The Green-Haired Monster of Trout Run Road
By Cole Herrold
Strange cryptid creatures are rather
common when one digs deep into the pages of old newspaper articles. These
encounters can be clearly fabrications of the writer's imagination,
misidentifications, or, more interestingly, honest to god encounters with the
unknown. These sightings range from mundane to grandiose, so it's difficult at
times to wade through all the information. As time goes on, however, these
cases eventually, which for a time seemed lost, are rekindled due to
supernatural sleuths and Fortean researchers who then cull the accounts into
books for all to enjoy. One such account describes an extremely aggressive
encounter with a colossal creature that, while brief, is entirely captivating
and, in such, leads one to ask more questions than what we can currently glean
from the information available.
On Saturday, December 1, 1973,
eighteen-year-old Michael Lee Findley was out on Trout Run Road in Hellam
Township, York County, at 5:00 in the morning when he experienced an aggressive
assault from a creature seemingly ripped from the pages of a Marvel
Comic. The creature, which the December 4th article of the York
Daily Record described as a "green-haired monster," proceeded to
go and attack the young man. Findley would note that the creature was bigger
than any man and was covered in shaggy hair and ran and walked bipedally.
Findley was able to survive the assault and had managed to work his way to the
York Hospital, where doctors had found long scratch marks on his face and a
serious head injury that led to some memory loss which prompted an
investigation by police. Upon telling the police about the attack, the officers
proceeded to search the area but found nothing and would be quoted saying their
investigation "did not reveal any facts relating to the same" in
regard to Findley's testimony. The police coming back to him after finding
nothing would attempt to convince him that his attacker was nothing more than a
man in furs, but Findley knew that what he encountered was not that, and if it
was," it was the largest man who had ever lived on the entire planet
."Findley also, as a boy, lived on a farm and was aware of the natural
fauna of the region and was able because of this to rule out the usual suspects
for such a case like a bear and cows, as some of the officers had claimed it
could be. This account would seemingly be lost to Fortean history if it was not
for the incredible research by Pennsylvania Fortean Researcher Timothy Renner, who
would initially include this encounter in his mandatory book on Pennsylvania
High Strangeness Beyond the Seventh Gate. Timothy Renner would later
reach out to the witness and would discuss the encounter and, surprisingly,
discovered some discrepancies between what the witness said happened and what
the newspaper reported. One of the major discrepancies involved the appearance
of the creature, which Findley would say the following, "I can’t tell you
what it looked like," upon which Renner replied, "you can’t tell me
what it looked like, or you don’t want to tell me what it looked like” Findley
responded “oh I can’t” yet during the interview the witness would give little
pieces of details describing just what he had seen, but the one element that he
does not remember from his encounter is the creature's green hair. Renner noted
that the witness was still disturbed by this encounter and that he, to this
day, has the occasional nightmare that replays involving the attack, and that
he was seemingly resistant to wanting to dive back into that morning. Renner
would also go on to hypothesize that the newspaper added the description of the
creature as green-haired as a way of dismissing the story.
Now with breaking down this case, we have
evidence that something did happen to Michael Findley on that road, so an
overall hoax or lie is unlikely to impossible, especially since the encounter
caused serious head trauma, not something one would endure if they were
perpetrating a hoax. Misidentification is also unlikely, seeing as with
Findley's background, he is very much aware of the local wildlife and how they
behave. We can rule out a bear also, as well as the attack seemed to simply
stop, and if this was a bear, we would have more wounds and damage from the
attack. So, we can see from this that the more skeptical or mundane answers are
unlikely in this case.
While mundane answers do not exactly hold
up in a case like this, there is another possibility that seems to be the
conclusive answer to the encounter. This encounter is just one of the countless
cases of aggressive sasquatch. This idea is also held by Timothy Renner after
talking to the witness and seeing as York County is surprisingly high in the
number of hominid sightings in the state, it would make sense. While the
original newspaper source is clearly questionable based on what Renner gleaned
from the interview, we do know that what the witness encountered was a colossal
hairy man-like creature that walked bipedally essentially; this describes a
sasquatch. Just why this creature seemed to attack Findley is anyone's guess,
but it would appear that this could have been because the creature viewed
Findley as a threat to its territory. If the creature viewed Findley as food,
the creature clearly could have killed him, and this encounter would not have
been published. Another interesting thing is the region that was attacked by
the creature; in the behavior of primates such as chimps, when they attack,
they tend to go towards the face and extremities, which is exactly what
occurred here in this case. We have seen this behavior in other bigfoot reports
when the creature becomes aggressive such as the case where a sasquatch slammed
a woman's face into a car door. This behavior lends more towards the great ape
theory of sasquatch and less towards a hominid origin.
One thing I feel that does need to be
included in this breakdown is the claim of green fur. While Findley does not
remember the creature having it, and Renner feels that the green fur was
included solely to discredit the sighting, it is important to point out that
sightings of green-furred sasquatch are not new. In French Lick, Indiana, there
were sightings of a red-eyed green-furred sasquatch called Fluorescent Freddie,
and many southern sasquatch reports often describe a greenish tint to the fur
seemingly caused by moss, algae, or other plant life clinging to the creature's
fur. This idea has even been used to rationalize sightings of the Bishopville
Lizardman, seeing as some sightings depict the creature as having ape-like
features but a greenish coloration. This is not a far-fetched idea as we have
seen this in other animals; in March of 2022, a video surfaced showing a green
furry slithering object trapped in a bucket in Thailand. This object turned out
to be a snake that had moss growing along its body which gave it an altogether
bizarre and Muppet-like appearance. So perhaps Findley had encountered a
green-furred creature and, due to the trauma, had forgotten that piece or is
trying not to remember the full depiction of the creature seeing as how the
event affected him.
While this case appears to be entirely
cryptozoological in origin, one cannot remove the other Fortean categories from
the table. Perhaps this entity was some extraterrestrial who had wandered
farther from his ship to the point that its origin seemed more earthbound.
Perhaps this entity was some variety of faerie, seeing as the location the
sighting took place has a reputation for supernatural and esoteric phenomena.
Perhaps this being popped in from another dimension and, in its confused and
terrified state, proceeded to attack what is conceived as a threat. All of
these possibilities, needless to say, need to be included, and most of this
comes entirely from the lack of information. Perhaps Findley saw more that
morning than what was reported some strange light in the sky or the woods or
heard some strange sounds or some other anomalous interaction that went
unreported. While I'm inclined to believe this case is Cryptozoological in
origin, there is a chance, as with most cases, that there just might be more to
it. Yet until more information can come to light, all we really can do is
speculate and hope that the next time the creature is encountered, it will be
on much friendlier terms.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Mammal,
Primate, Hominid
Location: Trout Run Road, Hellam Township,
York, Pennsylvania
Sighted: Saturday, December 1, 1973
Works Cited:
Beyond the Seventh Gate By Timothy Renner
York Daily Record December 4, 1973
Where did the Roads Go? Podcast. Seriah
Azkath. “Beyond the Seventh Gate With Timothy Renner”. December 6, 2016.
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