his inheritance. In response, Paul fled into the Theban desert around 250 AD. There, he took refuge in a cave adjoining a spring and a palm tree. He used the spring to drink and the tree to provide clothing and food for several decades. At some point, a friendly raven began bringing him loaves of bread regularly. Committed to his hermit lifestyle, Paul lived in that cave for the rest of his long life.

According to Christian legend, Anthony the Great was told of this desert hermit in a vivid dream. Upon waking, Anthony went out to find him. Later Christian chroniclers like Jerome suggested Anthony found Paul when he was 113 years old. The pair conversed for one day and one night before Anthony left him to his solitude and brought his fascinating story to the world. Upon Anthony's next visit to the cave, he found Paul of Thebes dead. To honor him, Anthony wrapped Paul in a tunic and buried him in the desert, purportedly with the help of two lions. In later years, Anthony became something of a hermit himself, taking to solitude deep in the Egyptian desert.

It's hard to say how much of Paul of Thebes' story is fact or legend. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church later canonized him and gave him a saint's feast day in early January. In later centuries, Paul of Thebes' story inspired several monastic orders including the Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite and the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit.

One of the more remarkable contemporary stores of hermitage and self-sufficiency is that of Richard L. Proenneke. Born in Lee County, Iowa, Proenneke joined the Navy one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He contracted rheumatic fever during his service and spent six months recuperating in the Norco Naval Hospital. According to friends, this brush with death instilled in Proenneke a sobering sense of morality and he dedicated the rest of his life to good health and a formidable body. After his discharge from the Navy, he became a skilled mechanic and eventually found work as a heavy equipment operator at the Naval Air Station in Kodiak, Alaska.

He took to the Alaskan wilderness and made arrangements to use a plot of land owned by friends near Twin Lakes, Alaska. With an eye for building as well as filmmaking, Proenneke began building a cabin from scratch using supplies gathered from around the area. Furthermore, he documented his work in the Alaskan bush using 8mm cameras. After sixteen months, Proenneke briefly returned home to visit family and gather supplies. He soon returned to his Twin Lakes cabin, where he spent the next 30 years. Besides brief supply runs from a friend and bush pilot, Proenneke lived in the Alaskan wilderness in complete solitude.

Many have perished attempting to brave such terrain. Proenneke however took to it easily, planting crops and scavenging old metal for cans and insulation. During his years of hermitage, Proenneke recorded valuable meteorological data. His 8mm films were eventually organized and made into a celebrated documentary called "Alone in the Wilderness." Upon his death, he bequeathed his cabin to the Natural Park Service. The site became part of the National Register of Historic Places a few years later.

In his own words, Proenneke espoused a love for solitude and asceticism. He once said, "I have found that some of the simplest things have given me the most pleasure. They didn't cost me a lot of money either. They just worked on my senses. Did you ever pick very large blueberries after a summer rain, walk through a grove of cottonwoods, open like a park, and see the blue sky beyond the shimmering gold of the leaves? Pull on dry woolen socks after you've peeled off the wet ones? Come in out of the subzero and shiver yourself warm in front of a wood fire? The world is full of such things."

Some people's commitment to religious piety is hard to believe. Take Julian of Norwich, for example. She was born around 1343 in the English city of Norwich during a truly turbulent period. The area was ravaged by the Black Plague not long after her birth, and the Peasant's Revolt affected the city for the better part of her life. Julian herself didn't have it much better. At age 30 she became so seriously ill that she assumed she was dying. While lying on her deathbed, Julian began experiencing visions of Christ and the Crucifixion which profoundly affected her. Once she recovered from her illness, she entered religious seclusion as an anchoress in a cell attached to St. Julian's church.

While little information comes down to us about her life, or if her name was even Julian, a series of wills from the church purport her quiet, incredible life. As the documents attest, Julian underwent a sacred ceremony in the presence of a bishop before being led into her cell with the door sealed behind her. She spent the rest of her life there, devoting her hours to prayer and contemplation. Along with life imprisonment, Julian took a vow of chastity and poverty, though she was given a cat as a companion. Despite the confinement, she would speak with church members and advise those in need, all through her cell door.

All that time in seclusion gave Julian plenty of time to think and write. During her self-assumed imprisonment, Julian wrote two texts now considered classic for their social context and mysticism. Her manuscript "Revelations of Divine Love" in particular is celebrated for its optimism in the face of chaotic times. It's also the earliest surviving writing from a woman in the English language. While little of Julian's biographical information survives, researchers believe she died sometime after 1416.

As the story goes, the path to hermeticism for William "Amos" Wilson began when his sister Elizabeth started dating a bad man. In deception, he tricked her into having relations despite having no intention of marrying her. When she gave birth to twins, he lured Elizabeth and the newborns into the woods, murdered the babies, and absconded to parts unknown. With no witnesses and no perpetrator, Elizabeth was convicted of the murders. For his part, Williams pleaded her innocence and even received a pardon from the governor, but it was too late. He rushed home, arriving moments before she was hanged.

Reeling from Elizabeth's death and its injustice, Wilson turned his back on the society that unfairly condemned his sister. For a while, he wandered southeastern Pennsylvania in a state of near-delirium. In 1802, he found a cave where Swatara Creek meets the Susquehanna River near the enclave of Middletown. There, he resigned himself to solitude, surviving with only a straw mattress, a table, some cooking tools, and a Bible. He spent most of his time writing and carving millstones, which he traded with nearby farmers for supplies. Though he kept himself clean, washing regularly, he refused to cut his hair. After a few years, the odd passerby would remark on his long, flowing white beard and hair.

