Tag: #folklore

If asked, Maryland school teacher Robert Chance will tell you about strange doings in York County and in nearby Harford County, Md.He says chickens are mysteriously slaughtered in grotesque fashion. Mauled guard dogs become more like docile puppies. Fifteen-inch tracks are found which have left unusually deep impressions in the ground. Chance’s explanation for these phenomena is a creature called “Bigfoot.” Chance gives this description of Bigfoot: About 7-12 feet tall, the creature is a two-legged humanoid weighing roughly 350 pounds. He is covered with dark or reddish brown hair, except over his face. He has a flat nose and a pointed head and is a good swimmer.

Most active at night, Bigfoot feeds on fish, poultry,roots and garbage. Chance has compiled evidence pointing to the presence of a Bigfoot in Pennsylvania and Maryland. He says there have been 237 reported sightings of the beast in Pennsylvania since the 1950s. One was reported in York County only last March. Chance claims he and Bigfoot have had two encounters.

The first was in 1972 when he was hiking an abandoned logging trail after a canoe trip on Muddy Creek in southern York County. He and his four companions were startled by several large boulders, about 50 pounds a piece, which came bouncing past them. There was no sound of a landslide, just the rocks.“I’ve never been as scared as I was on Muddy Creek,’’ Chance recalled. The projectiles came close but luckily hit no one.“I think he was just trying to scare us off. He could have hit us if he wanted to.”

Chance had read of reported sightings of Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest. The incident at Muddy Creek made him think that Bigfoot also lived in the East. Inspired, Chance checked and turned up other stories of bizarre occurrences. His quest for the beast began in earnest two years ago in Harford County, Chance was investigating a reported sighting. “I could smell something and my dogs were going crazy. I heard this rush through a thicket and this weird cry. I went and found saplings broken off waist high.” It was another close call with Bigfoot, Chance believes. He says more than 50 possible Bigfoot encounters have come to his attention this year — including several in York County.

There have been sightings in the county’s Muddy and Codorous Creek areas, he says. Tracks have been found in outlying farmland. And a truck driver says he saw a Bigfootlike creature near the Peach Bottom power plant on March 2. Scant hard evidence for Bigfoot’s existence can be found, Chance says. Strands of hair picked off barbed-wire fences have been identified as that of a primate, but not a known primate. Plaster casts have been made of footprints, Chance says. A camper with a tape recorder believes he got some Bigfoot shrieks on tape. But there are no photographs of an East Coast Bigfoot.The elusive quality that Bigfoot exhibits is a sign of intelligence, Chance says. “You can’t set a trap for it. It’s too smart. Bigfoot perhaps has retained survival instincts humans lost thousands of years ago. Although curious and powerful, the fleeting animal is afraid of humans, Chance says. That attitude, combined with thick vegetation, makes summer a slow season for Bigfoot sightings. Winter is when incidents abound because scarcer food forces more activity by Bigfoot, thin foliage makes spottings easier and snow clearly marks footprints.

The best theory Chance can develop is that Bigfoot roams the Appalachians, traveling from northern Florida to Penn-HARRISBURG and the mid-Atlantic area. Chance figures there actually are three Bigfoot animals. He guessed there may be 200 in the continental U.S.After a total of three months camping out in search of Bigfoot, Chance has come no closer than the two incidents related above. He isn’t quite sure what he’d do if he did find it.“I don’t think I could capture it because I wouldn’t know what dose of tranquilizers to use And I don’t have 20 men with a steel-mesh net.“I’ve thought I’d stand my ground and mimic what it’d do. Idealistically, I’d like it to communicate with me, although I admit that is a little far-fetched.”

An environmental education teacher at the local high school, Chance has a syndicated newspaper column in addition to being a town commissioner and environmental center director. He also works as a wilderness outfitter.“I get razzed a lot. My father can’t buy it (the Bigfoot notion). The commissioners and a lot of the people I teach with can’t buy it. You lose some credibility. But eventually I’m going to regain it when Bigfoot is found.“I don’t mind criticism from outdoorsmen,” he says. “But comments from a Monday morning quarterback who’s never even camped out in the backwoods — I get upset when they give me grief. It’s something I got to live with, I guess.”

Franklin News Herald, Tue, Jul 25, 1978.