BIGFOOT AT BLACK CREEK

By now the word “paranormal” is used simply to mean “outside the accepted theory,” and, as might be imagined, the modern business of it is a big one, concerning itself partly with subjects that people would type as “supernatural,” like apparitions of dead humans and extra-sensory talents in living ones. Paranormal inquiry also addresses things that might be totally natural, even commonplace, but simply out of setting. “Ancient mysteries” -- like the possible Phoenician exploration of the Americas -- are generally of this variety. Some paranormal subjects may just be undiscovered -- like UFOs, earth energies, and mystery monsters -- and, if the general presumptions of their advocates come true, might someday be the study of mainstream disciplines like physics, geology, and zoology.

The apish giant often called “Bigfoot” would be in the last category, and Shadows of the Western Door addressed the subject of its possible presence in Western New York. I compiled as many good “crazy critter” reports as I could about my home region, hoping for credible and electrifying “close encounters.” What surfaced easily was a folkloric mass from a long section of the Alleganies running well into Pennsylvania. Until recently this was the best modern cycle, but it was murky: often third-hand reports lacking reliable witnesses or physical evidence. At that point it didn’t surprise me; I expected the critters to be... scarce.

From 1973 to 1976 there was a better cycle of reports from a largely forested and rural region around the northern part of Allegany County. I had interviewed most of the key human players from this episode in the early 90s and they seemed very credible, but I'd left the matter out of Shadows because I didn’t have even enough idea what was up to know which chapter to put it in. (Ghosts? Beasties? UFOs?) From what I could gather, the focus - if not also the stimulus - of the quirky activity seemed to be a small cabin built by some high school kids near a marshy region that had attracted generations of paranormal rumors reminiscent of UFO stories, like strange lights and mechanical noises. The lads used to sleep in this jerryrigged shack on weekends and holidays, but one of them stepped outside one night and found himself and a large critter checking each other out. He described it as anthropoidal, but light-colored. In other respects the cycle followed paranormal patterns: ripped farm animals, rattled cabins, spooked livestock, alarmed countryfolk, and reports of strange, smelly critters. Yes - Bigfoot is supposedly so redolent that they call him “the Skunk Ape” in some parts.

Shortly after Shadows was published I started hearing stories that made me believe I’d given too short shrift to a couple of its topics, including Ol' Stinky. In the fall of 1998 after a luncheon talk in Niagara County I was approached by one of the attendees. That very week her brother's family had cast a set of seventeen-inch footprints outside their Allegany County home. They were wary of publicity, but I managed to arrange an interview for a few weeks later. I used the interval for a little more digging, and reflected on Bigfoot in my area back through time.

There were historic accounts of Bigfoot, or the reasonable facsimile. One of the most elaborate came from Livingston County, where a strange beast was sighted several times in 1870 and 1871. Big, bipedal, and hairy, it maimed a number of harassing dogs. The accounts make no mention of details we’d consider critical: its skull size and shape, its body configuration. It’s hard to know what was going on.

As part of the work on “Buried Secrets” - Shadows' chapter on the ancient mysteries of the region -- I had discovered a tradition of something like Bigfoot in the histories and old records. When the Whites arrived for good near the end of the eighteenth century this area was fairly dotted with earthworks much like the Old World type, and a number of curiosities came out of them, including two bestial, humanoid skulls from a pre-Iroquoian burial mound on Tonawanda island near Buffalo. Giant human-like skeletons turned up throughout the region, chiefly in the Southern Tier near the Alleganies, and along river valleys like the Conewango. More reports of big hominid bones came from homebuilders and other diggers near East Aurora and Rochester. Nineteenth-century finds, seemingly quite well-documented, of numerous giant skeletons just outside Western New York -- in northwestern Pennsylvania and the Susquehanna Valley -- could point to a tribe, even a race of them in the region, except for the sheer oddity of the idea.

While some Native American nations of the west seem to have the tradition of the Bigfoot, among those of the Northeast Woodlands the matter is anything but clear. Iroquois legend held figures that might be interpreted as Bigfoot-like, both generic - the Stone Giants - and individual, like High Hat, a bogie local to the northern Alleganies. I’d even heard of something called “the Wendigo Complex,” only found among Native American men, in which the sufferer believes he is becoming something bestial, cannibalistic, and dangerous to his community, even his own loved ones. Yet I had no confidence whatever that a Bigfoot was what we were talking about. I don’t believe you should start out looking for something and ransack tradition for things that remind you of it. You don’t understand the significance of the images that way. You start by getting into the context of a culture, and I really didn’t think I was with the native people of the northeast.

Next-->
Chapter 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5