Guest tirademan Posted July 17, 2012 Posted July 17, 2012 This account is intriguing. I found the 1902 story that represents the 1875 story as a fake first. But I've found many stories that were explained away (imagine that!) with ridiculous solutions. The 1875 account has a lot of detail that seems accurate to witness descriptions. I also have many other stories from Pennsylvania throughout the 1870-90s. What say you? tirademan
georgerm Posted October 7, 2019 Posted October 7, 2019 Sounds like a bigfoot and the poor dog did its best.
Trogluddite Posted November 12 Posted November 12 (edited) I just want to add a small grain or two of information to the research done by tirademan (RIP). If one reads the first article, who doesn't imagine an encounter with a gorilla or a gorilla-like animal? The details are remarkable. I believe that it is extremely unlikely that gorilla behavior was well-known in small-town America in 1875. From https://a-z-animals.com/articles/when-were-gorillas-first-discovered-why-was-it-so-late/ a gorilla skull was discovered by an American explorer in 1847 and French explorers actually sighted gorillas in in the late 1850s. An English explorer, Richard F. Burton, didn't publish Two Trips to Gorilla Land... until 1876, and then in England; this was after this newspaper article was published. It appears that the first type specimens were not brought back to Europe, by German explorers, until 1902. So where did the author of the article learn about this gorilla-like behavior? While the article's author is identified as John Nemo ("no one" in Latin), that is not necessarily a red flag. Bigfoot witnesses today wish to remain anonymous and that could be the sole reason for the use of a pseudonym. The article was published in a Christmas circular (i.e., a one-off to advertise Christmas shopping specials). In the second article above, the story is attributed, without corroboration or specificity, to "a New Castle newspaperman," which makes little sense as the effect of the story was to frighten the locals and the story may have kept shoppers away from New Castle. While the second article above claims that the owner of a minstrel show decided to take advantage of the article by pretending to capture the ape-man, nothing in the article suggests that the pretend ape-man resembled the creature described in the first article. As late as approximately 1887, Bob Hunting's "circus" was a one ring circus whose main attraction was a tight rope walker. And while Bob Hunting's minstrel show went on to become a very successful circus owner, there is no suggestion that it ever had gorillas, although it did have its fair share of scandals. Some additional articles relating to Bob Hunting and his circus follow. Edited November 12 by Trogluddite
Trogluddite Posted November 12 Posted November 12 I'm just adding these last two for their humorous value. I may not have been successful, I'd be much obliged if someone would let me know if you can reed the .pdf files. 1875 PA New Castle FU2.pdf 1875 PA New Castle FU3.pdf
Recommended Posts