From: Stig Agermose <stig.agermose@privat.dk>
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 08:42:47 +0200
Fwd Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 14:08:00 -0400
Subject: Bigfoot's Toehold On Pennsylvania Up For Debate 


Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/news/s_92639.html

Stig

***

Bigfoot's toehold on region up for debate at conference

By Carl Prine
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, September 21, 2002

**

He stinks.

Not that that's his only problem. He's at least 8 feet tall.
Very hairy. And painfully awkward in his size 85 feet. Very shy,
too. Loves dumpsters, but hates puppies, babies and group hugs.

Spotted more than 500 times since 1973 in western Pennsylvania
alone, the tall, dark and hairy man-beast known as "Bigfoot"
takes center stage today in Jeannette, Westmoreland County,
where a gaggle of Sasquatch aficionados will host the fourth
annual East Coast Bigfoot Conference & Expo.

Although never captured or otherwise scientifically
substantiated, the big lug known for his mammoth footprints
continues to cut an impressive =97 and odorous =97 path through the
collective consciousness of the Keystone State.

"He looks like a big hairy guy and he stinks real bad," said
John Vukovich, a West Newton hunter who claims to have seen
Bigfoot six times since the early 1960s. "Armpit, body odor,
real bad, real concentrated. And diarrhea. He smells like
diarrhea, too.

"In the sixties, we didn't really know what he was. We thought
these tracks were from some hippie walking barefoot in the
woods.

"Now we know better."

Or do we? The Bigfoot tracking network nationwide is split on
the nature and number of Bigfeet. Some trackers in the Pacific
Northwest insist Bigfoot hasn't relocated to the Pittsburgh
area. Some say there are no more than 2,000 Sasquatches
nationwide and that they should be on the Endangered Species
List. Others estimate as many as 6,000, living in nuclear
families from Maine to Alaska, with cousins in Tibet and Guyana.

But Pennsylvania's Bigfoot has always been a bit different.
There are more sightings here than any state east of the
Mississippi, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers
Organization. In fact, Pennsylvania sightings rank third
nationwide, with nearly as many reports as Canada.

He's also a bit more supernatural here. Surveyors point to our
Bigfoot's unusual three-toed footprints, his glowing red eyes
and note the big fella mysteriously disappears when shot at or
touched =97 not to mention witnesses who claim they saw Bigfoot
carrying a glowing green orb through Beaver County. They've seen
him near UFOs. To these Keystone State trackers, he's out of
this world.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Bigfoot, and he came to Pennsylvania
in a space saucer.

"If you see Bigfoot, call us as soon as possible," says Stan
Gordon, a longtime UFO and Bigfoot tracker. "You need to get
people there as soon as possible who are trained to do this.
Don't shoot at them or disturb them in any way. We still don't
know how they'll react."

Gordon has never gazed directly at either UFOs or Sasquatches,
but in his Greensburg basement bunker, a vast array of radios
and other gadgets patrol the night skies, searching for the
crackling whispers from squad cars, jets or park rangers
following Bigfoot. Or spacemen. Or both.

Once on an investigation he heard the song of the Bigfoot, and
it wasn't pleasant.

"Bigfoot, these creatures make a sound you'll never forget. They
vibrate the sound out of them, a wailing, like a baby crying or
a woman screaming. That's very common. We heard it and it was
like a person with asthma."

Gordon's hotline typically nets callers reporting Bigfoot
darting in front of their cars, terrorizing farm animals or
crashing through the forest with a deer on his back. He has a
newspaper clipping dating to 1931, detailing a giant ape man
lurking around barn yards.

But much of the time today, the phone rings from a trailer park.
And it's not Bigfoot dialing collect.

"These things, for whatever reason, are commonly attracted to
trailers," says Gordon. "Trailer courts, individual trailers.
Banging on the sides of the trailers. Why? There are a lot of
questions. We don't have all the answers. We just gather the
information."

Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society director Eric Altman lives in a
Jeanette trailer park, but Sasquatch has never knocked on his
door. Altman, however, has probed an August sighting of Bigfoot
skulking about the Delallo's Italian grocery store near there.
Does Bigfoot nosh on capicola?

"We have a theory: He was going through the dumpster," says
Altman. "He has to fight for food. You've got an 800 pound
creature roaming around, and he needs a lot of calories. Berries
and nuts and twigs aren't going to cut it.

"We went and talked to the woman who saw him at Delallo's. We
met her, and she told us all about it. She definitely saw a
Bigfoot, and my wife and I staked out the area after that, but
he never came back.

"There was a point where my wife got kind of scared, so we left.
We don't know if Bigfoot ever returned or not, but he's often
sighted in this area. West Newton, Jeanette, the whole Chestnut
Ridge. Delallo's is part of that area. Bigfoot country."

But at Delallo's, workers and patrons alike contend they've
never seen the Bigfoot. A clerk mumbled something about an ex-
  boyfriend, but still insisted she'd never spotted Altman's ape
man there. Ditto with the guys eating outside on Delallo's
picnic table, who were listening to a crooning Sinatra, not the
asthmatic wail of the Sasquatch.

"The Bigfoot? Never saw him," says Mike Samsa, an Allegheny
Energy Solutions executive from Chicago. "But I can see why he'd
come here. Definitely, he should stop by for the sausage-stuffed
peppers. Bigfoot would love 'em."

To skeptics, Bigfoot will likely never drop by Delallo's or any
other Jeannette haunt. The fact is, they insist, there's no
proof Bigfoot exists or has ever existed. Beyond the Indian
lore, the plaster casts of three- and five-toed Sasquatches, the
brief sightings and the grainy photographs, there's no DNA
evidence, no Bigfoot bodies, no nothing but a hazy legend.

"I assume, for the most part, that people are being sincere when
they say they've seen Bigfoot," says Ben Radford, editor of the
Skeptical Inquirer Digest and a longtime debunker of the Bigfoot
myth. "Of course, there are hoaxes, and the Bigfoot field is
littered with hoaxes.

"People want to believe in Bigfoot. They want to touch that
notion of wild innocence, that Bigfoot is a mysterious creature,
a 'wisdom keeper,' who connects us to nature. It's part of a
deeper need all cultures have. They want to believe in a
creature that modern science or technology can't explain."

For true believers, however, Bigfoot is as real as, well, UFOs.
Or vampires. Or Camelot.

"To me, Bigfoot research is like the quest for the Holy Grail,"
says Jeannette's Altman. "Modern science has never seen the Holy
Grail, and people looked for it for years and never found it.
The ark. People looked for Noah's ark for years and never found
it.

"I like to see myself as a private investigator who is trying to
solve a mystery. And, hopefully, our organization or another one
will solve the Bigfoot mystery. It's a blast, and I wouldn't
trade it for anything."

If you go

Fourth Annual East Coast Bigfoot Conference & Expo
Gator's Nightclub, 101 S. Fifth Ave., Jeannette, Westmoreland
County
Today, noon to 8 p.m.

To report a Bigfoot sighting, call the hotline at (724) 374-5555

Carl Prine can be reached at cprine@tribweb.com or (412) 320-
7826.

**

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