September 12, 2008

Seneca Sasquatch

On 9/11/08, as I was waiting, and waiting on a delayed flight in Philadelphia, I had a long conversation about Bigfoot with an engineer who has worked for DuPont for 17 years. He told me that the hairy beast reports from Seneca, Illinois, are still quite active and all the people he has recently worked with there talk about them all the time. (My informant, Brad, is a consultant to clean up the groundwater in Seneca. The location used to be owned by DuPont but is now owned by an Australian company. DuPont has responsible policy of cleaning up sites discovered through new technology to have been a lot “dirtier” that previously thought, I was told.)

The Seneca reports were in the news a great deal in 2005, and can be found in media articles such as this one here. As that article mentions, four accounts from Seneca, Illinois — two of which were from June 2005, while the others date to 1979 and 1983 — were deemed credible by the BFRO.

In the 1960s-1970s, accounts from nearby Pekin, Illinois, were investigated by me and others, and included a Bigfoot seen swimming.

But it is Seneca I wanted to note again today (and yes, I know that a certain Tom Biscardi piggybacked on the BFRO work by journeying there in the recent past),

Longtime residents call the beast the “DuPont Monster” because it has been reported in the forest along DuPont Road for more than 40 years. Of course, it has been discussed on Cryptomundo before.

What I learned that I haven’t seen in the usual reviews of this is that the actual concentrated area of the sightings is a former TNT manufacturing area for DuPont, and now the Australian company. The components of dynamite are created and stored there, for the construction of explosives used, mostly, reportedly, for mines.

Now, as everyone knows, the reports of Mothman and Bigfoot, as well as other weird events, around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, were mostly in one specific spot – the TNT area, outside of town. The location was used to manufacture TNT during World War II. The first thing the “airport” gentlemen from Indiana whom I met, who is consulting in Seneca, asked me when I mentioned the WVA site was, “Was it a DuPont factory?”

I didn’t know, although I don’t recall hearing DuPont associated with Mothman. But I now wonder what company (or spinoff or parent company) owned the TNT site near Point Pleasant. Something to think about and research later, when I return home unless a Cryptomundian finds the answer before then.

The following drawing was shared by the BFRO on the site, as coming from one witness (“John”) encounter for June 10, 2005:

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Filed under Bigfoot, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Eyewitness Accounts, Mothman, Sasquatch, Skunk Apes, Windigo