The Green-Haired Monster of Trout Run Road

 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 4^th 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. 

Fluorescent Freddie

 Fluorescent Freddie

By Cole Herrold

Some Sasquatch sightings are downright strange. Some are connected with UFOs like the Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot Incident or the Ohiopyle UFO-Bigfoot incident; some bigfoot seem to vanish or turn into balls of light; in between these more surreal encounters and classic sasquatch encounters, there are seemingly normal sasquatch encounters that are just one degree into the weird. One such encounter of a sasquatch of a different color was reported in French Lick, Indiana, and while it's not one of the most famous cases out there, this case is so rare it seems to only get mentioned in comparison to other cases even though there is more to the story.

At least a dozen teenagers and adults, while out driving and wandering around the woods along a road three miles South of French Lick near a municipal works, began to encounter something that they never would have expected. The creature was an astounding 10ft tall, but this was not the most bizarre feature of the creature as instead of the traditional brown, red, black, or even white fur that was so common in other accounts but instead a vivid green and its eyes glowed bright red. The first and only named witness from what can be gleaned from newspaper and book sources was a 16-year-old official named Steve Dixon, who was a Springs Valley High School Student at the time of the sighting, yet not much is known from this sighting. The creature was investigated by Police Chief Oral Carnes, who searched the area after the initial sightings and having heard that the high school youths were entering the darkened woods with shotguns and other weapons but came up empty-handed both in gun-toting teens and monsters and felt that the whole green-furred monstrosity was nothing more than a hoax. One high school teenager said in the March 17^th edition of the Indianapolis News, "You can't knock it if you don't go see Freddie yourself". The area where the creature was seen soon became known as "the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant". The road, over the course of several nights, turned into monster hunter central as cars lined the side of the road for the entire length of the "Valley of the Jolly Green Giant". Youths would enter the woods in pairs of two and three, calling out to the creature in an effort to coax the creature from hiding. One boy, a 16-year-old named David Noble, who had it would seem seen the creature during this time, had even called out to the creature saying, "We're your friends. Don't be afraid. We won't hurt you". Yet the creature never seemed to respond. After a quiet night with barely any interactions or sightings, most of the searchers left after 3 hrs. After this initial wave of sightings, the creature seemed to of dropped off the planet, and no one has since claimed to of seen the creature.

Now it is important to point out that French Lick, as well as Pope Lick and Big Bone Lick, makes up one of the corners of the Big Lick Triangle. This is an area of high strangeness similar to the Coudersport Triangle, Bridgewater Triangle, and, more famously, the Bermuda Triangle. So, it’s almost unsurprising that such a creature would be reported in this geographical Fortean hotspot.

While this case is exceptionally interesting, what are we to do with this creature in regard to an explanation. This creature could obviously be a hoax or a prank perpetrated by the unmotivated minds of high schoolers. The fact that there's only one officially named witness and very few details on this case adds a patina seen with other hoax cases or urban legends. Yet I must say that this case has a lot of other details seen in other Sasquatch cases that seem to indicate a wider range of phenomena.

One of the most comparable cases to this one is the Bishopville Lizardman case. Now the Bishopville Lizardman case is a mixture of two types of creatures reported the classic reptilian-type creature which attacked Chris Davies and the large primate-like creature seen around the same time. This primate-like creature also was reported to have grayish-green fur or skin, and some researchers feel even the reptile-type encounters might have simply been a Sasquatch-type creature covered in moss and with dried muddied fur which gave the impression of scales. Perhaps this is what we are seeing here as mud-covered sasquatch-type creatures have been reported before, and in these accounts, leaves and other debris often are reported clinging to the fur.

