Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:322 A History of Wild-Men

Episode Date: May 7, 2017

I will be welcoming Kevin to the show who wrote, "I had an encounter that was exactly like one of your other guests. When I heard his story I almost fell off my chair." I spoke to Kevin yesterday and he said, "I had the exact same encounter as one of your previous guests, it happened in the exact same location as his in fact I played the encounter for family and friends. My family and friends have always laughed at me and when I played the encounter nobody was laughing. My encounter happened several years ago and where your guest describes being escorted out, that is exactly what happen to me. This thing paced me out knocking down everything in its way and when I would stop it would stop when I would continue it would continue. As your guest was describing the location I knew every detail in fact where he describes the creature stopping as he came out of the wood line is exactly where it stopped when it was chasing me." I will be also welcoming Timothy Renner to the show. Tim writes "I just published my second book which is called Bigfoot in Pennsylvania: A History of Wild-Men, Gorillas, and Other Hairy Monsters in the Keystone State. It is all historical accounts from the 1830s through the 1920s which I have compiled from old newspaper articles. In this way, it is kind of like Sasquatch Chronicles in that it's just filled with encounters. I have added some commentary at the end of each chapter - but this mostly is my reasoning as to why I think the "wild man" in an article is referring to a bigfoot creature (for instance if the "wild-man" is 8 ft tall and covered in hair). Throughout the early 1920s there was a wave of sightings in PA - many of them quite aggressive - with multiple attacks on people, livestock, and cars noted in the articles. Many behaviors are noted throughout the articles which I recognized from being an avid listener of SC. I know you don't often have authors on - but I figured I would at least let you know the book is 'out there' and let you decide. All the best"   Check out Timothy's book HERE and his website, Strange Familiars, HERE.  

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs was showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me. And this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't.

He was yelling out, he'd he grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house. It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 911, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you bet. Sure. What's going on now, sir?

That son of a bitch is about six foot, nine, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-uh. to Sasquatch Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you this evening. We'll be going back in time a little bit tonight and looking at historical accounts that are almost 180 years old in Pennsylvania. I'll be

having author Timothy Renner to the show, and he's the author of Bigfoot in Pennsylvania, a history of wild men, gorillas, and other hairy monsters in the Keystone State. And it's available on Amazon now. If you get a chance, go to Amazon, get yourself a copy. If you love Sasquatch Chronicles, I think you'll like this book. Because what Tim did is he basically went back in time and started grabbing historical accounts. And like I said, we'll go back almost 180 years and start looking at reports. ports in Pennsylvania.

If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on this show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com become a member. You can also click on the shop at the top and get merchandise if you want a sweatshirt, a lot of cool items on there. If you get a chance, check it out. And I'll also be welcoming Kevin to the show. and Kevin will be sharing an encounter.

He came forward because another witness had the exact same encounter in the exact same location he had had, but it was almost 20 years earlier. Very, very interesting stuff. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Timothy Renner to this show. Tim, how are you doing tonight? Doing good, Wes.

Good. Thanks so much for being on. I know you wrote Bigfoot in Pennsylvania, A History of Wildmen, Gorillas, and other hairy monsters in the Keystone State. And for the audience, I'll put a link. If you go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com, I'll put a link under the show, and you can actually go and order the book. And I'm kind of interested in reading this book. When he sent me the email, you had talked about you had looked up encounters. And, you know, the show is based on people's encounters.

But for the audience, would you kind of give them a brief rundown of the book and why you decided to write this book? Sure, yeah. Well, you had me on for my other book, Beyond the Seventh Gate, that talked about some things in York County and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In the course of writing that,

I kept stumbling on these newspaper articles, and I thought they were really interesting because, really, basically, because they're a lot like Suss Watch Chronicles. I mean, I love the show because it's encounters. These old newspaper reports are basically like encounter reports. So I decided, well, I'm going to do maybe a book that collects those.

I didn't know that I was going to find enough for a whole book just for Pennsylvania, but once I got to digging around, I found quite a lot of articles. You and I talked the other day, you found a lot of aggressive reports from the past. Yeah, more than I thought I would. A lot of people, you know, I've had some people already say that, you know, the cover of the book, he looks too mean. These are gentle forest giants, and the reports don't bear it out. Honestly, there's quite a lot of attacks from attacks on people, abductions or attempted

abductions of children, attacks on livestock and pets. There's quite a lot in there. What was the earliest report you had from Pennsylvania? Yeah. They go back. The earliest one I found was 1838. What they called them, and they called them Wild Men back then. I'm sure, you know, you and most of your listeners know this. Bigfoot, you know, wasn't a popular term until the 1950s. Well, if it wasn't used to the 50s, it probably didn't even become popular to the 70s. So when you look this stuff up, you have to look for wild men. It's really interesting because in the 1800s, a lot of the reports will say there's a hairy man running around. He's an escape lunatic. When you get to about 1890, 1900, suddenly the story shift and the wild man articles become less.

They start disappearing and people will talk about escape guerrillas. suddenly there's there's a whole army of escape guerrillas running around that whereas before they said they were you know they were madman which is really interesting because that's right around the time the the mountain gorilla is discovered or or i guess not discovered but uh brought to the attention of the west you start getting this this change where where they have something to call it now other than a wild human they they begin calling them gorillas and weren't a lot of gorillas uh even in captivity at that time, very few. So there certainly weren't enough to, you know, escape and run around the hills of Pennsylvania. Yeah. I'm real curious. Give us your first report that you had there. I know you have, this is kind of examples from the book, I'm assuming.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, all these reports are in the book and then more. The first one's from 1838, and it's actually a kind of a little person report. So it says something like a year ago, there was. considerable talk about a strange animal said to have been seen in the southwestern part of Bridgewater. Although the individual who described the animal persisted in declaring that he had seen it, the story was heard and looked upon more as food for the marvelous than having any foundation in fact. He represented the animal as we have it through a third person as having the appearance of a child seven or eight years old,

though somewhat slimmer and covered entirely with hair. He saw it while picking berries, walking toward him erect, and whistling like a person. after recovering from the fright, he is said to have pursued it, but it ran off at such speed, whistling as it went, that he could not catch it. He said it ran like the devil and continued to call it after that name. The same or a similar-looking animal was seen in Silver Lake Township about two weeks since by a boy of some 16 years old. We had the story from the father of the boy in his absence, and afterwards from the boy himself.

The boy was sent to work in the backwoods near the New York State line. He took with him a gun and was told by his father to shoot anything he might see. except persons or cattle. After working a while, he heard some person, a little brother, as he supposed, coming towards him, whistling quite merrily. It came within a few rods of him and stopped. He said it looked like a human being covered with black hair about the size of his brother, who was six or seven years old. His gun was some little distance off, and he was very much frightened. He, however, got his gun and shot at the animal, but trembled so that he could not hold still. The strange animal, just as his gun went off, stepped behind a tree, and then ran off whistling as before.

The father said the boy came home very much frightened. And when thinking about the animal he had seen, he would, to use his own words, burst out of crying. That's the animals call it or the, they call it the whistling wild boy of the woods. That's interesting. What year is that from? That's 1838. Wow.

Sounds like a modern day Sasquatch report of running into like a juvenile. Yeah, many of these reports, the behavior seems to just match up. You know, like I said, they're calling him wild. men and stuff, but the descriptions and the behavior seems to really match up with, you know, modern witness reports. Yeah, and I've had people on the show, too, where they'll see what we would call a juvenile, and they'll say it was like a small child just covered in hair. I mean, I've talked to so many witnesses that I described that, and the whistling and the

chirping, and that's fascinating. What year is your next report? Well, I mean, they go on up, but I have some from 1874 that, um, I thought this was interesting because there's an area called the Welsh Mountains in Lancaster County, and they tend to have reports again and again and again, at least in the 1800s. And this is just an excerpt from a longer article, which mentions some other things, like some people saw a big snake and stuff that they'd say just kind of put it all in the same article. But this excerpt is from that. It says they're talking about the Wild Man. He is, according to the statements of those who have seen him nearly seven feet high and weighs over 250 pounds.

