newspaper – Sasysquatchgirl

The Black Flash of Provincetown…

The Black Flash was first reported by some school kids on their way home, they stated it jumped out from behind the dunes. It was tall, dressed all in black and incredibly fast. The kids ran, the figure’s maniacal laugh echoed after them.

Next it was an adult who claimed to have encountered it. Marie Costa was walking past the Provincetown town hall one October evening when it jumped out in front of her from behind some bushes. In addition to its black wardrobe, she claimed it had glowing blue eyes, silver ears and could jump impossibly high, which the newspaper account bore out. She ducked into a coffee shop, told what had happened and several men went to pursue it, with no luck. The police said it was a hoax, but Costa was genuinely frightened.

After Costa’s encounter, more reports filtered in. Some nights had several reports, from different parts of town, sometimes simultaneously. Even the police started to admit that perhaps there was something to the report, something devilish. It was called many things in addition to the Black Flash … the Provincetown Phantom and the Devil of the Dunes.

Most descriptions agreed that the Black Flash stood at an imposing height, some claiming the figure to be far taller than the average adult. Eyewitnesses often mentioned a long black cape and mask that added to its startling silhouette.

Distinctive features included glowing blue eyes and sometimes silver ears, which set the Black Flash apart from any known person. Locals frequently remarked on the figure’s apparent ability to leap over fences, displaying agility that seemed unnatural. Some reports even speculated that the Black Flash’s movements resembled those of a prowling animal rather than a human.

Last week my sister found this book at a museum, and as luck would have it the Black Flash himself had a few pages of his own.

This book gives the full detail of witness Al Janard’s encounter.

“On a cold December afternoon, Allen Janard, his younger sister Elanore, and his two brothers, were playing hide-and-seek in their back yard on Standish Street. On the sandy hill overlooking the yard, Elanore spotted something crouching. “Look,” she shouted, “there’s a bear on the hill.” The boy laughed. “There’s no bears on Cape Cod,” Allen informed her.

“I’ve never seen a bear,” Elanore admitted, “but if that isn’t a bear, what is it?” The boys looked up and saw something crawling down the hill towards them, barely visible in the fog. Allen recognized it immediately, and a numbing fear flooded his body. He gave the alarm and they all ran for the house. Their parents weren’t home and the kitchen door lock was broken. Out the window, they watched the black figure run into the back yard and head for the back door. Joey grabbed his mother’s rolling pin, Allen held a carving knife over his head, and Louie quickly filled a bucket with scalding water. Elanore hid behind a char. All the crying ended suddenly into an eerie silence as the backdoor doorknob began to turn. “All I could hear was my heartbeat,” said Allen, but the door didn’topen. The phantom just remained outside the backdoor, breathing heavily, so they’d know he was still there. Louie then got an idea, he went up through the house with his bucket of water to the attic and, through the skylight, got out onto the roof. Crawling down the overhang over the kitchen, he spied the black figure below and dumped his bucket. Then through the window, they saw him retreat through the back yard, a dripping black phantom, shivering from head to toe, not looking half as fearsome as he had when he arrived, and that was the last anyone in Provincetown saw of The Black Flash.

Allen Janard, now in his mid-fifties, thinks it might have been his cousin, Manny Janard and Matt Costa, now a prominent businessman in Provincetown, always thought it was his brother Elmer, but both those suspects were only 12 and 13 years old when the Provincetown Phantom made his first appearance. Francis Marshall, who became Provincetown’s Police Chief in 1959, and is now retired, living in Yarmouth, told me that he knows who The Black Flash was, “but I won’t give you a name,” the former police chief told me. “I will tell you this though,” he said, “The Black Flash wasn’t just one person. He was four men, who sometimes played the part alone, and sometimes together. Two are dead now, but the others have a hell of a time when they get together, reminiscing about the times they scared the hell out of their friends and neighbors in Provincetown.” The Provincetown Phantom, better known as The Black Flash, is legend now, and his daring exploits, agility, strength and size grow greater and greater as the years go by…”

And a final surprise to the weekend my niece made me a t-shirt of the Flash from my IG post design.

