Albatwitch

 Albatwitch

By Cole Herrold

Pennsylvania has its fair share of cryptids. Its lakes and rivers are littered with several marine monsters, from Raystown Ray to the Allegheny River Monster and Susquehanna River Monsters. Its skies are heavily trafficked by thunderbirds, both the pterosaur and giant bird varieties, as well as countless flying humanoids. Its fields and forests are the homes to Bigfoot, Colossal Snakes, Yellow What Is Its, Goose Grabbers, Scuttlers, Black Panthers, and Mountain Lions, and so in this seemingly never ending menagerie, it's difficult to believe that there could be any more unknown animals in its hills and hollows. However, in one of the weirdest and most notorious locations in PA, there are reports of a bizarre hairy hominid that does not exactly match the typical Bigfoot and thereby seems to be a totally unique species. This species which frequents Chickie's Rock and Chickie’s Ridge, an infamously haunted location and bigfoot hotspot, is said to be home to a primarily arboreal primate that has a bizarre penchant for stealing apples which led it to be known as the "Apple Snitch" but as years went by the name was shortened and changed to the now infamous Albatwitch.

The Albatwitch is a cryptid whose origins can be traced back to the Native Americans. The Susquehannock tribe of the region frequently reported these creatures and would describe them as particularly aggressive. The creatures were said to make their presence known by making a sound like a cracking whip but mainly lived in the trees and shadows of the forest. The creatures were also said to communicate over long distances by smacking flat rocks together. The Susquehannock knowing how powerful these creatures were, would go and paint their images on their shields. When colonists came to the region, the natives warned them of the creatures, but particularly in the 1800s, anyone who was near the region would encounter the beasts. The creatures would raid picnickers baskets and would pelt apples at those who were in their domain. During this timeframe, it is said that individuals in the area began to hunt and kill the creatures, ultimately to the point that they were nonexistent in the region. Some even claimed that the creatures were completely extirpated from the region as sightings and apple throwing were practically nonexistent. However, in the 50s through the 70s, whispered sightings started to pick up again, but they generally went unreported. It wouldn't be until 2002 that Albatwitch sightings would be collected, and the sighting that kicked it off ventures off the trail of something biological and something more supernatural.

In February of 2002, at 6:00 am, Bigfoot and paranormal researcher Rick Fisher was out driving along Route 23 near Marietta. As he neared Kinderhook Road about two miles from Chickie's Rock, he noticed a dark figure seemingly dressed entirely in black walking in the middle of the road. As he approached, he began to wonder why someone would be walking in the middle of the road in darkness and began to slow down. As Rick drew closer to the figure, he could tell that the figure walking in front of his car was the size of a child, which made him even more concerned as he wondered why a child would be out on the road at that time of day. Rick was practically crawling as he followed the figure, and concerned for the child, he decided to try to get its attention. So he proceeded to reach over and turn on his high beams to try to get the child to turn around and understand why it was out during that time of day. The figure noticed the now blinding lights behind it and, just as expected, proceeded to turn around, but as it showed itself to Rick in the glow of his headlights, Rick could tell this figure was not human. Rick could see in front of him a black hair-covered creature about three feet tall and seemingly not distressed by his high beams. Rick felt that what he saw at that moment was in his experience a kind of Bigfoot and said in an interview with Linda Godfrey, “my first thought was that this must be a skinny one, it walked like a human not ape-like although the arms were longer, and it was swinging its arms." As he stared at the creature, its eyes glowed a brilliant yellow, and as he watched in total amazement, something particularly bizarre happened, the creature disappeared. The creature simply popped out of existence, leaving the stunned motorist behind on the road. Rick pulled his vehicle off to the side of the road sitting there shaking in absolute disbelief at what he had just witnessed. He began to get out of his vehicle to investigate the area, but then a sinister thought dawned on him. If this creature could seemingly wink itself out of existence, then it could just as easily rematerialize someplace else, like right next to him or in the back seat of his car. Seeing the potential paranormal danger he was in, Rick hopped back into his car and proceeded to drive back home. He did not tell anyone of his sighting for some time but ultimately came forward. As with most experiences, his story was completely bashed by skeptics, and so he went searching for more eyewitnesses as a way to corroborate his story that a creature like that did exist. When discussing his sighting to a colleague, his friend would go and tell of how he met someone who saw the same kind of creature just a couple miles down the road from where Rick did, and so Rick went and proceeded to interview the witness.

