(Original headline: Earliest sighting of Chase Bigfoot )
Not only are the Americans getting a tad jealous over the fact we've got our own bigfoot, they've also got to put up with the fact our man-beast was spotted first.
For records unearthed by The Post reveal people were seeing bigfoot on, or near, the Chase in the late 1800s.
The news will be a bitter blow to paranormal investigators over The Pond who have derided a string of Chase Post exclusives about sightings over the beast on our doorstep.
For those Yankee Doodle doubters, we reproduce the first ever Chase bigfoot report from Shropshire Folk-Lore volume one (1883).
"On the 21st of January, 1879, a labouring man was employed to take a cart of luggage from Ranton in Staffordshire to Woodcock, beyond Newport, in Shropshire, for the ease of a party of visitors who were going from house to another.
He was late in coming back. His horse was tired and could only crawl along at a foot's pace, so that it was ten o'clock at night when he arrived at the place where the highroad crosses the Birmingham and Liverpool canal. Just before he reached the canal bridge, a strange black creature with great white eyes sprang out of the plantation by the roadside and alighted on his horse's back. He tried to push it off with his whip, but, to his horror, the whip went through the thing and he dropped it on the ground in fright.
The poor, tired horse broke into a canter and rushed onwards at full speed with the ghost still clinging to its back. How the creature at length, vanished, the man hardly knew.
He told his tale in the village of Woodseaves, a mile further on, and so effectively frightened the hearers that one man actually stayed with friends there all night, rather than cross the terrible bridge which lay between him and his home.
The ghost-seer reached home at length, still in a state of excessive terror (but, as his master assured me, perfectly sober) and it was some days before he was able to leave his bed, so much was he prostrated by his fright. The whip was searched for next day and found just at the place where he said he had dropped it.
Now comes the curious part of the story.
The adventure, as was natural, was much talked of in the neighbourhood and, of course, with all sorts of variations.
Some days later, the man's master was surprised by a visit from a policeman who came to request him to give information of his having been stopped and robbed on the Big Bridge on the night of the 21st January.
The master, much amused, denied having been robbed, either on the canal bridge or anywhere else, and told the policeman the story just related. "Oh, was that all sir?" said the disappointed policeman. "I know what that was. That was ......[report ends - fs].
Earlier related story: Ongoing Sightings Of Giant Hairy Biped In England
