JEANNETTE, PA. Fans of Bigfoot, investigators plan conference
Bigfoot enthusiasts from several states will gather in southwestern Pa.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- It was about midnight Aug. 15 when a Westmoreland County woman, gathering lettuce from her garden to make her husband's lunch, suddenly noticed a large, hair-covered creature watching her.
It appeared to be about 8 feet tall, had broad shoulders and was standing against a tree about 80 feet away.
The sight caused her to drop the lettuce and run back into her Derry Township house just southeast of Pittsburgh.
Her son went outside with a gun, but the creature had vanished.
Was it a Bigfoot or something else?
Eric Altman, founder of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, has logged it as a Bigfoot sighting and said that's not the only recent one in Derry Township.
In April, three people out for an evening walk about five miles from the August sighting spotted an upright, hair-covered humanoid creature come out of a wooded area headed in their direction.
It suddenly stopped about 200 yards away when it spotted them and began moving away, taking what they described as huge strides.
"We sent a research team up there," Altman said, but the team could find no discernible footprints or other evidence of what the creature was.
Conference scheduled
Those and other sightings will be a topic of conversation when the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society hosts the fifth annual East Coast Bigfoot Conference/Expo in Jeannette on Sept. 27.
The event is free and will feature Bigfoot investigators from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and Maine.
Doors open at 10:30 a.m. at Pitzer's Townhouse Restaurant at 101 S. Fifth St., and the first speaker is scheduled at noon. The event is free to the public.
Altman, who has never had a Bigfoot sighting, said he is "95 percent sure" that they actually exist, despite the lack of hard physical evidence such as a body or captured creature.
He was with a group of investigators who found 18-inch bare footprints in the snow in Ligonier Township in Westmoreland County in January.
They followed them for 21/2 miles before losing them on some hard ground, he said.
Pennsylvania sightings
There have been about 20 Bigfoot sightings in southwestern Pennsylvania over the past year, Altman said.
There have also been reports from other areas of the state, including activity near Edinboro in southern Erie County in March where a family was hearing loud animal screams and found evidence of a large animal in the woods behind their home.
A large pile of animal scat was recently found there and is being submitted for DNA testing to determine its origin, Altman said.
He has also been getting reports from Ohio, including the spotting of a Bigfoot-like creature in a farm field near Zanesville and other sightings in Northeast Ohio.
Northeastern Ohio Bigfoot Research, based in Alliance, reports on its Web site that 15-inch bare footprints were found in a dry creek bed near the Mahoning River not far from Alliance in June 2002.
Footprints near Berlin
Michael Beckett, co-founder of that organization, wrote that he also found 14-16-inch hominid bare footprints near the carcass of a recently slain deer while hunting near Berlin in November 2002.
The deer appeared to have been killed by a rock, he said, and the tracks he found showed the presence of a hominid that probably weighed more than 800 pounds and had a stride 2 feet longer than his own.
Other Bigfoot investigators, such as the Eastern Ohio Bigfoot Investigation Center and NORKA of Akron, have logged dozens of reports of sightings over the years in Ohio.