This was a report posted to a news group on the internet.  We give the author full credit for it and its contents.  We did not attend the convention this year. 

PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

NEWCOMERSTOWN, Ohio - Bigfoot stomped through the West Elementary School gymnasium on Saturday, leaving his size 17-EEEE imprint in plaster casts and lollipops, his supposedly haunting howl on compact discs and likenesses of his furry face peering from sweatshirts, hats and fuzzy videos.

Believers were thrilled, skeptics confounded and the just plain curious were challenged there by the 12th annual Bigfoot Conference/Expo 2000. Nearly 200 people, including Sasquatch experts and eyewitnesses from across the country, gathered at the event, sponsored by the Tri-State Bigfoot Study Group. The group covers an area (Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia) that has had as many reported sightings as the Pacific Northwest of this 7-foot-tall, 900-pound, furry, ape-like creature that supposedly haunts the deep forests and remote mountains.

Don Keating, conference organizer and longtime local resident, said he had videos of two possible sightings in the dense woodlands around Newcomerstown, the birthplace of sports greats Cy Young and Woody Hayes, and the retreat home of Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White.

Keating reported local Delaware Indians are said to have cautioned early settlers to put out food offerings for the "wild ones of the woods."

Today, the legend persists, largely on faith. When Keating asked how many in the audience believed they had seen Bigfoot, only seven raised their hands.

But it’s a growing belief, according to Keating, who said the conference had steadily grown from the first, which attracted only 42 people. The conference, he said, is not intended to sell the idea that Bigfoot exists, but to bring investigators, eyewitnesses and enthusiasts together to share information and improve study in the field, with the eventual goal of making a proof-positive discovery.

Some conference attendees included Bigfoot as part of a general interest in the unexplained, mysteries encompassing everything from UFOs to the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Brian Seech and his wife, Theresa, were among a group of conference visitors from Aliquippa, Pa. They said their interest in the paranormal was prompted by their own UFO sighting five years ago. Seech said they came to the conference to get some tips before embarking on a planned Bigfoot search this summer in West Moreland County, Pa., an area ofprevious Sasquatch sightings.

Sue Juber, 45, of Alquippa, wasn’t as ambitious - yet. "I’m not sure if I believe in Bigfoot or not," she said at the onset of the conference. "That’s why I’m here, to find out."

But Jim Davis, 52, of Akron, said he had been a "Bigfooter" since 1967, when he lived in Streetsboro and was driving on Ohio 14 late one night and saw an elderly, panic-stricken couple running down the road. Davis said the couple had been lantern-fishing at a local lake when they encountered a creature and fled. Visiting the site, Davis said he found huge footprints and ungodly, unimaginable stench.

Davis said the conference was a way he and others could "talk with other people who understand what they’ve seen or heard, and not be ridiculed."

"It’s almost like a support group, letting people know it’s OK to see a Bigfoot. You don’t have to be embarrassed," said Canadian wildlife ecologist John A. Bindernagel, one of the conference speakers who believes Bigfoot is North America’s great ape.

On the frontiers of Bigfoot technology, William Dranginis, of Manassas, Va., brought a prototype of a $5,000, four-camera, 360-degree video surveillance system he hopes to deploy next year in an area where he spotted an unknown creature four years ago. When triggered, the system pages Dranginis, who can then monitor and control the cameras remotely with a laptop computer.

Bob Daigle, 56, of Detroit, baits his Bigfoot videocamera "traps" in northern Michigan with fish (canned and fresh), but is reluctant to meet Bigfoot, face to fur.

"All reports say they tend to be benign," he said, "but they’re still capable of killing a human being at any time."

Conference exhibits featured plaster casts of Bigfoot footprints, and Sasquatch artwork and figurines - some probably a bit too similar to Chewbacca of the "Star Wars" movies to make dedicated believers happy. Souvenirs included shirts, hats, bumper stickers, keychains, footprint-shaped suckers, CDs and videotapes.

Snatches of conversation swirled like markers on a trail of the bizarre: "If you ever see one, you got to stand still,’cause if you move, they move ... I should’ve tracked it. I probably would’ve had my arms torn out of my sockets, but at least I would’ve had something."

Bigfoot fans hunted down autographs of visiting celebrities like J.E. "Smokey" Crabtree, whose Bigfoot sighting in Arkansas was the basis of the 1975 movie, "The Legend of Boggy Creek"; or Larry Lund, "The Sasquatch Sleuth," of Vancouver, Wash., who presented a session on Bigfoot video fakery.

He does not include the so-called "Patterson film" among them. That grainy 1967 footage - the most widely aired and recognized image of the alleged creature lumbering near a forest - "is what keeps us going, makes us think we’ve really got something here," Lund said.

But many at the conference said nothing less than a Bigfoot body would convince skeptics.

As the six-hour conference closed, after all the speakers and exhibits and videos, Dale Reed, 57, of Carrollton, Ohio, was still unmoved. "When I see one come through my back yard, that’s when I’ll believe it," he said.

Sue Juber, however, was a converted skeptic, and plans to join her Aliquippa neighbors on their Bigfoot search this summer. "I came, reluctantly, but I’m glad I did," she said. "By showing how much [purported evidence] wasn’t real, I was able to understand how much out there does seem real."

Bigfooters hedge their bets. Nobody at the conference said the creature absolutely, positively exists. They believe it does. And even if it doesn’t .

As Carolyn Mack of Detroit said with a shrug, "It’s a mystery. You always hope there’s something out there. But if nothing else, it sure makes life interesting."

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