“Juvenile Bigfoot”, Evolved Monkeys, Or Just Good Marketing? Meet The Albatwitch Of Pennsylvania Folklore

Christopher Vera, Director of the Columbia Historic Preservation Society in Columbia, Pennsylvania, and one of the founders of the state’s local “Albatwitch Day” festival, alongside co-founder Rick Fisher, have recorded some 60 sightings from various cryptid hunters or serendipitous ramblers across Lancaster and York counties – including one from Fisher himself. He claims he saw the Albatwitch back in 2002, standing in a road near Chickies Ridge. It was a “stick creature” with glowing yellow eyes, he told PennLive in 2022, and it vanished just as suddenly as it appeared. 

Vera, meanwhile, has his own, perhaps once-removed experience with the creature: “So, I’m up on Chickies,” he tells IFLScience. “I’m on the lower trail after a heavy rain, and […] I see footprints in the mud. And they were only probably, like a size six, but the big toe was pretty big.” 

“But the weird – the odd thing,” he continues, “it wasn’t going lateral on the trail. It’s actually crossing from one wooded area to the other. How many people would walk, barefoot, like that?”

The search for the Albatwitch

So what, then, is the Albatwitch? Well, it’s probably nocturnal, says Vera – the only sightings reported during the day tend to involve Albatwitches that are “lethargic,” he tells IFLScience. 

In fact, saying “it” is probably misleading – Vera thinks they’re pack animals, living in groups up in the forest canopies. And despite their unnerving physical description, they do seem to be peaceful: “I’ve never heard of anybody being attacked by one,” Vera says. “All they do is roam.”

In the nighttime, by contrast, they seem almost mischievous – their very name, Albatwitch, is thought to be a corruption of the Pennsylvania Dutch for “apple snitch”, due to their trademark behavior of, uh, stealing apples from picnickers on the local Chickies Rock, eating them for themselves, and hurling the cores back at their de-lunched victims. 

Visitors without a fruit basket may find themselves even worse off: “my friend [went] down to Fishing Creek, which is in our county, and it’s a wooded area,” Vera says. “So, he has to go to the bathroom – it’ still dark out, so his friend decides to drop him off in the woods and then point the headlights towards the woods while he’s peeing. Midstream, he looks off to his left and he sees what he said was a monkey face staring at him, like a small little monkey face staring at him.”

[I] think they’re monkeys that escaped from the circus back in the day.

Christopher Vera

Such tales have a storied history in Lancaster County. Albatwitch “hunts” are a longstanding tradition – Vera points to newspaper clippings more than 100 years old reporting various forays into the forests in search of an Albatwitch, and none appear to have been successful. “There was one story that one boy saw one something across the path,” Vera says, “but who knows what it was.”

Following the lore

The origins of the Albatwitch legend are, like the beast itself, hard to pin down. Some have suggested it goes back to Susquehannock mythology – the tales told by the Native Americans who lived in what is now Lancaster County before Europeans arrived. Perhaps that’s correct; perhaps another origin, coming from the mostly German immigrants to the area later on, is the true answer.

Honestly, it could be either – or neither. Hell, it could be both: “Some [cryptids] do have Indigenous roots, like the wendigo,” David Puglia, Professor & Deputy Chairperson, English Department, Bronx Community College, The City University of New York, and author of North American Monsters: A Contemporary Legend Casebook, tells IFLScience; “some ostensibly have Indigenous roots but not really, some are European imports, and plenty have come out post-American nation imagination.”

Vera, though, has another theory. “[I] think they’re monkeys that escaped from the circus back in the day,” he says.

It certainly fits the description: mischievous, vaguely humanoid, evidently kind of smart – and there’s a certain plausibility to it. “In Columbia, back in the 1800s, it was common for circuses to come,” Vera tells IFLScience. “I had hotel registry books from the mid-1850s [where] you could see the circus was in town [as they were] staying at the hotel.” 

“So I’m thinking, okay, did monkeys escape from the circus back in the mid-1800s?” he says. “And they went up into the woods and evolved into what we call the Albatwitch […] You know – more hair, skinny, knows how to walk upright […] after so many years of living in the winter, living up in the trees, [could] they evolve into a different [kind of] monkey?”

