- MANASSAS -- Those who know
46-year-old William Dranginis say he's a levelheaded guy.
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- He has a sharp mind, an easy smile, an attractive family,
a nice home and a trustworthy job designing surveillance equipment for
the government.
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- But, 10 years ago, Dranginis says he crossed paths with
something in the deep, dark woods of Culpeper County.
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- Snicker if you want, but his life has never been the
same.
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- March 11, 1995. Dranginis recites the day with unwavering
detail.
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- Blue skies. The hint of spring. A perfect Saturday to
mess around with his latest passion: hunting for artifacts with his new
metal detector.
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- Today had a special destination: a string of old gold
mines from the early 1800s that still stab deep into the rolling earth
of Virginia's Piedmont. He headed out early with an old friend, an FBI
agent named Frank, who shared his itch for hidden treasures. About an hour
southwest of home, near Richardsville, they picked up another agent, a
man Dranginis was meeting for the first time.
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- The day slipped by peacefully. The three hiked along
dirt roads and forested paths, poked into old mine shafts and scoured the
soil. Around mid afternoon, they turned back toward the car, tired and
empty-handed.
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- On a logging road, about a half-mile from the pavement,
Frank abruptly shot his arms outward in a silent signal to halt.
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- "Behind that tree," he whispered. "There's
a man."
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- The three stood stock-still, staring at a cluster of
slender pines just ahead on the right. Why would a man duck out of sight
unless he was up to no good? Frank drew the 9 mm handgun he wore holstered
on his side. The other agent produced one as well. Both trained their barrels
at the shadows behind the trees.
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- Suddenly, Dranginis says, a dark, shaggy head peered
out at them from behind a pine, then jerked back. Seconds later, he says,
a creature like none he'd ever seen darted out and began running, following
the edge of the road.
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- "It ran for about 75 feet, moving from our left
to our right, before it took a sharp turn that took it deeper into the
woods," Dranginis said. "We watched the top of its head bobbing
as it disappeared down into a ravine."
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- During that 10 or 12 seconds, Dranginis says, he was
shocked into a kind of tunnel vision.
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- "I don't remember hearing anything, and I can't
tell you what its face looked like," he said. "I was just stunned
by how tall it was, like 7 feet. And it was so quick and agile. It moved
on two legs like a man, but so much more powerfully. I remember watching
the muscles work as it ran. And the hair flowing, back and forth, every
time it pumped its arms."
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- The creature was gone, but the men didn't move.
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- The agents stood frozen in their firing stances.
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- A minute passed. Maybe another. No one spoke.
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- Finally, the agent from Richardsville found his voice.
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- "That was a bear," he said quietly. "Let's
get out of here."
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- They double-timed it to the car, looking over their shoulder
the whole way. They drove in silence, dropped off the Richardsville agent,
then stopped for a bite.
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- Over a burger, Dranginis finally looked Frank in the
eye.
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- "That was no bear," Dranginis said.
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- "I know."
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- Until then, Dranginis says, he had not entertained a
single serious thought about Bigfoot. A big hairy creature, hiding out
in North America, that no one had ever managed to capture?
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- Come on. That stuff was for supermarket tabloids. Actually,
the legend of an elusive, upright, ape-like animal spans centuries and
cultures. The towering Yeti of ancient Asia. Abominable snowmen of the
Himalayas. Sasquatch of Native American lore.
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- The term "Bigfoot" took hold in the 1960s during
a rash of footprint finds and creature sightings in Northern California.
"Bigfoot fever" hit a high point in 1967, when a Sasquatch-type
animal was supposedly filmed on a few grainy frames of now famous - and
much disputed - footage.
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- Real or not, the film became the cornerstone of a subculture
of Bigfoot believers. They flourished in the Pacific Northwest - an untamed
place where it seemed possible for a giant to hide.
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- But here? In long-settled, heavily trod Virginia?
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- John Green, 78, is considered by many to be "Mr.
Sasquatch." He lives in remote British Columbia, an epicenter of Bigfoot
lore. Green has spent much of his life probing the mystery.
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- In 1976, he crossed the U.S. to document sightings. Green
says he found reports in every state except Hawaii.
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- "Maryland was absolutely loaded with sightings,"
Green said. "And Virginia is right next door."
