Bigfoot sightings have strange marriage

Stan Gordon of Greensburg, Pa., discusses a spate of reported 1973 Bigfoot sightings in Westmoreland County while speaking at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

YOUNGWOOD, Pa. – There is infighting in two paranormal groups that have a strange marriage.

Bigfoot followers don’t like it when that creature is associated with UFO sightings.

“And visa versa,” Bigfoot expert Stan Gordon said today at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, Pa.

“The UFO people don’t want to connect a zoological creature with extraterrestrials,” Gordon said after speaking to a large auditorium packed with those with a fascination for the unexplained.

His lecture focused on a string of 1973 Bigfoot sightings and other mysterious events here in Westmoreland County, including some just down the road from this college.

The first took place near Greengate Mall in early August, when a man claimed to have had an unreal experience while shaving in his bathroom. It began with his smelling rotten cucumbers. He turned around to gaze at a window, eight feet off the ground, Gordon said.

“He saw two large glowing red eyes staring at him,” Gordon said. “His dogs didn’t bark.”

Gordon later went to investigate this scene, and, he said, he found the “strangest three-toed footprint” in weeds behind the mall, which since has been demolished.

Such sightings went on for months, perplexing even the Pennsylvania State Police.

The most-convincing evidence came from animals – cats, livestock and especially dogs – by how they reacted to the sense and smell of things associated with this elusive, fur-covered animal with fangs, Gordon said.

“The dogs were like paralyzed in fear,” he said.

Some family dogs hid in fear under porches, he said, while others refused to eat for up to three days after those stories emerged and soon would make local and national news.

“State police even said you couldn’t fabricate that.”

Derry Township was a hot bed that year for those odd events, which included repeated Bigfoot sightings at two farms.

“For whatever reason this thing kept coming back at night,” Gordon said, adding that witnesses there also noticed strange lights and UFOs between hearing weird animal screams.

Elsewhere in Derry residents of a mobile home claimed to have seen a Bigfoot staring at them at their front door after opening it at the sound of a baby crying and scratching, Gordon said. The electric lights began to flicker inside that home. Later, investigators discovered the electrical supply line ripped out to the mobile home, Gordon said.

He moved on tell an equally strange story from near Kecksburg in Westmoreland about a nut-shaped metal object that crashed into a hillside. The U.S. Army showed up, along with a tractor-trailer, which sped off with the thing and supposedly took it to a military base under strict secrecy in December 1965.

“There is more to this mystery than meets the eye,” Gordon said.

Assorted Bigfoot sketches on David Dragosin's booth at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference at Westmoreland County Community College. (Scott Beveridge photo)