He walks generally on all fours, is almost covered with hair, gives unearthly yells, and makes all kinds of gestures. His hands and feet are double the size of an ordinary man's, and he presents an altogether horrible appearance. He approaches the cabins of settlers and mountains and carries off their pigs and sheep, and with a demonic laugh, disappears into the dense forest. The brave spirits of the neighborhood go gunning for him, but whenever they can, come in sight of the monster. He just gives a yell and a jump. And before the hunters have time to pull the trigger, he is gone. That's 1874. In 1881, there's same area. A gentleman living near Morgantown, Berks County, was in town the other day and tells the story of a wild man of the woods in New California Hills, a portion of the Welsh mountain range. He says a party of young gentlemen

were out slang with their ladies. And while driving through a pass in the hills, the foremost horse suddenly became unmanageable and evinced all signs of great terror. At the same time, a wild cry came from the thicket, causing the horse to turn around, and all efforts to make him pass the place were unavailing. The young men remained near the hills for some minutes and heard the noise a number of times. The same gentleman says that farmers in the vicinity have suffered from the depredations of some animal, which makes peculiar footprints in the snow, but up to this time they have not been able to discover it, though the hills have been scoured a number of times. Some think the animal is a cat amount or an animal species,

whether there's anything to the story we do not know, but we give it for what it's worth. So that's just in the same area. That is interesting. I love the old reports because, you know, I wanted to ask you, when you're looking through these, did you, did anyone ever talk about the smell? Did anyone ever talk about stuff?

Some witnesses will talk about today as you look through some of those reports. I don't know if I have anything on the smell, but so much the behavior, I mean, I've got, you know, attacking dogs. there's a story that plays out just like I'm missing 411 story. There's like window peeking kind of stuff. You know, just stuff you see in the modern reports over and over again.

It's really interesting. Even down to the excuses, the authorities would give about what, you know, what people were seeing. What type of excuses would they give? There's a, there's, in the early 1900s, there is a story of a gorilla that's in Delaware County. people are seeing this thing it's uh you know it's breaking uh people were putting out bear traps for it this this thing is breaking bear traps police at one point report chasing after it they said it ran as fast as a racehorse later on there's two stories that pop up one the police say they called a big dog and they

say well this is it this is what people were seeing a week or so later the police catch a black guy it's a rather racist article but they say it was a black guy who put who was wearing bare skin and put phosphorus in his hair. There's no other reports about any glowing, you know, hair or anything. Oh, this is it. It was just this crazy black guy. The funny thing is, the guerrilla reports continue, you know, after both of those supposed explanations.

Yeah, and like I said, a lot of times with these old-time reports, you know, you hear the same thing being repeated over and over and over again. What was it missing 401 report? Do you get, or the story kind of that lined with that? Do you have that one handy? Yeah, let me grab that. It's from 1888, and it really just reads like one of the reports from the books. It's lost or kidnapped, mysterious disappearance of little Florence Hughes. Friday afternoon, Florence Hughes, the two-year-old daughter of John Hughes, an employee of the Bradford Oil Company, who lives on the Rutherford Farm, was playing in that vicinity with two other children. The little one's playmates left her alone, well, they were. were seeking flowers and a clump of underbrush nearby, and when they returned she was gone. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes were immediately notified and instituted a rigorous search, but could find no

trace of the missing one. All day long, the fruitless search was kept up. In the evening, a crowd started out from the city, swelling the number in the searching party to over 100. Every nook and spot in the woods and fields within a radius of one mile was examined closely, but without success. The lost babe could not be found. The parents are nearly distracted and have the keen sympathy of many friends in their trouble. It is believed the child has been kidnapped and stolen away. The era, that's another newspaper, the era continued an account of a supposed wild being a few days ago

who has been seen in the locality of late, and it is now feared the loathsome wretch has spirited the child away to his layer in the hills. Major adjut of the Bradford Oil Company ordered the men employed under his direction to prosecute the search until a clue is found somewhere. These, together with the large band of volunteer searchers, night diligently seeking for the missing child. At a late hour, nothing had been heard from the

missing one. Florence is a handsome child. She wore Friday a Czech gingham sailor suit. She has long, brown curly hair, round face, brown eyes, and rosy cheeks, and is stoutly built. Any information concerning her whereabouts will be joyfully relieved by the distracted parents. And it continues, there's no trace of the little one. Rutherford, PA, January 20 of Florence, the little two-year-old child of John Hughes, who has been missing from home since 10 o'clock this morning, has not been found. Although there were at least 200 men and boys with torches and lanterns scouring the woods all evening. So far, the search has been fruitless. It is thought that she may have been carried away by the wild man who had been seen by several in this locality recently.

The parents are nearly frantic and earnestly request assistance to continue the search tomorrow morning. All who will kindly help assist, please meet J.T. Jones at the boiler house, Rutherford Farm at APM. Then it continues. The search abandoned. A party consisting of J.P. Taylor, Thomas Mills, and two members of the era staff visited Rutherford District at 2 o'clock this morning and learned that no trace had been found of the lost child. A heavy fog hung over the woods and the search was abandoned until daylight. So that's, I mean, Politey's mentions a lot of the cases where bad weather will move in and interrupt the search.

Yeah, that's a sad one. That's really sad, you know. I can imagine it being your own kid. That's terrifying. Did they ever find the kid or does there any mention? I couldn't find them any report that I'm ever finding the kid. It looks like she just disappeared. That's too bad.

Yeah, yeah. It's just one of those odd cases where they're, and they mention a wild man, you know, in the article with the, you know, disappearance. So that is an interesting detail for them to bring up, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, that's why I put it in the book. I mean, other than it reading like one of the missing 401 cases, you know, know, it specifically mentions, oh, we had seen this wild man in the area. Yeah, and you hear a lot of people disappearing that way, a lot of kids disappearing that way.

They're there one minute. Then everyone kind of goes off for a second. Then they're gone. They're just, it's like they just left the planet and they're never found again. And I'm always fascinated with those. Fascinating is not the right word, but with those type of accounts because it's like, well, what happened to that person? I can understand if someone's out hiking and they might get hurt or get stuck out somewhere, but playing on a property, two kids go off for a second, and then the kid's just gone.

Yeah, it's a two-year-old as well. I mean, how far is a two-year-old going to go? Yeah, and for the audience, again, the book is called Bigfoot in Pennsylvania, the history of Wildman, Gorillas, and other hairy monsters in the Keystone State. What other accounts do you have? There's one of a red-haired giant. It's not exactly a Bigfoot, but I know those kind of come up. it's uh and again the a lot of you know these old articles have uh this one isn't so bad but but some of the language is is pretty rough as far as uh you know racism and so forth it's just that's just the way the articles were at the time i i tell people in the you know opening the book it's not it's not

men as an endorsement it's just you know i'm reprinting the articles yeah so two colored boys william george and jeremiah johnson of middellberg three miles south of greencastle tell a strange story of having been chased by a wild man while in a wooded patch of the road near that place on Sunday. Their story was incredulously received until Sunday morning when a man by the name of Thomas rushed into town with the story of a wild flight from a red-bearded giant with a club. His description of the man and his fright convinced many that the boy's account may be true. A party has been searching for the man but without success. That's from 1894. It's interesting they mentioned the red hair and the carrying the club.

You know, I've heard that before. Yeah, I mean, that's the red hair giants. They kind of pop up here and there. Again, it's not a, you know, a typical Bigfoot description, but it seems like these things kind of come up at the same time. Just kind of a side note, don't you find it interesting when you read those articles? Because I've read not what you've have, but some of the older articles and you read them, and there's stuff that I want to post on the blog.

It's different with a book. I mean, you have to put it in Word for it. But on the blog, I've read some of these old articles, and there's just such a racist undertone to everything. Yeah. And it's almost, and they blame the African American man for everything. Well, it must be him. You know, it must be. And the way they write the articles, it just amazes me because today you'd never, you'd never get away with that.

People just don't tolerate it one bit, you know. We've come a long way, but it's, I mean, it's eye opening. to see some of these articles. It's just, I mean, one of the ones that mentions that only people of African descent seem to be able to see these guerrillas, which it's, I mean, it's directly contrasted in another article where it talks about, you know, white farmer's seeing it too. But it's just odd that the sort of, where there's just blatant and sort of undercurrents of racism throughout. It's just, you know, it's the time. It's not a pretty part of our past, but it's, you know, it's what it was. Yeah, it's fascinating, though, because, you know, a lot of those, you know, a lot of Native Americans, a lot of African Americans were out, unfortunately, working the fields, and they were the ones out actually seeing the stuff.

And, yeah, it's too bad when you read some of those articles, because there is really good information in them. Yeah, and that's what I, my point was kind of to everybody. Let's, you know, if we look beyond the language they used, there's. there's information to be gained from these. And like I said, these aren't all the ones I have. These are just a sampling from the book. But I have one from 1895. This is a pretty wild one.