Wilson lived close to nearby townships and rarely interacted with people, preferring to hide in his cave and fleeing into the complex rock structure when people approached. Wilson likely died in October 1821, as the Harrisburg Intelligencer newspaper ran his obituary notice on the 13th. His story quickly transformed into folklore as numerous records from the Chester County Courts attest to Wilson's hermetic life.

Some popes were men of the people while others like Pope Celestine V eschewed society as much as possible. Born as Peter of Morrone in a rural part of Sicily, he showed a propensity for religion from an early age. His mother Maria encouraged his spiritual development and sold family property to hire a tutor for the boy. By the time he became a Benedictine monk at the age of 17, Peter was already showing an inclination towards asceticism. Within a few years, he moved into a cave on the Montagne del Morrone where he gained a reputation as a hermit and a miracle worker. His lifestyle attracted a considerable following, leading Peter to found the Celestines Monastic Order.

Meanwhile, at the Vatican, the College of Cardinals had drawn ire from Catholics for failing to choose a successor for Pope Nicholas IV for over two years. From his hermitage, Peter predicted that God would strike down the cardinals for their procrastination. The College of Cardinals presumably feared his reputation and prophecy so they decided to elect Peter as pope instead. Peter refused their nomination and even attempted to flee. In response, the cardinals found him, brought him to the Vatican, and declared him Pope Celestine V. Due to his years spent in solitude, Celestine V made for a particularly ineffectual church leader. After five months and eight days, Celestine V resigned from the office of the papacy and attempted to return to his old life.

His successor, Pope Boniface VIII, feared reprisal or the possibility of Peter becoming the antipope. As such, he tracked him down. From there, Peter was imprisoned at the castle of Fumone in Lazio, Italy. Peter died after 10 months in prison at the age of 81. While his legacy remained at odds for centuries, the church eventually canonized Peter — or Pope Celestine V. What's more, his body remains on display in a glass casket at the Santa Maria di Collemaggio.

A doctor by trade, many knew James Lucas as an educated man with eccentric habits. When his father died, these proclivities became pronounced. A little less than two decades later, his mother died, flaring his eccentricities to a profound degree. Presumably suffering from the loss, Lucas moved back into his parents' Hertfordshire Estate. Besides refusing to execute their wills, Lucas became fearful of his relatives. After that, he barricaded himself in the family home and let it fall into disrepair. He resigned himself to a life lived entirely in the kitchen, sleeping on a bed of soot and wearing a blanket fastened with a wooden pin.

Naturally, the house deteriorated to a considerable degree. The place became infested with rats, prompting Lucas to keep his meager rations of breed, cheese, and red herring in baskets hung from the ceiling. Paranoid, with hair down to his waist, Lucas kept a gun on him at all times. Despite his solitude, Lucas hired two watchmen to live in a nearby hut and monitor the estate.

Though he refused to leave the house for the rest of his life, Lucas didn't mind visitors. At first, tramps and children would come and dialogue with him through an iron grille. In time, he became something of a Victorian celebrity for his hermit lifestyle, causing increasingly well-to-do people to come and visit. He died in 1874 of apoplexy. After his death, workers removed 17 cartloads of dirt and ashe from the home, as well as vast sums of cash he had hidden in his living room.

Much of the information about Baal Shem Tov comes down to us through oral traditions. His story is so old it's hard to parse what is true and what is pure legend. That said, he was likely born to a poor family in modern-day Ukraine and orphaned at a young age. The Jewish community of Tluste adopted and educated him, but Tov preferred to wander through nearby fields and forests. Eventually, he learned the Torah and took teaching positions in nearby communities. He began experiencing visions around this time which led him to study the Kabbalah. After marrying, divine revelations compelled Tov to move deep into the Carpathian Mountains. There, he eeked out a meager living digging clay and spent the rest of his time in meditative solitude.

Over time, he gained a reputation as a faith healer, creating protection amulets and prescribing cures for the afflicted. While not a strict hermit compared to others on this list, Tov's time in solitude spurred him to create a new religious movement in Judaism. This initiative emphasized a direct communion with God, service to others, and a meditative-like technique whereby one follows their distracting thoughts to their root within the Divine. It also became the basis for modern-day Hasidic Judaism. Though Tov eventually disavowed asceticism in favor of community involvement, his time in hermitage had profound and wide-reaching effects on Judaism.

Perhaps the strangest hermit story is that of Tom Leppard. After spending 30 years in the British military, Leppard found it hard to connect with other people so he decided to cover his body in tattooed leopard spots to stand out better. While he hoped his striking appearance would cause photographers to pay him for shots, something compelled him to live a life of solitude instead. For 20 years, he lived alone on the Scottish Isle of Skye in a makeshift cave on the edge of Loch na Beiste. His shelter lacked electricity or windows but he seemed to prefer it that way.

Leppard spent the better part of two decades cooking on a small camping stove and sleeping on a piece of rotting board. While he rarely interacted with other people during that time, occasionally Leppard would kayak to the mainland to pick up supplies and his pension. Eventually, he gave up his hermetic life in 2008 and moved to more stable accommodations in Broadford, Skye. Leppard died in June 2016 at the age of 80. (For more on strange living, read about a Hindu sect that lives in cemeteries and eats out of skulls.)