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|» More From The Staten Island Advance | |

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|Could this be Bigfoot country? | |

|One author claims recent evidence exists in Greenbelt, 30 years after Staten Island "sightings" | |

|Sunday, June 08, 2003 | |

|By HEIDI J. SHRAGER | |

|STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE | |

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|Note to the reader : | |

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|This article was well done, but there wasn’t any mention of my personal run-ins with the creatures, which in part caused the | |

|story to arise again in the first place. I hope that they do not discount my experiences, but to each his own. As Dorothy states| |

|below “I know what I saw.” I’ve had several close encounters with the creatures thought to be the legendary, elusive “Bigfoot.” | |

|And after this article ran, I even befriended a couple of them. I began feeding them to help them out with their diet as food | |

|gathering seems to be their top priority. We inevitably had a falling out though when I shined a flashlight at them. But I hope | |

|to patch things up this summer! | |

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|---Tom Modern | |

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|On a cold winter's night in 1975, a young nurse named Dorothy Daly was driving her usual route up Richmond Hill Road to her job | |

|at St. Vincent's Hospital, when she nearly mowed down a dark figure that had emerged from the woods. | |

|She screamed, hit the brakes and blasted the horn, but the two-legged creature simply came to an eerie standstill in the middle | |

|of road. There it stood, captive in her headlights less than six feet away. Stupefied, she began to shake. As it slowly turned | |

|in her direction, she realized this person was no person at all. | |

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|Ms. Daly's account matches those of thousands of people around the world who have witnessed what they thought was the | |

|unexplainable. But in the eyes of many, her description -- a docile creature about six feet tall with long arms, covered from | |

|head to toe in thick, dark hair with very long hair hanging from its head -- could mean only one thing. | |

|Ms. Daly saw the fugitive species known as Bigfoot. | |

|Since that night she has tried to forget, and until recently has been successful. But two months ago, a Staten Islander named | |

|Tom Modern wrote an article in the New York Press weekly newspaper about his hunt for the creature, known by Native Americans as| |

|Sasquatch -- derived from an Indian word meaning "wild man." In it he describes tracks and other signs left behind in the | |

|swamplands, creek beds and dense woods of the Greenbelt. | |

|THE WINTER OF 1975 | |

|Sitting safely in her beachfront home in Great Kills one recent afternoon, the now-retired nurse cast her memory back to that | |

|night in Richmond. | |

|"My first thought was some stupid kid was in a Halloween costume," she said. "I yelled, but this thing didn't hear me -- or | |

|didn't seem to." Then, as if shrugging off a pesky child, "it just kind of loped off in the direction of the [St. Andrew's] | |

|church cemetery," she said. | |

|When she got to work that night, Ms. Daly repeated the same four words to her co-workers: "I know I'm sane." | |

|Divorced and busy raising two children at the time, Ms. Daly did not report the experience right away. "I filed it in the 'Who | |

|knows?' department," she recalled. "It wasn't trying to scare me, it didn't bother me. It seemed more that I bothered it, quite | |

|frankly." | |

|What made her finally report it was finding out about two other sightings reported in the previous month, December of 1974, in | |

|the same area surrounding Historic Richmond Town. | |

|Two cousins, Philip Vivolo, 12, and Frank Pizzolato, 11, were walking up a small, wooded hill that jutted out of a river bed one| |

|late afternoon when they heard a roar, as reported in 1975 by Robert Warth, president of the New Jersey-based Society for | |

|Investigation of the Unexplained. When they turned, they saw a hairy creature standing about six feet tall at the foot of the | |

|hill looking up at them with its arms raised. | |

|The incident caused a stir. The Advance reported at the time that "six police squad cars, an Emergency Services Unit and a | |

|police helicopter led a two-hour hunt." It quoted Vivolo, now in his 40s and living in New Jersey, saying, "I looked down from | |

|the hill and I saw this bear. ... I looked at him for about 10 seconds. I saw his snoot and the rest of his body. ... He was | |

|standing on two legs." The police found nothing, and Vivolo came home "ghost white," said his mother after the incident. | |

|The church pastor told Ms. Daly about the second sighting. A young couple had seen such a bipedal beast walk by when they were | |

|sitting in their car late one night in the church parking lot. He told her not to feel bad, she recalled, and remembered him | |

|telling her, "We believe you." | |

|BELIEVERS | |

|When it comes to Bigfoot, such faith is a rare commodity. | |

|It runs deep, however, in Tom Modern. | |

|"I'm learning to recognize the remains and evidence they leave behind," said the 39-year-old writer who moved to the Island in | |

|1994. "I'm finding [the evidence] in several areas, areas I thought it would be unlikely to find them in, like Great Kills | |

|Park." | |

|The tenaciously elusive Bigfoot travels along creek beds when possible, so the sediment will wash away his tracks, said Modern. | |

|The amateur sleuth led the Advance to one place he thinks the primate roams --exactly where Ms. Daly saw him that cold January | |

|night. | |

|On the southeastern outskirts of LaTourette Park, surrounding the Church of St. Andrew, Richmond Creek runs through woods and | |

|swampland. The hours Modern has spent bushwhacking through the dense foliage -- he even camped there for several nights -- has | |

|convinced him that we share the Greenbelt hinterland with the great beast. | |

|"I believe they've always been here -- long after the Indians left the land," he said. | |

|After the April snowfall, he said he found prints matching the size and curvature of Bigfoot's in the woods on both sides of | |

|Richmond Hill Road, indicating it took the same passage it made in front of an unsuspecting Ms. Daly. | |

|One of the prints appeared on a wooden plank stretching across the creek, pointing in the direction of the stream itself as if | |

|the creature was walking its length instead of crossing its width. He measured the track to be 15 1/2 inches long and 6 1/4 | |

