The Field & Stream trail cam photo

The photograph on the right is making its rounds on the Bigfoot websites around the internet. Now, while we don't know that this picture was taken in Pennsylvania - or even on the East Coast - it has been noted that it looks to be very similar to the infamous Jacobs photos (possibly showing a Bigfoot, or, much more likely, a mangy or underfed bear) which likewise made the circuit a few years back.

The newer photo, to me, seems like it may have been Photoshopped, in part: the body and head of the creature don't seem to jive. While the body displays motion blur, the head looks very static. It also, in my opinion, doesn't look necessarily apelike. Most likely scenario to me is that it is a genuine photograph of a running bear, with the ursine's head Photoshopped out and replaced with a more apish head.

Original image source: Field & Stream

Return of the 'Monk'

Some months ago, I posted about the wild animal which terrorized the Latrobe area in the late summer and autumn of 1945. Although it was usually said to be a monkey, it's tempting to think of it as possibly a juvenile Bigfoot, since, after all, this is on the Chestnut Ridge. It seems to have first appeared in the Crabtree area and the predominant theory was that the animal was an escapee from a circus, according to the Pittsburgh article cited below.

A young boy from Lloydsville, Jerry Nolan, ran into his home in late August, having been chased by a monkey from a field. The boy's mother looked out a window to see the animal swiping at their furiously barking dog. After it struck at the dog, it turned tail and jumped over a four-foot fence. Latrobe police, gamesman Robert Reed, and veteran hunter John Horne went to Lloydsville to search for the ape, but to no avail ("Monkey, If There Is One, Still Eludes Folks of Latrobe Region", Connellsville Daily Courier, August 27, 1945).

On September 13, James Poole of Greensburg was bitten on the neck and hands by a monkey which dropped from a tree onto his shoulders. He was treated at Westmoreland Hospital by Dr. C.C. Crouse ("Greensburg Man Bitten By Monkey", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept. 13, 1945).

This and the previous post constitute the extent of my knowledge on this case - at this time, anyway.

The 'Monk' of Wildcat Hollow (1945)

This has to take the prize for most misleading name in the annals of Forteana. While it gives the impression of a clerical, cassock-wearing phantom, this beast was nothing of the sort, being a "large rhesus monkey or a chimpanzee" that roamed the area between Latrobe and Ligonier in 1945.

The first real mention of the so-called 'monk' came on September 7, when an article appearing in the Altoona Mirror mentioned that the Reed School had been closed the day before due to sightings of the weird creature. It leapt into the midst of a corn roast being held at the school on the night of September 5, making off with two ears and displaying no fear of humankind. I'm assuming this was the incident which led to the closing of the school - as a local game warden (coincidentally also named Reed) said, "The parents won't let their children out of the house so long as the thing is on the loose. And we can't blame them." Reed had also been investigating the animal for a month, so presumably there's some earlier sightings, though I haven't seen them.

One of the witnesses to the animal was Paul Claycomb of Marietta, who said the 100-pound beast broke into his chicken house and stole one of the birds. His dog "almost broke down the door trying to get in the house when that thing came along."

Another article, appearing in the Indiana Evening Gazette the next day, reported another sighting of the beast, made the previous night. Two boys near Norvel, Norman White and Joseph Seville, were out in Seville's backyard with their dogs when they began to growl - swiveling their flashlights around the yard revealed the animal hiding nearby. One of the ubiquitous hunting parties was formed, but like practically every posse hunting a weird creature ever formed, all was for naught and they came up empty-handed.

And there the story seems to materialize and end. A predominant theory mentioned was that the ape escaped from a circus about six weeks before - isn't that the theory on any animal found where they aren't supposed to be?

This is probably the earliest sighting of a simian nature from the Chestnut Ridge I'm aware of, the Chestnut Ridge area of Westmoreland and Fayette counties being, apparently, the domain of Pennsylvania's resident Bigfoot population.

As a fun 'name game' aside, Wildcat Hollow might, or might not, be named after another weird creature - an article following up on the 1922 shooting of a long-tailed wildcat shot near Tinicum, Bucks county, says that the cats also inhabited the Chestnut Ridge.

