In The News

National Bigfoot investigators visit Salt Fork on Saturday

The alleged sighting Wednesday evening in Salt Fork State Park of a creature matching the description often given of Bigfoot has generated the attention of a national investigative agency.

Marc DeWerth and two fellow investigators with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization traveled to the park Saturday to both speak with the Cambridge man and woman who claimed to have heard and seen a creature near a groomed trail and search the area for evidence to substantiate the alleged sighting.

Bigfoot researcher Marc DeWerth examines what may be the footprint of the creature near a groomed trail in Salt Fork State Park Saturday morning.

"It sounds compelling," DeWerth said of the couple's alleged encounter. "The main witnesses are describing some things that are obviously Sasquatch characteristics. By their enthusiasm they want to talk about, because it's something that if you really did see one, you want people to know about, because if you hold it in you'll be sorry about it. Twenty years down the road you'll find out that people have been seeing them and you'll be upset you didn't tell someone about it. It's nothing to be ashamed about. Bigfoot is just another animal in the woods. It's not going to harm anyone. If you see one, it's just like winning the lottery."

The trio of investigators walked through much of the area where the creature was reportedly seen. Possible "stick stacks" — a phenomenon associated with some sightings in which sticks are placed around standing trees — were found.

As well, what may have been a footprint was located on a hillside. The imprint, DeWerth said, measured nine inches in length and was five inches wide at the ball of the foot and four inches wide at the heel, dimensions reportedly proportionate with tracks from other sightings.

Though some droppings were found, DeWerth said he doubted they were from the creature.

The area in which the state park lies, he said, is ideal in which a creature such as Bigfoot could reside, and that the park has been the scene of much alleged activity.

"Salt Fork, in general, has always had a long, active history of Bigfoot sightings," he said, "from the day the park was opened. There were six or seven sightings in the first two weeks this park opened. To the current day there has been a consistent amount of sightings, a consistent amount of activity in the area, strange sounds, footprints being found, deer acting weird, like coming out in front of cars, herds of them, and not wanting to go back into the woods. This is prime Appalachia. If you're a six to 10 foot tall creature, this would be a prime habitat to live in."

The park office reported Saturday evening that they had neither received any reports of strange occurrences nor experienced either an increase or decline in the number of visitors to the park in the past few days.

Two weeks ago, a BFRO team in the state park reportedly located what may have been the track of a juvenile Sasquatch, as well as muddy adult tracks high on a rock outcropping.

And some encounters, DeWerth said, go unreported.

How does DeWerth respond to allegations that physical evidence supporting the existence of Bigfoot is lacking?

"I beg to differ," he said. "There's a lot of physical evidence. If you took the Sasquatch case to a court of law, where it's based on evidence only ... Bigfoot would be a fact, there'd be no doubt about it. But that's no how it works in science. Science wants the body."

Among that evidence is the famed Patterson film of 1967, taken near Bluff Creek, Calif., in which a female creature is allegedly captured on film, footprints with dermal ridges (fine lines similar to a fingerprint) and hundreds of large tracks.

DeWerth speculated that some scientists are fearful to openly advocate the existence of Bigfoot for fear of being ostracized within the community of their professional peers.

The BFRO is a conglomerate of volunteers, veteran researchers and investigators and scientists "that are out to prove the existence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch," DeWerth said.

From: The Daily Jeffersonian, 23 August 2004.