This is a creature breaks a horse's neck. Halstead PA August 2nd, Halstead's wild woman. Our inhabitants are terribly frightened over the appearance of a wild woman, said to be the wife of the wild man seen near Hancock, and many will not go out after dark. She was at Susquehanna on Friday, evening after the men had quit work and went to a machine shop and removed with perfect ease a

balance wheel. She mounted it and rode towards this place as easily as many can ride a bicycle. She was met near Smoky Hollow by a peddler with a horse. She dismounted from her balance wheel and possessed the same knack as the wildman did in dislocating the neck of the horse. As with one jerk she broke its neck. With a slight wave of her hand, she rendered the poor peddler unconscious. She then dragged the horse to the woods. where its bones were found today, showing that she had eaten the horse. The peddler recovered from his severe blow, and while sitting down, thinking over his troubles, he heard two men coming in the darkness.

And these proved to be Aaron Rinhardt and Jason Melody, who gave the alarm. The wild woman was not pursued until morning, when a large crowd started in pursuit, and looking over the ground where she had last been seen, and men's tracks were discovered, showing the size of her foot, the toes of which measured six inches and one in diameter. They followed the trail as best they could. As they got near Turkey Hill, they saw to their astonishment a pile of rattlesnake skins, showing the creature eats snakes as well as horses. They returned on Saturday, but had not seen her.

It is rumored she is in a cave near Mount Manitome, but no one dare go find out. Officers Higgins and Hogan say they will catch her yet if it is in their power. In an interview, the peddler today informed the correspondent that the woman was about eight and a half feet tall, and he thought weighed about 500 pounds. he said that instead of large sleeves, her arms were covered in a heavy growth of hair, which he said would be the style in a few years. So there's some oddness there.

I think reporters at the time tried to kind of add some things to lighten up the story a little bit. That comment about her, you know, having hair on her arms instead of sleeves. That, to me, seems like a reporter edition. But I can't say for sure. it. You know, there's some stuff that you find throughout a lot of the reports, what just as in today, reporters, especially if it was reported first in another paper, they'll take this sort of kind of hard, skeptical stance and they'll kind of make fun of the story as they report it. In other cases that a lot of the wild men, they'll say we're wearing pants or we're wearing tattered clothes.

and I don't know if that's misreporting. You know, even today people see sometimes the creatures and say that I saw a guy in a gilly suit or at least I thought he was wearing a gilly suit at first until I realized it was, you know, a hairy creature. Or if it's too to the sort of Puritan values of the time where they thought it was too like risque to report, you know, a naked wild man running around. Because there's a lot of times, you know, it would be an eight foot hairy person will say he had, you know, know, trousers that were ripped up or something like that. And I've noticed that, too, on some of those old reports that they do that. You know what I used to find frustrating, though, is when you read those reports, the reporters at the time didn't really take the time to ask too many details about what the person saw.

And I don't know if you came across that. You may have a different story than I do, but I know it's a lot of the old newspaper reports are like, well, it was eight feet tall. The guy thinks it was probably 500 pounds. which, you know, in the 1800s, that's a giant. I mean, today that's a giant, but back then people weren't that big. Yeah, the average size of a man in the 1800s I looked up was about 5 foot 5. So if you're talking about, you know, 7 and 8 foot hairy wild men walking around,

you're talking about it big, big creatures, you know, well, you know, it's doubtful they were humans. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, but you know what I mean, though? Like they don't ask like, what did the nose look like? What did the eyes look like? What did the mouth look like? What did the, and they don't really do the due diligence of actually finding out what the person saw. You know, it was a wild woman.

She was eight feet tall and 500 pounds. And if you think about that last report you just read, what can break a horse's neck? I mean, really. Yeah, with one below. That's incredible. Yeah. One from 1881, it's got, again, this is just a behavior we see nowadays. You know, you've heard it hundreds of times, I'm sure, on your show.

about a creature attacking dogs. A monster gorilla is reported to have made an appearance on Jimmy Bruns farm, Valley Township, Armstrong County. The other night, the animal visited the house of John Emery and captured a dog, which he carried away into the woods. Subsequently, it is said the animal attacked and badly wounded, a gigantic hound belonging to Mr. Connulton. A party is organizing to affect its capture. So it's just, you know, again, it's just the same behavior we see throughout time. Yeah, it is. me we're still chasing this thing.

Book on, I didn't mean cut you off. What did you say you got? Oh, no, no. That's, I mean, that's the point. I mean, I think it's been around, you know, as long as we have. In 1897, I have one that shows like the window peeking behavior. It says, what is it? Strange beast said to have been seen near Coal Valley.

McKeysbort, September 16th. The people of Coal Valley are panic-stricken over a strange animal that has been seen in Wilson's woods. a 400-acre track back of the village. Wild ravines and deserted coal pits were the only attractions in the woods until a few days ago. John Wilhelm, whose house is on the edge of the woods, was the first man to see the monster. It came up to his porch a few mornings ago and looked at the window. In appearance, it seemed to be an ape or a very old man covered with hair. It walked on its hind legs and seemed very nimble in its feet.

Wilhelm was going to shoot it, but before he got his gun, it bounded over the railing of the porch and disappeared in the woods. Oliver Payne, a dairyman, also saw the strange thing. He had gone out to the woods to look for a stray cow when he noticed the strange-looking monster coming toward him. Pain took to his heels in the opposite direction. The monstrosity has also been seen by William Chambers, another farmer. The people at Coal Valley are organizing an expedition and will try to capture the beast

or whatever it may be. And that's pretty amazing too. I mean, you hear that today. You hear people talking of these things walking up, looking in the windows, and then, you know, jumping off the deck and running back into the woods. Did you have any reports that you can think of? I know I'm kind of putting you on the spot, but of anyone shooting these creatures. Yeah, yeah.

There are a couple where they mentioned shooting them and it having no effect. One of them said the reports that are going on in Darby in Delaware County around 1906, I believe someone shot it. And they said it bounced off like plate armor. That's the way they described it. And actually a really interesting attack case. A boy shot it. And this, this again is the sort of another noted behavior of

the creatures having that sort of cultural culture of revenge, you know, where they follow someone back to their house. This is a fantastic story. This is giant gorilla creates fear and snobes. County. This is from 1920, so it's a little later. In the 1920s, there was a wave of guerrilla sightings throughout Pennsylvania. They kind of start towards Pittsburgh, move to the center of the state, man, moved down to Gettysburg, which is in the kind of south central part of the state. You can sort of follow the reports through the newspapers,

all the local newspapers at the time. There's just, you know, tons and tons of these reports. But this is sort of at the beginning of the wave. It's, again, it's 19. Giant gorilla creates fear in Snyder County. Animal believed to have escaped from a carnival breaks boy's arm during attack, had previously been wounded, visits Bolig farm quite often. The appearance of a man ape or gorilla in the mountains of Snyder County has caused great excitement among the residents of the section where the animal was seen. The big ape was first seen three weeks ago by Samuel Bolig of Miser, a small town in Snyder County. The animal is supposed to be seen. The animal was supposed to be seen three weeks ago by Samuel Bolig of Miser, a small town in Snyder County. The animal is supposed to to be one that escaped some time ago from a carnival and which has since been living in the mountains of that section of the state. Samuel and Margaret Bollig, the children of Charles Bollig, were gathering Kinlingwood one night in November with the light of a search lamp when a huge animal, about seven feet tall, and that stood up like a man, was discovered by the children within the circle of light. It looked to them like a huge monkey, and when discovered, dropped on all

fours and ambled away, soon disappearing in the darkness. A week later, the same animal was discovered in a cornfield on the Bollig farm, which is at the foot of the mountain. Samuel procured a 32 caliber rifle and took a shot at the huge man creature, evidently wounding it, as it fell at the shot, rolling over several times on the ground. The boy and his father trailed the wounded ape some distance by the blood, but were unable to overtake it, and at length gave up the pursuit. On Monday night of the present week, the strange creature made its third appearance at the Bollig farm. Charles Bollig was engaged in chopping wood by the light of a lantern when the ape

approached near enough to be seen. The son ran to the house and procured the rifle, but before he could shoot the gorilla, it viciously attacked him, knocking him down and breaking his arm, and was finally driven away by the father. The lad lay on the ground in an unconscious condition. He was taken to the house and soon after recovered his senses, and it was found that he was not seriously injured. He suffered much from shock, but is expected to be fully recovered in a short time. A large number of men with rifles started out to hunt the animal, but 100 Louisville. town hunters, or sorry, about 100, Lewistown hunters are scouring the narrows in surrounding county toward the Snyder County line in hope of getting a shot at the huge creature and killing it.