Really Mysterious Pennsylvania by Stan Gordon

Pennsylvania-based UFO, cryptozoology and general Fortean researcher Stan Gordon is releasing a book, Really Mysterious Pennsylvania, today. Stan has done some extensive work on the possible UFO crash at Kecksburg and was one of the main chroniclers of the horribly strange Bigfoot encounters in the state back in the summer and autumn of 1973.

The wild man of Morgantown

On September 20, 1874, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette ran an article about a hair-covered "wild man" which had been seen near Morgantown (Berks County), in a region enclosed by hills and ridges. It was nearly seven feet tall and uncommonly for a Bigfoot frequently walked on all fours. It was described as having "altogether a horrible appearance."

The Bigfoot creature was reputed to steal pigs and sheep from mountain farms, and to utter a "demonic laugh" as it did so. A group of hunters pursued the beast, but it yelled and leaped and vanished into a forest.

More Biscardi Bait

A video was posted on January 5, 2010 on YouTube. It was posted anonymously by someone using the name "bobywade517". The attached description says that sightings of a white Bigfoot had been taking place in this Pennsylvania town, though, oddly, it's not mentioned at all what town that is. It obviously, therefore, can't be confirmed that there even were Bigfoot sightings here, and the creature in question sounds like a guy breathing heavily in a mask and looks like someone in a store-bought costume. Chalk one up as fake.

The only white Bigfoot I'm aware of seen in Pennsylvania is a four-foot one seen in Carbondale this summer. Otherwise, I'm drawing a blank.

Urban Legends of Maryland, Part II: Goatman

The region near Bowie (Prince George's County) is the haunt of a variously-described monster named Goatman. Some will have it that he is a man with a goat's head. Others, that he is a goat-legged human figure, a traditional satyr. Still others, that he is a 6-foot tall hairy humanoid, a typical Bigfoot. Whatever the case, the stories of Goatman could have their origins in August 1957, when a gorilla-like creature was reported to be prowling around Brown Station Road in Upper Marlboro. Over 200 reports of the Abominable Phantom, as the creature was called, were received by police in the space of a week.

According to Marylandghosts.com, a Washington Post article appearing in November 1971 reported that a dog belonging to April Edwards of Bowie was killed, its severed head the only part of it that was found. The head was discovered by Willie Gheen and Ray Hayden. The night before, Ray's brother had encountered a 6-foot tall bipedal hairy creature which made whining, squealing sounds near the railroad tracks at Old Fletchertown Road.

The autumn of 1976 had Francine Abell seeing a grayish-brown, round-shouldered animnal with reflective red eyes cross the road in front of her car on Route 198 and then step over the guard rail and disappear. In March 1977, a NASA engineer witnessed a Bigfoot-type tossing a dog onto the road at I-95 and Powder Mill Road in Beltsville. In August 1982 a sighting of a gorilla-like animal was made in a field near the United States Agricultural Research Center (USARC) in Beltsville, a building with other bearings on the Goatman legend as seen below.

In August 2000, a number of construction workers saw a 12-foot tall Bigfoot-like creature roaming around suburban Prince George's. This seems unusually tall for a Sasquatch, if not exaggerated.

An undated encounter with Goatman was described by "thestereogod" in Weird Maryland, surfacing from the military housing complex near Andrews Air Force Base. A quadrupedal figure which later rose onto two legs was seen near a stream, and later hoofed footprints were found in the area.

The legendary version of the origin of Goatman has it that a scientist working at the USARC in Beltsville (above) became the axe-wielding beast-man, though the mechanism differs from teller to teller: some have it that the scientist simply went mad, and took up residence in the wooded lands. Others will have it that through a horrible accident, the scientist was mutated into a goatish figure. Yet another variation has the scientist working on a cure for cancer when this happened (living near a large pharmaceutical lab as I do, I can confirm that sheep and presumably goats are indeed used for generation of various vaccines and such -along with its area of origin, that makes this version sound as if it could be a response to the anthrax attacks immediately post-9/11).

