Editor’s note: Watch throughout October for Paranormal PA, a series from PennLive exploring strange and unexplained phenomenon, from hauntings to Bigfoot sightings and everything in between.
An apple-loving, pint-sized version of Bigfoot is the local bit of folklore at the heart of Albatwitch Day, which will be celebrated Saturday, Oct. 8 in Columbia, Lancaster County
The legend of the albatwitch — a rarely seen ape-like creature described as being very slender, 4 to 5 feet tall and covered in reddish-brown hair — is older than the town that celebrates it each year.
The creature figures into the mythology of the Susquehannocks, the native Americans who inhabited the area for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived, said Christopher Vera, president of the Columbia Historic Preservation Society.
The Susquehannocks painted images of such creatures on their war shields, said Rick Fisher, a Columbia-based paranormal researcher and owner of the massive collection that was once the National Museum of Mysteries and Research Center.
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“We’re not really sure if they had a belief in some ape-like creature or where they got the image from,” Fisher said. “Perhaps it was just a warlike image to ward off enemy tribes.”
But the albatwitch celebrated in Columbia today may be more Pennsylvania German than Susquehannock in its origins. Many believe the name “albatwitch” is a variation on apple snitch, a uniquely Lancaster County bit of folklore.
The creature gained a reputation for thieving apples in the late 1800s, when Chickies Rock, just upriver from Columbia, was a popular picnic spot, complete with a trolley that ran there from the town.
“These creatures, the albatwitch, would come out of the trees and steal apples from the people who were picnicking there,” Fisher said “They would eat the apples and throw the cores back at the people.”
Both men also have shared more modern accounts of the albatwitch.
Vera said a boyhood friend reported an encounter in the early 1980s, when “this creature came eye to eye with him and pinned him to a tree. His brother yelled and the creature ran.”
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Fisher, who’s been involved in paranormal research for many years, said he encountered something that looked similar to the generally accepted description of an albatwitch on Valentine’s Day 2002, while heading to Middletown to present a program on ghosts.
He said a “stick creature” with glowing, yellow eyes was walking down the middle of the road near Chickies Rock when he spotted it in his headlights. Then it vanished.
The two men were at the helm of the Albatwitch Festival that launched in 2014 and has evolved into Saturday’s event, which runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Speakers this year will be Mary Fabian, founder of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Project; Eric Altman, founder of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Bigfoot Study Group, a field investigator for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, director of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society and most recently founder and director of the Pennsylvania Cryptozoology Society; Tim Renner, creator of “Strange Familiars,” a podcast about the paranormal, weird history, folklore and the occult; Lou Bernard, an investigator of the paranormal, legends and stories from the past; and Robert Phoenix, a practitioner of Pennsylvania German powwow and folk magic tradition.
Music will be provided by Dillweed, Stone Soup, Sound Method and Tangmoon.
Rivertowne Trolley Company will run trolley tours from Columbia to Chiques Rock every 45 minutes through the day. The festival also will feature a range of vendors and food providers
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