As his presence is called great consternation in this section, the gorilla being a very dangerous animal on account of its great size, strength, and savage nature. That kid's lucky he didn't die. Yeah, yeah, and other reports, that report kind of is, there were several reports on the same kid. other reports said that he was put in critical condition by the creature. So what changes is how bad he was hurt. Some reports say both arms were broken, and some reports say he was like really, really put in bad shape and didn't know if he was expected to live. But what's consistent is that he was attacked by a seven foot gorilla.

It's important to note, like they say these, you know, this is an escaped act. animal. There were so few guerrillas in the United States at this time that they were reported on like celebrities. The New York Zoo had them and they would report kind of on their almost on their daily activities. They were all named. They knew where they were. And they cost about, it was about $20,000 at the time, which is in our money today that would be bare minimum half a million and probably a good bit more. So there just weren't a surplus of guerrillas that, you know, were in all these circuses to escape.

No, you're right. And the other thing, too, is, you know, in Pennsylvania, I've never been to Pennsylvania, but I've seen weather reports and people are reporting their tracks and the snow and stuff. I'd give a gorilla probably about a week and a half before it's dead out there in wintertime in Pennsylvania. Right. And that report was from December.

of 1920. So yeah, it was cold. They even talk in one of the reports that follows up about a cold snap and they think they think the creature's dead. But because of the cold snap, they figure, well, it's, you know, it must be dead. But then people see it again after, after this cold snap. So yeah, it's, and it's a strange land. It would be for a guerrilla. It's, you know, strange food. It just, it doesn't make sense at all. It would be a gorilla. You know, what I find interesting about that last report is I've had that reported behavior on the show of people who've taken shots at these things on their property. You know, they'll own a bunch of land and they'll take shots at them or the dog man. And you'll get this same, almost identical to what

you just read. You'll get that same behavior, almost like they're coming back for vengeance. And that's a very human-like trait to hold a grudge enough to come back and punish someone for shooting at you or um and don't read too much into it i'm not saying saskwatch is human but it's a human like trait to hold a grudge want revenge and then come back and wait for an opportunity opportunity to invoke your revenge on someone who's taking a shot at you yeah i mean and so the and it was two weeks later two weeks after the boy shot him and he recognized the boy apparently he didn't attack the father he attacked the boy which is really i mean it's first frightening if you think about it. Yeah, that is. That is. Well, you know, like Tim, you've heard the show.

I had that one, I say kid. He's probably early 20s, but, you know, he's still a kid to me. And he took a shot at that dog man. And he didn't believe in any of this. And this thing came back and started harassing him at his grandfather's property. And it was focused in on him, like it would come up and growl at his window. It wanted, almost like it wanted revenge for him popping off a shot towards it. I don't think he actually hit the creature. In fact, I know he didn't. If you go back and listen to the show, he missed it, but he hit right above its head on a tree. He thought it was a coyote. And this thing came back, and its focus was on him.

Not so much to the grandparents. Its focus was on him. And that's terrifying, man. That's really terrifying. Yeah. And these, whatever these, I think it was a group of creatures. There seems to be so many sightings, like I said, around this time in 1920, that I can't can't imagine it's just one creature, but they were very aggressive. This is just a few days after

that attack in the same area in 1920. This is guerrilla attacks autowist. New stories concerning the mysterious animal that looks like a gorilla and makes a noise like a horse, which has been seen in the lower end of Snyder County during the past month, are in circulation every hour of the day. And the tale of an alleged attack upon an autowist south of Sealand's Grove is today's best tale. The gorilla, or whatever the animal terror may turn out to be, leaped upon an autoist traveling towards Sealand's Grove, so the story goes. And he would no doubt have been badly done up, but for his resistance with a small penknife, which was the only weapon at hand. When the fight was at its height, according to the story, another autoist came along and joined in the fray, the two automobile drivers succeeding and beating off the animal's attack. So this is, again, that's just a few days after the other attack.

And they're saying autowists, is it a vehicle? What do they mean by that? Yeah, that's just a, you know, I guess the term at the time for someone driving a car, an autowist. So I'm, my imagination, you know, it must be one of these old, old-timey cars, you know. I don't know if it didn't have a roof or, you know, again, the details aren't there, but apparently it jumped on in this guy's car. Yeah, some of those old articles are funny to read, you know, not funny to read, but, you know, You know, they almost kind of put a theatrical, you know, with a quick foot, Jimmy Jones took off running and he was lighted foot and he got away from this creature.

And it just cracks me up when you read some of that stuff. It's like, who writes that? You know, I mean, who talks like that? You know, this guy ran his ass off. He almost got killed. You know, they, you know, just give it to a straight. But you see that. Didn't you see that with a lot of the old reports?

Oh, yeah. There's a certain, like, rhythm to the language. You know, you can read it in the old-timey movie voice. if you want, you know, the, you know, hey, we're going on a gorilla hunt today, see? Yeah, you know, before you go into the next report, you got, gosh, I had to read this book now. Normally I have people on after I've read the books. I apologize to the audience, but I've talked to Tim so many times in the past and we did the little people show and I hope people go out and get it.

I'm going to get it. It's a big foot in Pennsylvania, history of wild men, gorillas and other hairy monsters. in the Keystone State, Timothy Reiner. Tim, you ever look up, before you go on to your next account, do you ever look up Lewis and Clark's diaries? I haven't. No. You got to read it, man.

You got to read it. Those guys ran into Sasquatch. I don't care what anyone says. You read some of those guys's diaries. Lewis, he talks about the wild man. He talks about seeing the wild man. And they talk about running into these creatures. And it's interesting that it's in his diary.

no one's edited it out no one's like well let's not put that in there they left all that stuff in there and there's and it's kind of hard to read some of it's boring but there's portions of his diary if you read he talks about the wild man

of the woods and the Native Americans warning them not to go into certain areas and it's a pretty fascinating read but I didn't me cut you off oh no no that's I mean I think I it's no surprise to me because you find reports of these things everywhere. I mean, there's, at some point I'm going

to do with the help of a friend, I have a friend who translates medieval Latin, and he's going to help me do some of these medieval reports from Europe that haven't been translated, but they're talking about them, you know, back in medieval Europe. You know, they called them wild men or in England, they called them wild woes. They're just everywhere. It's so interesting just that the behavior follows with them that, you know, we might call them by different names, but it seems like we're still talking about the same thing. Yeah, and that's the part that's always fascinating me with this topic is no matter if it's the United States or Canada or Australia or Russia or China, all these different areas, everyone's kind of talking about the same thing. I mean,

from one region to the next. And the behavior is very much from one region to the next, the same thing. You might get more aggression from one region to the next. But for the most part, they're talking about the exact same thing. And, you know, guys back in the 1800s and early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon for them to form a posse. I mean, you come up on someone's property and you start messing around and they call it the wild man. It wasn't uncommon for them to get six, seven guys, load them up and go shoot this thing. And it just frustrates me. We're still chasing this exact same thing today. What is going on? Oh, yeah. It's, there's so many cases of that. Like you said, they'll form a posse. There'll be 100 men, you know, out in the woods searching for this thing

with no success, you know, or they'll pop off shots at it and they'll say, you know, it jumped, you know, 20 feet in one jump and was gone. Yeah, and I bet if you look at those old reports, and you may have done this already, but I bet you'll start to see as an area gets populated. there's less and less reports of the wild man. It's almost like they move to another area. And as that area gets populated, the reports get less and less. And it's almost like they're kind of moving to the outskirts.

I've just seen that from the 80s to today from here in Washington State. You can almost, you look back and you're like, really, there was a report here in the 70s? This is the middle of town. But back in the 70s, this wasn't the middle of town. This was the middle of nowhere. then he starts to see reports of them being pushed up into areas, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's hard to, I guess someone who, if you had population estimates and stuff, I would bet that that's the case as people expand outward. In fact, I do have, like, there's one of the last reports in the book is in the town of Gettysburg, which, you know, now is a, it's a pretty touristy and built up around. the battlefields and stuff, but in 1920, you know, a creature kind of marched right into town. Do you have that one handy?

