By Tim Binnall
A puzzling pair of photos taken at a pond in upstate New York show an eerie figure that unsettled the woman who spotted it lurking in the water. The weird encounter, reported to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), occurred on the afternoon of August 10th as the witness, identified as 'K.D.,' was hiking at a remote marsh in Onondaga County. At one point during his visit, she stopped to snap a picture of "the whole pond with the surrounding area." Moments later, she noticed what appeared to be a person (seen below) wading in the water. "I was instantly unnerved and wondering what the heck was going on," she recalled, indicating that she then took the two now-viral photos (featured here).
"It seemed to snap its head around and look right at me in such a strange way that I got creeped out even more," K.D. said, explaining that the stare-down was so troubling she opted to slowly exit the area before things got any weirder. After reaching the parking lot, the witness bravely decided to walk down a different trail that led her to the area where she had seen the figure. However, when K.D. got near the spot, "there was no one down there." Feeling deeply uneasy about the location, the witness tried traveling down another path near the pond, but was soon overwhelmed by a similar apprehension that ultimately prompted her to call it quits on adventuring for the day.
Although she initially suspected that the figure was simply a person inexplicably skinny dipping in the marsh, K.D. began to have second thoughts when she revisited the photos at home and was struck by the figure's "odd and strange" appearance. "It really looked inhuman," she mused. A friend who subsequently saw her photos "immediately" suggested that the figure could have been Bigfoot, which is how the wondrous images wound up in the hands of the BFRO. Understandably intrigued by the curious photos, the group promptly dispatched an investigator to the scene and worked with K.D. to recreate the presence of the figure seen in the images.
To his credit, BFRO investigator Ben C. ventured to a close approximation of where the mysterious stranger was spotted in the pond as K.D. took video of the scene. "It took me approximately 10 minutes to wade through the water," he later reported, "due to the uncertainty of footing caused by waist-deep pockets of mud, multiple submerged trees and branches, as well as the roots of entangling water plants." While Ben noted that the K.D.'s photos initially appear to show "an elderly, out of shape and naked, human male" inexplicably lurking in the marshland, he argued that "on-site investigation of the location and subsequent size comparison of the figure in the photos to known measurements make this less tenable."
To that end, it has been suggested that K.D. could have encountered a Sasquatch that fateful August day and that the creature's unusual appearance was due to its fur being matted down from the pond water. While that theory may sound fantastic to some, one cannot help but concede that the prosaic explanation of it being a person taking a rather treacherous nude dip in the bog on a random Monday afternoon is almost equally unfathomable. For now, the BFRO has withheld the specific location of the sighting in the event that someone comes forward to identify themselves as the figure. However, given the circumstances surrounding the photo, it is hard to imagine such a scenario unfolding. What do you make of K.D.'s perplexing photos? Weigh in with your thoughts at the C2C Facebook page.