Introductory comments by Tom Holton, President, Dublin Historical Society: This story is from the Summer 1989 issue of “Shanachie, A magazine of Dublin culture and history”. It was written by the Dublin High School Journalism class which collected stories from Dublin village residents in 1984 and 1985 then published in four volumes. “Shanachie” is an Irish word for storyteller. The stories are treasures of Dublin history. Here is the story:
The Spring of 1972 saw perhaps one of Dublin’s best rumors and most notorious pranks. It was the first year of construction for the Muirfield golf course and the construction sites were a sea of mud. One stormy night a shaken nightwatchman reported he had observed a ten-foot tall black, hairy ape-like creature. The next morning, workers and some townspeople found numerous sets of 14-inch “Sasquatch” footprints leading in and out of the Muirfield area at Ashbaugh Road.
TV crews and newspaper reporters came for the story. Mothers kept their children inside. Experts from OSU were called in. Former Dublin Mayor Catherin Headlee owned a farm adjoining the Muirfield site and sold sweet corn and other produce to the construction workers. She was interviewed by the media and later gave this story to “Shanachie” guest writer Man Ying Lam for the Summer 1989 issue. Following is Headlee’s recollection of the Big Foot scare. The text reflects Ms. Headlee’s colloquial speech pattern.
In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were out in the northern part of California, when they supposedly spotted a female Bigfoot walking not far from them. Roger Patterson took out his camera, and started filming the creature. Since that day, there have been numerous attempts at explaining what the creature could have been, and whether it was a so called Bigfoot or not.
“When Muirfield was started up here an’ they started to build the golf course, this construction team came in from Pennsylvania. I was selling sweet corn here in the garage. They had to have a watchman to guard the construction equipment and keep out the trespassers.
“This nightwatchman, he was kinda a ‘scaredy cat.’ So this other watchman got big Big Foot feet, like Sasquatch. He rented these feet and a costume and dressed up like Big Foot. And it had rained with deep mud, so you had these Big Foot tracks.
“He is wearin’ the costume an’, he comes up an’ he scares this nightwatchman up here at Muirfield. But the guy with the Big Foot costume didn’t think that he was gonna call the police! He didn’t think that he’d be that scared! The guy calls the police, they call in helicopters…They had this place crawlin’! They had TV stations an’ everythin’ else—'Big Foot Was Running Loose Here in Dublin!’ It was nothin’ but a joke to start off with.
“The TV stations came here an’ they interviewed me in the corn patch. And everybody was sighting him! He had been sighted in Jerome, in Grove City—he was sighted everyplace! It was all untrue!
“They were carrying guns into the fields, huntin’ him down. It was a real big deal. People were really scared. They’d see him at night, they’d see this big thing look in their windows! (laughs)
“So they were trackin’ this Big Foot down in there where the golf course is now and there was a sighting like someone had spotted him. They had this footprint, which was a bona fide footprint. But it was this guy who had the costume! So he hid the costume an’ he thought, ‘Oh God, I can’t tell anybody this.’ At that time, I didn’t know all of this. When the TV station and the papers come out here to interview me…I’d say ‘There is no such thing as Big Foot. I mean, if there was tracks, they would be everyplace. And there isn’t any tracks out here in the cornfield. It’s just nothin’ but someone havin’ a good time.’ “Oh no!’, the papers and TV said. ‘He’s been spotted at Delaware…”, an’ they went through all of this.
“After four or five years, an’ it all died down an’ Muirfield began to grow up, one guy came in here an’ he said, ‘Remember me, Mrs. Headlee?’ I said, ‘No, not really.’ He said, ‘I’m Big Foot!’ He was a kid outa Pennsylvania an’ he said, ‘Remember when Big Foot was loose?... You were right. There was no such thing as Big Foot.’ And then he told me the story of what he had done.”
Tom Holton is president of the Dublin Historical Society, a nonprofit educational organization with a mission to collect and preserve the history of the Dublin area and make it available to the public. For more information, visit www.dublinohiohistory.org.
