Bigfoot's on a tear through the state

By J.D. Mullane

The phone rang in the newsroom and there was a man's voice, sincere, if slightly overcaffeinated.

"I saw Bigfoot," he said.

Where?

"Near Plumbridge. I was getting something out of one of my trucks and I heard a sloshing sound. As I looked up I saw this — I don't know what the hell it was — but it was around last Halloween. I ran up to my house and got a spotlight. I shined it down there. This thing was standing there, looking back.

"It looked like a man covered in fur. Eight, 9 feet tall. As I shined the light, there it was standing behind some trees. It stood there lookin' at me; its eyes were yellow. It went back towards the turnpike overpass."

Turnpike, huh? Maybe Mr. Bigfoot got in his car and took off. Maybe he moonlights as a tractor-trailer driver and stopped to, you know, "freshen up."

"Let me tell you something, pal," the voice said. "I'm a very credible person. You just killed yourself by laughing at me. Obviously you think this is a big joke. Well, let me tell you, until someone else comes forward to say they saw the same thing, I'm not saying anything."

Click.

And that's the way it's gone for two days here in the newsroom.

Tuesday I reported about a man, Stuart Caesar, who claims to have pictures of Bigfoot tracks (they look like boot prints to me) that he snapped near the Magnolia Hill section of Levittown.

Since then, I've gotten calls and e-mails from as far away as Belgium inquiring about the photos.

I'm amazed at how many people have seen Bigfoot, the legendary ape-like creature that Native Americans believe is a spiritual being.

Many who've contacted me say the tracks are definitely the creature's.

But not Eric Altman, head of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society.

"Those tracks are obviously fake," Altman said. "It's clearly a boot. You know, when you're investigating Bigfoot, you can't jump to conclusions. You have to eliminate all known animals and other possibilities. These pictures look like a hoax, and a bad hoax."

Altman, who lives in Jeannette, near Pittsburgh, installs telephone systems. But for the last five years, his spare time has been spent hunting Bigfoot throughout the commonwealth.

Bigfoot's on a tear through Pennsylvania. Altman said there have been an inexplicably large number of sightings over the last months.

Since Dec. 6, "track finds" have been spotted near Bloomsburg, Clearfield and Dubois.

There's been Bigfoot "activity" reported in Bradford County, too. On Feb. 29, tracks were reported in Adams and Westmoreland counties.

In December, two brothers in Pike County spotted a hairy, smelly 8-foot creature stalking the woods behind a housing development.

Another man reported spotting a Bigfoot on Route 56, 12 miles east of Johnstown.

"One guy wrote me and said he saw Bigfoot swimming in Lake Erie," Altman said.

Bigfoot swims? Who knew?

An expedition to search for Bigfoot is set for late April in Derry Township. At least 50 Bigfoot trackers from around the nation will participate.

Altman said he's "90 percent certain" Bigfoot exists, though he's never seen the creature.

He has, however, heard eerie, unearthly screams during his woodland expeditions, which to aficionados, indicate Bigfoot's nearby.

The legend of the creature was first widely reported in North America in 1958, when road builders in Northern California found large ape-like footprints at their work site.

A crew member made plaster casts and the local newspaper coined the name "Bigfoot."

Turns out it was a hoax. Ray Wallace, who owned the road-building company, planted the prints as a gag. Wallace died in 2002 at 84, and his family came forward with the original casts that were used to make the Bigfoot prints.

Altman dismisses the story.

"The plaster casts don't match the casts the Wallace family claims are the originals," he said.

Still, Bigfoot experts say the best evidence is "the Patterson film." It was shot by Roger Patterson, accompanied by guide Robert Gimlin, as they rode horses through the Northern California wilderness in 1967.

The film shows an ape-like creature loping through the forest, turning its head and glaring at the camera before vanishing from view.

"Patterson took it to his grave that it was real," Altman said.

Gimlin is still alive, but rarely gives interviews. He has always insisted the film is not a fake.

I asked Altman: Didn't they discover the Bigfoot in the Patterson film is a fake?

I mean, in the last few frames, you can see Bigfoot check his wristwatch as if he's thinking, "Geez, look at the time. Gotta go rustle sheep and terrify drunken campers over the next ridge."

Altman laughed.

Nah, that never happened.

"But if you can't laugh at some of this stuff, you really have no sense of humor," he said.

From: Bucks County Courier Times, 4 March 2004.