U Weekly. Serving The Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio

The quest for Bigfoot continues...

By Brian Foley

Unbeknownst to me, an area about an hour and a half east of this great city is a hot bed for Sasquatch sightings. It seems as though Cambridge, Ohio and Salt Fork State Park have had a series of Bigfoots (or is it Bigfeet?) seen in the area. Being the ardent journalist that I am, I felt compelled to investigate this phenomena first-hand by attending the 18th Annual Bigfoot Conference/Expo, at Salt Fork.

The conference began at 4pm in the lodge at the State Park. By the time I found the lodge I looked in the conference room to see about 300 people sitting there listening to Larry Lund, who had just began his portion of the evening.

Lund is one of the nation’s leading researchers on Sasquatch and has been studying the Bigfoot phenomenon for decades and is widely regarded as “The Sasquatch Sleuth”, probably because he sleuths sasquatches (or is it sasquai?). Lund nervously worked the room with a combination of stale one-liners and stories told with the excitement he would have had if it had happened yesterday.

Most of Lund’s speech was about fraudulent videos and reports of Bigfoot sightings, and how all the best Sasquatch researchers are dying. He actually brought up the fact that the researchers were dying several times – maybe he was venting after losing some colleagues, but I think he was subliminally trying to warn us of a government conspiracy to kill anyone who learns too much about the missing link. The world may never know.

The next speaker, Rich LaMonica, brought with him his famous recordings which reportedly contain the speaking voice of Sasquatch. “The Talker” tapes as they’re known to the hippest sasquatchers, contain some weird warbling-like sounds, which are just indescribable. If you want to hear it for yourself you can visit LaMonica’s website at www.geocites.com/saqatchr; the recordings are filed under “My Encounters.” If it’s on geocities, it has to be authentic, right?

During LaMonica’s program, I noticed several people bob their heads up and down as they were dozing off intermittently. I even caught myself falling asleep a couple times. I guess I’m not as ardent a journalist as I earlier claimed to be.

After hearing the tapes the meeting broke for about an hour for dinner. I took this opportunity to examine the collection of artifacts they had set up in the front of the room. There was a nice collection of Bigfoot footprint plaster casts, Bigfoot footprint gingerbread cookies, and even a football autographed by the New England Patriots. (Maybe Bigfoot was a linebacker the Pats just drafted this past weekend.)

The next speaker was Linda Wygle, who once saw Bigfoot when she was a child, but now she trains dogs to find people. If she could train her dogs to find Bigfoot she would be rich. I can’t believe that she hasn’t thought of this.

After Wygle spoke I grew bored and decided to go into the woods and scope out the scene for myself and see if I could get any hot leads. The sun was starting to set on an overcast Saturday as I entered a trail about 200 yards away from the lodge. About 100 feet into the trail, which is for horses I believe, I spotted a big spider and it scared the crap out of me. It was then that I realized if I found a Bigfoot I would probably be totally freaked out and probably scarred for life. I left (read: ran out of) the woods for my own sake and headed back to the safety net that is Columbus.

I’m really not as ardent a journalist as I lead you all to believe.

Originally Published: May 3, 2006

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