This case is one that I would love more information on. It's quick and brief, but it has all the earmarks of cases that are stone-cold classics like the Mill Race Monster, as it involves a strange non-traditional creature and a monster hunt. It's amazing that this case was not covered more intently, but perhaps at the time, the case was not treated as seriously or that the witnesses simply were not interviewed. Either way, this was a brief and obscure case that definitely needed to be brought to the attention of more researchers.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Primate/ Hominid, Mammal

Location: French Lick, Indiana

Sighted: March 15, 1965

Works Cited:

Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend By David J. Daegling

Cryptozoology A-Z By Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark

Mothman and Other Curious Encounters By Loren Coleman

Sasquatch the Apes Among Us By John Green

Weird Indiana By Mark Marimen, ‎James A. Willis, and ‎Troy Taylor

The Indianapolis News, Indiana, March 15, 1965

The Indianapolis News, Indiana, March 17, 1965

 

Old Yellow Top

 Old Yellow Top

By Cole Herrold

In the annals of sasquatch research, there are tons of cases involving evidence or behavior that seem to indicate a biological species. These behaviors and features are so specific that they match known scientific examples of other animals. One of perhaps the most interesting features reported in some sasquatch reports is what seems to be examples of piebald individuals. Piebald in organisms is simply having two alternative patches of color fur, and it is something seen in a variety of animals. So its extremely interesting and adds a unique patina of credibility in this series of sightings.

The first reports of this manimal, known as Old Yellow Top, Yellow Top, or its original name PreCambrian Shield Man appeared in the North Bay Nugget but were made famous through John Green’s Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us after Rene Dahinden gave him the clippings. The very first sighting of the creature occurred either in September 1906 (some reports state 1907), where it was seen by a group of men building the headframe at the Violet Mine near Cobalt, yet further information on this initial sighting went seemingly unreported or was lost over the course of time. During this time, however, the creature continued to roam the area, being seen by the countless miners who worked in the area. All of the accounts of the time, which were more like whispers, described the creature in the same way as approximately 7ft tall with dark brown/black body hair and a mane of pale yellowish head hair.

On July 27, 1923, the second documented sighting of the creature was reported in the Nugget. On this occasion, Mr. J. A. MacAuley and Mr. Lorne Wilson claimed that they had seen the creature while working on their mining claims which was located Northeast of the Wetlaufer Mine. The two prospectors were taking test samples from the area when they encountered what they initially thought was a bear picking at a blueberry patch. Wilson wanting to scare off the animal, proceeded to go and throw a stone at the creature and expected it to simply wander away, yet this was not the case. “It kind of stood up and growled at us. Then it ran away. It sure was like no bear that I have ever seen. Its head was kind of yellow ad the rest of it was black like a bear, all covered with hair”.

On April 16, 1946, the creature was seen once more roaming around the cobalt mining camp. The creature was seen by a woman and her son who lived near Gillies Depot while they were walking the railroad tracks on their way into Cobalt. The anonymous woman said that she spotted a dark hair-covered creature with a "light head" lumbering off the railroad tracks into the woods near Gillies Lake. She was unable to get a clear look at the creature but did notice that it walked like a man. It's from this sighting that it was believed that if this was the same creature as seen in 1906 that it was over 40 years old.

On August 5, 1970, 27 miners on their way to work the graveyard shift at Cobalt Lobe were riding a bus when the bus suddenly went out of control and almost plunged down a nearby rock-cut. The bus driver Aimee Latreille who had been driving this bus route for 4 months, said that he was startled by a dark form that walked across the road in front of him. None of the miners or the driver were hurt in the accident. Latreille would comment, "at first I thought it was a big bear. But then it turned to face the headlights, and I could see some light hair, almost down to its shoulders. It couldn't have been a bear". Mr. Latreille said he did not know if he would continue to drive the bus after the incident. "I have heard of this thing before but never believed it. Now I am sure". One of the miners on the bus got a brief glimpse of the creature, and Larry Cormack said that the creature “looked like a bear to me at first, but it didn’t walk like one. It was kind of half stooped over. Maybe it was a wounded bear, I don’t know”. Mr. Cormack initially did not believe in the existence of the creature even though his father had talked about it when he was younger. Throughout this time, there were two other occasions where the creature was said to of come out of the woods and scared bus passengers; when it does this, it waves a club in the air. The creature (if the same one) was nearly 70 years old when it was last seen in the area.

