Last month, I did a blog post about the Jersey Devil and how the legend may have originally been borne of people simply misidentifying Bigfoot. After the post was published, I had a number of people contact me privately and on social media because they were surprised to hear that Bigfoot could indeed be living in New Jersey. Some of them had just never made the connection between Bigfoot and the Jersey Devil before, and others were incredulous that Sasquatch could be roaming the vast Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey at all, understandably assuming that Bigfoot is strictly a resident of the Pacific Northwest. So when I saw this story today, detailing a woman’s sighting of Bigfoot in the Jersey Devil’s own stomping grounds of the Pine Barrens, it seemed like a good opportunity to showcase a very recent New Jersey Bigfoot sighting.
Now, a number of news outlets have covered this story, but I chose to use the article published by the New York Post, New York City’s most embarrassing tabloid. Sure, the New York Daily News is pretty terrible and stretches the definition of “journalism” to its limits, but the New York Post is only slightly more respectable than the National Enquirer. But only slightly. Note how, four words into their article, they misspell the name of the very subject they are writing about. Of course, this rag is completely dismissive of the Bigfoot phenomenon and arrogantly ridicules it throughout the entire piece, yet can’t even spell “Sasquatch” correctly. How could I not quote them?
Just one example of the high journalistic integrity of the New York Post
Why did the “Sasquach” cross the road? To give us another reason to make fun of the Garden State.
The legendary — OK, fictitious — “Bigfoot” was allegedly spotted in South Jersey’s densely-wooded Pine Barrens, adding to the dozens of sightings in the Garden State since the 1960s, according to a group that logs “credible” accounts of the big, hairy, bi-pedal creature.
“In a split second, I saw something brown on 2 legs and about 6 feet tall sprint behind the car,” writes breathless eyewitness “Tricia” in the latest sighting logged by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which tracks the hirsute hallucination globally, the Asbury Park Press reported.
“I caught it in my rear view mirror,” wrote Tricia of the creature she said she spied on an overcast April 7 as she drove with her husband and dog near Brown Mills in Ocean County.
“I was kind of thinking to myself that my eyes were playing tricks on me but I just couldn’t shake it,” she wrote.
Reps from the BFRO reached out to Tricia the next day, and she elaborated.
“She explained that after taking some pictures of the wetlands, they got back in their vehicle and she started to drive on down the dirt road, and she glanced back in her rearview mirror and saw a tall, and lanky brown haired biped leap across the entire road,” wrote BFRO investigator Eric Spinner.
“She described how the legs were splayed like a dancer – each leg pointing opposite – and the arms too were moving back and forth,” Spinner wrote.
A trip to the “encounter location” uncovered no tracks, hair or other evidence, Spinner added. Still, “It doesn’t get much better than to have the chance to do an interview so soon after an incident.”
The BFRO has logged 68 Sasquach sightings in Jersey, going back to 1966.
There have been more in New York — the group has logged 105 — but Bigfoot hasn’t been seen in the Empire State in a good half-dozen years.
California holds the record for Bigfoot sightings, with the BFRO logging 437.
I like reading reports like this, as they seem pretty credible. There doesn’t seem to be any embellishment here. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a hairy humanoid in her rear view mirror, plain and simple. Bigfoot didn’t chase her, she didn’t feed it apples for 3 hours, and there’s nothing really outrageous about her story. It could have been a hoax, or a misidentification of a known animal, but she believes she saw something. She even admits to doubting her eyes at first, but she believes she knows what she saw. Again, it doesn’t mean it definitely was Bigfoot, but to me it reads as a very believable sighting, and worthy of the follow-up it received from the BFRO.
