State officials: Bigfoot isn't lurking in Pennsylvania parks and forests; fake flyers reported

Bigfoot or no Bigfoot, the state and a local paranormal researcher are not amused by fake flyers warning state park and forest visitors about the presence of the unconfirmed, yet hugely popular, hairy hominid creature.

Because the fake flyers appear to use official state letterhead, the state doesn’t want the public to get the wrong idea that Bigfoot might be just around the bend of their favorite trail.

State park and forest rangers have been ripping down the flyers since August in an undetermined number of state lands, said Wesley Robinson, press secretary for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR).

The fake flyer with DCNR letterhead reads: “Due to encounters in the area of a creature resembling “Bigfoot,” we are instructing all park visitors to observe elevated park etiquette, be cautious of your surroundings, and to keep the location of any small children/pets within a tighter scope of awareness.”

The flyer, which also is written in Spanish, adds: “Report any sightings to a ranger, front office, or to the DCNR Office of Missing Persons. Do not post sightings on social media.”

Not only does Bigfoot not exist, according to DCNR and mainstream science, the state agency doesn’t have an Office of Missing Persons. Using DCNR letterhead is illegal, too.

“I would encourage people to think through the text on that flyer,” Robinson said. “There are pieces of information that can be verified with a Google search. When you see flyers of this nature that set off an alarm and that don’t appear real, there should be serious scrutiny.”

For longtime Bigfoot researcher Stan Gordon of Greensburg, there, indeed, should be scrutiny because there are Bigfoot researchers in Pennsylvania wanting residents to report sightings to them.

“DCNR cares for the state’s forested and park lands, not Bigfoot sightings,” said Gordon, who operates the UFO Anomalies Zone website.

“That doesn’t make sense why somebody would be putting those flyers out,” he said.

The large bipedal mammal is rumored to frequent Chestnut Ridge in the Laurel Highlands and other wooded venues, Gordon said.

Officials are concerned the fake flyers will scare park users, Robinson said. Even if someone has what they think is a sighting, it’s just that — a brief sighting and not an actual encounter, he said.

“We don’t want to alarm people,” Robinson said. The agency has a rigorous review process of communications to the public to “ensure people have trust in us.”

The agency doesn’t dislike Bigfoot, though, and can be lighthearted about the mythical beast, sometimes incorporating it into park programming.

The Kinzua Bridge State Park in McKean County this summer offered an event titled “Geocaching With a Bigfoot Twist,” in which each of the caches contained information about local Bigfoot sightings.

For the record, though, DCNR does not recognize the existence of Bigfoot or other similar cryptids, Robinson said.

Stories and reports about Bigfoot in Pennsylvania have been around a long time, Gordon noted.

There have been at least 1,800 newspaper accounts in Pennsylvania for Bigfoot sightings since the 1800s, he said.

Gordon has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and collected sightings for decades. One of the most recent sightings in the region occurred during daylight hours May 8 on the Derry side of Chestnut Ridge, he said.

His hotline, 724-838-7768, has been active since 1969 and never stops ringing, he said. People with sightings also can visit his website or send an email to paufo@comcast.net.

“These (witnesses) are reluctant to talk about it publicly because they don’t want to be ridiculed for what they saw,” he said. Witnesses include hunters, outdoorsmen and police officers.

Gordon said he noticed a link between a “massive outbreak of UFO sightings” across the state in 1973 and a summer surge of Bigfoot sightings in 1974. His group investigates cases, some of which are unexplained and some with accepted explanations.

In 2019, Pennsylvania ranked third in the country as one of the best areas to spot Bigfoot, according to the Travel Channel and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, a national group that collects and investigates Bigfoot sightings. The state has since slipped from the Top 10 rankings.