While these are all of the official documented accounts that appeared in the newspaper, there was allegedly a photo taken on July 18, 1923, of the creature. The photograph shows a dark fur-colored being standing in a wooded forest. The creature has a yellow fur-covered head which gives it a rather Muppet look. Not much is known about this photo, and outside of it appearing on the Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology Wiki, I have not been able to find the original source from which it originated. There are some concerning elements of the photo that do seem to indicate that it is a hoax, but until further information can be found, the photo remains inconclusive. This colored photograph, if authentic, would be one of the earliest photographs of a sasquatch, second only to the 1894 photo and captured right before a 1940s photo.

Some theories for the creature from the time were that it was a Pre-Cambrian man who lived in a cave near the area. Another theory, one of which was popularized by the author of the August 5, 1970, article of the North Bay Nugget, was that this entire encounter was a hoax either by the driver or from some "reveller from the Open Cut Saloon working off a big head." The problem obviously with this is that while the 1970 encounter might have been a hoax yet, it is unlikely since there's been a history of a similar specifically described creature in the area for at least 70 years, as well as the fact that there were multiple witnesses of the creature as it crossed the road.

This case is an example of what Cryptozoologists Loren Coleman and Mark A. Hall would refer to as Marked Hominids. These creatures are similar to the traditional sasquatch in overall appearance, yet they have more human attributes than ape-like features. These types of creatures tend to exist in the subpolar regions of the world. The main feature that distinguishes them are different colored patches of fur, arms that do not reach below the knees, flat buttocks, visible genitalia, and protruding stomachs with splayed-toed feet which reach 10-14 inches long and 3-5 inches wide with a narrow curving impression.

This is, to me, one of the most interesting cases of a sasquatch-type hominid, for it's similar to what biologists experience with natural animals. Occasionally in nature, a team of biologists or ecologists will encounter a piebald animal or an animal that they would nickname or have some special relationship with, and from this, they can track and study the species more. The fact that almost 70 years Cobalt sighted Old Yellow Top is akin to animals of that kind. It's a shame that there was not more research done on the creature before its death since no reports of this particular creature have been sighted in the area since then. If researchers and scientists had the chance to do more research in the area and the chance to follow the creature and monitor its behavior, perhaps some of the problems researchers experience now in regard to the study of these creatures, but unfortunately, its something that will remain in hindsight and the past.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Primate/ Hominid

Location: Cobalt, Ontario, Canada

Sighted: 1906-1907, 1923, 1947, 1970

Works Cited:

The Bigfoot Book By Nick Redfern

Cryptozoology A-Z By Loren Coleman

Sasquatch the Apes Among Us By John Green

The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe

Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology - Volume 2 By George M. Eberhart

“Old Yellow Top” Encyclopaedia of Cryptozoology. cryptidarchives.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Yellow_Top. Accessed July 2, 2022.

"Pre Cambrian Shield Man Seen by Two Prospectors" North Bay Nugget, 27 July 1923

 "'Old Yellow-Top' Reported Seen in Coleman Township" North Bay Nugget, 16 April 1947

 "Third Appearance by Pre Cambrian Shield Man" North Bay Nugget, 5 August 1970

The Presque Isle UFO Incident

 The Presque Isle UFO Incident

By Cole Herrold

There are some cases that are clear classics. These encounters are often retold and retold, and for me personally, such encounters, while interesting, are often told so much that they become a rather old hat. This is not to say that such encounters are boring or that there isn't further information on the accounts; the Ape Canyon Incident, for example, is one that while there is tons of potential new information on that case, no one seems to cover it and so the same story is told and retold. The problem with this is that for those who are incredibly interested in Fortean phenomena, these cases tend to not get further looked into and instead are left with the already lengthy work that was done. I run into this issue rather frequently hence why most of my articles are on cryptids, aliens, or ghosts that seemingly were only encountered a few times and only appear in antediluvian archives or forgotten books. When I initially wrote about the Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot Incident, I pulled some of my resources that involve similar encounters; among them was perhaps the earliest encounter from Pennsylvania of a seemingly extraterrestrial sasquatch.

