In the mid-1970s, stories of mysterious sightings in New Jersey’s swamps and woods surged across the state’s more far flung communities. The alleged apparition: Bigfoot.
Most wrote off Bigfoot as folklore, but the sightings in New Jersey took a serious tone as seemingly reputable sources said the legendary Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest was bicoastal and had taken to the woods of the Northeast.
Some of the local resurgence 50 years ago was encouraged and documented in Jean Jenkins’ columns in the Madison-Florham Park Eagle, the first called “Will the real Sasquatch please stand up?” In it, Jenkins cited alleged studies and reports that said the mythical creature was real and related to the prehistoric Gigantopithecus, an extinct type of ape that lived a few hundred thousand years ago.
In the weeks that followed, Jenkins wrote that sightings in Sussex County had been reported every once in a while since the 1940s, but had become increasingly common starting in early 1975.
Residents in the area around Bear Swamp in Newton, according to newspaper reports, had allegedly been seeing a 9-foot-tall monster with gangling arms roaming the area. In one incident, five people said they encountered a shaggy giant walking upright in a remote area near the swamp. Witnesses said the creature had long gray hair and a humanlike appearance.
A new Bigfoot statue was donated to the Salt Fork Eco-Discovery Center annual by the Ohio Bigfoot Conference during their annual event the weekend of during the May3-5 held out at Salt Fork State Park. The yearly event attracted an estimated 3,000 Bigfoot enthusiasts who came together share their passion for the legendary creature.
Tales of a local Sasquatch screaming in the night, leaving footprints in the snow and even spoiling a hunter’s deer carcass by ripping off a leg before fleeing hit radio shows, such as Glenn Maggio’s on the old WFMV-FM out of Blairstown.
The timing was curious.
In early 1975, the wolf documentary “Cry of the Wild” was supplemented in theaters by a 20-minute report on the “Big Foot,” and ads flooded newspapers for Goodyear’s new “Bigfoot” tire.
Coincidence or not, a fire was lit.
Dramatized searches for Bigfoot began popping up in TV shows, a $10,000 bounty emerged for any video footage and, adding some legitimacy, the Army Corps of Engineers included the Sasquatch in its “Washington Environmental Atlas,” according to various newspaper reports. The atlas warned that some believe human-looking creatures standing up to 12 feet tall, weighing up to 1,000 pounds and striding six feet or more may be wandering the state’s forests.
Later in 1975, reports from West Coast Bigfoot hunters began flooding in. So did the obvious hoaxes. Someone claimed to have captured a baby Bigfoot in an attempt to capture the bounty. Another person said a Bigfoot held them captive for a weekend. But locally the trail went cold. Or so it seemed.
Penn State Forest is home to Bear Swamp Hill, a unique landscape that lies 140 feet above sea level.
In the summer of 1976, the Associated Press released a report out of Walpack Township that went nationwide. Irving Raser, then a 54-year-old warden with the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, told reporters that he and a colleague, Charles Ames, saw a Bigfoot fighting off two dogs in the summer of 1975. The sighting, he said, unfolded during a morning walk near a beaver swamp about a dozen miles north of Newton.
Local police reported that the two men had likely seen two dogs harassing a deer. Raser told reporters for several newspapers, including the New York Times, that he knew better — it wasn’t a creature he had seen before.
During the tussle, Raser said the two men shouted and the dogs pulled back. The creature reached the bank, stood up and looked at them. They said it was about 6 feet tall, possibly 250 to 300 pounds, with long brown hair, deep-set eyes, bare palms and a flat face.
Ames said it “looked like a bloody ape.” And Raser said that if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was a man wearing a monkey suit. However, the scream it let out, Raser said, was nothing like anything he had ever heard from any of the region’s fauna. The creature kept roaring and watching the men as the dogs kept their distance.
After about 30 minutes, the men left and drove to the Hainesville state police barracks, Raser said. They returned with two troopers and shotguns, but the dogs and the creature were gone. The only thing they found nearby was a deer carcass.
Bigfoot is the mascot of the new Salt Fork Eco-Discovery Center. There are multiple statues of the cryptid around the campus where visitors can take photos. Bigfoot is also the character guide throughout the discovery center that offers environmental information.
Months earlier, down south in Salem County, an 11-year-old boy reported seeing a large white-tinged creature in Supawna Meadows, a national wildlife refuge near the Delaware River. His flashlight reflected red eyes from a hair-covered, upright figure about 50 feet away.
The boy’s parents contacted local authorities, who did not pursue the matter. Decades later, investigators with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization interviewed the now-adult witness and found him credible. His description — no neck, massive shoulders, eye level about 7 feet — matched other reports from the era.
The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has reports of nearly 80 Bigfoot sightings out of New Jersey, the most recent credible account coming out of Ocean County in November 2024.
Among them was a December 1976 report from two teenagers, who were exploring the abandoned Carnation dairy plant in Sussex, when one saw “hairy legs” behind a box in the attic. Moments later, the figure crashed through a wall and bolted into a cornfield, bounding five to six feet at a time, organization records show.
There were more reports in other parts of New Jersey during the summer of 1976. Children in Bernardsville in Somerset County reported seeing massive three-toed footprints. In Morris County’s Rockaway Township, a group of children said they saw a 9-foot-tall creature that climbed just like a human picking berries near White Meadow Lake. Police insisted it was a bear.
Still, Sussex County remained the epicenter. As 1976 went on, more stories emerged from those who had remained tight-lipped about their sightings. There were hikers, hunters and a county road department employee, who said he jumped out of his truck and ran to a nearby home when it peered into his window. The Herald News reported that one man claimed to have seen Bigfoot five times between 1974 and 1977. Bigfoot was 9 feet tall, covered in grey fur and could run 60 miles per hour, said the man, John Adams, then a 40-year-old chef.
Adams, who told the newspaper he was relieved to hear others had seen it, had a theory. He said the creatures were extraterrestrial and could make themselves vanish.
By the late 1970s, Bigfoot was part of New Jersey folklore. Some armed themselves. Others traded stories with UFO and paranormal groups. In Sussex County, the term “Big Red Eye” entered local vocabulary, but the statewide hype gradually died down. The legend stayed a legend.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bigfoot in NJ: How sightings craze gripped state 50 years ago