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- If Bigfoot does dwell in the Old Dominion, state wildlife
experts say, it's news to them.
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- "I checked around with our long time game wardens,"
said Julia Dickson-Smith of Virginia's Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
"None of them remembers ever getting a report about Bigfoot - not
from the public and not from anyone on staff."
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- Green says he's not surprised.
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- "Your wife doesn't believe you. Your best friend
doesn't believe you," Green said. "It doesn't take long to realize
that the smartest thing to do is shut up."
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- But what folks might hesitate to tell a uniform, they
will tell cyberspace. Bigfoot Web sites have ample reports from Virginia,
with encounters from the Blue Ridge to the Dismal Swamp.
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- The experiences range in intensity - from no more than
other worldly howls in the night heard at Surry's Chippokes Plantation
State Park in 1998 to a 1981 report of a Bigfoot sprinting through the
middle of a campground in Chesapeake's Northwest River Park.
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- All that chatter from Virginia - as well as other Eastern
states - has won the attention of seasoned researchers, who once thought
the West Coast had a corner on the phenomenon.
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- "No, we don't think Bigfoot is sitting in downtown
D.C.," said D.B. Donlon of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
Based in California, the group bills itself as the oldest and largest of
its kind.
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- "But we have good reason now," Donlon said,
"to believe that the same creature being seen in the W est is also
being seen in the E ast."
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- Even among believers, theories about the creature's identity
ramble widely. On the far fringes: Bigfoot is an alien, or a ghost, or
even the ghost of an alien.
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- Most students of Sasquatchery, however - including a
handful of reputable scientists - think Bigfoot may be a remnant relative
of Gigantopithecus, a large primate found in fossils in Asia, but thought
to be long extinct. A nocturnal, skittish lifestyle, they say, coupled
with thin numbers and more brainpower than most animals, has helped the
creatures avoid mankind.
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- Still, after decades of searching, doesn't it seem someone
would have collared a Bigfoot by now, dead or alive - or at least found
some verifiable remains?
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- "I can't explain that," said Jeff Meldrum,
an anthropologist and associate professor at Idaho State University. "I
only know that just because you lack a body doesn't mean you're justified
in offhandedly dismissing all evidence."
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- Meldrum specializes in primate studies, with a focus
on how two-legged species walk. Fake Bigfoot prints abound, Meldrum says,
but scattered among the pranks have been a few he considered genuine.
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- "Details - like toe dynamics, flexibility and weight
shift - all pointed to a real animal," Meldrum said. "That's
when the hair stands up on the back of your neck."
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- Dranginis' friend, Frank, does not want his last name
used in a newspaper story about Bigfoot. He's retired from federal law
enforcement now, but says he still works a job that requires a security
clearance.
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- "I can't have people thinking I'm a nut," he
said. "I never told anybody about what we saw. I figured they wouldn't
believe me anyway."
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- Dranginis told anyone who would listen, even his co-workers
at Windermere Group, an Annapolis, Md.-based private contractor specializing
in government security. A gadget geek by nature, Dranginis has spent 14
years designing spy stuff for the company - hidden eyes, bug detectors
and the like.
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- His job also requires a security clearance, but no one
at work seemed too worried about his state of mind. Most just raised an
eyebrow, then asked what he'd been drinking or smoking. Others tried to
suggest some reasonable explanation: Man in a monkey suit? An old hermit?
Kids playing a joke?
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- Few took him seriously, except his wife, Carol.
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- "I've known my husband since high school,"
she said. "He came out of those woods a different man."
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- Over and over, Dranginis returned to Culpeper, hoping
for another glimpse. When that proved fruitless, he began building camera
systems to show the world, once and for all, that Bigfoot was real - and
that he, Dranginis, wasn't crazy.
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- He tried motion-triggered setups. Heat-triggered.
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- Cameras mounted in trees. Wrapped in camouflage.
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- Buried in the ground.
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- None found a Bigfoot. Dranginis suspected the equipment
was emitting tiny, ultrasonic noises that were alerting the cagey creature.
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- He kept trying, trolling online auctions and supply houses,
spending just about every spare dollar he had on ever-more sophisticated
components.
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- After a while, Bigfoot became his full-time hobby. Maps
of sightings papered his garage.
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- Electronic gizmos took over the shelves. Late-night hours
found him red-eyed, but still in his workshop.
