Long Island Bigfoot Report #7

This post is a guest post by researcher Karl Sup and part of a series. The entire series can be found on the right hand side in the favorites posts (LINK). 

Long Island Bigfoot #7

Central Long Island, New York (City Withheld)

April-May 2016

April on Long Island can be mild, however, when I returned to the woods on April 6th it was still a little chilly in the low 40’s during the day, with night time temperatures dipping into the low 30’s. Trees were still bare, and only a few wildflowers were blooming in the undergrowth. The crisp air didn’t faze me at all as I hurried after work toward the preserve trails. 

I first headed toward the gravel quarry area. At the northeast corner of the intersection of the trail leading to the quarry, I spotted a purposeful arrangement of sticks on the ground. 

They had been broken to size and laid in the forest litter on the corner. This was the opposite corner of the same intersection from where the stick was placed against the tree (see report #6).

At other research sites in Arizona, Texas and Oklahoma, myself and other researchers have noted a correlation between these ground glyphs and the ancient language Ogham (above). 

Ogham pre-dates 6th century Ireland and is found inscribed on numerous burial markers on the island. A theory popular among modern scholars is that the forms of the letters derive from the various numerical tally-mark systems in existence at that time. 

This theory was first suggested by the scholars R. Thurneysen and J. Vendryès, who proposed that the Ogham script was inspired by a pre-existing system of counting based around the numbers five and twenty, which was then adapted to an alphabet form. Another theory proposes that hand or finger signals were the source for Ogham is a reflection of the fact that the signary consists of four groups of five letters, with a sequence of strokes from one to five. 

It is a mystery who originated Ogham, and an even larger mystery why it is making a modern appearance on our forest floors. While this stick arrangement wasn’t apparently Ogham but more like Runic, it was very purposeful and its meaning unknown.

I hiked up and around the quarry to look at the footprint found last time. It had degraded terribly since the last visit without any other prints or disturbances surrounding the area.

There was however an 8 foot by 5 foot area of the quarry hillside below that was disturbed, and what appeared to be a butt print near the bottom of that area. 

None of these were really conclusive or had definitive form, but I did record and photograph them anyway. In traversing back down the hillside of the quarry, I did find one print. Oddly enough, just one. 

It was situated two-thirds of the downslope, with the print about 15 degrees off from perpendicular. It was smaller than the old print on the path at the top of the quarry, but still nearly 14 inches. Its depth was impressive at 1.5 inches. It took a tremendous amount of weight to create it. Stomping my foot into the substrate nearby merely dented the ground a quarter inch.

It also appeared that there were toe drag marks in the print in the downslope end of the print. Toward the center, there were lines that looked like shoe tread but could also have been creases in the bottom of a bare foot. I was sure then, or now, what to make of this print. The fact that it was a solitary print in the center of the hillside, still puzzles me.

Twilight consumed the woods, and I started hiking back out. I didn’t get back in there until April 21st. I was rarely still on Long Island on a Thursday, but there were scheduled meetings on Friday morning and I had to stay over. 

The grey skies of winter had finally given way to spring and brought with it milder temperatures. Trees and flowers started to blossom and birds sang for their love interests.

I hiked to the quarry area, but found nothing out of place. The sticks laid out at the intersection were gone however. In the area between where the stench was encountered in Fall 2015 and where the print was found in March 2016, I placed an apple on a

branch of a broken tree. This tree would become my new apple gifting station for this site. The gifting branch for this 12 foot tall stump was about 8 feet off the ground, and was visible from either trail. 

After placing the apple and announcing that it was a gift for them, I decided to hike toward the area where I found the garbage can cairn (see Report #6).

The cairn was undisturbed, so I continued down the trail west from the cairn. I found a large red rubber ball off the trail in a clearing of the thicket. 

I was drawn to that area because of an old tree break that was visible from the trail to the north. Not far from the red ball was a weathered tennis ball as well. 

The leaves and forest litter had been well trampled at some point. I surmised that these balls may have found their way out of the backyards of homes nearby, however the nearest home was over 200 yards away down a path that was not well traveled and had over growth in many places. I would have to assume they were carried here at some point. The red ball was surrounded by brier vines that had sharp thorns.