The case is rather famous and known as the Presque Isle Incident. Initially, I was reluctant to write about it as the encounter has been written about rather extensively but being incredibly intrigued by such encounters, I dug a little deeper, and after searching through old newspaper accounts, various news videos, and some of the various books on the subject I've come across more information revolving around the case that has not been currently put into an official up to date document.

The incident began on the most unassuming of days on Sunday, July 31, 1966. This encounter began when 18-year-old Douglas Tibbets, 16-year-old Betty Jean Klem, 22-year-old Anita Haifley, 26-year-old Gerald La Belle, 2-year-old Sandra Haifley, and 6-month-old Sara Haifley were out spending the day on picturesque Beach 6 of Presque Isle. The group had traveled to the beach from their homes in Jamestown, New York. They had spent the day eating a picnic on the sand and spending an hour or two swimming and might I add rather hazardously in the waters of Lake Erie (I add the hazardously because the lake is reportedly home to an aquatic cryptid that has on several occasions taken a bite out of swimmers, I hope to discuss it on a later date). As the group was getting ready to leave, they all barreled into the car and noticed that as Doug Tibbetts started the engine and applied gas to the accelerator that the car was simply spinning on the sand, and they were unable to get traction. The group then proceeded to get out and try to push the car off the coarse terrain, but again they were still unable to get their vehicle moving. It was during that time that they had decided to send Gerald La Belle, the oldest of the group, to go and find help. Gerald was able to hitch a ride with another group of beachgoers and made his way to Erie to search for a tow truck or some other help.

It was starting to get dark out and was about 9:30-10:00 pm when patrolmen Robert Loeb Jr. and Ralph E. Clark came to the area where the group was stranded. Seeing the car, they came close and asked the group if they required some assistance; the group told the officers about how La Belle had left to get some help in town and that the officers needed not to worry themselves about their current plight. The officers, however, told them that if La Belle did not come back in around 40 minutes, they would return to come and check to see if they had become free from the sand trap.

The group, as they stared completely bored out of their mind, began to stare upward at the stars. As they gazed into the dark semi twinkling abyss, they saw a bright light that seemingly shot out of the sky. The object, which at first they thought was a star, they noticed, however, that it was moving erratically as it would start and stop moving incredibly fast, occasionally dimming. The light was octagonal in shape with a hollow center and appeared to be a glowing purple and blue. The object came from the north, and as it reached a certain section, it seemed to hover in the sky.  The object, as it came closer, seemed to change shape as it began to slowly descend down to the ground; the object slowly landed onto Beach 7, about some 300 yards from their car. When the object landed, they noticed that the object was mushroom-like in shape. It was an oval structure with three lights on the back atop a narrow base. The object emitted a beam of light that moved in a straight line across the sand. The object seemed to emit a sound like the noise of a telephone receiver but countless times louder. The sound was so loud that it vibrated their car. As the object did this, it seemingly unleashed several rays of light that illuminated the surrounding woods and gave them a clear look at the object. Mrs. Klem would describe it further ‘it lit up the whole woods in the path. It wasn’t like a searchlight. There was light along the ground along the whole path”.

The officers returned to the area at about 10:30pm, and they noticed that La Belle had not yet returned. As they approached the car, the group was talking so fast and panic-stricken that the officers could barely decipher what the group was saying. Eventually, the group was able to calm themselves, and Douglas Tibbetts would utter to the officers, "There's something weird going on here." He would go and tell the officers that something had landed near Beach Area 7 and that the group was hearing several strange and peculiar sounds coming from that area. Tibbetts would add that "…you arrived the lights went out" to the officers as if the object was aware of their presence. The officers looked over at the area and were starting to walk over to the area. Tibbetts feeling the safety of being surrounded by armed individuals, decided to aid them in pointing them in the direction where they saw the anomalous object land. The officers and Tibbetts were heading towards where the craft seemed to land; they only made it a little distance when they heard the horn sound from the car.