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- By early 2001, Dranginis had given his mission an official
name: the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization. He placed an ad in a
rural magazine: "Have you seen a Bigfoot or Sasquatch-type creature
here in Virginia?"
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- More than 60 people responded. Dranginis wrote down their
stories and checked out still-hot trails.
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- Two years ago, he turned the key on the Bigfoot Primate
Research Lab - a 24-foot Ford camper once used as a mobile veterinary clinic.
Now outfitted with an arsenal of high-tech spy gear, the camper has cemented
his status as the state's go-to guy for Sasquatch.
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- In all, Dranginis figures, those few seconds in the woods
of Culpeper have cost him around $55,000.
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- "At first, I just wanted to look this creature in
the eye, to see what it was, then get back to my life," he said. "But
after a while, it became something I had to prove - not just for me, but
for everyone else who's seen it."
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- So far, Bigfoot hasn't cooperated. After a decade of
trying, Dranginis has managed to land little more than a couple of fuzzy
photos and an intriguing clump or two of hair.
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- His family, however, still supports him.
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- "My friends think it's cool," said Katie, 18,
the younger of his two daughters. "They come over here, and they're
all into my dad. They're really impressed with his toys."
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- Dranginis found what might be his best evidence on an
old farm in Chesterfield County, south of Richmond.
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- The couple who own the property don't want their names
or the location of their home revealed. Word has already leaked out, drawing
gun-toting trespassers with a thirst to be the first to bag Bigfoot.
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- The couple are working with Dranginis because they like
his no-kill approach.
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- "He doesn't want to hurt these creatures and neither
do we," said the husband, a country preacher. "We're just curious
about their origins."
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- Neither he nor his wife claim to have seen one.
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- "It's all from people who come to visit us or work
on the place," the husband said. "They've asked me, 'What kind
of animals are you raising here? Orangutans?'"
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- They have noticed huge prints in the snow shaped like
a human's bare foot. They've heard chilling sounds from the 2,500 acres
of woods hemming their property. They've wrinkled their noses at an overpowering,
sewer-like smell - a scent often reported by people who say they have gotten
close to Sasquatch.
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- "For the longest time, we thought it was a bear,"
the wife said. "But wild bears don't walk on two legs."
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- Dranginis mounted one of his cameras on the couple's
barn. The few images it captured were too dim to prove anything. Then,
the hair turned up, a few wads of reddish-brown mats fluttering on the
ground nearby.
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- Dranginis sent a portion of it to a specialist at the
Smithsonian's natural history museum. A copy of the results he received
says the sample " most closely matches the characteristics of human
hair."
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- He sent the same hair to a lab for a chemical profile.
Janet Starr Hull, a Texas nutritionist well-known on lecture and radio
talk-show circuits, reviewed the readings. Hull said she's puzzled by the
low level of toxins in the hair.
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- "I've studied hair analysis for many, many years,"
Hull said. "I've never seen test results like this. Humans are exposed
to all kinds of pollutions and chemicals that show up in their hair. This
is not a human profile. At least not a modern one."
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- Dranginis wants to have DNA analysis done on the hair,
but the going rate at a private lab - around $5,000 - is too steep. He
has tried to persuade a number of university labs to do the work for free,
but so far, there have been no takers.
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- "The most hurtful ridicule comes from science,"
Dranginis said, "the people I expected to at least be anxious to disprove
me. I can't even get them to take me seriously enough to look at it."
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- Every now and then, though, Dranginis gets a little backup
when a respected expert steps a toe onto his side - like Jane Goodall,
the famed primate researcher.
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- "Jane has heard similar stories from indigenous
people all over the world," said Nona Gandelman, a Goodall spokeswoman.
"She is open to the possibility that there may be a primate out there
we haven't met yet."
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- But - once again - here? In Virginia?
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- Some long time believers still aren't buying it.
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- Bob George, a Portsmouth native and long time Bigfoot
researcher, teaches biology at Florida International University in Miami.
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- "Look," George said, "when you start talking
Virginia, it's getting to be a little preposterous. I mean, what's next?
New Jersey?"
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- Well Ö perhaps. According to the Sasquatch Information
Society, folks say they've bumped into Bigfoot at least four times in the
state better known for its turnpike than its green space.
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- Bigfoot could not be reached for comment.
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