14. The Beast of Whitehall, another local Bigfoot, terrorized a small town in Upstate New York in 1976
The Bigfoot type creature reappeared in the eastern part of the country shortly after the Fouke Monster events. The occurrence in 1976 Upstate New York remains much-lauded as evidence in the Bigfoot community. One hot, August night, a group of teenagers were listlessly driving around when they spotted a hairy, 7-foot tall creature standing by the side of the road. As they turned their truck around to get a better view, the beast began to scream at great volume, and ran towards the vehicle. The boys sped off, and reported the incident to a skeptical local police force in Whitehall.
One of the teenager’s brothers, Brian Gosselin, was a police officer on duty that night, and the following night decided to investigate in the company of another intrigued colleague. Tramping through the field where the beast had allegedly stood, Gosselin found it in his torchlight, just 35 feet away. ‘It was over 7-feet tall, probably around 400 pounds. When I put the spotlight on it, it raised its hands, they weren’t paws… to cover its eyes’, he later recalled. Trust in the eyewitness-account of a cop has made the area a hotspot for Bigfoot hunters (and thus, sightings) ever since.