The officers and Tibbetts ran back to the vehicle with such a sense of importance that one of the officers lost his service pistol in the sand and chose not to take the few moments to recover it but continued on his path to aid the women and children in the car. Where the remainder of the group was completely freaking out. Betty Klem was in the driver's seat, and when she saw the officers and Tibbetts, she began to run down the beach in a state of hysterics. She was pursued by the officers and eventually calmed by Officer Clark and initially was unable to tell what happened. Once they returned to the vehicle, the officers and Tibbetts noticed that Mrs. Haifley was in a total state of shock and unable to speak of what had occurred. While Haifley was unable to speak, Klem began telling them what happened while they were away. A little after the officers and Tibbetts entered the woods, a figure came from the exact entrance. Thinking it may have been Tibbetts or one of the officers, they weren't too concerned, but as they called to the figure, they soon realized that it was not human. The group stared at the creature and saw as it approached that the entity was some 6ft -7ft tall and had a strong resemblance to a gorilla, yet further specific features were undefined aside from its long protruding fangs. The creature then began to circle the car first from a distance and then much closer. When the creature was right next to the car, it began to reach out with razor-tipped claws and scratch the side of the car, and hit the roof of the vehicle, which left some dents. In the moment of pure terror, all the girls and children could seemingly do was to scream and honk the horn. The creature seemed to react negatively to the sound and, upon hearing it, returned back into the woods. Then right before the men left the woods, the girls saw the craft rise up and speed off into the north.

The officers feeling that this was getting out of hand, began to take the group to the nearest police barracks, where they retold the whole account. They then sent out a party to search the area, and the entire area was filled with officers with every kind of caliber weapon you could imagine, and the beach was littered with the red flashing lights of police cars. It was around midnight when George La Belle returned to the location, and he was in total awe at what he was now seeing. The car was still there, trapped in the sand. All he could think seeing this spectacle was, "my god, what is it, a war going on here." The officers searched the area and focused primarily on the area of the car. They took pictures of the scratches, which every member of the group claimed was not there before the incident. Realizing they weren't going to get far investigating at night, they returned to the barracks and decided to return to the scene in the morning.

At the police barrack, the group was still kept, and Betty Klem's eyes were exceptionally red, which the officers attributed to her crying; however, researchers, later on, would associate with radiation. Chief Dan Dascanio would do the official interview and felt that the witnesses were being truthful and considered the matter no joke. That morning at about 7:00, they let the group return to the beach with them to retrieve their car and belongings, and the group then spent the remainder of their time being involved in the various investigations that followed. The following morning the officers began to investigate the beach, and Officers Paul Wilson and Robert Canfield found several triangular shapes, each 11 ft apart from each other, and skid marks in the area where the object landed about 350-400 yards away from the car. Among them were two diamond-shaped imprints about 18" wide and 6-8" deep, each 10-12ft apart. Also, there was a series of tracks that seemingly were found that led from the site of where the craft landed to about 12ft from where the car was parked. The tracks were conical and similar to a bear's or a person's and about 8" wide, 5-7" deep, and 5-8ft apart. However, it is important to note that Officer Wilson, one of the policemen who found the wave, did not feel that the tracks were from a creature but appeared to be made by some kind of heavy object or objects. Photographs were taken of the triangular patterns on the ground and made wide newspaper circulation. Major William S. Hall of Youngstown came to the location on Beach 6 during this time and took plaster casts of the impressions in the sand.