|inches wide at the top. | |

|On a recent afternoon, Modern exuded an air of cool objectivity as he pointed to spots high on a thick tree trunk that looked to| |

|have been persistently rubbed. He fingered two spacious, circular patches of broken reeds carved out of a sea of towering | |

|cattails, as if animals had romped there. His enthusiasm peeked through when he spotted a nearby muddy spot by the creek bed | |

|where a cluster of tracks appeared to be coming out of the stream and disappearing into the thick carpet of bulrush in La | |

|Tourette's wetlands. | |

|EVIDENCE OR IMAGINATION? | |

|While Modern believes such evidence is easy to miss, especially if you're not looking for it, many who routinely trek through | |

|the Island's woods laugh at the notion that they share the terrain with Sasquatch. | |

|Tom O'Connell, supervisory park ranger at Gateway National Recreation Area, Great Kills Park, said what Modern sees as evidence | |

|is easily explained away. "My staff are all over this place, every inch of it," he said. "It doesn't make sense that there would| |

|be anything abnormal and none of us would have seen it." The matted down reeds Modern saw in Great Kills park, for example, | |

|"could have been where we piled brush," said O'Connell. | |

|Many people skeptical of a Staten Island Bigfoot, however, leave open the possibility that the primate exists in the Pacific | |

|Northwest, where researchers say the species -- numbered at between 2,000 and 3,000 in North America -- is concentrated. | |

|"In the Pacific Northwest, it could be possible," said Ed Johnson, science curator at the Staten Island Institute of Arts and | |

|Sciences. "There are hundreds of thousands of acres of uninhabited territory. Something like that could live there and escape | |

|notice for a number of years," he said. "But on Staten Island? I have to tell you, no." | |

|Most scientists agree that if conclusive evidence, such as skeletal remains, has still not been found after decades of | |

|searching, Bigfoot is about as real as Big Bird. | |

|If new mammals are continually being discovered throughout the world, asked Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, a University of Pittsburgh | |

|professor of physical anthropology who specializes in primate and human evolution, how can the supposedly largest animal on two | |

|legs be so elusive? | |

|"As much as I will keep my mind open, the fact that they haven't even found this thing is odd to say the least, in terms of the | |

|rash of discoveries of new animals that has been going on," he said. | |

|A March, 2003 article in the American Museum of Natural History's publication "Natural History Magazine," reported that in the | |

|last decade, scientists have discovered "three species of birds, 19 species of amphibians, 16 species of reptiles, and, just | |

|since the year 2000, at least 29 species of fish and 516 species of invertebrate." It went on to list recent discoveries | |

|including a "barking deer," a "yellow pig" and a species of rabbit, and added: "Those findings alone are remarkable; after | |

|hundreds of years of systematic biology, who would have thought that large or medium-size mammals would remain to be described?"| |

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|A huge blow came to believers late in 2002, after the death of Ray Wallace, the man who coined the term Bigfoot in 1958 after | |

|one of his employees found the beast's prints in the forest of northern California. His family revealed that he faked the tracks| |

|using a set of carved wood feet. | |

|THE SEARCH CONTINUES | |

|A minor setback, said Bigfoot's pursuers. | |

|Indeed, the search for Sasquatch has always been part myth, part science, and the gap between them may be closing. As dedicated | |

|amateurs amass a body of evidence, including hairs, plaster casts of prints and reported sightings, an increasing number of | |

|respected scientists -- including gorilla expert Jane Goodall -- are insisting it is time to take a closer look. | |

|One piece of persuasive evidence, named the Skookum Cast, was discovered in southern Washington in September 2000 by researchers| |

|from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which calls itself "the only scientific organization probing the | |

|Bigfoot/Sasquatch mystery." | |

|It is being hailed as the first documented body imprint of the hairy giant, made while he lay in the mud by a pond to eat some | |

|fruit. The team first investigating it included two anthropology professors and a wildlife biologist. Especially impressive was | |

|the enormous size and authenticity of the Achilles' tendon. | |

|As long as such plausible clues are uncovered and credible witnesses report sightings, the search will continue. | |

|Eric Altman, director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, said the most recent report he received was April 13, when three | |

|farmers out on a walk one evening saw a light brown creature walk toward them in a cornfield. Last year, Altman said, his group | |

|received about 15 reported sightings. | |

|"Most sightings are accidental," he said. "It's like winning the lottery. Most people who have them have never believed in | |

|[Bigfoot] before. One day, there they are, and it's happened to them." | |

|Might it happen again on Staten Island? Consider the scarcely seen white-tail deer. Another self-proclaimed skeptic, Richard | |

|Buegler, president of the Protectors of Pine Oak Woods on Staten Island, admitted, "We know we have deer out there and very few | |

|people see them. It's amazing that an animal like that can exist and not be seen. Some people even say they don't believe | |

|there's deer on the Island." | |

|Though her memory has faded slightly, Ms. Daly's conviction about what happened that night 30 years ago has not. "I know what I | |

|saw," she said, visibly shaken after having tried to forget the experience for three decades. | |

|Like most other people who have reported sightings -- often with great hesitation for fear of ridicule -- Ms. Daly does not | |

|believe in Bigfoot, and said she does not scare easily. And like others, she has trouble reconciling her skepticism with what | |

|she saw. | |

|"It sounds illogical, but this thing was very real to me," she said. "I saw the eyes. They were glinting at me." | |

|Ms. Daly would like nothing more than to forget those eyes. "If it was going to see anyone in the world, it would see Dot Daly | |

|on her way to work -- that's my luck," she said. "Wherever it is, I hope it stays there." | |

|Heidi J. Shrager is a news reporter for the Advance. She can be reached at shrager@. | |

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