The individual who Rick interviewed would describe a very brief encounter that happened about three years earlier, in 1999. The witness, known only as Dwight, was driving near the location with two of his friends when he noticed a peculiar hairy creature seemingly walking near the road. Rick, after this initial sighting, began plunging headfirst into the Albatwitch mystery going so far as to collect countless reports and sightings, many of which occurred after his own.

One of the earliest sightings he collected occurred in September 1978 on Route 372 West near Normanwood Bridge, where a woman driving along the road saw a strange creature run across the road in front of her car. The witness would describe the creature as being about 5ft tall with brown wavy hair and seemingly bipedal. The witness watched as she drove past as the creature continued to shamble up an embankment and disappear from sight.

In the 1980s in Columbia, another early Albatwitch sighting occurred. A 10-year-old boy and his brother were hiking in the woods around Laurel Hill Cemetery. The 10-year-old boy was lagging behind his brother, who was much further up the path than he was, and noticed a peculiar creature peering at him from the wilderness. The boy, in complete shock at the figure he witnessed, would elevate his shock to terror as the creature ran straight at him and proceeded to pin him against a nearby tree. The creature, which the boy only could describe as a small bigfoot, stared inquisitively at the boy which it had captured. The boy, however, would not be held captive long for his brother, who turned around and saw the creature began to yell at it and the creature, seemingly scared or intimidated by the elder sibling, proceeded to free the boy and run off into the woods.

In 2000 on Pinkerton Road near Mount Joy, a witness encountered while driving to work with two coworkers a strange figure on the road in front of them. The witnesses, initially thinking that the object was a deer, began to slow their vehicle down, and as they peered out, they realized that what they were looking at was not a deer but something they had never seen before. There before them was a 4-5ft tall thin black hairy creature crossing the road. Rick talking with the witnesses, felt that the creature they had seen perfectly matched the same creature he saw some two years later.

Roadside sightings of the same or similar creature were frequently reported around that time and seemed to be focused heavily in and around Pinkerton Road. In 2002 about two miles from Rick's sighting, another group of friends was driving on Pinkerton Road when a thin hair-covered creature proceeded to wander in front of their car. In May 2005, another witness would report encountering an Albatwitch assumedly in the same location, but no other details of the encounter were reported. Another similar undated sighting took place on Route 23 West near Marietta Pike between Columbia and Marietta. The witness to this sighting saw a small hairy creature moving incredibly fast across the road and had happened many years ago. Unfortunately, like the May 2005 account, there is no other information on this encounter.

Another Pinkerton Road sighting near Mount Joy with an unspecified date occurred when a young woman was driving home at night and saw a small brown hairy creature crossing the road. The witness was so scared by the creature that she saw that she started crying and was afraid to go past the creature. She taking up as much courage as she could muster in her current state, began to swerve the car around the creature and proceeded to drive straight home. When returning home, she was noticeably distressed to the point that her parents asked her what was wrong, and she told of what she had seen. Once she had finished recounting her encounter, her parents burst out in a cruel string of laughter and to this day do not believe her encounter.

On July 18, 2008, a woman was driving on Route 264 about three miles outside of Red Lion in York County. As she was driving along near an open field, she noticed something dark running through the open grass; seeing that it was something peculiar, she pulled over to get a better look, and as she did, she saw a bizarre sight. She saw a creature about four feet tall covered in dark grey sparse hair. The creature's head was smaller than that of a similarly tall human child's and that it was running bipedally. She observed the creature for some time, watching it do a very interesting maneuver. The entity would run for a distance and then stop dead in its tracks, then it would look around. It did this several times before ultimately running off into a patch of woodlands.