Yeah. Yeah. Let me grab it here. It's 1921. So this is on the tail end of that sort of wave of guerrilla sightings that comes across the state of Pennsylvania in 1920, 1921. Strange beast shot by York Street citizen, found footprints too. It's in again.

Now, what they're talking about is there's been several reports of this animal around Gettysburg. It's in again. After having passed out of the limelight several months ago, the well-known gorilla is back. It was in Gettysburg several nights ago, according to information from well-informed circles. It was not only seen, but shot at. Whether or not it is wounded is not known, but it departed hurriedly from York Street in

the direction of Biglerville. Not long ago, a woman residing on York Street saw a strange object about four feet high, moving along the fence in the rear of her house. it is said, and being alone, she rushed to the place next door seeking help. The man of the house secured a shotgun. He too saw the beast. He fired, the gorilla dropped to the ground. Thinking he had bagged his game, the gunner went toward the fallen animal.

When only a few feet away, the beast jumped to its hind legs and chased the man into the house. Residents of that part of town declare, those who ventured to look out say the animal disappeared in the direction of Biglerville. In fact, they declare an examination of the ground in a field nearby revealed footprints of a strange. beast. A number of York Street residents have oiled shotguns long obscured, and a second visit by the beast to that part of town would probably result fatally for it. Others believe the animal by this time has returned to the fastness of the mountains. It bothers me hearing reports like that because, you know, if you shoot something, and this may be this hunter in me talking, but if you shoot something, rarely does it pop back up and start chasing you. It just, you know,

I guess not always, but I just have a hard time sometimes with those reports because it's like, what is this thing? You know, it's like when I, Tim, when I had the, I don't know if you heard that show or not, when I had the son on and his mom had tranquilized the animal and she intentionally over-tranclized it to kill it and then it ended up getting up and running off. It's like, oh yeah, she worked for animal control or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

It's like, well, what are we dealing with? You know, I mean, here's a trained woman with a tranquilizer, and she's well aware of what the weight is, and she's done this how many times. And she, you know, and I guess for the audience, they probably have no clue what we're talking about, but, or maybe they do. It was a quote-unquote gorilla that was hit by a snowplow, and she went out there to put the animal down, and she had overtranclized it intentionally to kill it because it was in so much pain. It was more or less a mercy thing she was doing. and she well over-trinklyzed the thing, and then it pops up and it takes off, which makes no sense, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's freaky. And in that one, I don't know if, you know, maybe he had birdshot or something, but it seems if you hit something with a shotgun, first of all, you're not going to be that far away from it if you're hitting it with a shotgun. So maybe, you know, maybe it was birdshot or something he had, but either way for it to drop and then pop back up

is, I mean, pretty scary. And chase him back into his house. That's wild. Yeah, that is. And if you notice in that article, this is why I say I think it was more than one creature. The other, you know, guerrilla reports are saying the things are seven foot tall, which, by the way, we talked about this before. But the average height of a gorilla, well, the tallest gorilla, I think ever measured was about 6'4. And that's a huge African gorilla.

So to have a seven foot tall gorilla is outside the realm of the African gorilla. And that's what they're talking about, except in this article, again, they say it was four foot tall. So I think we're talking about more than one creature. Yeah. And well, and you see that too with reports from the South. They don't know what to call it. You know, and I love that you came on the show and you're talking about some of these. And I really appreciate you talking about some of those reports in your book because you'll see that from a certain time.

frame, they'll call it the wild man. And then they compare it to the gorilla because that's what they know. They'll, well, it's a gorilla. And then as they go throughout history, it's, and you see that down south a lot, you know, they'll call it the corn man because they don't know what else to call it, or they'll call it, uh, the chicken man, you know, because they saw them stealing chickens or, and so it's almost, you almost kind of have to know what the locals call it. I know down south you'd probably find 10 times or reports you have up there in Pennsylvania, but you kind of have to know what the locals call it and what they're referring to when they call it. You know, it's not going to be Bigfoot and it's not going to be Sasquatch. Most of the Sasquatch stuff you hear in the Pacific Northwest, you can go back

a long time and it's Wildman or it's Sasquatch. But down south, or I would imagine in Pennsylvania, it's the same thing. It's like, well, they're just describing what they know, you know, like a gorilla. Yeah. Yeah, I have actually an appendix in the book with just a list of alternate names that, that for these creatures that, you know, again, it's different names, but they're, they're, they seem to be talking about the same things. Some of them from Native Americans, some of them just from kind of folklore. It's just like you said, I had one guy talk to me. He said, we don't have Bigfoot in Pennsylvania. And then he describes this thing called a Hodad, which was a big, tall, hairy monster. that walked on its hind legs. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what you tend to get in those areas. You know what I find interesting is when they call it the wild woman.

You know, from doing the show so much, people will say, well, I thought it, maybe it was female. I kind of get the impression it was female. But they'll tell you they're not really sure if it was female or not. That was more or less an impression. But as you read some of these old reports and they talk about the wild woman, and the guys they'll say, I ran into the wild woman. What makes them look at that and go, well, that was a wild woman?

Are they seeing the breasts? Is that why they're saying it's a wild woman? Yeah, they don't, it's not always clear. And, I mean, it's not in my book, but I'm remembering, wasn't the reports of the Minerva monster, didn't they describe that as like a big hairy witch? That was from the 70s. I'm trying to remember. I'm not sure.

Yeah, but, but I mean, it happens. and you wonder why people got the impression, you know, it was a woman. I have a couple really strange ones in the book with one of them's an attempted abduction. I don't have that handy. But they mentioned the woman, the so-called wild woman attempting to, well, it picked up and ran away with the kid. And the kid screamed and the mother ran after it. And she was screaming enough that it drawed the father, I think. And they ran after the creature.

It ended up dropping the child. But it was making off with this child. And I have another weird. When this is from 1891, wild woman seen again. The wild woman who roamed over South Mountain near this place years ago, it is reported, has made her appearance again. One of a party from this place while picking Huckleberry says he saw her. While going through a review,

he said our attention was drawn to a peculiar noise on the incline above we ventured near the spot and saw all to our amazement an object in an almost nude condition long hair grown over its face and body and one arm and one leg shorter than the other it was hanging on a vine suspended from a large tree swinging to and fro as if humming a lullaby upon seeing us it leaped from tree to tree and was soon out of sight chattering to itself as it disappeared the affairs caused considerable talk here and the matter will be further investigated. And it's just such an odd detail with it. They said one arm and one leg shorter than the other. But the really interesting, as it's swinging in trees and it just jumps from tree to tree with no problem, again, these are not, you know, these are not really, I can't imagine this being a

human, you know. This is 1901. It's a guerrilla attack from Bridgeville, Pennsylvania. Frank Biles colored, was nearly killed last night by a gorilla near Bethel campground, eight miles from here. It is said the guerrilla escaped from a circus menagerie at Seaford. Biles was riding a wheel to cannons when he was attacked. It threw him from the wheel and dealt him a heavy blow with its fist. The man in some manner pulled his revolver and shot twice, making his escape to cannons. Upon reaching cannons, he was unable to speak for some time. A crowd gathered about the man.

His clothing was in shreds, and he had an ugly wound over the year. A posse of about 50 men was formed to capture the animal. Jesus. You know, you would think people back then, might have looked at some of those and been like, we got a hell of a problem with guerrillas escaping the zoo. You know what I mean?

We got like an epidemic going on here. Yeah, and that's, I kind of note the idea that before that, you know, a lot of times they'll call them crazy people. It's an escape lunatic. It's like, if there were that many eight foot tall escape lunatics, you know, roaming around the country,

it's like an army of crazy people escaped. It just doesn't make sense. And certainly the other reports from the time don't bear it out. You don't read articles of these, you know, of, oh, hey, everybody, a giant hairy man escaped from the Insanus Island, you know, look out for him. And you don't read the articles of, hey, you know, we lost a, you know, a troop of guerrillas from the zoo. Everybody watch out. You just, people see the things.

