Early one February morning in 2002, Rick Fisher was driving down Route 23 toward Marietta, Pennsylvania, when he saw what he thought was a child standing in the middle of the road. He slowed, planning to help—until he got close enough to see this was no child, or at least not a human one. The figure was about five feet tall, stick thin, and covered in dark hair. Fisher turned on his high beams to get a better look. The creature turned around, staring at Fisher with yellow eyes, then vanished.
Residents of Pennsylvania’s Lancaster and York counties might recognize this hairy hominid as the Albatwitch, a local legend that Fisher says has been spotted in the area since the 1800s. The earliest accounts came from picnickers enjoying Chickies Rock, a cliff overlooking the Susquehanna River. They reported that strange, hairy creatures stole their apples then threw the eaten cores back at them. This is likely what led to its name, which may have started as a compound Pennsylvania Dutch version of “apple snitch,” though Tim Renner, cohost of the Strange Familiars podcast, believes the true root of the name is the German word alb, or “elf.”
The Chickies Rock area is no stranger to paranormal activity. The village of Chickies flourished with iron furnaces that burnt anthracite coal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After those furnaces closed in the early 1900s, the village was abandoned and the area converted into Chickies Rock County Park. The 200-foot quartzite cliff at the park’s center is known for its scenic vistas, but has also been a place of tragedy, with lives lost to falls and accidents over the years. Some of these departed souls are believed to haunt the ghost town of Chickies, whose ruins can be seen along the park’s trails.
While hauntings are reported in the area, though, those who have spotted the Albatwitch believe it’s a flesh-and-blood creature—and Fisher is just one of many who claim to have had an encounter with it over the years. Newspaper reports from the 1920s describe campers going on Albatwitch hunts (though they don’t mention whether any were successful). Since going public with his 2002 encounter, Fisher has personally received 21 reports of a small bigfoot-type creature in Lancaster and York counties, several of which are recounted in his 2019 book Ghosts of the River Towns.
Those raised in the region grew up with the Albatwitch as local lore. Chris Vera, a local historian and president of the Columbia Historical Preservation Society, recalls childhood games centered on hunting for Albatwitch and trying to catch it in a bag. “It’s something we always did as kids,” he said in a 2023 interview with PennLive. “I hold the bag down while your friends chase the Albatwitch.”
Most Albatwitch sightings center around the Lancaster County town of Columbia. Vera has uncovered more than a dozen reported Albatwitch encounters in archives of Columbia newspapers, dating back to the 1920s, and documented over 60 sightings in recent decades.
Though similar creatures have been spotted elsewhere, Columbia has claimed the Albatwitch as its hometown cryptid and celebrates it every fall with Albatwitch Day. Fisher, who started the event with Vera in 2014, says he was inspired to throw a local cryptid celebration after lecturing at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. The Albatwitch fest has grown with each passing year, bringing together more than 5,000 people from across the United States in 2024
Fisher is proud of how the festival has grown, though he doesn’t take full credit for its popularity. “It’s not me doing it, it’s the people who come and support it every year,” Fisher says. The reasons people attend the festival vary. Some come to celebrate a local legend, while others have had strange sightings of their own and attend the festival to share notes on their encounters. Along with enjoying lectures, live music, food, and cryptid-themed goods for sale, Albatwitch Day attendees can take trolley tours up to Chickies Rock—with apples in hand—to try and catch their own glimpse of the elusive creature. During a trolley tour at the 2017 Albatwitch Day, Vera says that a group saw five sets of red, glowing eyes moving from tree to tree, watching their trolley pass.
As to the origins of the Albatwitch and why it calls South Central Pennsylvania home, local experts each have their own theories. Vera is currently researching a theory that their story begins with primates that may have escaped from visiting circuses in the early- to mid-1800s. But the legend might date back to Indigenous folktales of similar hominids, predating the arrival of Europeans. Fisher, meanwhile, suspects the Albatwitch is a juvenile bigfoot and thinks they’re drawn to Lancaster County for practical reasons: The river and farmland serve as viable sources of water and food, though he admits, “I don’t have an answer as to why the smaller creatures are more common here than other areas.”
Stan Gordon, a local paranormal investigator, notes that reports of small ape-man creatures across Pennsylvania have been increasing since 2023. “Credible witnesses are encountering these creatures every year,” he says. “They’re not seeking publicity. They have nothing to gain. They just want to know what it is they saw.”
For anyone who has an Albatwitch encounter to report, Stan Gordon’s hotline is open 24/7. And for those who are still hoping to catch their first glimpse of this small ’squatch, Chickies Rock remains the go-to place to start your search.
