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On the trail of Bigfoot‘He’s out there, I can sense it9WAYNE KING, 40, director of the Michigan Big Foot Information Center studies a plaster cast of a footprint left by the legendary and elusiva ape-like creature who King Believes inhabits the wilds of northeastern Michigan. I know he exists, said King.LAKE ANN, Mich. (UPI) — A twig snapped somewhere below the thickly wooded ridge along the river bank and Wayne King stopped dead in his tracks.Silently, he swung his 8mm movie camera into position and waited, eyes intensely searching for movement in the forest shadows.“He’s out there. I can sense it,” King whispered, adjusting the tripod on his camera.HE STOOD ready to record the moment he’d spent 27 years preparing for — a face-to-face encounter with Bigfoot, a legendary ape-like creature who King believes inhabits the wilds of northwestern Michigan.Ten minutes passed with no sound, no movement, no Bigfoot. King and his three companions moved on.“I’m not disappointed, because I know he exists,” said King, an auto worker who operates the Michigan Bigfoot Information Center from the basement of his home near Flint.“EVEN THOUGH I’ve never seen him, there is plenty of solid evidence, eyewitness accounts, proof that Bigfoot, or Sasquatchas the Indians call him, is in Michigan. And some day, I don’t know when or where, I’m going to find him.”Other Bigfoot sightings have been reported in recent years in the Pacific Northwest from northern California to British Columbia.King, 40, spends his weekends in the woods, following leads reported to the information center. Sometimes he is accompanied by his “field man,” Nathan Blake-more, 24, a fellow worker at the Flint Chevrolet plant, who also admits to being a “Bigfoot believer.”“I’m no Bigfoot hunter,” King said with a firm look. “I don’t want to hurt him. I only want to prove he exists so we can get some laws to protect him.”The latest “hot spot” in his ongoing search is Benzie County near the Platte River and the Lower Woodcock, an idyllic lake where a fisherman recently reported hearing a series of eerie whistling screams that King ascribes to Bigfoot.“NEVER BEFORE in my life have I heard a sound like that,” the fisherman, Abe Roorda, 30,told King. “It must have had lungs bigger than mine. It was almost human.”A week earlier, King was following another lead about a half mile from the Lower Woodcock when he discovered 12 large footprints spaced in 7 to 8 feet strides.He made a plaster cast of one print that he said “clearly show s the padded foot of a 600 to 300-pound primate. Definitely not a bear. No claw marks.”In another part of the county in 1974, a man and his teen-age daughter ran off the road one night to avoid hitting a tall hairy man-like creature who stepped in front of their car, King said.A year ago, a Flint couple vacationing in the area found giant footprints in the snow that King described as “those of a large humanoid.” The same couple earlier this year reported hearing a strange scream in the woods accompanied by a strong garbage odor that Bigfoot experts associate with the creature.IN ALL, KING said, he has received 40 “solid pieces of evidence” including eight sightings of Bigfoot in Michigan over thepast four years.This time out, King found no signs of Bigfoot to back up Roorda’s account. So he packed his gear and drove to a nearby cafe for a lunch of coffee and cigarettes before heading home.Thanks to a serie of daily “Bigfoot reports,” on a local radio station, word of King’s presence preceded him to the cafe. He wras handed a message asking him to inspect some tracks found by mushroom hunters in a woods a few miles away.“Look at the size of that,” King said, gently probing a 15-inch long foot-shaped impression. It was one of about 40 widely spaced prints that stretched out over some 300 yards before trailing off into the dense woods.“How can you dispute evidence like this?” King said gleefully. He dispatched Blakemore to fetch the plaster while he posed for pictures beside the print.“A good find,” he said. “Not as good as finding Bigfoot in the flesh. Seems like I’m always a step behind him. But someday he and I are going to shake hands. I just hope I have my camera with 11me.
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Herald
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Tue, May 31, 1977
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Hayner P.
IL, USA 27 Sep 2023
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