Bigfoot Meets the Yardley Yeti

[From Bucks County Courier Times. September, 26/ 2006.]

Bigfoot hunter Tom Biscardi is on the phone from California.

“What's the story out there with the Yardley Yeti? Whaddya got?” he asked.

I told him I have been swamped by reports from people in Lower Bucks County (but mostly in the Yardley/Lower Makefield area) who have seen a strange dog-like creature.

“From what I can tell,” I said, “it could be a feral dog, a fox with mange or a mutant chipmunk.”

Biscardi chuckled lightly.

“Chipmunk,” he said wryly.

“Did you know,” he asked, “that you made all the Bigfoot alerts? Your story has hit nationally and internationally.”

The Yardley Yeti — an “international” hit? I asked.

Yes, among Bigfoot enthusiasts, he said.

Biscardi has spent 33 years researching and hunting Bigfoot, the alleged monster-like creature that stalks thick woodlands from Oregon to Pennsylvania. Biscardi has been doing it full time for two years. He has a Web site dedicated to his work. (Searchingforbigfoot.com.)

He called me for clarification on the creature. “Yeti” is usually a name associated with Bigfoot. Since Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) are in their annual north-to-south migrating season, he wondered if a wandering Bigfoot is the source of alarm.

“I know there is a migration path out there, and they could be going through your town,” he said.

I don't think this thing is Bigfoot, I said. It's more like Little Foot, or little feet.

“OK, well, I'm talking about hominids; things that walk on two feet,” he said.

This is definitely a four-footed animal, I told him. Probably a fox flushed from its habitat.

Again, he chuckled.

“From the descriptions you've given me, I think you have to ask: Can all these people seeing this thing be nuts? Can they all be hallucinating? Can they all think this thing is a chipmunk gone berserk?” he asked.

I chuckled lightly.

“I'm not going to try to convince you,” he said. “I read your [previous columns] and I'm sure you're going to get more calls.”

He was right. Readers (including lots of kids) are calling to say they have seen a Yardley Yeti-like thing but have also heard it howling and “screaming” in Lower Makefield and Bristol Township.

Here's “Kate” from Morrisville:

“I saw it. It was unlike any animal I've ever seen. It was some sort of mutant. It looked like an anteater crossed with a lemur, but it was reddish, like a setter. The thing was [angry], making a really scary, shrieking noise. We have a weird Pennsylvania thing here,” she said.

I was also contacted by horror story writer Jonathan Maberry.

He said he and his wife took a picture of the Yardley Yeti last October in Doylestown. Maberry believes it's a fox with mange. (Don Polec of Action News interviewed Maberry and is planning a piece on the Yardley Yeti Wed-nesday at 11 p.m., Maberry said.)

“Actually, sightings like the Yardley Yeti go back 500 years in Great Britain, where they are known as the barghest, which are spectral hounds. The "Hound of the Baskervilles' was based on the barghest,” Maberry said.

Maberry describes the barghest in his recent book, “Vampire Universe,” a fascinating and chilling compendium of supernatural creatures. (After reading Maberry, don't go to bed with the lights off.)

Barghests, or “Hell hounds,” he writes, appear as death omens. They emerge from the shadows to chase victims, or “stand baying in the forest near a home where someone is doomed to die.”

Uh, I think I prefer Bigfoot.

WCSRO, 2006.