On Saturday afternoon, I joined a capacity crowd inside the Northland Public Library community meeting room to hear longtime Pennsylvania researcher Stan Gordon speak about Bigfoot.
Before I go any further, I should correct the mistake I made while Gordon was signing books after the program. I casually referred to him as a “Bigfoot hunter.” He politely informed me that he prefers researcher and investigator.
Fair enough. Nobody at the library was issued a tranquilizer rifle, a net, or one of those safari hats with the little chin strap. More importantly, Gordon has spent decades interviewing witnesses, visiting reported encounter sites, comparing testimony, and documenting strange events across Pennsylvania. Whatever conclusions someone might draw from his work, he clearly does not regard Bigfoot as a punchline.
I usually do.
A Full House for the Hairy Fella
The library program was called Strange Aspects of the Elusive Bigfoot, and apparently I was not the only person curious about those aspects. The meeting room was filled to capacity, with an audience that included longtime paranormal enthusiasts, curious adults, and quite a few younger children attending with their parents.
Gordon began investigating Pennsylvania Bigfoot reports in the late 1960s and has since interviewed hundreds of people who claim to have encountered large, unexplained, hair-covered creatures. The library promised stories involving Bigfoot, UFOs, mysterious orbs, trails of footprints that suddenly stop, and possible government interest in some cases. Gordon delivered all of that and considerably more.
His background may help explain his methodical approach. Gordon trained as an electronics technician, specialized in radio communications, and worked in electronics sales for more than forty years. He began researching mysterious Pennsylvania events while still young and eventually organized investigative groups devoted to UFO reports and other unexplained phenomena. His official biography describes his involvement in the extraordinary wave of UFO and Bigfoot reports that swept across Pennsylvania in 1973.
I arrived about ten minutes late, so I may have missed the full story of what first pulled him into Bigfoot research. I do not believe Gordon has ever personally seen one.
At least, not yet.
What became clear very quickly, however, was that the Bigfoot Gordon investigates is considerably stranger than the one I had brought into the room with me.
Not the Bigfoot I Expected
I tend to imagine Bigfoot as an oversized ape-man wandering through the forest, occasionally stepping in front of a blurry camera before disappearing behind a tree—kind of like a mother-in-law from hell.
Gordon’s cases describe something much more elusive—and potentially much more unsettling.
Witnesses often describe creatures standing between seven and nine feet tall. That part is familiar enough. The glowing eyes are where things start getting interesting.
According to many of the reports Gordon discussed, the creatures’ eyes do not merely reflect an outside light source the way an animal’s eyes might shine in headlights. Witnesses describe the eyes themselves as appearing illuminated.
Then there are the UFOs.
Gordon believes there is a significant relationship between Bigfoot encounters and reports of strange objects or glowing orbs in the same area. Pennsylvania’s enormous 1973 wave remains central to his research because residents were reporting both unusual aerial objects and encounters with huge, hair-covered creatures during the same period. His book Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook focuses heavily on that strange convergence.
One of the cases he described involved a farmer who encountered what I recall Gordon characterizing as an enormous red sphere—possibly as large as a barn—near his property. Two towering, glowing-eyed creatures appeared nearby.
The farmer responded in the traditional Pennsylvania manner: he retrieved a .30-06 rifle and shot at them.
It apparently had no effect.
The creatures eventually vanished, leaving no ordinary explanation for what the witnesses had seen. Other cases involved gunfire that likewise seemed unable to harm the creatures. There were reports of tracks that abruptly ended, as though whatever made them had simply disappeared from the physical landscape.
Gordon also described a white-haired creature reportedly holding what looked like a globe of energy. Some witnesses have seen groups of smaller creatures, perhaps five feet tall rather than the more commonly reported giants. Apples seem to be a popular menu item. Other cryptids—including mysterious black panthers—sometimes surface in the same regions. Rare reports even involve what witnesses interpret as telepathic contact.
Taken separately, almost any one of those stories could be dismissed as a mistake, exaggeration, prank, or strange night in rural Pennsylvania. What interests Gordon is the repetition of certain details across decades of reports from people who often have no connection to one another.
