Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Brad Steiger
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our gut feelings.
When the bone was returned to where Dave found it, and we stepped away, the rocks and boulders stopped completely. The canyon was silent once again, and we made our way out of the canyon without further incident.
We discussed what happened many times, but always came to the same conclusion. It had to be that we stumbled into a lair and the encounter was with Bigfoot. It could have ended badly, but rather ended up as an experience to share. We’ll never forget it.
Eric Altman’s journey into researching the paranormal began at the young age of 10 when he watched the 1970s docudramas Legend of Boggy Creek and Creature from Black Lake, allegedly based on events that took place in the deep south of Arkansas and Texas. The two films inspired Eric to begin 27 years of research into the paranormal that he has undertaken with the utmost seriousness. Eric has an interest in spirits, haunted locations, UFOs, and the paranormal in general. However, his main interest is studying hominid creatures such as Bigfoot. Eric currently heads the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, a group of dedicated researchers who investigate encounters and sightings of Bigfoot in the “Keystone State.” Although Eric has never had a face-to-face encounter with a hominid creature, he hopes through persistent research and ongoing investigations either to prove or disprove these creatures’ existence. (Eric and the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society can be contacted through the group website at www.pabigfootsociety.com or by email at [email protected].) Eric also co-hosts an internet talk show entitled “Beyond The Edge” and is the chairman for the annual East Coast Bigfoot Conference that takes place in Pennsylvania.
When I asked Eric for a case currently under investigation, he told an interesting story involving a family and the discovery of a dead deer that appeared to be the victim of a Bigfoot. According to Eric:
In the small town of Wysox, Pennsylvania, a family was visited by some unusual but violent being (s) on the night of July 4, 2006. The family had returned from a family outing, and as they were walking from the car to the house, they began to hear loud screams coming from the wooded area behind their home. What they heard not only puzzled them, but frightened them as well.
They heard screams coming from three different locations in the large forested area behind their home. They own several hundred acres of forest behind their home, and somewhere, around 11:00 P.M. there were three “things” in the forest screaming.
One animal or being would scream. A few moments later, something would respond in kind with a loud scream. Within what seemed another few moments, another shrill answer would respond in kind with yet another scream coming from another location in the wooded acreage.
This calling and answering occurred for over 15 minutes before the family went into their home.
The next day, the children of the family decided to explore the woods to try to determine what or who may have been responsible for the sounds they heard coming from the wooded area behind the home. What they found would not only shock the family but the researchers involved in the investigation.
The family discovered a dead deer. The animal was found with its right front leg wedged tightly in the “Y” of a small tree. How it got there in that position was a mystery.
But the bizarre occurrence doesn’t end there. The deer appeared to have bloody welts on the top of its head as if it [had been] beaten by a blunt object. The deer also was ripped apart from the midsection back. A large hole was ripped in the side and underbelly of the deer, and its right rear leg was missing.
The method of the deer’s brutal death was accompanied by the discovery of a large bloody rock found not far from the animal, along with several large human shaped impressions in the ground….
The method of the deer’s brutal death was accompanied by the discovery of a large bloody rock found not far from the animal, along with several large human shaped impressions in the ground which led the family to speculate that a “Bigfoot” or similar type creature was responsible for the death of the deer.
The family also found several broken trees and branches in the area. They also found several trees ripped out of the ground with the roots still intact.
Upon contacting our group, our researchers visited the location about eight days afterwards to look at the deer. It was still there; no other predators had touched it, and the evidence of the tracks and so forth were still there.
During our investigators’ visit with the family, our researchers heard the screams the family had heard on that first night, July 4th. Although the person/creature responsible for the screams and the brutal death of the deer was never seen or discovered, some of the circumstantial evidence leads to the possibility of a Bigfoot being the culprit. Unfortunately, by the time our researchers arrived, there was no fresh evidence to collect to be tested. The weather and elements had contaminated the tracks, deer, the tree, and the rock.
In his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (2007), Jeff Meldrum, who works in the Department of Biological Science at Idaho State University, states that it is not simply a matter of believing in Bigfoot, but it is using scientific evidence to prove his existence. No history is without myth. No myth is without history. Unfortunately, a large number of his fellow faculty members are not enthusiastic about Meldrum’s quest for Bigfoot and feel that his research is an embarrassment to the college.
Meldrum forges onward. On September 22, 2000, he was among a team of fourteen researchers who had tracked the elusive Bigfoot for a week deep in the mountains of the Gifford Pinchot national forest in Washington state. There, in a muddy wallow near Mt. Adams, the team found an extraordinary piece of evidence that could end all arguments about whether or not the mysterious creature exists. It was here that they located an imprint in the mud of Bigfoot’s hair-covered lower body as it lay on its side, apparently reaching over to get some fruit. Thermal imaging equipment confirmed that the impression made by the massive body was only a few hours old.
The team of Bigfoot hunters who discovered the imprint—Dr. LeRoy Fish, a retired wildlife ecologist with a doctorate in zoology; Derek Randles, a landscape architect; and Richard Noll, a tooling metrologist—next made a plaster cast of what appeared to be impressions of the creature’s left forearm, hip, thigh, and heel. More than 200 pounds of plaster were needed to acquire a complete 3.5 X 5 foot cast of the imprint. Dr. Meldrum stated that the imprint had definitely not been made by a human who had improbably crawled into the mud wallow.
On October 23, Idaho State University issued a press release stating that a team of investigators, including Dr. Meldrum; Dr. Grover Krantz, retired physical anthropologist from Washington State University; Dr. John Bindernagel, Canadian wildlife biologist; John Green, retired Canadian author and long-time Bigfoot hunter; and Dr. Ron Brown, exotic animal handler and health care administrator, had examined the plaster cast obtained from the mud wallow and agreed that it could not be “attributed to any commonly known Northwest animal and may present an unknown primate.”
According to the university press release, after the cast had been cleaned, “extensive impressions of hair on the buttock and thigh surfaces and a fringe of longer hair along the forearm were evident.” In addition, Dr. Meldrum, associate professor of anatomy and anthropology, identified what appeared to be “skin ridge patterns on the heel, comparable to fingerprints, that are characteristic of primates.”
While the cast may not prove without question the existence of a species of North American ape, Dr. Meldrum speculated that it “constitutes significant and compelling new evidence that will hopefully stimulate further serious research and investigation into the presence of these primates in the