In 2010 another Pinkerton Road sighting took place. A husband and wife were driving home when they noticed a small four-foot-tall brown hair creature cross the road in front of their car. Seeing the strange creature, the pair slowed their car down to a crawl and proceeded to watch the creature crouch down beside a bush seemingly hiding from them. The couple had no idea what the animal was, but they were certain that it was not a deer or any animal they had seen prior. It wasn't until they had heard about the Albatwitch that they felt that this was what they had seen.

During the Summer of 2012 (however, the witness is unsure of this as it could have been 2011 or 2013 as well), the witness, her two sisters, and her friend went and spent the entire summer at a campsite in Bainbridge. They took a camper up and were not relatively far from civilization; they had all the luxuries as well as two cars between them that they had for further drives, but Bainbridge could be easily reached by traveling an old, wooded trail which they frequently used to get such mandatory provisions such as food and beer. On one day, the witness found herself alone at the camp, and her friend called her and said that he was having a cookout in Bainbridge and figuring it would be a good way to get something to eat and something to do, she walked the old, wooded path to Bainbridge and walked over to the home where the cookout was being held. When she got to the cookout, however, aside from her friend who was hosting, she found the whole affair awkward, for she did not know anyone else there. So, after filling her stomach with food, she began to head back to the campsite to wait for her sisters and friend, and they would all go back later that night. It was starting to become dusk as she walked the old trail, and so she was starting to see shadows grow in the forest. The trail she walked on was very near the Susquehanna River, which was 30 yards to her left, and to her right also 30 yards was an old set of railroad tracks. All of these locations were almost hidden by the dense foliage that permeated around them. As she looked around, she noticed some movement coming from the area where the river was. As she looked a figure which she could only describe as a 'kid bigfoot' for it was about 4ft tall with dark hair from head to foot. The creature came running up from the woods and right onto the trail some 15ft in front of her. She stood frozen as she watched the creature move.  The creature seemed to be getting away from something and proceeded to run off the trail jumping over several tall bushes and over the railroad tracks before disappearing into the woodland. For years the witness would tell of her encounter with a kid bigfoot, and she would constantly be laughed at, but her idea of what the creature was would change when her newly married husband was reading about the Albatwitch and coming to her said, “Oh my god this is what you saw."

Other sightings near Bainbridge have occurred over the years, most of which have an unspecified date. One sighting which occurred at Nissley Vineyard happened when a witness was driving by the vineyard at early dawn and noticed a small dark creature crouched in one of the fields. The witness attempted to get a better look at the creature and, as he turned his car around to try to see the creature again, saw the creature leap up and run bipedally back into the nearby woods. On another occasion, a witness driving between Marietta and Bainbridge saw a small hairy creature cross the road at night.

Another sighting that occurred closer to Chickie's Rock took place when two young men out for a drive late one night were driving on Prospect Road. The pair were about to drive through an underpass when a strange creature dropped down from the top. The young men stopped their car as fast as they could as the small creature shambled off into the nearby woodland, seemingly chasing a rabbit. The men were extremely shaken up by this sighting and, whenever recounting their encounter, took to calling the creature the Devil Baby.

Things would change for the history of the Albatwitch when on January 29, 2018, a coyote hunter would have a bizarre encounter that would change the rest of his life. While hunting in a riparian bog in a PA game land, the man noticed an eastern coyote exiting the rear of a hunting blind behind a clearing that was seemingly littered with deer and small animal bones. This clearing was to him indicated as a kind of killing field for the eastern coyotes that sheltered in the bog. When he approached the blind, the man noticed a bizarre figure moving on the ground between the trees in an area right-diagonally rear of the blind. The creature appeared to be something similar to a female chimpanzee. However, there was a peculiar thing about this creature was that not only did it walk bipedally, but that it also seemed to be "cloaked." The figure was a bizarre blob of black and white, yet there was a noticeable shape underneath it of some sort of mass. The man watched the creature move away from him and simply left the bog for the day, wondering just what he had seen.