Along this path were four interesting, purposeful and obvious sets of sticks laid out on the ground. They were directly on path, smack in the middle. This path looked lightly traveled. They were not random arrangements. Their meanings once again are unknown, but I’ll just leave these up to your analysis:

These ground glyphs were about 30 to 40 feet apart down the path. There was an unusual amount of other small sticks near each of these areas but off to the side. Almost as if other messages had been left and removed in the past. One of the fallen trees on the path was covered with bracket fungi. The fungi was not disturbed or damaged on the top edges of the log where one would expect damage on a path that was well traveled. Broken forest litter on the path showed signs of aging and weathering due to snowfall and freeze/thaw cycles.

 I hiked back out of that area and tried a never explored trail 200 yards due north of my previous location. On this trail found an intriguing stick arrangement 20 feet to the south. 

Sticks had been placed into a box shape with three small saplings inside the perimeter of the box. A curved stick stretched over the arrangement, spanning two of the saplings. Further down the trail I discovered an old trail split that went southwest in the direction of the multiple tree break area and old bedding (see Report #6). 

Just off the trail I found an old Works Progress Administration (WPA) drainage box from the late 1930’s. In the summer and fall this area would have been completely invisible from the trail. It makes me wonder how many miles of drainage conduits are running under these woods and where other access point were located!

Shortly thereafter I headed out of the woods. I did stop by a fenced pasture on the way out of the preserve, where three horses roamed. They would never come near the fence line unless I was holding an apple. I always lured them over on each visit to get a look at their manes. It has been reported by other investigators that Sasquatch, or possibly woodland hair stylists, will braid the manes of domestic horses at night. These three horses never had any braids visible. The pasture did border a busy road, and perhaps that was a deterrent.

When I finally returned to the woods on May 16th, the temperatures were very beautiful and in the mid-60’s during the day. Spring had finally arrived. The flowers were blooming and the forest undergrowth was growing lush and thick. I hiked in to the quarry and found that the apple was gone from the tall ‘gifting stump’. The print was eroded even further from the spring rains. The area downhill from the trail was once again dense with vegetation and an excellent hiding place.

 

On the trail at the same intersection to the quarry where other ground glyphs had been left, there was a pile of rocks assembled there. The pile was approximately 10 x 8 inches across. 

The rocks were not stacked, but laid out. I pondered why it had been placed there, without a resolution. Further down the trail away from the quarry toward the garbage can cairn was a new ground glyph.

As with many of these glyphs, there was a couple of fresh breaks on the ends. This always tells me they were placed and not coincidental tree fall. A solitary rock was placed along the outside edge of the longer stick. It was likely during all of my time in these woods, I must have been walking past many of these messages on the ground without noticing them. They are very subtle and look very natural… until you really LOOK at them closely.

I hiked down toward the garbage can cairn to see if there were further markers or ground glyphs down that path. I found that the cairn had been knocked over off the red stump. Markers that were on the ground before were all gone and the sticks had been swiped off to the side. Since they were purposefully erased, I made the assumption that their original intent was purposeful as well.

Once it started to get dark, I began to hike back out. To the east of the trail leading out to my rental car parked at the dead end road, I could hear some crunches. Now at other times I would stop and listen closely and determine it was falling acorns, a squirrel, a raccoon, a deer or any other explanation. 

This time when I stopped to listen, one additional crunch could be heard before it too, stopped. I continued walking again then stopped abruptly, with the same results. 

I was definitely being shadowed. 

Sasquatch will parallel your path to observe you. At one point I was able to see some slight movement through the dense brush in the dim light. I took several photos into the brush, but there was really nothing conclusive. 

The area where the movement was perceived is circled in red. 

After I stood there for a while straining my eyes and taking photographs, I continued down the now dark path. However, I no longer heard anything stalking me to the east. My next trip into the woods was in June, but you’ll have to wait for Report #8 to read more!

Karl Sup is a software architect, developer and analyst, and an avid Bigfoot researcher working in the mountains of Arizona for many years. During this research and in other states including New York, Maryland, Iowa, Missouri, Georgia and Wisconsin, he has been fortunate enough to interact with and view multiple subjects over the years. Karl also has had decades of audio analysis and editing experience, and assisted in helping M.K. Davis clean up and enhance audio from VHS tapes he had been studying and discovered the presence of infrasound within those recordings.