Yet another variant of Goatman surfaces from Depression-era Anne Arundel County, and seems more believable. In this one, Goatman was an accident victim who suffered brain damage. In the accident, his head was disfigured and appeared to have two horn-like projections. He wandered the wilds, killing and eating animals raw, armed with a shotgun or sickle. He was apparently quite misanthropic.

Like all good urban legend figures, Goatman has particular haunts, though it's difficult to pin down just one. Of course, as mentioned above, one of his preferred regions is the area around Fletchertown Road near Bowie. Some also have him taking up residence at the Glenndale Asylum, and abandoned mental-health facility near Lanham-Seabrook - or maybe, as some variants have it, he is a former resident of the hospital.

Goatman is also reported to frequent the area around Lottsford Vista and Ardmore-Ardwick Road in Mitchellville as well as Tucker Road in Oxon Hill, where a satyr-like phantom terrorizes amorous teenagers.

In the area of Largo, Goatman is said to be tremendously fast and aggressive, running at speeds of up to 60 MPH and then launching himself at passing cars, accounting for a number of car accidents.

In another typical urban legend fashion, the stories of Goatman are hopelessly confused with other urban legends. One of the more notable of these is the notorious "Crybaby Bridge", which features in several urban legends nation-wide. The Crybaby Bridge associated with Goatman is on the border with Anne Arundel County, on Governor's Bridge Road. The bridge in question is an iron trestle, and legend has it that you can hear the crying of a baby who supposedly was hung from one of the iron beams. Some variants, though, claim this as Goatman Bridge, and the crying is no ghostly infant but Goatman himself. Another is on the Lottsford Vista Road.

As discussed in a previous post, the stories of Goatman and Bunnyman are inextricably linked. In fact, some variants have it that Bunnyman resembles a goat and that Goatman is simply a variant name for that figure. Some of the areas of Bunnyman legends, such as Greenbelt, are squarely in Goatman territory.

Goatman seems to have a notable antipathy towards dogs. The Bowie sighting discussed above involved the killing of a dog, and many have claimed to have seen Goatman throwing dogs off of overpasses on the Washington Beltway. Bigfoot also often have a dislike of dogs, the Beast of Seven Chutes and Momo having been seen with dead dogs. This is also a feature of the Mothman of West Virginia.

One wonders whether the frequenting by hairy hominids, etc. of the area near the USARC is due to the easy availability of prey animals such as goats and sheep.

Whether Goatman is a Bigfoot or NAPE, a strictly urban-legend figure, or something else entirely, is up for dispute. However, it does seem something has taken root in Prince George's County.

Check out the rest of the Urban Legends of Maryland mini-series:

Part One: Pigwoman

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part VI: The Gorilla

In 1922, Shoemaker wrote Allegheny Episodes, which contained a tale called "The Gorilla". The tale, a story of murder and revenge, was a fictionalized account based on actual incidents which took place in the early 1920s in Pennsylvania and Maryland. These events are chronicled by Chad Arment.

The first incident, and apparently the one Shoemaker's story was based on, took place in December, 1920 when Samuel Bolig, 13, was attacked by a "gorilla" on his father's farm in Globe Mills (Snyder County), and his knee dislocated in the attack. It was said that the gorilla was an escapee from a circus in Williamsport. It was later reported that no other inhabitants of the area had reported sightings of the ape.

However, as an article on the case in the North American BioFortean Review reveals, a whole flap of sightings surfaced in 1921 from Adams County and surrounding areas.

1. Gettysburg (Adams County), January 19: The gorilla was spied sitting on a rock at Mount Rock. The only Mount Rock I could find is in Cumberland County, but it is described as very close to Gettysburg.

2. Idaville (Adams County), January 20: An animal described by some as a gorilla and by some as a kangaroo (shades of the Dorlan Devil) was pursued on Snyder's Hill and also on Pike Hill. It fled towards Cumberland County. Several hams were stolen from William Chamberlain's smokehouse and attributed to the gorilla.

3. Sunnyside (Cumberland County), January 24: Another sighting. A hunt was launched.

4. Waynesboro (Franklin County), January 26: Harry Shindledecker saw the gorilla near the baseball fields on Chestnut Street.