In the Spring of 2019, the hunter once again saw the same or a similar creature in the same general area of his first sighting, but this time the creature was moving down from the top of a tree. The creature was once again "cloaked," appearing as a bizarre black-white blur with some mass underneath it, and proceeded to climb from the tree to the ground. The creature he felt was acting as some kind of lookout for the eastern coyotes who were heard yipping in the bog as the man had entered the clearing. The man interested by this bizarre creature was so confounded that he began the Albatwitch Zoological Survey. The Albatwitch Zoological Survey focuses primarily on finding both fossil evidence of the ape as well as attempting to learn as much as possible about the creature. The witness known only as the founder on the site has several interesting theories regarding the Albatwitch that seek to explain all the anomalous behavior and effects the creature has with already established science. He has several hypotheses, such as that the Albatwitch seemingly has a symbiotic relationship with the eastern coyotes of the region as the two possibly cooperatively hunt for prey based on what the founder seemed to witness at both of his sightings. The founder compares this behavior to that which has been seen in Ethiopian wolves and grazing Gelda Monkey herds. The group even has even proposed a scientific name for the species (Pan chlca sp.nov.) as well as currently conducting paleoanthropological digs for fossil evidence of the species.

The Survey even has developed a hypothesis that explains why the creatures seem to be cloaked in the two sightings that the founder had. This is the following from the article that explains the phenomenon: “the Albatwitch is capable of undulatingly manipulating its fur with piloerection, i.e., the phenomenon of "raising the hackles," not only on its back between the shoulders like many canids but all of its bodily fur. The founder observed an Albatwitch with black fur and white skin, which by undulating its fur rapidly while moving through a riparian bog and down a tall tree created a form of "motion dazzle" that to the human eyes appeared as alternating, black and white contrast. In effect, a shadowy, asynchronous, zig-zag that obscures the Albatwitch's silhouette but does not obliterate observation of its bodily protuberances or lack thereof. The Albatwitch's "cloaking" camouflage creates a shadowy but ethereal image that captivates and engages the human brain into visual staring that only ends when the image disappears into the forest, leaving the observer in a state of befuddled bewilderment as to the nature of the observation. Other commentators have described the movement of Albatwitch in the forest as "gliding," or "walking on air," which the founder attributes to the human brain's attempt to classify the motion of an Albatwitch into a mode-of-movement categorically familiar to the human brain. The Albatwitch ambulates on the ground like other animals but its "cloaking" camouflage can create the visual illusion of ghostly "gliding" or "walking on air."."

Outside of Rick Fisher and the Albatwitch Zoological Survey, other researchers such as Stan Gordon would collect similar cases of seemingly small hairy hominids that match the Albatwitch in the state, and even more, researchers would note of other diminutive hairy hominids in other states. Ivan T. Sanderson, in his masterful tome Abominable Snowmen: Legend Comes to Life, would describe a seemingly identical type of creature known as the Little Red Men of Delta in Tennessee. These entities were about the same approximate height and also had long reddish or dark brown hair and seemed very similar to the Albatwitch. Similar diminutive hairy humanoids have been reported as well by the Algonquin Native Americans; these individuals described a small humanoid known as the Megumoowesoos. The Megumoowesoos, however, was more akin to the European concept of faeries as they would lure people into the woods with the sounds of wonderful music from flutes. Anywho would follow the flute sounds into the woods would never be seen again.

The Albatwitch is a very diverse phenomenon, much like Bigfoot; however, there is much less information on it. The creature seemingly has both biological and supernatural qualities to it, and even with all the hypotheses that the Albatwitch Zoological Survey has, it still does not explain every facet of this creature. Rick Fisher's encounter, while perhaps the most dramatic, is an example not of a blurry blob from a cloaked creature but of a seemingly teleporting or disappearing Albatwitch. Other sightings such as the encounter from the 80s seem to indicate to something less ethereal and more traditionally biological, and most sightings of the creature, at least that are reported, are of a creature that seems to simply be an undiscovered great ape or hominid.