And again, I guess it's just they reason that, oh, it's a gorilla must have escaped from a zoo. Yeah, and it's kind of funny to go back and read those articles today because, you know, guerrillas for the most part will bluff you. Rarely will they actually attack you. They'll bluff you. They'll bluff charge you or come at you. But they'll rarely ever attack someone. And all these attacks, I guess they didn't know that much about guerrillas back then. I don't know. I wasn't around during that time, but I would assume they didn't know that much about guerrillas. And you would think there's like an epidemic going on of escaped guerrillas and crazy people. Yeah, yeah. From the number of reports, it's just, you know, there's too much. It's, it's too much to be escape girls. It's too much to be crazy people. A lot of reports I found were definitely humans. Like, I did find some reports. If they talked about it speaking to them, if it ended up, you know, they did send it to a county home, there were homeless people around. And I ran into a lot of those reports. And I didn't put them in the book. For every one report that, that, that, could be a big foot creature. There's 20 that I found that definitely weren't. So it's not like I just threw everything, every mention of a wild man in the book. I tried to kind of select the ones that, to me, seem like they either could be or definitely were big foot creatures. Here's a 1906. These guys get in a fight with a creature. Three guys end up fighting it. Wild man fault captors and made his escape after one had been badly bitten. Again, that's 1906. The wild

man supposed to be an escape patient from Dixmont, who has been terrorizing the boroughs of Ben Avalon, Avalon, and Elmsworth was caught by a party of Ben Avon citizens, but made his escape later. J.S. Wagoner, Charles and Robert Crawfield, and John Trust, while returning home, were accosted by a man with long hair all over his body and who had the appearance of a full-grown gorilla. Mr. Wagner, as well as Charles Crawford, immediately gave battle, and with the assistance of Robert Crawford, succeeded in getting the supposed wild man down on the ground. Mr. Truss took his handkerchief and bound the wild man's wrists behind his back, but when they allowed him to rise, the lunatic began kicking and biting in such a manner

that all parties concerned were only too glad to let him go. Straining his wrist, he managed to get his hands free, and he ran to a nearby tree and went up it with the agility of a cat. Wagoner and Trust were left to watch while the Crawford brothers went home and secured lanterns and additional help, but when they returned, they could find no signs of Wagoner and Trust or the supposed wild man. They searched the locality and found no signs of either. Then they started home and when near Crawford's farm caught up with the watchers who gave an exciting account of their experiences, stating that the wild man came down the tree and gave them a fierce battle in which Wagoner was badly bitten and scratched and his clothing torn.

And who knows how it went, but they're saying they actually at some point had the creature's arms tied. That's the crazy part. You know, in some of these old stories, you'll hear of guys tying them up. I mean, there's one, there's a famous case. I can't remember what stated it's in. But they formed a posse and basically shot the creature in the lake and then five or six guys tackled it and chained it up and brought it back into town. And, you know, maybe they just made guys different back then. I'd rather than I would tackle one of these things.

I'm with you. They must have been like serious dudes. I want no part of that. So this is in the handkerchief. the same area same date 1906 ape like animal scares people in Delaware County

trap set for it pulled up by the roots and the wires and chains snapped all Delaware County is exercised over the antics of a strange gorilla like animal which has been frightening belated pedestrians almost out of their wits in widely separated parts of the county within the last two weeks one night it was seen near Chester

another night it was seen prowling near media and again it was seen running along the roads on all fours in morton walking sometimes upright like a man or else running along at racehorse speed on all fours with a peculiar leaping stride and covered with a heavy coat of hair the animal is differently described by those who see it. The Negroes have been terrorized and in many sections of the county cannot be induced to pass certain localities after dark where the animal has been seen. Others have stocked themselves with all manner of weapons to put an end to the freak and still

have fled. Some are of the opinion that is an escaped ape from the zoo which is strengthened by the fact that a representative from the zoological gardens was making inquiries in Springfield Township a few days ago concerning it. Traps have been set for it only to be pulled up by the roots and the heavy wires and chains snapped like sugar twine. Frank Carr of Springfield, aided by several of his neighbors last Tuesday week, got out two heavy steel bear traps, baited and set them. The strange animal had been seen lurking in the woods nearby at night, and it was determined to capture it. The traps were set in an enclosure in the back of Mr. Carr's house, but the next morning both were sprung, the bait eaten off, and a section of heavy telegraph wire with which

they were fastened to a big oak tree was snapped like a thread. The ground was clawed up as if newly furrowed and the traps were found several rods away as if carried that distance before the animal released itself. It was reported last Sunday night as having been seen in media on Washington Street near the residence of United States Marshal John B. Robinson, but it disappeared in the darkness. So, yeah, there is something, and again, this is the one where I was talking about, where they later claimed it was a dog or a black guy in a, in a bear skin, whatever this was, broke these traps, you know, that no dog is breaking a bear trap or it's snapping the wire. Well, yeah, and you see that sometimes with these old reports where it's almost kind of,

you almost wonder if the guy writing the report is looking for some sort of sanity to what's going on. because if you do as they describe it like a racehorse on all fours with a strange leaping the way it leaps on all fours uh and it walks up right you that's not a dog i mean they you know and people were smarter you know just as smart as they are today uh i can't imagine someone going now you probably ran into a dog as you read the descriptions you hear a lot of witnesses even on saskatch chronicles talk about that when they're running you know they've seen these things running on all fours. I can even think of police officers that have seen them run. And they'll say, hey, this thing was doing 30, 40 miles an hour easily and had a weird leap to it as it was almost

galloping like a horse, but on all fours. And then it would get up on two legs. It's fascinating. You see the exact same descriptions today as you saw back then. Yeah, that bipedal to quadrupedal you know, motion. It occurs in several of these articles throughout the book. They'll see it standing up, walking. And it seems like when they want to really get moving, they drop down to all fours. And I know some of it was theatrics back then when they're writing, but, you know, you had to be careful back then, writing too much about wild men and monsters, and because people would get their guns together and go start searching for these things, and you don't want to cause a panic. Yeah. And these are, a lot of these reports are from

just little small town papers. They're not, you know, if they were all coming from, you know, maybe one paper, it'd be one thing. You think, well, maybe they're trying to, you know, pump up their sales by, you know, putting sensationalistic stories or something. But you can, you can follow it from paper to paper. Like I said, you can almost follow the course of these creatures as they go across the state and be, you know, one small paper to another as they'll report. And a lot of times, you know, it just names the guys by name. Like, you know, here's the local guy that saw it and this is what he saw. And you'll find the report again in the next small town paper, you know, the next town over.

Well, you know, and with that, you know, you could say, well, they're trying to sell papers. But in all of these reports, there's little tiny details that you even hear in encounters today. And unless somebody would have seen the creature, they wouldn't have known those little tiny details that you hear about in some of these. Yeah, that's my favorite part. I think just recognizing and honestly it's you know from listening to Sasquatch Chronicles and and witness reports really that you start to recognize the stuff like the the bipedal you know the quadrupedal stuff or the peeking windows was a big one you know when you when you see that it's like you just hear so much of that and uh I just found it really fascinating even the the automobile stuff

it's like they were having pretty much what it amounts to roadside crossings you know back at the birth of the the automobile. So I guess I can finish up with, it's pretty famous. People have seen the, and it's controversial footage, I know, as every film is, but the, the white-haired bigfoot from Pennsylvania, that sort of film clip of the white-haired creature. Oh, yeah, where the guy shines the light on its face. Yeah, yeah. I think that's real footage, you feel, my last opinion.

I think it's fascinating. somebody did a breakdown where you can see the face move, I think, which to me, it was pretty convincing. Not only the face move, and I'll let you get to the report, but not only the face move, but as you slow it down frame by frame, if it's a mass, there's certain portions of a mass that wouldn't move. Then you can see its eyes kind of squint and kind of like it almost like it's irritated that it's shining a light in its face. And you just see a lot of movement in its face. but not only that, but that creature takes off at breakneck speed, man. I mean, it's gone.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that's real footage. I mean, call me done, but I agree. I agree. And, of course, you know, for every one of us that says it's real, there's, you know, 10 people that say it's a fake, I guess. I mentioned in the book that I think being a skeptic about this stuff is the easiest thing in the world. And I'm not saying it's bad to be skeptical.

