Bigfoot sightings surge in surprising East Coast enclave

Things are getting hairy for Bigfoot in New Jersey!A group of hunters is investigating Sasquatch “sightings” in the Garden State — where the mysterious upright-walking beast has reportedly been seen or heard nearly 80 times.Though legend has it Sasquatch lives in the Pacific Northwest, The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has listed 79 reported Bigfoot sightings in New Jersey on its website.Bigfoot researcher Mike Familant and his team recently honed in on an unexplainably eerie, animal-like sound after mimicking an owl at High Point State Park in northwestern Jersey, Familant told NJ.comThe group recorded the sound in 2022 — but the mystery deepened when an expert determined it had come from outside of the area’s known animal world, said Familant, who documents the sightings on his online series, “In the Shadow of Big Red Eye.”A military linguist “came back with a report that said it was outside of human vocal range and wasn’t any known animal from northwestern New Jersey,” Familant said.The forests of Delaware Water Gap and Stokes State Forest are also supposed hotspots for the elusive ape, according to Familant.Jacob Korbel, an investigator for the research organization, said he was at first a Bigfoot skeptic — until he joined the group on an outing in the Pine Barrens in 2021.“About 100 yards away in front of us, there’s this whoop response,” Korbel told NJ.com.“And right away, I’m like, that’s nothing that I’ve ever heard before.

That’s not an owl, that’s not a coyote, fox.”“And you could hear it slowly getting closer to our position, like it was coming in to check us out.Like we were almost getting flanked,” he recalled.Overall, the reported Bigfoot sightings include 18 in Sussex County, 16 in Burlington County and 11 in Ocean County.Despite their research, there is still no irrefutable evidence Bigfoot exists, is elusive or just mythical.True believers point to everything from footprints to photographs and...