Got a love a family that takes an interest in your weirdness!

Happy Folklore Thursday!

Bigfoot in the News… Return of the Sasquatch Wild Man

Vancouver, B. C.

Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of “wild men” who inhabited the rocky regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are reported roaming the province again.

After an absence of several months from the district of Harrison Mills, 50 miles east of Vancouver, the long, weird wolf- like howls are being heard again and two of the hairy monsters were reported seen in the Morris Valley on the Harrison river.

Residents in the district tell of seeing the two giants leaping and bounding out of the forest and striding across the duck-feeding ground, wallowing now and again in the bog and mire and long waving swamp grasses.

The strange men, it was reported, after emerging from the woods, came leaping down the jagged rocky hillside with the agility and lightness of mountain goats.

Snatches of their weird language floated on the breeze across the lake to the pioneer settlement at the foot of the hills.

The giants walked with an easy gait across the swamp flats and at the Morris Creek, in the shadow of Little Mystery Mountain, straddled a floating log, which they propelled with their long, hairy hands and huge feet across the sluggish glacial stream to the opposite side.

There they abandoned the log and climbed hand over hand up the almost perpendicular cliff at a point known as Gibraltar and disappeared into the wooded wilderness at the top of the ridge. They carried two large clubs and walked around a herd of cattle directly in their path.

The return of the giants to the legendary stronghold of the Sasquatch monsters recalls the narrow escape of an Indian at the same spot last March, a huge boulder narrowly missed his canoe while he was fishing and looking up he said he saw a huge and hairy monster stamping his feet and gesticulating wildly, The Indian escaped by cutting his fishing tackle and paddling away. The same Indian declared the Sasquatch twice have stolen salmon which he tied in a tree outside his house out of reach of the dogs The latest appearance of the monsters was peaceful. They avoided the trails usually used by the people of the valley and molested neither cattle nor human beings.

People who have reported seeing the giants on their rare appearances described them as “ferociou looking wild men, nine feet tall and covered from head to toe with thick black hair.”

The Waterbury Democrat (Waterbury, Conn.), October 31, 1935

I really enjoy these early sightings, they seem more sincere however fanciful. The rate bigfoot is currently reported being seen feels somehow less believable to me. So I almost feel more comfortable going into the past encounters than I do some present ones. And of course you also have the legendary cryptozoologists of the time as well. History has always been more my speed…

The Wildman of New York…

“A wild man is loose in the woods at Hancock, N. Y. A group of hunters have just returned from Port Jervis, where they went for guns and ammunition with which to slay him.

But the question has arisen whether they have a right to kill a wild man? Some of the hunters argue tnat it would be murder. Others say that it wouldn’t, but that wild men are protected by the game laws. His life will probably be spared until legal advice has been taken, unless some impetuous woodsman slays him and then waits for a ruling. The first intimation the farmers had of the presence of the wild man was the disappearance of cows, young cattle and sheep.

They at first thought that a bear had taken them. John Cook, a farmer, heard a terrible rumpus in his piggery the other night and, believing that the pigs had upset a beehive placed temporarily in their stye, he ran ont. As he stepped into the shed be was grabbed by the wild man. The fellow looked seven feet high and was quite naked. He was a hairy man.

From his mouth protruded big teeth like fangs. Farmer Cook is six feet three and very powerful, but he was helpless in the grasp of the wild man, who carried him to the door and hurled him thirty feet The farmer fell unconscious; when he woke up he found himself lame and bruised. His best pig was gone. crowbar lay on the ground tied into knots. Farmer Cook says the wild man did this to show his annoyance at being interrupted. The next night Peter Thomas was driving near Dead Man’s Lane when he met the wild man.

Thomas says he looked like an ape. He seized the near horse and, with a single sweep of his long, hairy arm, tore off the harness. Then he wrung the horse’s neck and dragged him to the woods. This story is vouched for by Mr. Thomas, who is a church deacon.