I'm just saying it's easy. all you have to do is claim every witness is crazy drunk high or you know trying to become famous i don't know how or why someone would do that by saying it or and every uh every reporter that reports on it is just trying to sell papers and every picture is a fake every film's a fake it's just it's easy to be a skeptic but uh when these things are reported again and again the white-haired bigfoot for instance besides that film, it's just reported tons of people report this in Pennsylvania. It's in the western part of the state and you get reports on it all the time, regardless of whether the film is, is real or not. Like you said, I think it is. It's really compelling. I think it's probably a real

creature. But people were seeing a white-haired Bigfoot back in 1907 in Pennsylvania. Looks like a specter, but noisy as a wild man. White-haired apparitions scares some residents of Verona almost into fits. Who is the aged apparition with long white hair and beard, who with groans and moans and blood-curdling screams, raises the hair of residents of Verona in a fright, and with nimble feet almost gives them heart failure by going in swift pursuit? That is the question some of the citizens are puzzling over, particularly Elmer Boutchner, who fled in dismay on Tuesday night when the white-haired terrifier chased him. Bouchner started home late, and Parker Street he saw the strange phantasm. At least he thought it was such, until the all-inspiring figure let out a

horrible shriek, got down on all fours, and clawed the sidewalk, and then launched itself at Bautchner. The latter's cries vied in volume with those of the pursuer for a while, until he reached the sheltering doorway where he cowered. The specter passed on, and Bouschner, peeping out, trembling, beheld him disappear between two houses. Nobody in the neighborhood knew anything the next day of the strange vision, for Bouchner investigated. But the residents of Parker Street have been kept awake at night by the weird inarticulate cries of the white-haired old man. He is too noisy for a ghost, and the citizens are laying plans to capture him. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. And you'll see that, too, in reports. I plan to expand from Pennsylvania, and I'm going to keep going and do other areas. I'm not

sure I'll be able to do a book dedicated to every state, but I'm going to go ahead and try to do, you know, certain areas. I might have to put states together. But in Pennsylvania, at least, You get a lot of reports for the calm spooks or specters. You know, they kind of lump them in with ghosts until they chase somebody or until they start screaming or, you know, they'll report. It's just, you know, it's a ghost, but it looked like a half bear, half man, you know. Yeah, it's always a ghost until you get hit with a rock or it actually attacks you. Yeah. You know, or you shoot it.

I would imagine a white big foot you would think that that's probably a ghost. Yeah, yeah. And again, in that story, we have a drop at all fours and launching at the guy. So, you know, it's just the same behavior again and again. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Tim. I can't wait to read the book. Bigfoot in Pennsylvania, a history of wild men, gorillas, and other hairy monsters in the Keystone State. Check it out on Amazon.

I also have a link on Sasquatch Chronicles. And maybe I'll get a couple of the books and give them away to some of the listeners, too as well. I can't wait to check it out. I can't thank you enough for coming on. Oh, thanks for having me, Wes. Anytime. I love the show. Love to be a part of it. Thanks, Tim. And next up on the show, I want to welcome Kevin. Kevin, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Thank you, Wes. I appreciate you coming on. And if you would, you had an encounter, kind of like another witness ad on. I don't remember what episode it was. but if you would kind of start from the beginning.

You can even talk about that episode and what kind of got you to come forward and then maybe walk us into what happened if you would. I started listening to your show a number of months ago, and I had two incidents that took place with me in my life, and I shared them with my friends and my family and continually got harassment from them and made fun of, so I basically kept my mouth quiet. for quite some time until one night I was listening to one of your shows and I heard a guest of

yours tell my exact story it it knocked me off my chair and in fact when I went and played it back from my friends and from my family it kind of took the edge off and they started looking at me like you maybe you are right and you know it's been better since so I greatly appreciate it But what happened is years ago I met a family that was deeply into fishing and hunting. And I have been doing that for my entire life. When I was growing up, I would go out and work on branches out in Idaho. And the John Likeley Ranch where Evil Caneval jump the Snake River. And I've always been out working hard during the summers and just being out in the open areas

and we're out in the mountains fishing. In fact, my nickname is Trout. And about the time I was 16, my best friend's family who I met took me in, and they took me up to a place called the Pitt River up in Northern California. And at Pitt River, you go up to Reading on Highway 5 out of the Bay Area. And when you get to Reading, you turn 299 east and go about an hour up to the Sierra Foothills. Where you get to a four-way stop, it's about a good hour out. And the whole drive-out is old minds that are kind of dilapidated along the highway,

but it's a real neat feel when you're driving out there. And then when you get to that turnoff, you drop down 21 miles down into this valley. And I know the exact mileage because I used to train for triathlon, so I'd run it every once in a while. And it was 21 miles and teach you down into a little town called Big Bend, California. Now, Big Bend is a very small town. It's got a little teeny school and a number of houses there. And it butts up to what's called pit four and five. Pit River four and five. They call it that because of the PG&E controlled stations. And in that town is a little teeny store called the pit stop store where there's this older gentleman is an Indian guy that's been out there drinking beer since I can remember.

where he's been building this wonderful pot belly from drinking beer for so long. So every time I go out there, I always catch that guy out in front of the store. There's another road that you take that goes along the pit river into a small campground called Deep Creek Campground. Now, as you're driving back into that road, it's paved at first. and there are PG&E campgrounds that are cabins for employees to use and they'll vacation out there. And then as you go a little bit further down the road, there turns to gravel, and it gets to a dam where your guest talked about having his encounter. And driving into the D Creek campground is about 2.3 miles down.

dirt road that drives along the freeway, I mean, excuse me, drives along the river and goes up and down along the river. And you can look down onto the gourd and you'll see way down where the river is. And there are other areas that get dark and kind of eerie. There's this one part of the river, it's one part of the road as you're driving in that I always said, I would not want to be here at night. Well, that ended up coming back to bite me. So on one of the trips, I think I was about 20 years old, my friend Robin, and I went to this area on the camping road called the frog pond. It's a pond that's about the size of four maybe football field side by side.

It's about five feet deep and surrounded by deep brush all the way around the pond. And we go in there with 22s and shoot frogs and come back with frog legs. Well, one night, late at night, we were staying out there late, as we were walking back to our car, something was in the brush along the side of the pond, and the brush is made up of berry bushes, and they're really high and little trees that are growing. And it's probably 20 feet thick around the lake. You can't really see what's in there. but as we walked, something was knocking brush down and knocking trees aside.

And we stopped. And when we stopped, it stopped. And I looked at my friend Rob. Now here we have 22s. And we're probably 16, 17 at the time. And we're not the bravest young man. And I walked a little bit further. And whatever it was in the bush walked along the same speed that we did.

Now, we were probably 30 yards from the car at that point, and I just looked at my friend Rob, and I ran to the car. We jumped in the truck, and we drove off, never really thought much about it after that. Move forward about 20 years, probably 10 years ago now. I went out fishing with two good friends. Now, this campground is not used very much anymore. PG&E kept quit going up in there and quit servicing it. So the outhouses are falling in, and there's just not much activity back there. So it's real quiet, and there's more animals back there now.

So when I would get on a river, I would keep fishing, and I hated coming off the river. I wanted to go to the next pool and the next pool and the next pool trying to get that big trout. And on this trip, I finally caught this gigantic trout. that I've been trying to get, I've been trying to get an over 20-inch trout out of that river since I was a boy. I finally caught a 22-inch trout. And when these trout fight, they fight with fury. It's not fish that are coming out of a place where they groan with no water running. These things fight for their living.

You know, they're trying to get their food going upriver. So they're real strong. So it was getting late and I finally caught this fish. And I realized that it was almost dark. And I was way down river. So I just had an idea that I would climb out of the gorge and come across the road and then take the road back into the campground. So I started to climb out and it kept getting darker and darker.

And I just didn't realize how high it was. It was a long way out. And I finally got to the very top. It was dark. And I couldn't see anything. So I'm feeling my way trying to go through this brushy area. And I still don't know where I'm at yet on the river and I'm on the road. And it's just really dark.

And I'm bumping into things with my face. I'm hitting branches. And all of a sudden, to my left, I thought I heard something. And I stopped. And I listened. And I could swear. I heard breathing. So I don't know if you've ever gotten really scared,

but the first thing that happens is your ears start to ring because you get this shot of adrenaline. And the back of my neck, the hair on the back of my neck came up, and I just got really, really scared. So I start moving forward, and I kind of trying to look to my left, but I can't see anything. And I walk a little bit, and I could swear I heard. something walking towards me.

And I stopped, and for about three feet, it kept walking. And it was big, not walking around things. It was walking through them. So I stood there and stopped, and I could hear the breathing even louder. And now I am just absolutely terrified. And I start to walk a little bit further, and it's shuffling through the brush as I'm walking. And now I stop and I can clearly hear deep, deep breathing.

In my mind, I'm thinking to myself, this is going to sound stupid right now, but I have this 22-inch trout. And I'm thinking, whatever it is, maybe if I toss the trout, it'll leave me alone. So you're racing, trying to figure out everything you can at that moment. And all of a sudden, I start moving faster trying to get through these trees that I'm bumping into things, and I snap my pole, and I come to a stop, and whatever it is, is just to my left, and the sound that came out of it sounded like a bull, just breathing out or the blow snot out of their nose, and a branch whips across and hits me right across the face.