As a follow-up, they proceeded to check to see if others might have seen a similar object in the sky in which they found several people who starting at 8pm and ending at midnight, reported seeing a bizarre craft in the sky. The witnesses were Stephanie Lupo, Helene Roche, Alain Orcel, Charoly Mango, Sue Karle, Linda Henderson, Janice Dickey, Jane Moran. Reports of these UFO sightings would be covered in the Erie Daily Times and the Erie Morning News. Steve Lupe, another witness who was around during that time, would also claim to of seen a craft on Beach 2 when he and several of his friends and three other individuals saw a craft hovering over Lake Erie at about 8:30 pm. French exchange students Helene Roche and Alain Orcel, who lived at 412 Frontier Drive about a mile away from the beaches of Presque Isle, saw a lighted silvery object flying low that evening. Stephanie Mango of 4704 Homeland avenue also saw a similar craft claiming that the object was round and an undistinguishable color that flew silently at treetop level. She watched as the object moved toward the beach and then changed course towards the Erie's bay area, where it disappeared from sight. Sue Karie, Linda Henderson, and Janice Dickey were sleeping out in the yard of Karie's home at 1012 Shenley Drive around 11:00pm when they spotted a silvery object which they first thought was a star flying from South to North. They noticed that the object was seemingly fading in and out but was noticeably round and saucer-shaped. Ms. Karie reported that she heard a whistling sound and, as she looked up, saw an object moving north as high as the Boston Store (about 138ft). It was very low, and all the witnesses ran and got into their station wagon and proceeded to lock the doors. They watched the object from the safety of the car for only a minute before it ultimately disappeared. Another similar UFO sighting featured two girls, one named Cheryl Coffi, who lived in the lighthouse at Presque Isle State Park, claimed to of had a sighting in the area some three months prior to the sighting but did state that it probably had nothing to do with the incident near Beach 6.

Chief Dan Dascanio would then get ahold of the air force due to the closeness of Wright-Patterson Airforce to determine if some craft was potentially out that way that might have been misidentified. There was a confirmed none, but this led to a follow-up investigation on the Tuesday of that week within a matter of hours by five members of the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena, better known as Project Blue Book. The researchers named Richard Hobbs, Joseph McGuire, James Reed, Jeffery Gow, and James Sippell did a precursory check of the area for radiation levels which they would state was safe on the August 5, 1966 edition of the Erie Morning News and took a statement from Ms. Klem. Project Blue Book would later classify the Presque Isle case as one of the 'unexplained' cases in their files. After their investigation, La Belle would return to the location and discovered something incredibly odd. The tree where the creature appeared was completely gone, as if the tree was never there from the beginning. It was not laying on the ground or broken, nor was there a stump or roots. In an interview, La Belle would say that he felt that "The air force found things they didn’t want us to know. Betty didn’t even want to talk about it and Doug passed away about 3 years after this happened and then Anita just dropped out of sight…I don’t think they’re from this earth. They have to be from Outer Space, and they sure are smarter than us because we’ve never caught one”.

UFO investigators and newsmen hearing about all that would go on, began coming to the area to investigate and talk with the officers. Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz would discuss at length the encounter with Chief Dan Dascanio focusing primarily on Betty's sighting and said, "I’m convinced that the young people saw something. The girl was a credible person. Of the two individuals she was the most specific about what she saw- she made no attempts to fill in her story when she wasn’t for sure. She was one scared girl when I first saw her. Her hands were shaking, her face was trembling, her speech was more inarticulate, and she had difficulty remaining her composure. Her eyes were red, and she kept shaking her head from side to side”. A year later, the findings of the case were investigated by Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz, and his findings were reported in the October 1968 Medical Times. Schwarz concluded that Betty was being truthful and that the incident was not due to any illness or delusion.

During that time, two police officers reported that they saw a UFO in the area some two hours before the sun rose on August 3, 1966. The officer who initially saw the UFO was Lawrence Park patrolmen William Rutledge who spotted the craft at 4:45 am, and around the same time, Wesleyville patrolman Donald Peck also saw the object. There were a scant amount of sightings in the area that were reported in the Erie Morning Times the next day. After the police and the air force finished their investigations, the beach became a major hotspot for locals and those wishing to catch sight of something unknown. The entire Presque Isle was filled for countless months by those who came armed with cameras, telescopes, picnic baskets, binoculars, all aimed at the heavens in an almost Close Encounters of the Third Kind-like scene.  Yet Beach 6 was one of the most heavily visited locations on the entire Isle. However, during that entire time after the last few sightings at the beginning of the week, no further encounters or sightings were reported. The town still remembers this encounter, and occasionally material revolving around the case will appear in the local media.