5. Rouzerville (Franklin County), January 26: The animal was seen by Henry Needy crouched at his brother's farm. Needy and two others hunted the gorilla, which they cornered at Mike Lookabaugh's farm, but it escaped. At one point, the hunters killed a black dog which they took to be the gorilla. The newspaper reported that Rouzerville had not known such excitement "since Lee's battered and disorganized legions came thundering down the mountain after the Battle of Gettysburg".

6. Monterey (Franklin County), January 26: In the evening, the animal was seen near the golf course on Mentzer's Gap Road by William Flohr and Maurice Molesworth. It was described as being about five feet tall. It approached them on all fours and made gurgling sounds.

7. Chambersburg (Franklin County), January 27: The gorilla was seen by Paul Gonder, who was gathering wood near Black's Gap.

8. Pen Mar (Franklin County), January 30: John Simmons saw the gorilla in broad daylight.

9. Rouzerville (Franklin County), February 2: The gorilla was seen crouching alongside s fence making a gurgling sound.

10. Franklintown (York County), February 9: Abraham Lau shot at what he thought was the gorilla and found he had shot his neighbor's mule.

11. Jack's Mountain (Adams County), February 9: Harvey Minnich and Frank Rodgers saw the gorilla as they were returning from York to Waynesboro.

A few weeks later, the editors of the Waynesboro Press ran another story of a supposed gorilla killed by William Quimby, a farmer in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. The encounter supposedly took place at Willoughby, a widely-dispersed handful of farms south of Starr and right on the southern border of the county. This story was apparently meant to close the case of the Pennsylvania gorilla, but it is unclear what, if anything, this case had to do with the Pennsylvania ones.

A trip to Lock 49

On November 3, Mindi and I took a trip to Reading to do a bit of early Christmas shopping. While there, we decided to stop at the old Union Canal, so we could check out Lock 49. On August 17, 1875, Louise Bissinger, distraught over her husband's infidelities, took her three children on an outing along the Tulpehocken Creek. She had a basket tied around her waist, and when she reached the area of Lock 49, she grabbed her children tightly and plunged in. The children were still alive when witnesses arrived on the scene, but they drowned before the bodies could be pulled from the canal. The bodies were taken to Gring's Mill nearby. Later reports had it that while Mr. Bissinger mourned the deaths of his children, he callously was unmoved by the death of his wife. The stories have it that the ghostly forms of the Bissinger children are seen walking along the canal's towpath. Though the canal is now dry, the towpath is maintained by the Berks County Parks Department as a trail and it's commonplace to see joggers and cyclists along the old canal.

Lock 49 was a bit over a mile along the trail from the Wertz Bridge, a rather long wooden covered bridge bedecked with hex signs crossing the Tulpehocken. Shortly after entering the forested section of the path, after passing through what was the canal basin, I found a small conical structure about a foot tall made of three interlocked sticks. Similar stick structures have been previously found in areas of Bigfoot sightings and may be markers of some sort. This was probably in the area of what had been Lock 50. For the rest of the mile-long hike, I was hearing movement in the brush directly beside the path, movement which seemed to stop when I stopped and begin again once I started walking. This could easily have been squirrels but I didn't see anything there.

There were game trails leading all through the woods near Lock 49, though once again the skeptic in me wants to say these could have been due to the many local ghost hunting groups which have likely been all through these woods. I braved thornbushes and stray branches to follow these paths, which led from the maintained part of the trail clear through the canal bed and up the opposite bank, on which there was a second, less maintained trail.

The entire area is very near the Reading Airport, and the Berks County campus of Penn State, and not far from the Berkshire Mall.

Nick Redfern's book Man-Monkey is about the traditions of a shambling humanoid - what could be called a Bigfoot, though it is likely that it, like other British sightings, are something else - along the Union Canal in Shropshire, England. One aspect mentioned was the humanoid as the ghost of a suicide whose body was found in the canal. I had mentioned to him the coincidence of another Union Canal with a suicide in its history, as well. This possible presence of some sort of humanoid furthers the coincidence.

