By BARRETT NEWKIRK

barrett.newkirk@heraldbulletin.com

The strange experience 30 years ago of Mrs. Don Chestnut got significant coverage in the local press.

An Indiana State Police report printed in The Anderson Herald on Aug. 11, 1977, said the Elwood resident spotted an “unidentified walking object” or UWO while driving on P Street before dawn the day before.

“According to police,” the report read, “Mrs. Chestnut said she was driving from Elwood to Anderson to pick up her husband from work when she saw the creature in the road. The UWO was reportedly about 8 to 9 feet tall, with hair all over it, resembling a large monkey.”

The report ended, “Police say ‘bigfoot’ type creatures were reportedly seen quite often in this area 80 to 100 years ago, but this is the first report of this kind in several years.”

An article six days later in the Alexandria Times-Tribune speculated that the animal Chestnut saw may have been a horse that frequents the same stretch of road at night.

The news article mentioned several other big animal encounters in the area, including another alleged bigfoot sighting in Tipton County two years earlier.

If bigfoots do still live in the area, it seems they’ve gone back into deep hiding. A Madison County conservation officer said last week that the only strange animal sighting he could recall happened three years ago when a collared wolf traveled 600 miles from Wisconsin to Randolph County.