Meet the Albatwitch: Pennsylvania's Little Bigfoot

We're all familiar with the legends of Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, aka a dozen other names. Bigfoot has one thing in common with a lot of other mysterious critters, like the Loch Ness Monster, the chupacabra, and the rational Democrat: They don't exist.

That doesn't mean that sightings don't keep cropping up. Now, in Pennsylvania, there would appear to be a miniature-sized Bigfoot variant, one that is fond of stealing apples. This critter is known not as Littlefoot but as the Albatwitch.

Early one February morning in 2002, Rick Fisher was driving down Route 23 toward Marietta, Pennsylvania, when he saw what he thought was a child standing in the middle of the road. He slowed, planning to help—until he got close enough to see this was no child, or at least not a human one. The figure was about five feet tall, stick thin, and covered in dark hair. Fisher turned on his high beams to get a better look. The creature turned around, staring at Fisher with yellow eyes, then vanished.
Residents of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster and York counties might recognize this hairy hominid as the Albatwitch, a local legend that Fisher says has been spotted in the area since the 1800s. The earliest accounts came from picnickers enjoying Chickies Rock, a cliff overlooking the Susquehanna River. They reported that strange, hairy creatures stole their apples then threw the eaten cores back at them.

As usual, you can color me skeptical. My grandfather used to swear up and down that he spoke with and knew personally every squirrel on his farm, and while my cousins and I were welcome to hunt rabbits and pheasants there, we were forbidden to shoot squirrels.

But then, his squirrels didn't steal apples.

In fact, the Albatwitch legend may have just the opposite economic effect for the people around that part of Pennsylvania.

Though similar creatures have been spotted elsewhere, Columbia [a town in Lancaster county] has claimed the Albatwitch as its hometown cryptid and celebrates it every fall with Albatwitch Day. Fisher, who started the event with Vera in 2014, says he was inspired to throw a local cryptid celebration after lecturing at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The Albatwitch fest has grown with each passing year, bringing together more than 5,000 people from across the United States in 2024.
Fisher is proud of how the festival has grown, though he doesn’t take full credit for its popularity. “It’s not me doing it, it’s the people who come and support it every year,” Fisher says. The reasons people attend the festival vary. Some come to celebrate a local legend, while others have had strange sightings of their own and attend the festival to share notes on their encounters. Along with enjoying lectures, live music, food, and cryptid-themed goods for sale, Albatwitch Day attendees can take trolley tours up to Chickies Rock—with apples in hand—to try and catch their own glimpse of the elusive creature. During a trolley tour at the 2017 Albatwitch Day, Vera says that a group saw five sets of red, glowing eyes moving from tree to tree, watching their trolley pass.

OK, I think I see what's going on here.

Aspiring Sasquatch Hunter Has Legality Questions - Game Regs Are Ambiguous on Cryptids

Now, let me be very clear: I'm a huge fan of free enterprise, and if a small town can monetize a local legend by spreading the word and having an annual festival wherein the townspeople sell paraphernalia related to the creature and its legend, then more power to them. But speaking as a biologist, well, I'll make the same disclaimer I do when writing about Bigfoot: I'll believe they exist when someone brings in a dead one - or captures a living one. Even the Albatwitch isn't a tiny little beast; there would, by necessity, have to be a population of them, and it's kind of hard to swallow the idea that, in this age of ubiquitous smartphones, nobody has ever managed a decent photo of either beast.

So, the folks of Columbia, PA are having some fun and turning some profit; that's great, and I wish them every success. But let's not overlook that this creature isn't real.

Then again, there's also that certain Alaskan legend about the little wild people of the woods and tundra, so...

Every single day, here at RedState, we will stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve.

Help us continue to tell the truth about the Trump administration and its major wins. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.