Two Bigfoot Sightings Reported in Pennsylvania's Chestnut Ridge

Posted Tuesday, July 07, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

There's something about a childhood encounter that just hits different, you know? When a witness is recounting a face-to-face moment from when they were just a kid, the details tend to be incredibly vivid—and that's exactly what makes this recent interview over on the Creek Devil channel so compelling. William Jebning, who's been doing this research game for over four decades, sits down with a guy named Joe who shares not one, but two connected sightings from Pennsylvania's Chestnut Ridge area. If you're familiar with Sasquatch research at all, you know that region has a reputation. The Chestnut Ridge, sitting about 35 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, has long been considered a hotspot for all kinds of strange phenomena. Joe mentions his own mother even had a UFO sighting back in 1973 near their home, which adds another layer to the area's mystique. But let's get to the meat of it. Joe was 10 years old in 1979, right after Christmas. It was a Wednesday, his dad had just flown back to Baton Rouge for work, and his mom was heading off to her nursing shift. Classic latchkey kid scenario—he'd been out sled riding with his buddy Chucky all afternoon using one of those infamous "magic carpet" roll-up sleds that somehow sold millions despite being pretty much useless. After hours of playing in 2-3 feet of snow, the sun was going down and he had to make his way home, following plowed roads because the snow was too deep to cut through the fields like usual. As he crested a little hill approaching his parents' driveway, with snow banks piled high on either side from the plow trucks, something walked right across the road in front of him. Less than 50 feet away. Joe describes it as roughly 7 feet tall, dark charcoal gray—darker than battleship gray—and built like a basketball player. Very lanky, very thin. Not the typical stocky Sasquatch build you hear about most often. Here's what really gets me about this account: the creature didn't even acknowledge him. Didn't look at him, didn't break stride. Just kept walking from one snow bank to the other, then turned left and headed down the neighbor's driveway into a grove of trees behind their house. Joe says he froze completely—physically and emotionally. His brain was scrambling for any rational explanation, even glancing over to see if maybe his neighbor Mr. Riffle was out shoveling snow. But he knew what he saw. He stood there for four or five minutes, terrified it might come back, then bolted a quarter mile down his parents' driveway, locked the door, jumped in bed, and pulled the covers over his head. He didn't even eat dinner that night, which his mom noticed the next day. He told her he'd eaten at Chucky's house and wasn't feeling well. He didn't really discuss it with her until years later. But here's where it gets even more interesting. About 18 years later, Joe and his dad were out bird hunting—pheasants and grouse—and they ran into a ranch hand who was hired to watch over a nearby bison farm. Some locals had been shooting the buffalo, so this guy sat in his white Chevy Cheyenne pickup at night listening to baseball and keeping watch. He struck up a conversation with Joe and his dad and eventually told them he'd seen something strange—a tall, lanky, gray creature he described as a Bigfoot walking through the fields near his house. Joe didn't say anything about his own encounter at the time. He just listened. But the description matched exactly what he'd seen as a kid. Same build, same coloring, same area. Whether it was the same individual or just a similar type of creature roaming those woods, it's hard to say. But two independent witnesses describing the same unusual Sasquatch variant in the same region? That's the kind of corroboration that makes you pay attention. The Chestnut Ridge area has been associated with Sasquatch sightings for decades, and accounts like Joe's—coming from someone who was just a child at the time and carried the memory with them into adulthood—carry a certain weight. There's no reason to embellish something that happened when you were 10 years old, especially when you didn't even tell anyone about it for years. If you want to hear the full interview, including Joe's more recent encounter in Idaho, definitely check out the Creek Devil channel. Jebning has been hosting these witness accounts for 43 years, and his approach is straightforward—no hype, just letting people tell their stories. It's worth the listen, especially if you're interested in Pennsylvania Sasquatch reports or that lanky gray morph that seems to pop up in certain regions more than others.