Sunday, February 3, 2008

Walking Bet

Thanks to journalist Wayne Ford of the Athens Banner-Herald, I have an article from the Herald-Journal, which is the newspaper from Greene County. The article he sent me is dated October 5, 2001. In this article, the paper ran a section where it highlighted articles run by the paper a century before, having pulled this from their archives. The archived article included a blurb about an entity called "Walking Bet."
"Walking Bet" was called a "spook" by the writers a century ago. She was described as being "seven to eight feet tall." In addition, this entity was dressed in all black with a heavy veil. It was reported to come out between midnight and 1:00 a.m. The article went on to say that noone had the courage to approach and investigate the entity, whatever it was.
On a recent talkblogradio spot, Wayne Ford mentioned that it is highly unlikely that this was a woman, as most women do not stand "seven to eight feet tall." For that matter, most men do not as well. It was his assertion that this was a sasquatch. That would explain the "attired in a black dress" part, but what confuses me is the "black veil." Could this perhaps be a misidentification? Sasquatch are known to have black faces with black skin where there is no hair, and in the darkness, one could misidentify this as a veil. Maybe? Also, it appears that whatever this was came out only at night, which is similar to the nocturnal behavior said to be part of Sasquatch's routine. But what happened to this entity? Did it stop visiting Greensboro? Or did someone approach it finally and scare it off, or kill it?
If you have any knowlege of this story or know someone who lives in Greene County and has heard this legend, please post here. This is an interesting story, and could possibly be an old sighting of Sasquatch. At the very least, this is a story about a very tall, yet eccentric woman. Who knows?

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