Who would ever have imagined that an innocent hike in Leominster State Forest on a warm day earlier this year would lead to a discovery that brought three Leominster residents to be featured on one of televisions hottest new shows.
Bill Penning and his wife, Julie decided to take a hike one June afternoon, and after setting out their planned route, got slightly waylaid on a different path.
“We were just walking and talking, heading up to Notown Reservoir when the path split. I wasn’t sure which path to take, so we choose one and started walking on it,” Bill began.
He said they continued walking on the path when they began to hear movement in the surrounding forest.
“I thought it must have been a deer or something, but it was leaves and branches crunching and breaking. I got a weird feeling, and so did my wife,” Bill explained.
The pair decided to keep moving forward, so they walked a little further on the path, when they realized they were not heading where they wanted to end up.
“I said to Bill we could continue on till we came to the power lines, but he said no let’s turn and go back the way we came,” Julie explained.
When they returned to the spot where they initially heard the rustling, they were shocked as to what they found.
“We had just been there, and when we came back there were footprints, with five toes, and at least three and a half inches deep in the mud, they were some serious tracks,” Bill said.
The Pennings both experienced an eerie feeling and decided they wanted to get out of the area.
“Where it was early spring there was a lot of brush and berries around us, but not a sound could be heard by anything, no birds, or other animals, just a weird feeling,” Julie said.
Bill said he felt disorientated, and they both spent more time trying to find a way out due to the feelings they had.
“I was kind of scared,” Bill said.
After finding their way back to the road and eventually their car, the couple headed home, still in shock over what they found.
Bill explained that the footprints, all six of them appeared to have jumped out of the wooded area. There were also deer hoof prints, yet no sign of a deer in the area either.
“I think that whatever was there gave us a warning noise, that’s all I can figure,” he said.
After some time of thinking and trying to rationalize what they saw, Bill contacted family friend Ron LeBlanc Jr. and told him what happened. LeBlanc said he has always been fascinated with things that cannot be explained, and has spent time doing research on such things as Big Foot.
“I told Bill I had a casting kit and wanted to go back to the area and make a cast of the prints,” LeBlanc said.
When Bill and Ronnie went back, the large indent of the footprint was still there, even after a few rainy days in-between. The men started making the plaster cast of the foot to bring out of the woods with them. LeBlanc was also surprised by the size of the prints, and knew from so much reading they could not have been made by a human.
“The length is ten and a half inches, but the width is totally huge. It is not a bear, they do not have toes. This has toes like a human,” he said.
The depth of the prints also could not have been made by any human, nor would a human be barefoot in such rough terrain.
“The feet were directly one in front of another, not like the gait of any man,” Bill said.
Once the castings were safely brought out, LeBlanc began making phone calls, and more research on the subject of Big Foot. With some contacts he made, the information got over to The Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet folks, who were very interested in seeing and hearing what the trio had to say.
Penning said part of the experience of being in the woods, “was we were being watched. It was totally silent with other animal noises when we were there, and both I and my wife had the weirdest feeling,” he noted.
LeBlanc said that every year, new species of wildlife and plants are identified, so finding something new is not a stretch.
“There are approximately 100,000 different species identified each and every year.”
Penning spent much of his life hunting, fishing and being in thewoods, so the hike he took was also not out of the ordinary.
“I started to think back to the area in Leominster that was known as Monster-land, and a story that someone went out there and never came out. Kids used to go there to party way back when and I remember stories of things people would see out there. Who knows what was living out there.”
From research done, sightings have also occurred in Gardner and Ashburnham, and all seem to follow the power lines that run east to west across the state. There are woods, water, and plenty of food for anything to live out there.
LeBlanc’s research of the unexplained shows the size of the footprint to be that of a female Big Foot, measuring 10 to 12 feet long. Male footprints can be up to 17 feet.
“I know what I heard and I know what I found,” Penning said. “We were never out there looking for a Big Foot, never even thought about it,” he added.
Stories of knocks in the woods and trees snapping are common in Big Foot sightings, and Penning said he heard the snapping and a grunt.
“All I know is I found prints that made no sense at all.
Julie Penning said if there is another explanation for what the couple found, “I would be interested in hearing it. If someone could scientifically tell me what we saw, I will listen.”
Bill, Julie and Ronnie said they were a bit skeptical telling anyone what they found.
“I hadn’t told anyone I work with about it, but after it’s on TV they’ll all know,” she smiled.
Julie is a special education teacher at the Florence Sawyer School in Bolton and Bill is a facilities manager for Progress Software in Bedford. LeBlanc works for a Boston newspaper.
“There are always people saying they saw a Big Foot, but all I know is you are not going to see one sitting on your couch. We were in a wooded area that according to research is the perfect place for something like that to be,” Penning concluded.
Author: DIANE C. BEAUDOIN | Source: leominsterchamp[January 12, 2012]