Such rapid evolution would be, frankly, unlikely – but there are plenty of examples of monkeys adapting to life among humans, or in new or changing habitats. Chimps, for example, have shown remarkable behavioral variability; they can cope in vastly different environments and are smart enough to use tools and exploit resources like few other animals. They are, after all, our closest living relatives.

I speculate that commercial interests and a sense of regional pride and local identity are the driving force behind these particular types of legendary monsters.

Professor David Puglia

Of course, it could be something else entirely. Vera says other cryptid hunters have suggested Lancaster County simply has a Mothman problem; he’s also open, he tells IFLScience, to the idea that the Albatwitch is alien in origin. 

And maybe it’s just a baby of a much more famous cryptid. “A lot of people say they saw a juvenile Bigfoot,” Vera says. 

He thinks that’s unlikely, however. After all, “how many juvenile Bigfoot would actually walk alone without their mother, you know what I mean?” 

A growing community

The Albatwitch may be uniquely Pennsylvanian – you might even say uniquely Lancastrian, being as it is local to the area around the Chickies. But its story is one familiar to cryptid experts and enthusiasts: “It’s very common for a town or sometimes region to have its own local cryptid,” says Puglia. 

He’d certainly know: “There are over a thousand that I’ve identified in the US,” he tells IFLScience. “In my book, I speculate that commercial interests and a sense of regional pride and local identity are the driving force behind these particular types of legendary monsters.”

If so, then Lancaster County is definitely living up to expectations. Each year, Columbia plays host to “Albatwitch Day”, a festival devoted to the beast, which sees cryptid enthusiasts from across the country meet up and share theories. 

“It started as this little gathering, you know,” Vera tells IFLScience. “And now, 4,000 to 8,000 people come. We get some of the best speakers, live music, trolley tours […] we throw apples into the woods, commemorate the creature up in the Chickies.”

Around the town, Albatwitch memorabilia can be found for sale. Stores decorate their fronts with Albatwitch-themed art and props, and the occasional Albatwitch cosplayer poses for a photo. 

In Columbia, local culture buffs aren’t hurting for things to celebrate. The town played a pivotal role in the Civil War, Vera tells me – “if it wasn’t for Columbia burning the bridge, Gettysburg would never have happened,” he boasts – and before that, it was the site of myriad enslaved people’s first taste of freedom. So why is it that, among all these noble claims to fame, the Albatwitch has proven so… marketable?

According to Puglia, it’s all part of the whole cryptid gig. “When it comes to the supernatural,” he writes, “commercialism and media interest are an expected, if not integral, component of the paranormal process.”

“In truth, it would seem downright un-American if some ambitious entrepreneur did not try to boost a town and make a buck off the back of a notorious local demon.”

Could this be the year?

This October, when the 12th annual Albatwitch Festival convenes, the woods around the Chickies will no doubt play host once again to a horde of enthusiastic cryptid hunters. Whether they’ll spot their target remains to be seen; whether they’ll record conclusive proof of it, even more so.

All of a sudden, we see five sets of red glowing eyes staring back at us in the woods […] We didn’t know what to do. But we saw him.

Christopher Vera

So far, there’s no photographic proof of the Albatwitch itself. Vera is planning on setting camera traps for the beast, he says – though it seems so far that this little cryptid may be too canny even for that. After all, they apparently don’t even leave corpses: in years of chasing the Albatwitch, “we’ve never seen any carcasses,” Vera tells IFLScience. 

“But they could be like us, you know,” he adds. “If one of them dies, [maybe] they honor that death […] they may know how to bury their [dead], who knows?”

Still, it might not be the first time the Albatwitch allows itself to be seen. “About six years ago, I had some of the best Bigfoot hunters in the country on a trolley [tour],” Vera says. “We had 27 people. We go out into the cemetery. We turn off all the lights of the trolley, and I start talking about stories of the Albatwitch.”

“All of a sudden, we see five sets of red glowing eyes staring back at us in the woods,” he tells IFLScience. “Nobody’s picking up cameras, nobody’s doing anything. Everybody’s stunned, even the Bigfoot hunters.”

“We didn’t know what to do,” he says. “But we saw him.”