Tulpehocken is a Lenape (Delaware) word meaning "place of the turtle". The turtle, in Lenape lore, was the spirit entity which helped create the world. Like other cultures worldwide, the Lenape had the world resting on the back of a turtle. What does that mean? I don't know, quite possibly nothing.

Devotees of the ideas of Jim Brandon and Loren Coleman about so-called "twilight language" and the names that pop up again and again in Fortean contexts would be interested to know that there is a Warren Street in the area.

The Dauphin County Bigfoot

WHTM television has reported that a fellow in Dauphin County has released what may be a film of a Bigfoot (WHTM provides a still image of the supposed creature). The story's been making the rounds on various cryptozoological and Bigfoot blogs and websites recently. Several have posted to the effect that the whole deal is dubious at best, mostly due to the involvement of Tom Biscardi (best known for his association with the infamous 'gorilla suit in an icebox' Georgia Bigfoot hoax).

The sighting supposedly took place on the Appalachian Trail. The section of the Trail in Dauphin runs along the top of the mountains directly north of Harrisburg. The Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society has recorded only one sighting from Dauphin County, and that was considerably further north along the Susquehanna River directly across from the town of Liverpool.

Those individuals who have speculated that the Bigfoot was actually a branch may not be too far off. It is reported on the BFRO website that the witness in this case initially submitted the film to them, which apparently was of not a Bigfoot but of a leaf appearing human-sized due to forced perspective. After he was told this, he repossessed his film from the BFRO and resubmitted to Biscardi. In this instance, Biscardi may be vindicated - it seems as if he was duped rather than the culprit.

The incident at Liesenring and other Bigfoot/UFO reports

Over on Blogsquatcher, today's post is on the connected sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs. The Bigfoot/UFO connection has been present for years, and if all accounts are to be believed, before they were even called UFOs. Pennsylvania and Maryland are home to several reports of this connection.

The Sykesville, Maryland monster flap began in the early summer of 1973. Tony Dorsey was the first witness to the monster on the evening of May 29 at his home on Norris Avenue. According to The Bigfoot Casebook by Janet and Colin Bord, Dorsey's sighting came after he witnessed a UFO dropping an object of some type into a reservoir. Mark Opsasnick notes that Dorsey saw two luminous red eyes about the size of half-dollars, but did not see any sort of body ("Monsters of Maryland: Bigfoot", Strange Magazine 3).

The Chestnut Ridge area, which is Pennsylvania's Bigfoot hotspot, has seen the bulk of the UFO-related sightings. One of these was in 1975 in Jeanette. On May 19, a motorist saw a Bigfoot running quadrupedally, later rising onto two legs and running off into the forest. A UFO had been sighted in Jeanette on May 18. Other reports of synchronous Bigfoot and UFO sightings were reported from Midland and Uniontown. In the 1974 Uniontown sighting, several individual Bigfoot creatures were seen, as was a UFO. When one Bigfoot was shot at, it disappeared into thin air. In 1975, a report from Jumonville surfaced of a Bigfoot creature which, oddly, floated rather than walked and was later enveloped by a mist. When the mist receded, the Bigfoot was gone. Could the mist have been a sort of UFO? Many of these sightings were collected and investigated by Stan Gordon.

The most famous and bizarre humanoid report in Gordon's files, though, took place on October 25, 1973 in the small town of Liesenring near Connelsville. I'll post the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society's description of the incident:

A man and two boys saw a UFO land in a field. Upon investigating, they observed 2 tall, hairy bipedal creatures walking along a fence line. The creatures had matted, dirty brown hair, glowing green eyes, broad shoulders, and small necks. They walked stiff-legged giving them an overall robot-like appearance. The man shot at the creatures, which caused the spherical UFO that had landed in the field, to leave the area immediately. Although the witness felt he didn't miss, the shots had little effect on the strange creatures. They simply turned around and traversed their way back along the fence line. A luminescent ring on the ground remained where the UFO had once been. The witness left the area and returned later with a Pennsylvania State Trooper. Although the glowing ring near the ground was still visible, its intensity had diminished. Several hours later the luminescent ring completely dissipated.