Some years later, the case did return to the media through Brian Sheridan, a local ABC news reporter who did a news story on the sighting in 2005. In it, he interviewed Officer Ralph Clark, who would describe the events of the night further based on the interview with Betty Klem. He would add that the craft when it first appeared was very similar to a basketball with red, yellow, and orange lights and a white beam that came out onto the beach as if the craft was looking for something. He also would add that during the initial investigation, they found strange claw-like indentations that led to the water that they associated with a tripod-type object and, upon analyzing the area, came up with nothing. They also found a bizarre liquid that appeared in the sand that they could not identify, but that was safe from radiation.

After his initial report, Sheridan received a call from local truck driver Mr. Kim Faulkner who, upon seeing the news broadcast, felt that he needed to come forward and claim that he was behind the encounter that occurred that night. Mr. Faulkner was an 11-year-old boy at the time claimed that he purchased two 9ft tall hot air balloons made of first-grade tissue paper that had to be glued together and were heated with pie tins from the back of Boy’s Life magazine for $3.50 that he managed to put together at his home. He clamored onto the roof of his house with his modified hot air contraption. The two balloons which were glued together were red and white striped and had cleaner bags in the center of the creation that gave the appearance of windows. As he let the balloon fly, he soon realized that it was moving much faster and further than he anticipated and decided to chase the balloon on his bike. He followed the balloon all the way to 15^th and Pittsburgh Ave before he ultimately gave up as he was unable to come close to the balloon. Seeing he would not be able to recover it on foot or bike, he returned home and attempted to get his dad to drive him to go recover his balloon. His father, however, would have none of it as the balloon he said went way too high and fearing that since they were so close to an airport, there might be legal ramifications if it interacted with air traffic to this boyish whimsy. So, his father sagely told him don't say anything, and he forgot about it, but upon seeing the news broadcast, he felt he had to clear the air about the sighting. He would say, "I believe it landed or close to it, it reheated itself then it regained its height it only went out so far and then it descended into the water and that s why there was no trace it was first grade tissue paper and all they would find is maybe a few pie plates." However, when asked about the evidence found at the scene and the creature seen at the site, he said he had no part of that, only the UFO.

Sometime later, paranormal researcher and holy man Pastor Robin Swope, the Paranormal Pastor of Erie, felt that something was wrong with the statement laid out by Faulkner and proceeded to do some digging. He contacted Sheridan and asked him whether he felt Faulkner had attempted to gain some notoriety by claiming he was a hoaxster. Sheridan replied that he verified the story with Faulkner’s brother, found the Boy’s Life advertisement for the balloon, and even said that Faulkner did not even want to be on the news, did not brag, and he was the only person after they aired the original story that came forward claiming to of caused the sighting. He seemed to be a credible person. While Sheridan felt that Faulkner was telling the truth, there was something about his claim that seemed off. Swope, who is a lifelong resident of Erie, knows that typically during that time, the winds tend to go in a southwest direction, but the balloon would have to of gone in a northwestern direction of three miles to of landed at Presque Isle. Sure, enough upon doing some research into the weather patterns and contacting local meteorologists of the region, he found that the wind indeed was going a southwestern direction on the night that Faulkner allegedly freed the balloon and that the balloon would have been going in a totally different direction. So unless there was some strange weather pattern that night, there is no way the balloon was the object seen by the stranded couple, and of course, none of this explains the physical evidence or creature seen at the site.

Variations of the account do exist, and some are clearly accidental mistakes, such as Loren Coleman, who dates the encounter in his book Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America as July 31, 1977.  The show Monsters and Mysteries in America featured an episode revolving around the case, and while not as different as Coleman's date places the incident on July 30, 1966, a day before the actual event. However, other variations occur mostly in regard to the depiction of the creature seen and its behavior at the site. The August 6^th edition of the Pittsburgh Press, for example, describes the creature seemingly as a floating entity. They described the entity as a "formless" creature about 6ft tall with a head and shoulders but no legs and that the entity was about 5ft from Betty Jean Klem. This variation is interesting as the eyewitness sketch that was done seems very similar to this description as it seems to only show a creature's upper torso and arms and a straight line where the creature's waist should be. If this is the case, then I would venture that it's safe to say that the encounter is not that of a traditional Sasquatch variety ET and something entirely different. Coleman would also describe the creature in a different way; he would describe the creature as both neckless and armless that moved sluggishly in the underbrush.

