Trick Or Treat: Big Foot In Severna Park

By John Singleton

Civilization is fragile. The modest advancements enjoyed by suburban families often appear to hang in the balance. Bigfoot, real or imagined, is a reminder of the chaotic unknown, the unexplained and the irrational.

It was 1958 when Bigfoot first entered the national consciousness. At a construction site in Bluff Creek, California, Gerald Crew made a plaster cast of two large footprints lodged in the mud. Among the construction team were a number of Hoopa Indians, who explained the imprints belonged to a hairy forest giant. Bigfoot was born.

One of the first reported Bigfoot sightings in the Annapolis area occurred in 1970 on Bay Ridge Ave, near the SPCA. According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website, a young man was sleeping in a camper in the driveway of his parents’ home when he “noticed a shadow cutting back-and-forth through the window ...the thing came up slowly and walked around, lightly tapping the sides of the camper while walking around it. The boy could also see the shadow of a ‘head’ through the roof, so the thing had to be 9-10 ft tall.”

The BFRO was founded in 1995 as the only scientific research group studying the Bigfoot/Sasquatch mystery. Today, it is a repository for thousands of Bigfoot sightings across the United States. Critics declare Bigfoot a hoax. Others simply believe in the possibility of an unclassified primate who roams beyond the boundaries of established science.

In 1982 a Bigfoot sighting just off Benfield Road by a 13-year-old boy is documented on the BFRO website: “I grew up in a sub-division called Ben Oaks on the Severn. There’s a stream that runs by Shipley’s Choice and Ben Oaks across the road. At that time, Shipley’s Choice was a new subdivision where homes were being built. The stream was at the bottom below two hills. I recall playing around the stream and following it back to Ben Oaks. I was alone and remember feeling like I was being watched. I looked up the hill in the area of the new sub-division and... I saw a Bigfoot, maybe 7-8 feet tall. I didn’t know what it was at first. It was dark brown and big.”

There are numerous reports of Bigfoot sightings in Anne Arundel County on the BFRO website. In fact, the Severn River is identified as a corridor of particular Bigfoot activity. The trout-stocked creek bottoms that extend across the Severn Run Natural Environment Area, perched at the northwestern end of the Severn River, consist of more than 1,700 acres of state-owned land. The wildlife corridor created by Severn Run acts as a natural conduit for all forms of animal life to make their way south along the Severn River toward Severna Park and Annapolis.

On August 1, 2000, Baltimore Sun reporter Laura Barnhardt published a story describing an encounter with a mysterious 12-foot creature near what was then the Arundel Mills Mall construction site. According to Barnhardt, “Construction workers who were napping in a van called police” when an upright, furry, thing “ran past them so fast they weren’t sure what it was. The workers, who had fled to a nearby fast-food restaurant for safety, were reluctant to return to the construction site with the officer, said Sgt. Joseph Jordan of the Anne Arundel County Police.

“When the workers and the officer later caught another glimpse of what appeared to be the animal near a pond also on the site, the workers ran, police said. The off-duty officer stayed and reported seeing two animal-like eyes in the dark, though he couldn't tell what it was, police said.

“About 3:00am, the officer saw what appeared to be an animal lying on a hill near the pond, though it's unclear whether it was the same animal spotted earlier, police said. The officer blew an air horn several times, ‘but it didn't jerk or move at all,’ Jordan said. Anyone who sees a large animal should keep a safe distance and immediately call 911, Jordan said.”

Later that week officers and witnesses joked that what they could have seen was the “imaginary Loch Ness Monster from the Severn River.”

Today, Corporal Nicholas DiPietro of the Anne Arundel County Police, who was the officer on the scene at the construction site at Arundel Mills, still recalls the incident.

“A report came in that a group of construction workers had seen a 12-foot, furry creature run through the construction site at the Arundel Mills Mall. I was on the scene and responded. The report was from a group of construction workers who were sleeping in a van on the construction site waiting for work to start the next day. They were scared and I have no reason to believe they were trying to mislead the police. I investigated and later spotted a bear down by a sediment pond on the construction site. Although the description of the creature differed from the initial report, I’m pretty sure what they saw was a bear.”

Captain Joe Jordan of the Anne Arundel County Police still remembers the incident and acknowledges the difference in what was reported and what was identified later at the scene.

“The incident at Arundel Mills in 2000 was reported and documented with the Anne Arundel County Police as it should have been. Any time something out-of-the-ordinary happens that is reported by four people it needs to be reported and documented. It was a real incident, it happened,” Captain Jordan said. “The construction crew reported seeing a 12-foot creature. That obviously differed from what the police spotted later. Speculation on the animal itself is not something I can comment on.”

Could there be a Severn River Monster? Is Bigfoot real? Has modern science accounted for every possible species that roams the earth? The existence of Bigfoot will be debated for decades to come. But the more urgent question is - when will Bigfoot be spotted again in Severna Park?