A party of hunters fallowed the tracks to a lonely swamp. The footprints showed that ths man’s nails had developed into claws. He had uprooted trees.The lair ot the wild man was found on Friday, but he was not at home. Berry pickers discovered it in the woods near Rattlesnake Hill.

Near by was a portion of Mr.; Thomas’ horse, which evidently had been torn with the teeth of the wild man. Scattered about were tbe bones of sheep and other animals. The wild man takes his meat raw. Some say the wild man is an escaped chimpanzee or gorilla, but a member of the New York Veterinarian Association who is boarding at Port Jervis says monkeys don’t eat meat.”

The Lancaster Daily

Lancaster Pennsylvania 1895

Bigfoot in the News…The Everglades

“The First time Jim Spink lived by himself in Florida’s Everglades in search of Bigfoot, he stayed six months. He purchased equipment at a flea market. His camera didn’t have a Flash attachment..

-Now Jim Spink is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, duly certified by the Internal Revenue Service.

And the next time he lives in the Eyerglades, he figures the National Science Feundation can provide him with $21,780 in infra-red camera equipment so he can take Bigfoot’s picture.

Spink is an unusual man. So is Bigloot (or the Skunk Ape), if he is real.

Spink is for real. Spink is a perpetual junior colege student: “retired,” he says, living off $290 a month from the GI Bill for going to school.

He is the research director of the

Bigfoot Research Society, and he collects letter from scholars and professors that he would be happy to collaborate with like

David D. Martin. Ph.D., Primate Research Center. Cooperation and encouragement Spink receives. Money he doesn’t. He is undaunted.

Spink, a lean red-bearded ex-Navy quartermaster, is the author (albeit, an unpublished one of the manuscript, Bigfoot and Me.” Therein he tells about his lonely expedition to a remote oyster mound in a mangrove swamp in Charlotte County on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The mosquitoes were terrible. He spent his time there naked so Bigfoot would see they weren’t so different.

Unlike other true believers, some of whom have professed to see an 800 pound hairy man-ape. Spink acknowledges that he never actually saw a Bigfoot.

Instead, Bigfoot watched him, he said “I’m positive he was out there somewhere.” Always it was at night.

Once Bigfoot leaped right up to his pop tent and scared the living crap out of him, Spink said, “chattering and raving in a high-pitched scream.” Spink said he sang a Gllbert and Sullivan tune to calm Bigfoot. He said he played his harmonica and spoke reassuringly . He called Bigfoot “Gin.

“How you doing, Gin?” he said he asked. Bigfoot never answered

Spink, nonetheless, is convinced that Bigfoot, and perhaps his mate, made frequent nocturnal visits to his camp Site. Spink said he collected feces specimens, took pictures. He said he casted a footprint

Bigfoot, he said, once stole his apple-sauce from a pan, picking up the pan, carrying off the pan, and dropping the pan.
Spink said he even dusted the pan for fingerprints.

In March tragedy struck, hoodlums came and trashed his camp. Ruined everything, equipment, journals and evidence. Spink refused to give up. It was lucky that his girlfriend won 660 on “Bowling for Dollars” a television show and bought him new equipment. Unfortunately, Bigfoot didn’t return. Instead, a butterfly collector from Minnesota came by. And he became a great birder…”

Charleston Daily Mail

Wednesday, Nov 10th, 1976

Art by Aaron Johnson, Joel Anderson, 2022

I only attempted to transcribe part of the article, but I included it for anyone who would like to transcribe it, in its entirety….

Have a great evening everyone…

Bigfoot in the News…Bigfoot Attacks Horse

On the night of July 26, 1895, in the Delaware County resort town of Margaretville, Peter Thomas was driving a team of horses on a lone road when a “wild-eyed man or ape” stood in the road ahead. Thomas said the creature had “long and hairy arms” and was “uttering a raucous, inarticulate cry.” He said the creature twisted the neck of one of his horses before dragging it into the darkness. The creature was “seven feet high, of human shape, covered with hair.”

