This is the first of six possible incidents in the Chatham, Illinois area this month. The other reports will be posted in the coming weeks.

Chatham is a village just south of Springfield, Illinois. Not the first place one would think of as having any bigfoot activity. It is an area of soybean and corn fields with several small creeks that drain into Lake Springfield.

Facebook seems to have become the means of mass communication in the last couple of years and was the means that I became aware of this incident.

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15 June 2011

My mom found a Bigfoot footprint in her backyard!

In Chatham

I actually seen one before too … kinda creepy huh ? 🙂

I’ll post a pic

I have a friend who investigates this kind of thing. He’d freak if he saw those pics….

Ok…I will!! His name is John Winterbauer. Texting him now! Wonder if I can show him the pic somehow??

I can text it to you or to him

The neighbors German Shepard has been going crazy too

Is there just one print? Got the pic…thanks…sending it to him…

Yeah just the one. It’s under an apple tree and there are no baby apples above the print but there are elsewhere on the tree.

Weird!!

Can I have him call you? He is asking me for details.

Sure

That is a legit footprint!!! Omg!

That’s freaky

The police are on the way to my moms to look at the bigfoot footprint. What else do the Chatham cops have to do?

Lol please tell me this is a joke

No! lol. They’re calling Dept of Natural Resources tomorrow.

So a friend of a friend contacted me thru here and he is a Bigfoot fanatic and investigates sightings around Illinois. He’s coming to see it tomorrow.

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So the above was the conversation on Facebook on the evening of the 15 of June. A friend of the witness contacted John Winterbauer, a friend of mine who is also interested in bigfoot research. John in turn contacted me.

The next day my wife and I visited the two witnesses in their suburban Chatham home. Location details have been kept confidential. The home property does back up to a wooded stream which flows into Lake Springfield. The family has raised apples for years, but always wondered what was taking all the apples except those at the very tops of the trees. They assumed the apple picker was a raccoon.

The family was getting the liner to their pool changed, when workmen brought the footprint to their attention. At that time the witnesses were concerned about their safety from what appeared to be an intruder and called the Chatham Police to investigate. An officer came to the family’s home and looked at the footprint. He made no comment to the family about what he thought made the print. The area had lots of rain in the preceeding days making the area underneath the apple tree very muddy. Other than this lone print there were other depressions but none of  them as clear and complete as this one tract.

The right foot imprint showing the length of eighteen inches.

The right foot imprint showing the width of seven inches.

The family over the years has at times heard unusual vocalizations but had always passed them off as being some common forest animal. The night before the footprint was found a neighbor had commented about unusual sounds and his large German Shepherd dog was reluctant to go into the backyard and even was demanding to sleep in his master’s bedroom.

The Jonathan apple tree under which the footprint was found.

During our conversation I mentioned to the family that many times bigfoot leave gifts as a show of appreciation for food left out, whether intentional or accidental as in the case of apples. Later that day I received a phone call from the witness stating that he had found a rabbit in the backyard that appeared to have its head pulled off, not bitten or cut, but just simply pulled off.

The remains of a rabbit and a possible gift.

Everything has returned to normal with the witnesses, nothing new to report in the last couple of weeks.