"Bigfoot from Black Creek" from A Ghosthunter's Journal by Mason Winfield

II

It was an exceptionally mild October afternoon when I arrived at the home of Bill Pascarella and Sandy Stefan. Bill was a strong, red-bearded fellow perpetually dressed in jeans and flannels, a wood sculptor whose studio was in Wellsville. He traveled frequently about our region on various jobs, and, though he was obviously a firm presence about the household, he seemed to be a bystander to its social life and much of the decision-making. Sandy was a thirtysomething hippie, a free-thinking, long-haired artist who watched their brood of kids (ranging from five to twenty) and ran a gallery out of their house.

With input from the kids, Sandy gave me the particulars. They’d heard “funny noises - no one had anything more specific - outside their rural house one moist night the week before. I got the feeling that there was something atmospheric, possibly even subliminal, about their perceptions. The next morning they saw the footprints in the wet soil and made impressions of the best two. Presuming hopefully that the big fellow’s a vegan, they put bowls with a variety of fruit and bread on the porch that night. In the morning they found the edibles uneaten, though moved, as if picked up and examined. Strangest of all, a mirror, a heavy old job that took strength to move, had been taken from their porch a dozen yards into a small grove and left resting behind a tree in a position that could have reflectected the light from the house, as if the unknown woodsman was fascinated by it or his own image. One of the kids reported that something in the orchard had dropped a behemoth biohazard of which I’m pleased to say no plaster impressions were made.

For the evening of our interview an informal signing and reception had been arranged at Sandy’s living-room shop. I enjoyed her granola-cruncher friends and got a batch of new leads on the local paranormal for Shadows' eventual follow-up. Sandy’s boys and girls were well underfoot. A sixteen-year-old pack of anxieties named Parker was the image of my younger self, distrustful of authority figures like I must have at that point seemed. Evidently I passed the test, for within seconds of our first exchange of words the compact, sandy-haired, buzz-cut fellow was spilling those details of his life - his girlfriends, his fistfights, his wisecracks to teachers - that he thought put him in the best light. He focused on me as if only he and I were in the room, talking for a minute or two, then circulating off with his sidekick Jake and returning later, expecting my full attention for his every observation - no matter what stage a talk was at with someone else. Jake - an affable widebody introduced as a poet - offered to send me his own work for review, which would have been fine. I always try to encourage writing in kids. Parker tried to talk him into reciting one of the bombshells that had impressed their circle, but he declined. He’d send me something, though.

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