Bigfoot's fans had a big year in 2021

You’ve probably seen the famous footage of Bigfoot — that grainy film from 1967 showing an apelike creature ambling through the California woods, casting a brief, leisurely glance at the camera before disappearing off screen.

What an Illinois man saw last month was rather different. The creature he says he spotted outside the small town of Chandlerville, northwest of Springfield, was fast, athletic and massive, covering a two-lane road in two quick strides. It had incredibly long limbs and was covered in shiny black hair, the man said, and was gone almost before he could register what was happening. “It jumped into the darkness and I was kind of freaked out about it,” said the man, a 59-year-old engineer who lives near Peoria. “I said to myself out loud, ‘(Expletive) Bigfoot!’”

The downstate engineer said he was driving home on Illinois Route 78 when he saw the creature bound across the road about 40 yards from his vehicle. It turned toward him just before it vanished, though he couldn’t make out its eyes or face. The man said he is not a Bigfoot enthusiast and was sober as a judge when he made his sighting.

Matthew Moneymaker’s (of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) theory is that the creature is a primate genus known as Gigantopithecus that crossed into North America from Asia during the Ice Age and has managed to elude capture.

Tales of Bigfoot-like creatures exist all over the world.

https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2021/12/bigfoots-fans-had-a-big-year-in-2021.html