Bigfoot in Whitehall, NY

WHITEHALL — Joe James, the producer of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot,” figures it’s time the show visits northern Washington County because of its history of Bigfoot sightings.

“We’re coming to the area very shortly, and we are looking for people who have stories to share,” said James, who is responsible for the show, which has traveled all over the country and to other parts of the world in search of the creature known as Bigfoot, or Sasquatch.

“If anyone you know has a story they’d like to share with the cast at our town hall event, please send an email to [email protected],” James said late last week, asking people to respond quickly and include their phone number.

Details about when the actual local interviews and videotaping will take place are being kept under wraps to avoid excessive craziness, he said.

“At this stage, we need to keep things vague in order to screen responses and avoid hoaxes which disrupt our shoot,” James said. “We’d just like to wrangle a few witnesses. There’s a long tradition of sightings in that area.”

Once people have contacted the show, the producers will choose who they want to talk to and invite them to a town hall-style meeting.

“Finding Bigfoot” is in its seventh season and there are more than 70 episodes.

The four-person team is often shown traveling to a site, explaining about previous sightings and then “hunting for the creature.”

One of the team members, Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) founder and president Matt Moneymaker, has been to Whitehall before, visiting in 2008. The other members of the team are researchers James “Bobo” Fay and Cliff Barackman and “skeptical scientist” Ranae Holland.

Locally, Whitehall resident and researcher Paul Bartholomew does regular presentations on Bigfoot and is keeping the hunt alive.

He is the co-author of “Bigfoot: Encounters in New York & New England.”

The New York Bigfoot Society says the area around Whitehall and Castleton, Vermont, as well as the lower Adirondacks, have had Bigfoot reports since the late 1800s. But it really heated up about 40 years ago.

1976: Multiple sightings

The folded, yellowing newsprint has its own folder in The Post-Star archives and carries the headline, “Officers Track Creature.” It is from August 1976 and recounts a series of sightings that established Whitehall as a go-to place for Bigfoot hunting.

“Police are investigating reports of a large, unidentified creature seen last week in the town of Whitehall,” the story reads.

The sighting was first reported by two teenagers, who were going camping, but most important to those who research such things, the creature was seen by several people — including a number of police officers — over the next two days.

According to the article, “Although descriptions vary somewhat, the creature has been described by both police officials and civilians as between seven and eight feet tall, very hairy, having pink or red eyes, being afraid of light and as weighing between 300 and 400 pounds.”

The previous year, resident Cliff Sparks said he had seen the creature on the local golf course.

When Sparks died several years ago, his passing was noted on several Bigfoot websites,

In 2008, Moneymaker and about 60 other BFRO members visited Whitehall for the second year in a row, calling the region one of the hottest spots in the country.

Protected species

Beginning about a decade ago, Bigfoot showed up on the agendas of the town and village boards, and both boards passed a resolution supporting Bigfoot protection. The protective resolution, while not a law, prohibits the hunting of Bigfoot inside the town limits. That makes Bigfoot a protected creature anywhere in Whitehall.

Local officials have been looking to Bigfoot and a history of sightings around the area as another potential tourism asset. But the authors of the resolution also wanted to make sure the creature was protected. It is similar to the ordinance Port Henry passed to protect “Champ,” the elusive Lake Champlain monster.

In 2003, the Outdoor Network came to the region for an episode in a 13-part series called “Mysterious Encounters,” which has explored various local legends around the country. The crew set up motion-sensitive cameras at various locations in the remote woods of Whitehall to record any activity.

Crew members spent several nights around county Route 18, staking out spots and setting up 15 traps in the woods. While crew members said they didn’t uncover any fresh evidence of Bigfoot, they said eyewitness accounts still make this a compelling case

While the Bigfoot tradition has become entrenched enough in Whitehall that there are statutes, a painting of the creature on a golf course sign and occasional “Bigfoot Festivals,” the team from “Finding Bigfoot” has been pumping up the general idea of the creature — which has many different names in different parts of the world — in the public eye.

Their nighttime investigations, for example, are referred to as “Squatchin,’ ” and that word is emblazoned on Fay’s hat.