So whatever is there is right next to me, I panic, and I start knocking through brush, knocking through trees, trying to find the road. I kept trying to get through and I kept banging into things. And whatever it is with me is just to my left and it stays right to my left. Every time I'm moving forward, it moves and I can hear of breathing. And I keep trying to get to this road and I keep going further and further and further. And it's knocking things over. And it's just loud and breathing.

And I am just terrified. And I hit the road and I came out in. that one area on the road that I said I never wanted to be in in the middle of night, it's like a swampy area where the road has puddles in it, even during the hottest part of the summer. And I start to run, and I'm thinking to myself, throw the fish, throw the fish. And there's another part of me saying, no, I've been trying to get this fish in my entire life. And I just started running. And it stopped.

It stopped on the edge of the road. And I'm looking up into the sky trying to see where the road is because it's so, dark that the only thing I can see is clearings of the tree where the road is because it grows in on you there. It's probably maybe 15, 18 feet wide max. So I'm running and running and I get all the way back to the campground. And I come flying at the campground and I start to tell my friends what it happened and they all think that I'm nuts. And for years, I have been trying, you know, my wife has heard me tell this story. My kids have heard me tell the story. My kids have heard me tell the story. And every time I do, they roll their eyes until I played back the episode of a young man

that grew up in San Jose, who now lives in Los Gatos, whose family took them up to the Pitt River and stayed in the PG&E campgrounds. And he had an encounter on the dam when they were playing music and something was roaring at them and coming closer to him. And then on a second trip, just like mine, he gets lost out in the forest, with no light, and he's trying to get back, and something starts walking along with him. And as he stops, it stops. And as he moves, it moves.

And it was my story. And I felt vindicated. And I got to tell you, Wes, it is so nice to have a show like this where you know that you've experienced something. Now, I didn't see it, but I know what it was. It was too damn big. to be anything else.

There's no cows walking through the forest in the middle of the night and following you as you walk through. And there's nothing that makes that noise of breathing. It almost sounds like a Clydesdale. It's so deep and thick. But, you know, this show vindicated me with my family and my friends. And now when I play it, I don't feel like a fool anymore. So I owe you.

Yeah, well, you don't owe me anything. But that is, I'm glad to hear some of the vindicated. you know, because you do, the behavior you describe is very common. You hear that from a lot of witnesses. I mean, I've had hunters tell me encounters just like yours. I've had hikers tell me encounters just like yours where they follow you. And then when you stop, they stop. And then when you move, they move. And that's not normal predatory behavior. If a predator is going to get you, it's going to come up from behind and get you. And it's not going to, you stop and that's a perfect opportunity to snag you. And let me ask you, do you think it wanted you or do you think it wanted the fish or both? I think you wanted the fish. I really do. Because when it started moving towards me, it didn't bulrush me. It kind of like sat out in the perimeter.

And as I walked, it got closer and closer. Why would it stay with about, you know, I mean, it was close enough to where a branch swung back and hit me in the face. So whatever was in front of me held that branch, and the branch swung in it and nailed me. I think he was sipping the fish, and I didn't want to give the damn thing up. I could see myself getting killed over a 22-inch fish. And anybody that's a trout fisherman that's been trying to get that big fish knows what I'm talking about. You don't even want to give it up to a big foot. You know, so, yeah, I think you wanted to fish.

Yeah, and the breathing that you mentioned, I haven't had too many witnesses on that talk about the breathing. breathing. But it's kind of that musky in and out. Well, I mean, how would you describe it as far as the breathing goes? It takes a breath in. You know how you take a breath and you get about a second? We can't go any deeper. Its breath keeps going deeper and deeper and deeper. And then when he blows it out, it's long. And it just, it sounds so different than anything I've ever. heard before. It is just deep and almost a gurgly, but when it breathed out and stopped, it went and it was long and loud, and it was like, wow, it was freaky. Yeah, it is freaky to hear that, that breathing. And I've heard it before. Would you describe the breathing more of it being out of

breath, or would you describe it more of anger? When you heard the breathing, what was your impression? It wasn't even trying to be intimidating just the way it breathed is intimidating. It wasn't trying to growl. It wasn't trying to. It was just breathing. And I was so close to it that you could feel it. You could feel that it was like thick. It's hard to describe when it came out, when it would breathe, it'd be so.

deep coming in and so deep coming out. Now one time when he breathed out fast, it was, it was, it was, it's like a big bull or a Clydesdell clear in its nose. It was, but it was deeper than that. It was, it was pretty incredible. It was pretty incredible. Yeah. Whatever it was, I really believe that there's only one thing it could be by the size. And by the way, we went back later on the next. The next day as we were driving back out of that river and you're driving along the road. And there was an area that was squished aside as we came out where I came out on that road. It's back about five feet back from where I came out. There was like a little area that was whiter. I just happened to come out on it. And there was an area that was brushed down on both sides where it was wide.

and it was obviously that somebody looked like you almost drove a car through there. So, you know, I never saw it, but I see it in my mind. It was right next to me, and I was really, really, really close to one of them. And I never saw it because it was so dark, but I sure felt it. Yeah, and that's interesting. It makes you wonder if it had been watching you for a while, like you had seen you get that fish, and then all of a sudden you're leaving, and now it's going to, you know, and it makes you wonder, I always wonder what happens to people if they stop or if they turn around and go back towards

whatever's chasing them out because it's kind of a weird way they, how you describe it off to the side and it's just pacing you out. Animals, normally animals don't do that. Bears don't do that. And if it would have been a bear, especially being that close, it would have attacked you. And the bears in the area you're talking about are similar to here in Washington State. They're skittish. And if you're in the area, they'll run.

And they don't stick around. They're not curious about what you're doing. They'll generally go the opposite direction you're going. That's terrifying. It's even more terrifying being so late at night, being dark, and then have this happen to you. And you can't quite see it. It's almost more terrifying.

Well, you may not agree with this, but it's almost more terrifying when you can't see it. You can't see what it is. I got to tell you, that area where I was bumping through the brush trying to find the road. I was like a four-year-old boy trying to rush to my dad. I'm a pretty stout guy. I'm real strong and real fit.

And I was like a four-year-old trying to get out of the way. I ran. And when I got back to camp, it took me a long time to settle down. It really did. But you know what? That makes a lot of sense. I bet you it did follow me because the way that it kind of came over, it may have even watched me come up the side of the hill.

and as it came closer and closer. You know, now that I think about it, I really wish I would have left the fish there. He didn't bother me. I would have liked to give it to him for a gift. Yeah. He didn't bother me. He let me go.

I wish I would have left it. Did you still have your fishing pole in your hand? It snapped. It broke. I had the pull when I got back to camp, but that was one of the funny things about camp. They said, what happened your pole? My pole was broken in half,

and I didn't realize it until I got all the way back. I thought it was still intact. But it was broke down, almost down to where you hold on to it, down at the, where the reel is. It was only about two feet left after that. Yeah, the pole was snapped. And like I said, you know, a lot of people have that type of encounter, you know, where it's usually it's vocals or it's like how you were, you know, paced out of the area. And I'm always curious, too, because they seem to stop at a certain point, almost like you're getting too close to, you'll hear people say that. like I was just coming out of the trail to the parking lot,

or I was just coming out of the trail into the campground, and it seems like they stop right there. They don't move any farther. And I always wonder about that, too. That's very strange behavior for them to stop. You know, if they're going to antagonize you, you would think they would just keep following you and keep following you. Yeah, Wes, you said it, you know, you think about it.

It sounded like a huge cow going through it, right? There's no cow that's going to follow you and stop at the edge. There's no bear that's going to stop at the edge, and there's nothing out there that's big. There's only one thing that I can think of, you know, so, and then when I went back and saw the brush push to side, it was like the size of a bolt wagon coming through that area. You know, it's pretty telling. It's pretty telling. Yeah, it is.

And I got to tell you, when I played it back from my friends and played it back from my wife and kids, oh, my goodness, what an exciting moment that was for me. because it was exactly the story that he told me he didn't want to hear anymore and the look on their faces. So I thank you, Wes. No, I thank you, and I thank you for sharing it. My pleasure.

And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance, please visit Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Until next time, everyone. The country faster than the coronavirus and wagerie.

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