The next day, local farmer John Cook said he shot “a ferocious ape-like being,” before it grabbed him and threw him to the ground. The wild man stood “about seven feet tall, entirely nude, covered with black hair, with a long beard and with teeth which project from its mouth like fangs” .

Newburg Daily Express 1895; New York Daily Herald 1895.

Bigfoot in the News… Bigfoot in Pennsylvania

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.

A Bigfoot sighting in Gillespie County? – Fredericksburg Standard – Fredericksburg Standard

A Bigfoot sighting in Gillespie County? – Fredericksburg Standard – Fredericksburg Standard
— Read on www.fredericksburgstandard.com/2023/09/27/bigfoot-sighting-gillespie-county/

What do you think about this encounter, I feel one who is shaken up and not wanting to be identified as an encounter with some credibility, his parents stated;

“I have no idea what Joe saw, but I believe that he actually saw what he says he did. Based on his knowledge of the outdoors and his surroundings, I don’t think he’s mistaken in his description.

Nor do I believe Joe was the victim of a prank. I believe Joe saw what some people call Bigfoot or North American Wood Ape.”

He had enough knowledge to know what he was looking at didn’t belong in his forest area and was clearly distressed. I wish we had more evidence such as video of location, or a chance to go out there and look for prints, but maybe a researcher from that area could try to make contact with the witness via the newspaper.

Let me know what you think,

Be safe in the woods everyone!

Bigfoot in the News…Yeti in Siberia

A Soviet scientist said Wednesday she came within feet of the legendary abominable snowman during an eyeball to eyeball encounter with the furry beast in the snow covered forests of western Siberia.

In what Radio Moscow described as one of the closest encounters of its kind, the creature reportedly stood and stared at her with red eyes, not making a sound, before her pet dog chased the snowman or yeti deep into the woods.

The scientist, Maya Brikova, told Radio Moscow she had spent 25 years studying the yeti. Her sighting occurred late last year when Soviet media reported three yeti encounters.

Brikova and two guides had stopped for the night in a forest cabin at an undisclosed site in western Siberia and were awakened by a sound of rolling logs. They said they rushed out to the porch and saw the creature they had waited so long to see.

‘The day was breaking and we could see everything clearly. I saw in front of me an animal about 2 meters (6 foot, 7-inches) tall, covered with fur some 6 to 7 seven centimeters (2.5 to 3 inches) long,’ Brikova said. ‘It was covered with so much fur, its lips looked like slits. The fur on its head and face was shorter than that of its body. The palms were red and bare. The creature studied us with great attention. Its eyes were red without any whites, and its ears didn’t stick out,’ she said.

Radio Moscow said there had been an estimated 5,000 eyewitness accounts of yeti sightings in the Soviet Union, mostly by peasants, drivers, shepherds and other rural people.

The sightings had been reported in the Caucases region, the Altai district of south-central Siberia and the northeastern Yakutia area.

Brikova said she had prepared herself for such an encounter, so that she could have ‘a very good look at this creature and examine it thoroughly. There was a distance of 5 meters (16 feet) between us.’

She said it had not been difficult to measure the hairy biped’s height because it was standing against a tree.

‘We just stood on the porch and didn’t move. The creature didn’t move either. Then, all of a sudden our dog dashed out, and the creature quickly hid itself in the forest. We looked around for it but never saw it again,’ Brikova said. —

Last month, the leader of Soviet scientific expedition told the official Tass news agency one of the creatures had repeatedly tried to make friendly contact with his reasearch team in the Pamir mountains near the border with Afghanistan.

Igor Tatsl, said his expedition had reported several nocturnal encounters with the yeti, which they had also seen in the twilight at a distance of about 30 meters (90 feet).

Radio Moscow described Brikova’s sighting as one of the closest encounters of its kind but did not say whether she had photographed or filmed the human-like creature. Although yetis, also sighted in the Himalayas, are dismissed by many scholars as a myth, some claim they could be a form of hitherto unclassified ape.

Radio Moscow said in the past 60 years, more than 100 specimens of large mammals had been discovered, ‘so the most unexpected discoveries are always possible.’