With all of these varying kinds of phenomena, there is always the possibility that what is being described could be its own separate entity. The entity seen by Fisher, for example, could be its own separate creature that bears a strong resemblance to what could be the true Albatwitch or perhaps it is the true Albatwitch, and the other creatures are examples of juvenile Bigfoot or some alternative diminutive hairy hominid or great ape even though the latter seems to be much more unlikely. This kind of complicated or potential variation of creatures is common when it comes to hairy hominid reports Bigfoot, for example, has also been associated with cloaking, disappearing in plain sight, and being a seemingly biological entity. In fact, one of the most interesting elements of the Albatwitch Zoological Survey's research is the symbiotic relationship the creatures have with eastern coyotes; this is a phenomenon also reported with Bigfoot, albeit only on extremely rare occasions some of the famous cases include the Minerva Monster case where the creature was seen with Black Panthers or Mountain Lions, and there also was a case of a bigfoot running with a wolf in the same way a person would run with a hunting dog or a pet dog. I will say, though from all of these accounts, the supernatural Albatwitch appears to be a rarer variation of the phenomenon as the only one of the accounts that point to this is Rick Fisher's, for if you include the Survey's cloaking theory as accurate, then even what appears to be paranormal could only be a feature misconstrued.

While this creature is not as widely discussed as Bigfoot or Mothman, cultural acceptance and awareness of the Albatwitch is recently growing, especially throughout the state. The area around Chickie’s Rock holds an Albatwitch Festival on October 9^th, which features music, food, an Albatwitch hunt that ends with tossing apples into the woods, and lectures from various paranormal researchers and cryptozoologists. Even when looking at other cases around the state, some researchers are wondering whether the Albatwitch is its own species or if it is a juvenile bigfoot, and whether other accounts associated with juvenile Bigfoot in the state could be in actuality Albatwitch. My personal thoughts on it are the following if Bigfoot is a biological species, the Albatwitch could be a juvenile version of it now the problem I have with this is that Albatwitch sightings, for the most part, are very geographically centered, which indicates a very small population and another thing is that if these were juveniles, there should be an adult in the area but as far as I know the Albatwitch and Bigfoot are never seen together which to me seems to point to either them being separate species or that the area of Chickie's Hill and Chickie's Ridge is some kind of spawning ground or nursery but if that is the case clearly these animals have more different behavior when it comes to young than what other hominids and great apes do.

When it comes to cryptids, there are many different possibilities as to what they are and how they came about. The Albatwitch, to me, is a perplexing mystery, for it seems to be very similar to other cryptids around the world and country, but at the same time, there are several possibilities to what the creature could be and there's a good likelihood for all of them. I think it's interesting because there appears to be something geographically important about the sightings, as most are reported in very specific sections of roads and areas of the state. I think that this could be something that researchers should focus on, for there appears to be a clear pattern or range to this potential species that doesn't seem to be focused or investigated by Bigfoot researchers or other Cryptozoologists or even Forteans. I have tons of speculations as to what this creature might be, but I am no closer to the truth, nor do I think I ever will be even if I went to the area apple in hand.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Mammal/ Hominid/ Primate

Location: Chickie’s Rock, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: Pre Colonization Native reports and tradition to Spring 2019

Works Cited:

Abominable Snowmen: Legend Comes to Life By Ivan T. Sanderson

Beyond the Seventh Gate By Timothy Renner

Chasing American Monsters By Jason Offutt

Cursed in Pennsylvania By Mark Nesbitt and Patty A. Wilson

Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology By Michael Newton

Ghost Hunting Pennsylvania By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Hunting the American Werewolf By Linda Godfrey

Monsters of Pennsylvania By Patty A. Wilson

Strange Pennsylvania Monsters By Michael Newton

Fisher, Rick “Albatwitch” Ghosts of the River Towns. https://ghostsoftherivertowns.com/albatwitch. Accessed December 4, 2021.

Albatwitch Zoological Survey. https://albatwitch.org/. Accessed December 4, 2021.