They throw apples into the woods to lure him. They hold up burlap bags in hopes of snaring him.has eluded capture in the woods outside the river town of Columbia, Lancaster County.This hasn’t stopped the town folk from turning the legendary apple-stealing Albatwitch into big business with a Halloween-timed festival that celebrates the spritely, hair-covered creature rooted in Native American legend.
“It’s become a multi-faceted event with the live bands and the lectures and the trolley tours,” Vera said. “The town is starting to embrace it much more.”The local legend dates to the Susquehannocks, a Native American people who inhabited the area for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. The autumnal beauty of the riverside setting was shattered when the sneaky Albatwitch craftily purloined the picnickers’ ripe red apples. Adding insult to injury, the mayhem-causing creatures promptly hurled the eaten apple cores right back at the shocked settlers.Additional accounts of the Albatwitch took place in the 1980s, including a particularly aggressive encounter with a boy who told his parents: “This creature came eye to eye with him and pinned him to a tree.
Fisher, who’s steeped in paranormal research, told PennLive last year that he encountered something that looked like the generally accepted description of an albatwitch. Ironically, the chance meeting took place on Valentine’s Day 2002.