Who ya gonna call… for a Bigfoot sighting?

No one expects a Bigfoot encounter. Certainly not while you are driving down a highway or forest road. What would you do if you saw something you couldn’t identify? If you wanted to report it, who would you contact?

Maybe it’s just me, but I have often thought about this. When people ask me if I’ve ever had a strange or paranormal experience, I say “No” because I would never jump to a paranormal conclusion about an experience. I would consider all the potential rational possibilities and even doubt my own memory because I realize how flawed observations and interpretations can be. I especially recognize that I could not possibly exclude every normal explanation in order to definitively state it was evidence of the “paranormal”. The best I would be able to conclude is, “I don’t know” and it would remain my own personal experience.

But what would I do if I captured good visual or physical evidence of, say, a cryptid?

A local Bigfoot encounter

I was prompted to think about this again when I saw local coverage of a Bigfoot sighting that took place on Interstate 80 in PA approaching State College, a road I drove frequently decades ago when I was going to Penn State. The witness contacted the BFRO – the nationwide Bigfoot clearinghouse. The report noted the day and time was Saturday, October 4 at 5:30 PM. The weather was clear and the event occurred over an hour before sunset.

The witness described the movement of the figure as “moving quickly and smoothly.” The witness estimates that the time it took to cross the road from the moment it started moving from the right shoulder to the left shoulder of the highway was approximately three seconds. B.G. estimates that the figure crossed the left side of the road in three or four strides, he does not know how many it took to cross the right side of the road as it was obscured by the Subaru. The witness emphasized how amazed he was at the speed of the figure as it crossed the road. The witness recalled yelling out to his wife “What the hell was that?!” as the figure disappeared into the forested median to the left.

A tall, all dark figure crossed the road from right to left in front of a car ahead. It went over the guardrail on the left side of the road without stopping into a forested median. He lost sight of the figure and when he drove past the spot where it entered the wooded strip, there was no sign of it. He continued on. Everything happened within a few seconds. His wife, in the passenger side, was not looking ahead and did not see the figure.

The witness was very interested in the car ahead, who must have seen the figure at closer range when it crossed in front of them. There was no follow-up that I know of regarding a witness in the other car. The reporting witness even tried to follow the car and approach the driver to ask what they saw, but he was unsuccessful.

The witness described the figure as not proportioned like a human, or a bear. And not even much like the typical Bigfoot:

The witness said that the entire frame was taller and slenderer than he would have imagined for a bigfoot. He described it as “Long, tall, and slim”. Trying to compare the figure to a human body, the witness said how the legs and arms were longer with the arms extended downwards below the waistline as it crossed. B.G. said how the frame did not make sense to him, as the limb lengths were not proportional to a normal person.

He did not see clothing or fur/hair. I don’t know who else he contacted regarding this incident or why he went to the BFRO.

I really don’t like speculating on what happened here. But I would not dismiss that this person saw something upsetting – whether it was a person illegally and dangerously crossing an interstate highway where no pedestrians are allowed, or if it was something weirder.

What would you have done?

I’ve seen things while driving that gave me pause. When you are travelling at speed, you don’t have enough time to take in what you see. Then you are way past it, or you can’t just stop and pull over. Your brain works to try to figure out what to make of it and what response to take.

I had one incident where I was driving on a local road and swore I saw a large, out of place, iguana-type lizard on the roadway shoulder. After thinking about it for about 45 seconds, I was able to turn around and go back. There was nothing there. In countless more incidents, I was not able to go back.

For a moving creature, you have no way to go back. It’s gone. All you have is your memory, constructed based on the second or two that you saw it move. That’s not enough time to work out what it was. Mostly, you can fit the incident to a known scenario – a deer, a dog, a person, etc. But sometimes you can’t.

Other countries use dashcams more than we seem to in the US. One of our cars has a video camera feature that saves the last few seconds recorded if you beep the horn. That’s really handy but not widely available.

If I got something like the above incident on camera, and I thought it was a real anomaly, who would I share it with? I used to think I would send it to the most skeptical investigator I know at the time. I would probably report it to the police or game commission. I would NOT post it to social media, or go to the BFRO because then it can be used for purposes beyond my control. But many people do this. Many others probably don’t do anything but keep it to themselves. There are reasonable justifications for any and all of these options.

What did the other driver see? Why didn’t they report anything? Did they see what it really was? Or did the see something they didn’t want to know about? What would you do?

Update 11 Nov 2025: A Penn State blog, Onward State, reported on this incident with basically the same info as in the news articles and BFRO report. But this bit is important:

The witness to the October 4 encounter claims to have never believed in Bigfoot and only came to the conclusion after reading other reports of similar creatures in the area. And, after the BFRO reached out to him, the witness was willing to drive over one hundred miles from his home back to the site, simply to add more concrete data to the investigation.

If true, that’s interesting. It doesn’t change the fact that our culture conditions us to know what Bigfoot is. It’s a worldwide icon that is well-known, especially to residents of the US and Canada with access to modern news. It sounds like BFRO reached out to him, not the other way around. This shows the utility of local amateur research and investigation groups (ARIGs) that are mostly the collectors of these kinds of reports. They are willing to believe whatever you say without judgment. And, while they don’t usually do anything scientific or useful with the reports, besides publicize them, they serve a purpose in promoting belief and being scientifical.

The detail that the witness was willing to collaborate with BFRO to get additional measurements in the location, and not seek any personal publicity, pushes me even more to accept that he saw something upsetting, whatever it was.