The Northumberland County Mystery Beasts
By Cole Herrold
In September of 1913, the cities of Bear
Gap, Paxinos, Reed Station, Elysburg, Snydertown, and Shamokin were in the
epicenter of a rash of strange sightings of a bizarre creature that made its
presence known in the surrounding woodlands and desolate forests. The first
sighting of this creature occurred near Bear Gap and was sighted by timber
dealer Jacob Leisenring who was driving his car on Brush Valley Road towards
Bear Gap when he noticed a strange figure along the side of the road ahead of
him. The figure was on all fours and covered in dark fur and seemingly was not
use to the car's bright headlights as it seemed to disorient the creature
enough that it did not realize the potential danger it was in. The creature
seeing the now incoming car, began to turn around and slink back into the
woods. As Jacob watched the creature return back into the woods, he was able to
tell that the creature was about 30 inches in height and about three feet long.
Jacob reeling in what he had just seen, returned to Bear Gap and gathered
several other people to return to the location with him. When the group got to
the location, they found several prints in the soft dirt. The prints they were
surprised to see were very similar to a human's hand, but the bizarre thing
about these prints was that they were seemingly backward.
A week before the September 15th
publication Irvin Startzel and several others in his car would also encounter
this bizarre creature also while out driving his car; this time, however, he
was driving on a creek road near Reed Station towards his home in Shamokin when
a large creature leaped out across the road and began to scamper and crawl up
the nearby mountainside. Irvin, as well as everyone else in the vehicle, had a
much better look at the creature and said that the creature had a striped furry
body and that as it leaped across the road, the way it did so was like the
movement of an ape or a monkey. Exiting their car to try to catch another
glimpse of the creature, they noticed a series of footprints that were
human-like and also like Leisenring's tracks were backward.
Sightings of the creature continued in
Paxinos and Elysburg when farmers continually caught glimpses of a creature
matching the description of what Startzel and Leisenring saw in their fields,
and at night the area was filled with a cacophony of bizarre cries. While there
is a vague appearance to this creature, whenever the farmers would attempt to
approach the creature, it would run off, so they were unable to get a more
defined appearance of the creature. The farmers and nearby towns and cities,
however, even without a clear description, were on high alert as search parties
in the area broke out looking for the creature. Farmers loaded countless rounds
into their rifles and laid out several traps in the nearby woodlands waiting
for any anomalous animal to come into their possession, yet nothing was ever
found.
Sightings of this creature seemingly
stopped for a time, but it would not be for long when the same or a similar
kind of creature was reported in Snydertown in January of 1940. A family
comprising of a husband, wife, and his sister was driving one afternoon when a
creature began to walk out in front of their car. The man began to slow down,
thinking that it was a deer about to come out into the road, but as he watched
the creature cross, he realized it was not a deer. The creature appeared to be
like a large monkey and had a long tail that it kept curved up over its head as
it moved across the road. The creature had extremely bright eyes that were
reflective like a deer's, and the creature was covered in dark brown hair and
skin. One of the women who went on to report the sighting to the PA Bigfoot
Society would recount that Snydertown has several bizarre events and phenomena
said to occur there, such as a woman who went insane on a farm after saying,
the devil kept coming to look in her window.
While there have been, at least to my
knowledge, no other sightings of the Northumberland County Mystery Beast, the
area around Paxinos and Snydertown are filled with accounts of Bigfoot. I’ve
personally heard and collected several first and secondhand accounts of these
encounters and am extremely surprised that there might be another cryptid in
the area. The interesting thing about the Mystery Beast is that what witnesses
were describing in both 1913 and 1940 seems to be kinds of Primates. While a
full description of the creature was never described, the footprints left
behind in 1913 appeared hand-like which is something that we see in other
primates like chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, monkeys, and lemurs. The 1940
account, however, clearly seems to be a kind of extremely large monkey or
lemur.
Now with that said, it's difficult to come
to any true conclusion as to what species these creatures could be; their
identities are not definitive; aside from that, they both appear to be
primates. Skeptically speaking, there is the chance that these creatures could
be escaped Chimpanzees or some other animal that escaped captivity. In the
annals of cryptozoology, however, there are countless reports of large primates
that are not Bigfoot-like, but more like baboons or chimps these species are
referred to as Napes or North American Apes by Loren Coleman, have footprints
very similar to what was reported in 1913. Another cryptid reported in North
America that is of the same vein is creatures referred to as Devil Monkeys
typically Devil Monkeys are described as Baboon like creatures; however, the
term has been used to describe any monkey-like primate in North America such as
the Danville Devil Monkey of New Hampshire which bore a resemblance to a Woolly
Monkey.
Now with that said, there is the chance
that the 13' and 40' sightings are of different species of this kind of
creatures. While the creature seen in 1940 seems to be some huge monkey, the
lack of features described in the creature seen in 1913 makes an exact identity
impossible, but there are two key features that are described, the first being
that the creature had some sort of stripes along its furry back which is odd
because stripes are rarely seen on primates aside from lemurs and Owl Monkeys
and secondly it had human hand-like feet that were backward now there is a
chance that the witnesses may have misinterpreted the tracks and the footprints
were forward-facing but interestingly enough in other countries there have been
reports of primates with backward-facing feet the Kalanoro of Madagascar and
some versions of stories revolving the Orang Pendek of Sumatra describe them as
having backward-facing feet to make tracking impossible. Now there are very few
references to this kind of feature in creatures in America, but it is
interesting that there are alternative creatures in other parts of the world
which could be possibly related.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Mammals most
likely Primates
Location: Paxinos, Shamokin, Reed Station,
Snydertown, Bear Gap, Elysburg, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania
Sighted: September 1-14, 1913, January
1940
Works Cited:
Bigfoot in Pennsylvania By Timothy Renner
Humanoid Encounters: 1930-1949 By Albert
S. Rosales
Danville Morning News Danville,
Pennsylvania September 15, 1913
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