StanCourtney

Tomorrow morning (08:15 a.m.) , the 3rd of August , 2011,  I am going to be a guest on  the Ryan “Rybread” show on 107.1 WEAI FM which broadcasts locally from Jacksonville, Illinois. For those outside the listening area the interview can be listened to in archive here: Ryan “Rybread” show.

The interview is in regards to a series of five possible bigfoot related incidents in the Chatham, Illinois area.

Is Bigfoot In Chatham?

I was contacted to do a short interview with  WCIA TV 3 News, from Champaign, Illinois about the possible recent bigfoot activity here in Central Illinois.

Please click on link below to watch the video:

For the reports about the recent footprint found in Chatham, Illinois please see:

Footprints in Chatham

Messing with Sasquatch may not be such a good idea 

Guest on 100.5 WYMG – Springfield’s Classic Rock

Recently, the 3rd of July 2011,  I was contacted by a friend of mine about an odd occurrence. Her niece lives near Staunton, a small town in Central Illinois. The niece was  gone for the weekend and when she returned home found that something had broken into her chicken coop and killed 24 chickens by pulling their heads off and laying them all in a straight line, all laying in the same direction.

This is a disturbing incident. What could be so brutal as to not only slaughter all of her chickens? But also what or whom would leave them all in a row. That suggests purpose and intelligence.

This Central Illinois incident left few clues. Their neighbors had also lost rabbits which were housed in hutches in their back yard, and unusual sounds had also been noted.

Map of Staunton, Illinois located about 40 miles northeast of St.Louis, Missouri.

Are there other similar cases perhaps in other parts of the country? And if so what conclusions were drawn?

In May 2010 the following article appeared in the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News.

Mystery surrounds 26 headless chickens in North Pole

COOP: Bodies laid in a lollipop pattern, heads gone; three survived.

By James Halpin

Twenty-six chickens were mysteriously beheaded at a North Pole chicken coop this week. Then things got weird.

Troopers say they were called to a home on Sharon Road on Monday to a report of a mass chicken slaughter, with the carcasses laid out in a peculiar pattern on the ground.

The homeowners, who live in a semi-rural wooded neighborhood with large lots, had 29 white chickens in a backyard coop, said Trooper Ken Vanspronsen, who responded to the scene.

Sometime overnight Sunday, someone crept in and tore their heads off, but the homeowners told troopers they didn’t hear anything unusual. They woke up Monday and went out to feed the chickens, when they discovered 26 of them dead.

“They were very concerned as to why somebody would do it, and kind of spooked,” Vanspronsen said.

There was no sign of the heads, troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. The carcasses had been laid out in a north-south pattern — oriented with the coop — in a roughly 12- to 15-foot line on the ground with a circular arrangement of corpses at one end, in something of a lollipop pattern.

“It’s kind of a mystery as to why somebody would tear off chicken heads and then arrange the bodies in a linear pattern,” Peters said. “It’s certainly something that is perplexing. … It’s unsettling, to say the least.”

Troopers wouldn’t name the homeowners, saying they didn’t yet know if the act was a threat against them or if it was simply motivated by vandalism.

There was no damage to the coop itself and just three chickens survived the incident. It wasn’t clear if the suspects had been interrupted in their work of if the surviving chickens held some unknown significance.

“It’s kind of hard to say why anybody would do it in the first place, let alone why they’d stop,” Vanspronsen said.

The chicken carcasses when found were buzzing with flies in the warm Interior day and the meat was not salvageable. The display was photographed and the chickens were thrown out, Peters said..

I have been in contact with the reporter and in the last year nothing new has been added to the story.

In March of 2008  I visited a rural home near Springfield, Missouri and spoke with a lady who over a period of weeks had lost a large number of both chickens and ducks that were housed behind her home.  In this location only a few chickens were taken each night and none were laid out with their heads pulled off. I felt sorry for the two remaining chickens who roosted on her front porch and as close to her door as possible.

This family in Missouri had heard loud wood knocks and roars coming from the dark ravine behind their home. Large footprints and stick structures have been found by researchers on their property.  They sold their home and the new owners have been reporting strange sounds as well

In November of 2010 I gave a public talk in Belleville, Illinois. One of the attendees related to me that she was losing 5 or 6 chickens at a time. She also reported hearing odd sounds like a baby “crying in the woods” as well as other unusual and unidentifiable sounds. Their home is located in the woods near Red Bud, Illinois.

From Paul Graves, well known bigfoot researcher in Washington State comes the following note:

Hi Stan , my friend still lives in the cabin where he had a white sasquatch tear into his chicken pen and take 5 chickens and it layed them in a perfect row in the snow with all there heads pointed in the same direction , they shot bird shot over it’s head because they were scared and didn’t know what it was, they ran back in the cabin and when they came back three of the chickens were gone and two were left on the snowbank, his story was redone on “Monster Quest” show critical evidence, and the very first Monster Quest also .

This incident was also reported in the local newspaper (Wenatchee, Washington) the Wenatchee World 26th of January 1977.

So what are we left with? Were these chickens, killed by having their heads pulled off and laid out in a row, killed by a sasquatch?

I would think that the folks involved would much rather know that they were perhaps dealing with an animal, such as a sasquatch, than what so many suggest, some type of satanistic cult.

Jul 18, 2011

Messing with Sasquatch may not be such a good idea

By Kevin Tremain

Springfield – The State Journal-Register

CHATHAM – There’s something amiss in the backwoods of Chatham, something potentially big. Lately there’s been talk around certain areas of town of an unusual howling and screeching sound as well as evidence of some very large footprints.

