By Tim Binnall
The mayor of a town in Pennsylvania believes that he once encountered Bigfoot during a camping trip decades ago and says that the terrifying experience changed his life forever. Sharing the wild story with a local media outlet, Greg Stokes says that the incident occurred back in July of 1984 while he and his girlfriend were spending the night out in the wilderness near the Delaware River. Suddenly, the still-stunned witness who now serves as the mayor of the borough of Riegelsville recounted, the peacefulness of the night was pierced by the presence of something large and seemingly bipedal lurking around their campsite.
"It proceeded to stalk me for two hours and then screamed at me at the top of its lungs when I was inside my tent," Stokes recalled, "the scream was just absolutely incredible. It was definitely territorial. It was definitely directed at us." The mayor says that the "low, guttural" call was so powerful that it vibrated his body to the point that he ""couldn't see the inside of the tent. It was like looking through shimmering water." Amazingly, Stokes remembers how the creature behind the sound was seemingly so close to the campsite that "I could hear its lips pop open when it started to scream."
Although he did not catch sight of whatever animal was behind the unnerving scream, Stokes is fairly certain that he had run afoul of Sasquatch. "“I'm 99 percent sure it was Bigfoot," the mayor declared, "and I leave the one percent of doubt only because I didn't actually see it." Stokes explained that he eventually exited the tent and uneasily sat around the campfire until dawn, when he searched the area, but found no sign of Sasquatch nor anything else that might have made the sound. Be that as it may, the mayor mused that "that scream was life-changing" as it set him on a path looking for answers as to what he heard that fateful night.
In the ensuing 37 years, Stokes has dedicated considerable time and energy researching Bigfoot to the point that he even journeyed to the famed Bluff Creek, where the iconic Patterson-Gimlin film was captured. In a testament to just how unsettling the incident that sparked his obsession with the legendary creature was, the mayor revealed did not return to the camping spot until 2014. As for what Sasquatch could be, Stokes backed the theory that it is a massive remnant hominid known as Gigantopithecus, which he argues may have somehow survived in the wilds of North America undetected to this day.