Another frequent variation involves the kind of reported evidence found at the site. There were several burn marks in the ground in the shape of a triangle as that appears in every version of the account, as well as the fact that there were several photographs showing the anomaly. However, the tracks seemingly from the creature were something that is debatable. Some accounts state that there were several footprints from the woods to the car, whereas other accounts do not mention the tracks at all, or more frequently, there was simply a single track found. Some of the accounts involving multiple sets of footprints are occasionally described as starting and stopping in an odd pattern as if the creature seemingly disappeared in mid-stride.

Outside of the infamous Balloon hoax as previously described, there was also an accusation that went out against La Belle that he, in fact, created the UFO by using a flashlight and playing tricks on the people in the car as a kind of practical joke, but after analyzing all the evidence there’s nothing to confirm this and as La Belle is the only surviving member of that night willing to talk about the event he after some 55 years since the encounter is the only person keeping the story alive aside from researchers. However, even with all this information, we are nowhere near coming to a discernible answer.

In the annals of Pennsylvania history, encounters with Bigfoot-like creatures and UFOs are rather common. I recently covered the Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot case from 1973, which is perhaps the most bizarre case of this type. A similar case occurred near Ohiopyle in 1974 and featured several bigfoots that, when shot at, seemingly disappeared as a bright Christmas ball style UFO flew through the sky. These cases are perhaps some of the most interesting when it comes to the phenomenon, for there are many ways to look at it there's for example, the idea that these creatures could be the pets of some extraterrestrial species or that they are the intelligent drivers of such objects, there's also the possibility that they are a completely unrelated phenomenon that just happened to of been seen at the same time. It is important to note that all of these cases are surprisingly different, especially this one. For if any of the variations of the depiction of the creature are the actual description, then that means that the creature seen on Presque Isle does not fit into the Sasquatch category at all and is some bizarre entity. This is also the most technological UFO of the Pennsylvania cases as most seem to be bright lights or something more ethereal. The shape of the UFO is also interesting as it bears a strong resemblance to the Space Penguins of Tuscumbia case, which too was described as being a mushroom-shaped craft, albeit an incredibly small one. Even with all of this, however, whatever happened that night, I'm sure we'll never truly know and thus ends one of the weirdest cases in Pennsylvania.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Hominid or Extraterrestrial Hominid

Location: Beach 6, Presque Island, Lake Erie, Erie, Erie County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: July 31, 1966

Works Cited:

Alien Meetings By Brad Steiger

Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America By Loren Coleman

The Bigfoot Files By Peter Guttilla

Real Aliens, Space Beings, and Creatures From Other Worlds By Brad Steiger and Sherry Steiger

Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts From the Darkside By Brad Steiger

Lyon, Debbie “UFO Sightings at Presque Isle State Park, July 31, 1966”. Old Time Erie. July 2, 2012. https://oldtimeerie.blogspot.com/2012/07/ufo-sightings-at-presque-isle-state.html. Accessed December 4, 2021.

Swope, Robin "The Paranormal Pastor: The UFO landing on Presque Isle." The Paranormal Pastor. July 13, 2008. https://theparanormalpastor.blogspot.com/2008/06/ufo-landing-on-presque-isle.html. Accessed December 4, 2021.

Erie Daily Times. August 01, 1966.

Erie Daily Times. August 03, 1966.

Erie Daily Times. August 06, 1966.

Erie Morning News. August 01, 1966.

Erie Morning News. August 02, 1966.

Erie Morning News. August 03, 1966.

Erie Morning News. August 05, 1966.

Erie Morning News. August 12, 1966.

The Pittsburgh Press August 06, 1966

UFO at Presque Isle. YouTube. April 11, 2008.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO7-v10TG5Q.

UFO at Presque Isle Part 2-Solved!. YouTube. Apr 11, 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjmQgDtDfZk.

Monsters and Mysteries in America Season 2, Episode 12 "Alien Bigfoot, Cajun Werewolf, Lake Pepin Monster." Destination America. March 14, 2014. 

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.