Bigfoot Hunter Comes Up Empty

[From “The Canton Repository”. August, 15/ 2004.]

Donald Keating has searched for Bigfoot for 20 years — nearly his entire adult life.

He founded the annual Bigfoot conference in Newcomerstown, an event that drew about 200 people last April. He’s also director of the Eastern Ohio Bigfoot Investigation Center and the Tri-State Bigfoot Study Group.

He has traveled to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — all in search of Bigfoot. He has camped out in the wilderness. He has purchased night vision and recording equipment to document the existence of the elusive creature.

Keating, 41, has been interviewed countless times, by Japanese media, on Comedy Central and on radio shows.

Now he is ready to give up on Bigfoot.

Keating’s investigations into about 100 Bigfoot sightings — including the famed Minerva Bigfoot case of 1978 — never ended with conclusive evidence of a huge, hairy beast that walks like a man, emits a pungent odor and can bust loose with a blood-curdling scrowl — half scream and half howl.

Many scientists scoff at the notion. Much of the general public thinks people who believe in it are certified nut jobs. Film footage and photos are grainy or out of focus. And why, they ask, hasn’t a Bigfoot lumbered out of the shadows of the wilderness and waltzed into a Wal-Mart parking lot?

Keating’s Bigfoot odyssey started in 1984, after he read the book “Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us.” He had heard reports of sightings in the Newcomerstown area less than six months earlier.

He still takes the subject seriously. But he is running out of steam.

“Of all the people I’ve talked to, and probably the thousands of hours that I’ve spent out in the woods,” said Keating, “there is still not one shred of evidence to positively prove that the creature exists.”

Still, he is a believer.

“Apparently something is out there,” he said. “There’s too many reliable people who are claiming to see this thing.”

The Internet, stuffed with Web sites devoted to Bigfoot, breeds baloney, Keating said. Everything you ever wanted to know about Bigfoot — including bad poetry — is on the World Wide Web. Societies, T-shirts, Sasquatch footprint-casting keychains, tracking kits, “BELIEVE IT” stickers, and, yes, Bigfoot blogs.

“There’s too much BS that can be fabricated on the Internet,” said Keating, who delivers produce for a farm in the Newcomerstown area. The Internet is filled with “the greatest fiction writer never published.”

Footprints aren’t convincing, either, he said.

“I’ve seen dozens,” Keating said. “Some ... could belong to an unknown creature. I think other ones, they’re overexaggerated because of weather conditions or they’re just misidentifications of common animal tracks.”

In 1985, according to newspaper accounts, Keating said he encountered a creature about four miles south of Newcomerstown.

“I’ve heard a lot of sounds and I’ve seen glimpses of things far off in the distance that you can’t identify,” Keating said. “So it doesn’t go down as positive proof of something that’s out there.”

He’s perhaps most fed up with the Bigfoot brethren.

“This will ruffle a few feathers, and frankly I don’t care,” Keating said. “There’s too many researchers out there who are at each other’s necks” and won’t share research.

“Some of them are just working toward the cause of building up their ego,” he said, whereas “finding the answer as to whether it does exist or does not exist has always been my goal.”

He’s still waiting to make the discovery that would shock the world.

But for now, Keating’s turned his ambition to finding a job in radio or meteorology. His Bigfoot group no longer meets monthly. He might not even attend his own conference next year.

“I’m just getting to the point where I’m fed up with it.”

WCSRO, 2006.