The Soviets set up a special organization at the end of last year to establish contact with the abominable snowman. Its head, Pavel Belenitsky said the group based in Leningrad will embark on an expedition from May to September to try and obtain photographs and video footage.

‘We shall not be hunting for the creature. We shall not be trying to get hold of nature’s mystery. It is more important to study its psychological traits, its habits, its migration routes, in short its life under natural conditions,’ he said.

The ministry of culture recently established a Society of Cryptozoologists to study the possiblity of its existence following the discovery of a report that Marshal Pavel Rybalko, a famed Soviet tank leader, carried a snowman-like creature in a railroad freight car for several days in 1939 during fighting against the Japanese in the Soviet far east.

Soviet authorities also claim there is evidence that Maj. Gen. Alexander Topilsky found a dead snowman after a shootout with White Russian troops in the 1920’s during the Russian Civil War.

By ROMAN ROLLNICK

Bigfoot in the News…Ohio Hunters…

McARTHUR, Ohio A man who has been searching for the legendary ‘ Bigfoot ‘ in southern Ohio says he has found new evidence that several of the elusive creatures may be living in the area.

Robert Gardnier of Columbus, Ohio, said he and several other hunters went into the Wayne National Forest west of McArthur recently and found footprints measuring 17 ? inches long and 9 inches wide.

Gardiner, who described the creatures as being ‘very shy,’ said he and his hunting party were surrounded by the creatures at one time.

‘We had been to this deserted A-frame … and were looking in this ravine for tracks and didn’t find anything,’ said Gardiner. ‘Later on … we came back to the A-frame and there were big tracks. These had to be made within an hour before we got there.’

He said the hunters went into the ravine where the visibility is limited because of dense woods, brush and brambles.

‘We were looking at a specific sign on a tree,’ he said. ‘We found something on a tree. I’m not going to divulge what it is, but we were checking it out and we heard one bark.

‘They have a barking-type growl like a chimpanzee or like a gorilla,’ he said. ‘We listened and then we heard one behind us, and what these two things were doing was communicating back and forth. They couldn’t have been over 25 or 30 yards away from us.

‘One was between us and the A-frame and the other was on the other side of us,’ he said.

Gaadiner said he feels the creatures are only passing through the area heading for mountains in the southern part of the United States. He said one may have been injured and that is why they are staying in the McArthur area for so long.

‘I’ve told everybody to quit shooting at these things,’ Gardiner said. ‘If you come across one, he won’t bother you. He’s just curious.’

Many hunters have tried to find the creature, also called Sasquatch , which is about as elusive as the Himalayan Yeti _ the ‘Abominable Snowman’ _ and supposedly comes from the Pacific Northwest.

Throughout the summer, Sasquatch -like creatures have been sighted and reported in southern and central Ohio.

Bigfoot reportedly was first sighted in Ohio near McArthur Aug. 24. Larry E. Cottrill said he found three Sasquatch -like animals near his home, shot at them and may have wounded one in the shoulder. Cottrill has since moved away.

Serenity and Lore of Cape Cod…

https://videopress.com/v/TTUEMYzu?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

“Back in 1886, George Washington Ready, who was the town crier in Provincetown at the time, believed he saw a sea serpent.

Ready was walking near the shoreline in Provincetown when he observed a whirlpool-like disturbance in the water. A giant head with four rows of teeth, an eight-foot horn, and six eyes then emerged from the whirlpool. These eyes ensured the monster could look in every direction at once, and three of them were a fiery red color.

The rest of the monster’s body was about 300 feet long with a 12-foot diameter. It was accompanied by a sulphuric smell and an intense heat emanating from its body. The creature was massive, but Ready was able to hide behind some bushes on the beach to escape its gaze.

Ready claimed that the serpent made its way to nearby Pasture Pond before burrowing into the earth beneath the water. Much of the pond’s water drained through the hole the creature created, and the monster disappeared, as well.”

A little serenity and lore from Cape Cod. Just a little spot I carved out this morning for peace and coffee…