Since June there have been at least five to six instances of residents discovering or hearing evidence that the infamous Bigfoot may be lurking somewhere in the Chatham community. One case in particular has garnered some attention from local police, as well as a few proclaimed Big Foot experts.

On Wednesday, June 15, 2011, Michael Patrick’s mother was getting the liner to her pool changed at her residence, when workmen noticed an abnormally large footprint under the apple tree in the back yard and brought the footprint to Patrick’s attention.

The footprint measured approximately 18 inches long and eight inches wide according to the Chatham Police Department report. The immense size of the print isn’t fully appreciated until a hand is placed beside it.

Over the years Patrick and his mother had, at times, heard bizarre noises, but had always passed them off as coming from some common forest animal. But they weren’t the only ones that had heard the sounds either. The night before the footprint was found a neighbor had also commented about unusual sounds.

“My neighbor has a German Shepherd, and it heard something that night that spooked him. The dog went outside to investigate, but came back cowering, now it won’t leave its owner’s side,” Patrick said.

Unsure about what exactly the footprint was, and concerned for his mother’s safety, Patrick called the Chatham Police Department. An officer came to investigate the scene, but was unable to determine what might have caused the print.

“The responding officer stated that there was a large footprint approximately 18 inches long and 8 inches wide, and it appeared there were five claw marks,” Chatham Police Department Deputy Chief, Vernon Foli said.

The footprint measured approximately 18 inches long and eight inches wide according to the Chatham Police Department report.

To give you an idea how big 18 inches is, retired NBA center Shaquille O’Neil’s feet are approximately 15 inches long, and he wears a size 23 shoe. The average human being’s foot measures approximately 9 ½ inches. Most shoe size charts end at a size fifteen shoe. An 18-inch footprint is about the size of a healthy newborn baby. Considering the size of the print, it’s understandable for a person to show a little concern if they found such a print in their yard.

Patrick documented his discovery on Facebook where he struck up a conversation with a friend. Patrick’s friend knew John Winterbauer, a Bigfoot investigator. Winterbauer in turn contacted local Bigfoot expert Stan Courtney.

Courtney has documented sightings and gathered sound recordings and evidence of Bigfoot for years. He has interviewed over two hundred witnesses who have seen Bigfoot.

“I literally know hundreds of people who’ve seen these animals. There have been lots of them in central Illinois. I’ve recorded lots of sounds that other researchers and witnesses believe come from these animals. People in Springfield don’t realize it, but there have been a lot of reports from the Sangamon River around Riverton.” Courtney said in a previous interview.

Courtney said that there have been five to six other reports of finding footprints and howling in the Chatham area since June.

So why is Bigfoot in Chatham? Well it’s hard to say really. Patrick’s property does back up to a wooded stream which flows into Lake Springfield. Courtney proposed that the creature was drawn to the house because of the apple tree that grows in Patrick’s mother’s back yard.

Stan Courtney explained to Patrick that the apple tree might have somehow been interpreted as a gift of food. In the past the Patrick’s had noticed that apples from the tree had been picked, but only to a certain height. They believed that the culprit was a wily raccoon, but the large footprint seemed to suggest otherwise. Courtney told Patrick that a creature such a Bigfoot will usually return the favor, and present a gift of its own as a show of appreciation in the form of a dead animal or a strange arrangement of flowers.

This is the apple tree in the back yard of Michael Patrick’s mother’s house where the Bigfoot footprint was found. The print was found by workmen who were installing a new pool liner for Patrick’s mother.

The day after his meeting with Courtney, Patrick discovered the Sasquatch’s gift, a decapitated rabbit, near his mother’s house. In Courtney’s account he stated that the rabbit had, “its head pulled off, not bitten or cut, but just simply pulled off.”

Since that strange June evening, no more incidents have occurred at Patrick’s mother’s residence. You might think that such a strange series of events would frighten most people in to staying out of the back yard, but the occurrence has not deterred Patrick’s mother from going about her normal routine.

“She’s not scared, she continues to do her yard work, she thinks it’s neat. My mom has never been skeptical of it.” Patrick said.

While his mother may not be skeptical of what happened, others aren’t ready to pin the event on Bigfoot just yet. Vernon Foli posed a possible explanation, albeit an indirect one.

“One thing I can tell you is that approximately ½ mile south of this location is the former Grindstone Valley Zoo that use to have exotic animals. The zoo is no longer in existence but the owner is Brad or Larry Reynolds and he still has some animals at this location,” Foli said.

Could the print have come from an animal from the old zoo? The Reynolds had kept large animals such as buffalo, antelope, elk, deer, tigers, leopards, monkeys, and zebras while the zoo was open. Or could it be a bear footprint? It’s widely believed by many that there are no bears in Illinois, but with their presence in neighboring states, Wisconsin and Missouri, would it be so far fetched to think that there are indeed bears in Illinois?

At this point it’s hard to tell what exactly made the footprint, but with other accounts of strange happenings and unusual howls and screeches in Chatham, many residents are raising an eyebrow.

“I definitely don’t think it was a hoax, and it was more than just a coincidence. I think that people should just be a bit more vigilant and careful, because you never know what you’re going to find out there,” Patrick said.

To check out local sightings and accounts gathered by Bigfoot expert Stan Courtney click here.

To read a previous interview of Stan Courtney by the State Journal – Register’s Dave Bakke, click here.

Bigfoot in Chatham?  Tomorrow morning (07:10 a.m.) , the 21st of July, 2011,  I am going to be a guest on  Lynch & Liz in the Morning at 100.5 WYMG which broadcasts locally from Springfield, Illinois. The complete interview can be listened to here: Bigfoot in Chatham?

The interview is in regards to a series of five possible bigfoot related incidents in the Chatham, Illinois area. The first of these incidents is entitled Footprints in Chatham.