Extremely Detailed Account Of A Run In With A Wild Man (1879)

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Bigfoot Chicks, Melissa Adair. As serious researchers, the Bigfoot Chicks are commited to seeking the truth regarding the Bigfoot mystery. You can visit their blog at bigfootchicks.blogspot.com.

Two hunters came upon a wild man in the woods. Fast moving and scantily clad, he easily evaded capture. The story of this interaction with the wild man later appeared in a local paper and it was learned that he was a crazy Frenchman who had escaped when authorities were transferring him to an asylum. There are several interesting elements in this story that speak to the possibility of this wild man being a Bigfoot creature. It seems a little hard to swallow that a truly mentally ill person could survive alone in the forest for 2 years. What do you think?
See story below.

The Evening Gazette
Port Jervis, NY, Thursday, November, 20 1879
HUNTING A WILD MAN
A Strange Being Said To Be In
The Wayne County Woods

The curious Person Taht Two Hunters
Found While Hunting Deer - A Man
Nearly Naked And With His Skin
Black With Dirt - An Escaped Lunatic

From the Philadelphia Times

Stareoca, PA, November 13 - Much of the upper part of Wayne county is still an unbroken wilderness and a resort for hunters from all parts of the country. charles Ames and Frank Allabeen of rochester, NY have been camping near Upper Woods pond during the past week. On Monday they were driving a ridge for deer. Their dogs worked off the ridge to the edge of a dense laurel swamp. Ames was slauding at the foot of the ridge on a "run-way," pointed out to him by his guide. The yelping of the hounds and a commotion in the swamp put Amos on his mettle, as he supposed a deer was about to leap out into the open space and give him a chance for a shot. His gun was raised ready to fire, when to his surprise he saw a human being spring from the bushes and run rapidly across the opening towards the mountain. He ran in a stooping position, and helped himself along by a dexterous parting of the thick scrub oaks with his hands. His head was bare and his hair long. The opening across which he ran was several rods wide where the thick timber began. The strange being ran so fast that the hunter had very little time to note his appearance, but he saw that he was very scantily clad.

Pursuing The Wild Man.

Ames was so startled for the time that the man had reached the woods before the hunter had recovered himself. Then he resolved to follow the wild man - as he believed the thing to be - and if possible capture him. Shouting to Allabeen and the guide the three started in pursuit. The guide said that a man answering the description of this one had been seen before in that region by wood-choppers, but not for over a year. For some distance the hunters proceeded cautiously through the woods, but saw no trace of the object of their search. The dogs could not be made to take his trail. Finally the hunters stopped on the brow of the ridge and concluded to abandon the hunt. One of the dogs had gone off a short distance and his barking attracted the attention of the men. They walked in the direction of the noise and discovered the wild man crouching in the limb of a tree near the trunk and about eight feet from the ground. As the hunter approached, he nimbly swung himself to the ground and ran off into the woods. The guide instantly raised his gun and aimed at the fleeing man, but before he could fire, Ames struck the gun upwards and the charge passed over the fugitive's head. The guide said he had not realized what the consequences would have been if he had killed the man. The hunters were now more than ever determined to come up with the singular creature they had unearthed. They followed in the direction he had taken until they came to a place where the underbrush was almost impenetrable, and, as it extended a long distance up an ddown, they naturally concluded that the wild man had entered the thicket. They were not long in doubt, for as they walked ablong on the edge of it, trying to find a place where he might have entered, he bounded out again, within a short distance of Allabeen. The lattter ran towards him, and the grizzly creatuee stood still, as if he had given up all idea of escape.

When the hunter drew close enough to touch the wild man the latter turned and walked towards the thicket again. Allabeen sprang forward and caught hold of the man's shoulders, which were naked. Quick as a cart he truned and clasped Allabeen about the hips. Raising the hunter from the ground he sthrew him heavily, had first, into the underbrush. Allabeen maintained his hold, and the wild man fell with him into the thicket, but in an instant was on his feet again, and tearing loose from the hunter, ran back into the woods, Ames and the guide were but a hundred feet distant, but so quickly had the encounter begun and ended that it was over before they reached the spot. Allabeen received a sprained wrist, some bad scratches and a badly bruised side from his severe fall, but the hunt for the wild man was continued for two hours. All efforts to obtain further trace of him failed. Allabeen says that the man was nearly naked, the covering that he had on being remnants of a corduroy suit. His skin was hard and black with dirt His whiskers and hair were long, mixed with gray, and matted and entangled with twigs and briars.

Who Is He?


Two years ago three citizens of Damascus while looking for a lost cow in a swamp in that township, came upon a bare-headed, ragged and bare-footed man, with a short-cropped gray hair and beard. He ran away when discovered, but was captured after a long chase. It was evident that he had been in the for for some time. He talked wildly, in a language that no one in the neighborhood understood. He was finally taken to the couty seat and placed in jail. There it was found that his strange language was French and that he was evidently insane. When asked what his name was he drew the figure of a cross and he exclaimed in French: "I am the Empire." The county authorities refused to assume and responsibility in the case of the strange being and threw him on the Damascus authorities. No one in the township would take charge oof the unfortunate lunatic as apauper, and, as an easy way out of the dilemma, he was placed on an Erie railway train with a ticket to a station in a neighboring county,Before the train reached that station the man leaped from the car while in rapid motion, swam the Delaware river and disappeared once more in the woods of Wayne county.

An account of the circumstance of his capture, and the extraordinary disposal that was made of him was printed in a local paper, and some weeks afterward it was learned that the wild man was a pauper lunatic from a New York county. He was a Frenchman, who had lost his mind over the defeat of the French army by Germany and the destruction of the Empire. Having been pronounced an incurable case, the county authorities were taking him to a state institution, via the Erie railway, and he escaped at a small station bordering on Wayne county, and a long search failed to effect his capture. That this unfortunate creature has managed to maintain an existence in the forest of Wayne county for two years does not seem possible, but such is now believed to be the case since the adventure of the two Rochester hunters on Monday. An effort will be made to capture him and have him taken to a asylum.