Number of Witnesses: Shandellee… myself and my parents. Roundtop… myself.
Length of Observation: Both experiences lasted no more than a few minutes.
Animal Description: Shandellee… vocal and very smelly. Roundtop… very vocal.
Aprox. Height: unknown
Aprox. Weight: unknown
Head/Facial Description: unknown
Can Witness Provide a Sketch of Animal Seen?: No
Any Odor? If so, Description: Shandelee… It smelled so bad that it woke my parents and myself out of a dead sleep. I can only describe it as a mix of a wet dog, a skunk, and roadkill. Roundtop… it was further up the mountion and out of smell range.
Vocalizations Heard?: Shandelee… mostly low grunts and mutters. Roundtop… started as low gutteral growl and proceeded to a high pitch scream.
Wood Knocks Heard?: Yes
Physical Evidence? Tree Structures Found
Recordings Made?: No
Shandelee, the fall of 1973… Mind you the road we lived on would become a snowmobile route only during the winter months…. Shandelee had a abundance of wildlife, clear water, and many forms of edible fruit and plants… we had an abandoned apple orchard on both sides of the road next to our home… which the local deer herd frequented often. As a hunter I would run across several Indian stoneworks in the woods in the area. Most were only simple flat flagstone structures. There was one in the woods behind the house in a thirty foot clearing in the woods along a path I took as a shortcut to get to the school bus. This one was different than the other Indian stoneworks… this one was a huge “chair or throne” made from very large flat flagstones. My feet would dangle a few feet off the ground when I sat in it. The seat was probably nearly four foot square and it had large wide arm rests. The back was of one stone and was at least ten foot to its top. When I went back there to the “throne”…. I always had the feeling I was being watched. My mom had a compost pit next to the house, and after having the local critters which included the black bear that lived nearby and the coons and other opportunists constantly take advantage of the goodies in the pit, I put a large flagstone over it. Well that kept the little guys out of it but the bear was able to move the stone… so I put a larger stone and piled more on top of that which finally kept the bear out of it. One fall evening we were sleeping with the windows
open when we were awakened by a terrible stench. I went to the window and heard grunts and
mutters… and smelled the worst smell ever. I could not clearly see in the dark night… but the dark
figure I did see at the pit was much bigger than our smaller black bear “neighbor”. My mom came in to my room at this point and asked if I smelled what she smelled and if the bear was back. I was not about to go out and get a closer look at the creature. When I checked the pit in the morning… the stones were literally tossed away from the pit… the bear would basically “slide” the stone from the pit just enough to stick his paw down into it. After all these years I have thought a lot about that stone throne in the clearing in the woods and have come to the conclusion that the early Indians that lived there on Shandelee Lake built that throne to honor the big hairy creature(s) that lived on the mountiantop with them. I did not think to look around for tracks…. there were no stories and shows like there is today which always talks about tracks. Today it is a given to look for tracks.
Roundtop, the fall of 1973…. One night, my school buddy and myself were going to camp out in his tree fort up the side of Roundtop behind his house. He got in trouble and couldn’t go… so I went up the mountian to camp out by myself. The fort was built right over the trail that led further up the mountian.
That night I heard his dog run up the trial barking like he meant it. Right after that the horses came
running hard down the trail whinnying like they were scared out of the heads. I then heard the strangest animal sound I ever heard. It had to be up the mountian toward the top about 500 yards or so. It started out as a low gutteral growl and progressed into a very high pitched scream… this made every hair on me stand straight up. The dog came running back down the trail after the vocalization…. he was whinning and whimpering and scared to death. I sat up the rest of the night holding a very large iron skillet just in case what ever was up there with me stuck its head up through the entry hole in the floor of the fort. I was familar with the wild cats “screams” which was similar to what I heard, but they would sound more like a baby or a female scream with no very low gutteral growl. A few years later I went to see the movie “The legend of Bogie Creek”. In that movie they supposedly had a actual recording of a Bigfoot scream…. to my discomfort, it sounded exactly like what I heard that night.
For all these years, I always wondered why the Pacific Northwest was the only place where bigfoot was being reported… and was I crazy for thinking I had bigfoot experiences in upstate NY? Then recently I seen where the have had very good sightings in Whitehall NY. Maybe I wasn’t mistaken after all…. I know the Catskills mountians have a abundance of animals, fish, fruit, edible plants, and crystal clear water as well as shelter… enough to easily support any omnivore that lives off the land, heck I could live off what I could gleen from the woods up in those mountians… and have done so on many occations when I camped in caves and hunted or fished for chow. If I could do it…. I’m sure bigfoot could do it.