Chupacabra in Maryland... not...

WHITE PLAINS, Md. - Mulder and Scully from the "X-Files" may be needed in Charles County.

A man who speaks fluent Spanish, but little English, went to the County Sheriff's Department to report that he had seen something bizarre last month in the White Plains area.

"A brownish type animal that he described as a chupacabra, which is a mythical animal in the spanish culture," spokeswoman Crystal Hunt says.

Chupacabras are usually described as doglike creatures, but the man in this case says the animal walked on long arms like a monkey. When the report was made Sept. 19, county investigators searched the area and found nothing. A farmer in the same area reported finding several dead kittens in a nearby barn that day, but there's nothing indicating a link to the strange creature.

Hunt says investigators poured flour on the ground in the area of the sighting, so if the animal returned, it would leave visible tracks. They also set several traps in the area. But Hunt says "to date, nothing has been found."

There have been no additional sightings.

Anyone with any additional information is asked to call the Charles County Sheriff's Office at 301-932-2222.

Stop calling Bigfoot and mystery canines, etc. Chupacabra, people! Sheesh, the Chupacabra is fast becoming the modern Jersey Devil. Let's just throw every unexplained sighting into one big heap...

The leaping monsters of the Brandywine Valley

On January 21, 1932 James McCandless, walking near the town of Eagle in Chester County, Pennsylvania, saw a "hideous form, half-man, half-beast, on all fours, and covered with dirt or hair". A short time later, two employees of a nursery near Dorlan reported that they were frightened by a monstrous leaping thing, "neither man nor beast", which approached them. A McCandless and a hunting party canvassed the Dorlan area but found no sign of the creature - nary a track, nor any sign of exactly where it came from, or went.

I cannot tell whether the McCandless sighting, recounted by Loren Coleman in Mysterious America, and the Dorlan sightings, from Ghost Stories of Chester County by Charles Adams III refer to two separate incidents or one. But as Coleman notes that others reported sighting the creature before McCandless organized the hunting party, I have assumed the were different ones.

The "Dorlan Devil", as it was known, vanished for a few years before reappearing to be witnessed by Cydney Ladley, a Downingtown man who was travelling to Milford Mills. Ladley reported that the creature was similar to "an oversized kangaroo with long black hair and eyes like red saucers" and a passenger in his car confirmed his sighting. Ladley reported that the animal leaped across the road in a single bound and vanished into some marshland. Like McCandless, Ladley organized a party to search for the beast but came up empty-handed. The site of Ladley's sighting is now submerged beneath the waters of Marsh Creek Lake.

(The red eyes are a typical feature of Pennsylvania Bigfoot reports, and a high degree of agility is also reported on occasion. The Bigfoot seen at Latrobe, in Westmoreland County near Pittsburgh, in August of 1973 was reported to take enormous leaps.)

But these were not the only sightings of leaping monstrosities in Chester County and surrounding areas. On February 15, 1939, Sylvester Scott reported seeing a creature which leapt like a deer and made horrible wailing sounds from nearby Coatesville, and another wailing creature haunted the Sheep's Hill neighborhood near Pottstown, in Montgomery County ("Montie the Monster" may have been a black panther) in November, 1945. The Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society recorded that eerie screams, assumed to be those of a Bigfoot, were heard near Schwenksville in the 1990s. As Schwenksville is near Pottstown, perhaps they weren't.

In the southern portions of Chester County, near the Delaware state line, a dense forest called the Devil's Woods in urban legend stretches off of Cossart Road. Behind the typical urban legend standbys of Satanic ritual, inbreeding and phantom pick-up trucks are traditions of humanoid creatures haunting the woods - possibly yet another link in the riddle of the leaping monstrosities of the Brandywine Valley.

The Suscon Screamer

Pennsylvania has many urban legends which may be based upon cryptozoological phenomena. One of these is the legend of what is called the Suscon Screamer. The screaming thing is reputed to haunt the area around where the Susquehanna Railroad once crossed over Suscon Road south of Wilkes-Barre. The former bridge is also known among locals as the Boo-Boo Bridge or, more ominously, the Black Bridge.