That does not make the stories proven. It does make them interesting.
Bigfoot May Not Be an Animal
Gordon’s conclusion is not that a previously undiscovered species of giant primate has somehow maintained a breeding population in the forests of Pennsylvania without leaving behind a body, a skeleton, or other conclusive physical evidence.
His theory is much stranger.
After decades of examining the reports, Gordon believes Bigfoot may represent some kind of interdimensional phenomenon. The creatures appear, interact with our environment, and then leave in ways that do not behave like those of ordinary flesh-and-blood animals. Their association with orbs, UFOs, abrupt disappearances, glowing eyes, and apparent resistance to gunfire suggests—to him, at least—that the hairy figure may be only one visible piece of something far more complicated.
He also spoke about mysterious people who contacted him over the years regarding his investigations—figures with a definite Men in Black quality. Whether they were government agents, private investigators, cranks, or something else, their interest added another layer to cases already buried beneath several layers of weirdness.
I cannot say that I walked into the library believing Bigfoot was an undiscovered woodland ape and walked out convinced he was an interdimensional tourist.
I did walk out realizing that Gordon’s version of Bigfoot is a much better story.
Enter Clipper Watson
Bigfoot already has a minor foothold in the Midas Files.
Clipper Watson promotes himself as a Bigfoot expedition leader in West Virginia. He takes paying customers into the wilderness in search of cryptids, unexplained creatures, and whatever else might be lurking beyond the campfire light.
I have always enjoyed the uncertainty surrounding Clipper.
Is he a genuine believer? Is he a lovable snake-oil salesman? Does he exaggerate the evidence because tourists want an adventure? Has he spent so much time playing the role of Bigfoot hunter that even he no longer knows where the performance ends?
The most entertaining possibility may be that Clipper has been wrong about almost everything—until the day he encounters one for real.
Gordon’s lecture gave me a completely different way to imagine that meeting. Clipper would not merely stumble across an oversized animal hiding in the woods. He might encounter something whose presence is accompanied by strange lights, warped perception, missing time, or an opening between dimensions.
He might even discover that Bigfoot does not need to hide particularly well because it does not remain here for very long.
That possibility fits rather comfortably inside the Midas Files universe. In my stories, certain beings and civilizations travel through hidden pathways known as the Folds. These are not ordinary tunnels through space. They are fractures, shortcuts, and intersections within reality itself.
I nearly explained this to Stan Gordon standing over his book table.
Then I realized that I was not fully prepared to explain the Folds to a man who has spent more than half a century investigating actual reports of interdimensional Bigfoot.
This was probably the correct decision. I am not entirely certain I understand the Folds myself.
Time to Check Bingham’s Notebook
I left the library entertained, intrigued, and considerably less inclined to treat Pennsylvania Bigfoot lore as nothing more than a setup for a joke.
That does not mean I have become a true believer. Skepticism remains useful, particularly when extraordinary claims are built on testimony that cannot be independently verified. Yet I also admire people who take witnesses seriously enough to listen, document what they say, and search for patterns without immediately ridiculing them.
Stan Gordon has been doing that for decades.
He has written several books about Pennsylvania UFOs, Bigfoot encounters, cryptids, Kecksburg, and other unexplained events. His website continues to document current reports from across the state, including new UFO, Bigfoot, and cryptid activity reported during 2026.
I may eventually ask whether he would be willing to sit down for a longer interview. I remain curious about what originally drew him into the subject, what he considers his most convincing case, and whether any witness has ever described something resembling the Folds.
Until then, I have some fictional research of my own to conduct.
Perhaps Larry Bingham investigated unexplained creatures alongside UFO phenomena. Perhaps one of Clipper Watson’s ridiculous expeditions will place him face-to-face with something he can no longer explain away. Perhaps Bigfoot has been crossing through the Midas Files universe all along, wandering wherever he pleases while humanity argues about blurry photographs.
It looks like I had better start taking more notes in Bingham’s Notebook.
There may already be a section on Bigfoot.
