Creepy Things in the Woods

[From “Bucks County Courier-Times”. 2003.]

Two years ago, just past dawn in February, Rick Fisher was driving along a lonely stretch of Route 23 near Lancaster when he saw a strange creature.

It was about 5 feet tall, skinny, perhaps 80 pounds. It walked upright as if human.

"At first I thought it was just some guy in the middle of the road," he said. "From a distance it appeared to be a man dressed in black."

As he drew closer, he grew alarmed.

"This thing was not human. It was ape-like, covered with hair," he said.

He hit his high beams.

"The thing turned around and all I remember is that it had two bright yellow eyes," he said. "Then it vanished. It didn't run off the road into the woods, just vanished before my eyes."

You might find Fisher's story fishy. He is, after all, publisher of a quarterly periodical called "Paranormal Pennsylvania and Beyond," which explores ghostly phenomena throughout the Commonwealth.

He's also an amateur gumshoe with the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, whose members investigate sightings of bizarre creatures, like last week's appearance of the Beast of Bucks County.

The Beast, as you may know, was sighted numerous times in Lower Bucks, mostly in Northampton.

Courier Times reporter Alison Hawkes told me when she arrived at work yesterday she found 17 voice mail messages from people who claim to have spotted The Beast throughout the county.

We published a rendering of the creature Friday, which was sketched by an eyewitness who spotted it as it prowled his back yard in Yardley.

The animal has the ears of the Pennsylvania red fox, the body of the Colorado cougar, the snout of the African jackal and the tail of a hideous New Hope house poodle.

"I don't have a clue" what it is, said Fisher, after examining the sketch, which I e-mailed to him. "But it's Halloween. We always get more reports around this time."

That's not to say people are making it up, said Eric Altman, director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society.

"People are seeing something. There is something out there," he said.

Since spring, the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society has received 15 reports of odd creatures from across the state.

Last May, a Marine and his wife driving near Minersville accidentally struck a badger-like animal "as long as his car," Fisher said.

The thing, apparently unhurt, ran into nearby woods and hasn't been seen since.

In Washington County, there are reports of a mysterious huge cat-like creature killing livestock at night.

In June, a man driving on a rural highway near Harrisburg claimed to have encountered "Mothman," the frightening winged phantasm that appears prior to some great disaster.

So far, no disasters have been reported in the state capitol (unless you count Gov. Ed Rendell's economic plan).

"I talked to a state trooper out of the Somerset barracks and he said they get a lot of calls on stuff like this, but don't have the staff to investigate. They dismiss it, rather than following up," Altman said.

Both men say most reports probably are misidentified animals.

But some sightings aren't easily explained.

Since the early 1800s there have been about 500 reports in Pennsylvania of a large creature popularly known as "Bigfoot," which occasionally emerges from dense woods to frighten campers, hikers, hunters and little old ladies returning from church Bingo games on desolate back roads.

Several years ago, two men hunting near Waynesboro in south central Pennsylvania came across dozens of large human-like footprints that were 17 inches long and 7 inches wide. Fisher took plaster casts of several.

"It could have been a hoax, but I have drawn no conclusions," he said.

The Leni Lenape Indians believed the woods of Pennsylvania were loaded with supernatural creatures. This may explain Fisher's encounter with the vanishing hairy thing on Route 23 - and maybe the Beast of Bucks, too.

But Northampton police Chief Barry Pilla is skeptical.

"It's probably a big dog," he said.

WCSRO, 2006.