Unearthly screams have been heard reverberating through the forests near the little town of Suscon for generations and some residents have even phoned the Pittston Township police to complain of the shrieks.

Some versions of the story, in traditional ghost story fashion, have it that a ghostly female haunts the area, whether it be a victim of a car crash, a love-crossed suicide, or one of the ubiquitous phantom hitch-hikers.

One of the more popular versions has it that the tiny town is haunted by a porcine swamp monster that emerged from one of the surrounding bogs. In the 1970s, the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader reported that a local hunter heard something tramping around through the trees. Through his binoculars, he saw something

...about 6' long with a long snout. It weighed about 200 pounds and was gray in color. It had webbed feet with long claws and had a huge head...the ground was clawed up as if 100 turkeys had gone through.

This sighting was actually investigated by the Pennsylvania Game Commission, although the hunter refused to take the investigators to the area due to fear of the monster. The hunter did, however, say that the creature he saw was neither bear nor coyote.

The Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society has recorded that in May of 1976, there was a sighting of a group of four 6' brown humanoids at one of the lakes south of Suscon. There were also sightings recorded from Harveyville, also in Luzerne County (1984), and also from Dickson City immediately north of Scranton, in neigboring Lackawanna County (2003).

Another popular version has it that the Screamer was actually a panther that escaped from a circus train; although the specific date of this supposed crash is unknown, older residents of Suscon still remembered it, at least as of 1995 (when Pocono Ghosts, Legends and Lore by Charles Adams III and David Seibold was published). If this identity of the Screamer were true, by this late date it would doubtless be the cat's restless phantom.

The Jacobs Photos - Bigfoot or bear?

In late 2007, the media was abuzz about a series of photographs taken by a stationary trail camera with an infrared flash set up by Rick Jacobs in northwestern Pennsylvania. The camera captured a few photos of what were clearly bear, followed by two images (one of these is above) which many feel show a Bigfoot in a hunched position. The creature in the photos was apparently about the size of an adult bear, although analysis of limb ratios was more in line with a primate identity.

The explanation offered by the Game Commission was that the photographs depicted a bear afflicted with mange (the BFRO website feature on the Jacobs Photos includes a photograph of a mangy bear).

Short, white creature seen in Carbondale

Cryptomundo reports that a four-foot tall, long-haired, white Bigfoot was witnessed in a wooded area near a mine in Carbondale, Pennsylvania during the summer of 2008. The report was treated none-to-seriously by the local media. Local investigators report that there had been rumors of screams and other sounds from that patch of woods for years.

A black-eyed hairy monster in Uniontown

The Paranormal News reports that on July 10, 2009 a hominid encounter was reported from Uniontown, Pennsylvania. The report was investigated by the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, who found that at around 6:00 PM, the witness' car swerved to avoid hitting a figure which approached the road. After a few moments, she saw the creature again running down the roadway. She described a dark humanoid shape, 6 feet or taller, She reported that the entire face wss hairy, and that the creature had round, black eyes with no apparent irises. The long-armed creature had a flat black nose, no visible mouth, and a head that was oddly elongated. Upon investigation, a series of scratches on the car's trunk were found.

Eric Altman of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society also reported that the witness described the being as more of a canine hominid than a Bigfoot.

The Lancaster County goat man

In Pennsylvania Dutch Country Ghosts, Legends, and Lore, Charles A. Adams III, author of several books on the paranormal lore of various regions of Pennsylvania, recounts an account of a creature seen in Lancaster County in 1973.

A man-sized gray creature with a white mane, fangs and claws and a wolflike appearance grabbed a chicken in view of two farmers. The farmers also reported that the beast was possessed of two sharp horns.

Chad Arment notes that the original report in Pursuit (the journal of Ivan T. Sanderson's Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, or SITU) placed the creature in the Big Valley in Lancaster County, but as no such feature exists in the county, he speculates that the incident actually occurred in the Big Valley in Mifflin County. He also notes that the Big Valley was settled by many Amish from Lancaster County and that this may account for confusion.