NOTE: This new item used with permission of the Sun-Commercial.

From The Vincennes (Ind.) Sun-Commercial, October 31, 1982

By JIM MILLER, staff writer

Something walks by night in the woods.

Something that makes tracks.

Big tracks.

It walks with a four-foot step and pushes through whatever blocks its way, said Daniel Thais and his neighbor Jim Thompson, who have tracked it. It also snaps off sapling trunks and large branches eight or nine feet above the ground.

"Whatever it is, it had to weigh quite a bit," said Thais.

"And it's pretty strong," Thompson added.

Whatever creature may be roaming the woods, it crossed the Thais property on Camp Arthur Road more than a week ago, and it left tracks that Thais and Thompson found Oct. 23.

The young men - Thompson is 22, Thais 21 - were both laid off from their jobs, so they decided tracking the creature would be an interesting and possibly worthwhile way to fill their time. But as they followed the trail, which they had picked up at the former Knox County landfill on the Thais farm, it got to be more than just interesting.

"Your mind starts playing games when you see those trees broken off," Thais said. 'It started scaring us a little about then."

Out of the ordinary

Both experienced woodsmen, the two realized they had found something out of the ordinary. They followed the trail for about a mile, Thais said, across their own property and that of Norman Briner.

"The tracks just kept going, about four feet apart, up and down hills and through everything," Thompson said. "It never broke stride."

"It made you a little tuckered out just following the trail," said Thais. "It took all the hard spots through the woods; it didn't go around the way we would."

He said the broken trees included "good- sized saplings" and branches "about that big" - holding up his hands to compare their size with about that of a baseball.

Obstacles in the path had included thick berry briars, in which the trackers looked in vain for scratched-off hair. They also said they were unable to tell from the marks on broken branches whether its forefeet (or hands) had claws.

Souvenir

But-they did find a good set of tracks, both right and left feet, in a variety of terrain. The deepest were in a sandy spot at the landfill site, where they made a plaster casting of a left foot. The cast print is l5 inches long and 7 1/2 inches wide, with heel and toe prints looking to the unpracticed eye like those of an unusually wide human foot.

But a lot bigger.

"We wanted to cast both feet but we ran out of plaster," Thompson said.

"This cast we made took about 4 1/2 pounds," added Thais.

Other tracks were found in relatively hard pasture ground.

"It had to weigh quite a bit, because of the way it sank in there," Thompson said. "You know how a person will bend the grass over; these tracks were just down into the dirt, pushing the plants to the side."

With mixed feelings about the wisdom of the project, the two decided to follow the trail as far as they could. But it entered a woodlot owned by Robert Murphy, and they did not continue because Murphy had complained about trespassers in the past, they said.

After running out of trail and making their casting, Thais and Thompson began a search for an authority who might identify the maker of the tracks. To date, it has been unsuccessful.

Thais was skeptical of suggestions that it might be an escaped pet or circus animal. While denying any expertise on apes, he said the prints looked too much the shape of human ones for that, especially in the shape of the toes,

They went to Vincennes University, but did not find anyone who could identify the track - or would profess to be an expect on animals that might have made it; They also felt they were not taken seriously there.

"They kind of laughed at us," Thais said. "So did a lot of other people we told about it. We weren't too sure about talking to the newspaper because of that.

"But as far as we're concerned, it would be too much trouble to fake it," he added. "I'm not saying there's a Bigfoot or a monster out there. I don't know.

"But something made the tracks and I'd like to know what - or who."