This Is What Made Whitehall Famous For Bigfoot

With the bigfoot history surrounding the area, it's no wonder Whitehall, NY is an upcoming destination for the Finding Bigfoot team. Sightings in the area date back for 40 years. But what really got the area known as a sasquatch hot spot?

Abair Road Sightings

However, it was the sightings in 1976 that cemented Whitehall as a Mecca of Sasquatch sightings.

In August of 1976, Paul Gosselin, who at the time was 18-years-old, was out driving around with a friend, Marty Paddock. The two were driving down Abair Road, in the Town of Hampton, when they heard a female screaming.

Gosselin and Paddock glanced out into the vast field to see what the noise was coming from. The two reported to see a large, ape-like creature between 7-feet and 8-feet tall, darting toward their car.

Immediately, they both got in the car and stormed into the Village of Whitehall to report what they saw to police.

Gosselin’s brother, Brian, was the on duty police officer in the Village of Whitehall that night, when his father, brother and Paddock came flying back into the village.

“They were so strung out with excitement and fear,” he said.

The following night was Gosselin’s night off from work, so he decided to go out and see for himself.

Gosselin was down in the meadows, where his father and brother had seen the creature, while a state trooper was up at the top of the hill on Abair Road. The two were communicating via radio.

After about an hour and a half, Gosselin was radioed by the state trooper who said “Brian, what the AbairRoad(expletive) is that. I’m heading out of here.”

The trooper sped away, leaving Gosselin alone.

He said he continued to hear noises, “not twigs snapping, limbs snapping,” and something suddenly made him decide to turn his spot light in the direction of the sound.

“I turned my spotlight on it and it was now about 30-35 feet away,” Gosselin recalled. “It was over 7-feet tall, probably around 400 pounds. When I put the spotlight on it, it raised its hands, they weren’t paws, they were hands, I could see the fingers, to cover its eyes. They were red and about the diameter of a mayonnaise cover, they didn’t glow like a deer’s eyes in headlights though.”

Gosselin said at that moment he had a million different thoughts run through his head, when suddenly the creature turned and retreated, making a lengthy guttural noise.

“It’s impossible for a human to make that noise,” he said. “This thing showed no aggression though. If it wanted me it could have had me, let’s put it that way.”

Gosselin sat in the field for about 15 more minutes, trying to figure out what he had just encountered.

“I knew everything it wasn’t, it wasn’t a man, it wasn’t a bear, it wasn’t an ape,” he said.

Since that moment, Gosselin has been 100 percent a believer.

It was the Abair Road sightings that Bartholomew says have made Whitehall a haven of Sasquatch activity.

“The New York/Vermont boarder area has had several underreported instances,” Bartholomew said. “Abair Road sort of made Whitehall famous for it.”

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