Pennsylvania’s dark woods inspired our Skooky Things season this year. . . after the sun goes down, strange noises abound. Mysterious animals and cryptid sightings have been synonymous with this area..
And on that note.. Enter the little Bigfoot.
He is well known around these parts–some have seen him, while others stayed busy looking for his bigger brother..
Albatwitch is a 4-foot legendary creature..
He, or she, has said to have inhabited the Chickies Rock area along the Susquehanna River.
From that point Albatwitch moved around, with sightings in various woodsy locations around Eastern PA..
Like so many other paranormal legends, this forest-inhabiting friend has quite a long history in Dutch folklore..
The darned Dutch! They strike again.
The Albatwitch is not as scary as Bigfoot (although some think Bigfoot is just trying to keep to himself, stay private, and live his best life) ..
The Susquehannock Native Americans tribe held a belief in an ape like creature that roamed the local woodlands, even depicting it on their battle shields..
Albatwitches were said to make their presence known by making a sound like a cracking whip but mainly lived in the trees and shadows of the forest. We guess they did not want to be seen..
The creatures were also said to communicate over long distances by smacking flat rocks together. If you hear that in the woods today, he aware..
He is a primarily shot humanoid like-entity. From what we know through traditional stories, the Albatwitch liked to sit in trees and snack on apples. It would even be a thief, taking apples of unsuspecting people!
In a sign of pure rudeness, the entity throws the cores of digested apples at people it stole them from..
In fact, that’s how it got its’ name – albatwitch is a corruption of an “apple snitch.”
The legend says they were driven to near extinction in the later 1900s, although there were a few reported sightings in the early 70s and one as late as 2005. Their base, Chickie Rock, has long been the hub of stories concerning strange sounds and sights..
So how did we get the stories from the 1800s passed down to us today, enough to have a location actually host an Albatwitch day.. ?
In 1920, the NEW ERA reported about a YMCA group that wanted to find the creature. It failed, despite one boy thinking he saw one:
On July 15, 1926, the Lancaster NEW ERA reported about boy scouts trying to find the Albatwitch–until they just gave up.
Things went quite on the Albatwitch front.
Until the 21st century.
INTERNET AGE: THE PERFECT TIME TO FIND AN ALBATWITCH
Someone must have been listening to Art Bell..
In February of 2002, at 6:00 am, Bigfoot and paranormal researcher Rick Fisher was out driving along Route 23 near Marietta.
As he neared Kinderhook Road about two miles from Chickie’s Rock, he noticed a dark figure seemingly dressed entirely in black walking in the middle of the road. As he approached, he began to wonder why someone would be walking in the middle of the road in darkness and began to slow down. As Rick drew closer to the figure, he could tell that the figure walking in front of his car was the size of a child, which made him even more concerned as he wondered why a child would be out on the road at that time of day. Rick was practically crawling as he followed the figure, and concerned for the child, he decided to try to get its attention.
So he proceeded to reach over and turn on his high beams to try to get the child to turn around and understand why it was out during that time of day. The figure noticed the now blinding lights behind it and, just as expected, proceeded to turn around, but as it showed itself to Rick in the glow of his headlights, Rick could tell this figure was not human. Rick could see in front of him a black hair-covered creature about three feet tall and seemingly not distressed by his high beams. Rick felt that what he saw at that moment was in his experience a kind of Bigfoot and said in an interview with Linda Godfrey, “my first thought was that this must be a skinny one, it walked like a human not ape-like although the arms were longer, and it was swinging its arms.” As he stared at the creature, its eyes glowed a brilliant yellow, and as he watched in total amazement, something particularly bizarre happened, the creature disappeared. The creature simply popped out of existence, leaving the stunned motorist behind on the road. Rick pulled his vehicle off to the side of the road sitting there shaking in absolute disbelief at what he had just witnessed. He began to get out of his vehicle to investigate the area, but then a sinister thought dawned on him. If this creature could seemingly wink itself out of existence, then it could just as easily rematerialize someplace else, like right next to him or in the back seat of his car. Seeing the potential paranormal danger he was in, Rick hopped back into his car and proceeded to drive back home. He did not tell anyone of his sighting for some time but ultimately came forward. As with most experiences, his story was completely bashed by skeptics, and so he went searching for more eyewitnesses as a way to corroborate his story that a creature like that did exist. When discussing his sighting to a colleague, his friend would go and tell of how he met someone who saw the same kind of creature just a couple miles down the road from where Rick did, and so Rick went and proceeded to interview the witness.
The very wordy description gives us the keys to unlocking the Albatwitch mystery.
It speaks for itself:
So it was all fun and good vibes until as soon as my family was trying to leave and that’s when things got eerie. A small crowd of people had already formed at the train tracks waiting to cross over so everything seemed totally normal… until it wasn’t.
The best way to describe it is the train began to make rapid freak successions and noises, changing directions and making thrashing, horrifying jolts until finally coming to a complete halt. For over an hour.
I wouldn’t say that panic ensued, but the whole mood of the event shifted. My husband and I looked at each other after accepting we were unable to leave, and realized this was going to be fun with two young toddlers 😊. People began asking each other what’s going on. One puzzled Columbia local shook his head and said that nothing like this has ever happened before. A German Shepard that was waiting alongside us was panting and jittery, almost like the dog was picking up on something spooky too. Believe me when I say after about 20 minutes people actually started to climb up and over the train cars to cross the tracks to leave.
So, hey Lancaster Reddit community, was anyone else there? Was that all just a very bizarre coincidence …..or maybe…. just maybe, is it possible that the Albatwitch wanted to make things more interesting this year? 🙃
In the spirit of Halloween, I’d love to hear from anyone else whose experienced creepy things in the Chickies Rock/Columbia/Lancaster area. True stories only…
One response to the Reddit post we enjoyed most: “What in hell is an Albatwitch?”
THIS, my friends, is an Albatwitch:
