#174 More About Bigfoot

A friend loaned me her book, "Genesis Of Belief: A Personal Journal" by Otis Matthews, 1983, Zeus Publications. The author was working as a carpenter as a nature museum near Fort Mill, South Carolina. One of other workers at the museum went to Fort Mill after a lady saw a Bigfoot in her garden there and returned with a plaster of Paris footprint 18 inches long. The museum's taxidermist said it was of a human foot. Eighteen inches long? Bigfoot sightings were being made so Matthews began walking at night, three or four nights a week, along dirt roads. One night he was sitting at a small campfire with his dog, Sherman (surely a popular name in the South), a Shepherd-collie mix, when the dog gave a low growl. Matthews hushed him. In the distance, he heard what he thought was a fox hunter whistling for his hounds. This, he found later was a Bigfoot's all-clear signal. It is used by the Yeti who are often heard whistling to each other. No known primate below man displays this practice (page 5A). Then Matthew heard something heavy, like a cow, running, but it had the footbeat of a man. Then he observed, "It was hollering in pure joy, 'yow, yahoo!'" The creature got within 25 feet before he seemed to notice Matthew, fell silent, and disappeared.
At the same time, hundreds of bigfoot footprints were being found on the nearby Saluda River next to dog and cat kills, thus establishing that bigfoot is omnivorous.
Matthew's book concerns the happenings around Brown Mountain, North Carolina and York County, South Carolina. At Riverbend in York County, a man and his friend were standing only ten feet apart when something sounding like a bull ran between them. He was snorting and kicking up dust. They saw nothing but the dust. This parralels the sighting I covered of the bigfoot walking, bushes moving, but the observer could only see the outline of the bigfoot by what looked like thermal waves the creature was apparently emitting.
Peter Nickerson, MS, MSW at peternickerson12@yahoo.com