The first signs of the beast popped up a few miles outside Whitehall, N.Y. He was lurking by the corner of a convenience store, his massive, hairy arms hanging low and his bloodred eyes blazing. Not four minutes later, I spied him again, this time standing proudly under the sun in the middle of a golf course fairway.

By the time I rolled into Whitehall proper, I saw the creature known to some as Bigfoot everywhere: outside a comic book shop, handing out leaflets on a street corner, wearing a Metallica T-shirt and head banging by his beat-up Toyota Tercel.

With the fearlessness of the most dedicated cryptozoologist, I pressed on, walking past these assorted bigfoots toward the downtown village and, I hoped, the truth.

To be fair, I knew what I was getting into. For one weekend each year, the tiny New York town celebrates its favorite elusive creature with the annual Sasquatch Festival & Calling Contest. So I expected my share of sightings, even if all of them so far had been statues or attendees in costume.

An entire family in Sasquatch outfits, including a very confused-looking toddler, crossed the street on the way to the amphitheater hosting the festival, just past a woman wearing a T-shirt that read "Sasquatch doesn't believe in you, either."

Whitehall's obsession with the Sasquatch — not to be confused with a yeti or Chewbacca, unless you want random New Yorkers yelling at you — goes back to 1976, when several local police officers reported seeing one at the Skene Valley Country Club (which explains the statue!). There have been other sightings in the area over the years, prompting Whitehall to adopt the big fella as its official animal in 2018.

"Hell, it's illegal in Whitehall to shoot at Sasquatch," some guy named Craig told me as I hit the outskirts of the fest, where thousands of attendees were streaming toward the merchant tables, food trucks and beer garden. I imagined some bleary-eyed farmer seeing a giant man-ape trudging through his fields, grabbing his rifle and taking aim before his son yells out, "Daddy, don't! It's Sasquatch!"

When I expressed some skepticism about his claim, Craig responded, "You can damn well shoot just about anything in New York. But trust me, don't nobody try and shoot Sasquatch here. We love him."

I bumped into festival coordinator Barbara Spoor outside the amphitheater just before the costume contest began. Between returning high fives from fellow volunteers and other locals, she explained that the festival started seven years ago and has "just grown and grown."

"The town has really come to embrace it," Spoor said. "It wasn't like that at first — things were a little more fringe — but now a lot of the local businesses get into it and the town sees such an influx of visitors. It's a huge weekend for Whitehall."

Amid all the bouncy castles full of screaming kids and the face painting and food trucks, I'd almost forgotten my assignment, handed down by one of Seven Days' news editors, no less: Find Bigfoot. (OK, he actually said something like "Hey, this looks fun and weird and totally up your alley; you should check it out." But what I heard was "Find Bigfoot.")

So I started asking everyone if they had seen the creature. Craig said maybe, but he was drunk at the time and couldn't be trusted — but yeah, probably. I marked that down as a yes.

I made my way through booths of Sasquatch hunters and podcasters, asking who, if anyone, had seen the big boy. Wes and Beth Guay, a married couple who host the supernatural-themed podcast "Where Our Minds Wander With Wes and Beth" admitted that they had never laid eyes on a bigfoot.

"But that should never discourage scientific curiosity," Beth pointed out.

"If we only believe what our eyes see, we wouldn't get very far," a man named Henry told me. A member of the New York Bigfoot Society, he identified like-minded searchers as "footers" and said, yes, a number of them had caught glimpses of a Sasquatch — though the society's Instagram feed is mostly pictures of hiking trails notably lacking in giant, hairy bipeds.

My search for truth was derailed again as the costume contest began. It was hard to ignore the spectacle of a stage full of Sasquatch cosplayers vying for the top prize.

I was pretty sure the dude with the backward baseball hat and T-shirt that said "Who wants to drink with Darryl?" stretched across his big, brown, furry ape costume would win, especially when he started whipping the crowd into a frenzy with a series of moves lifted straight from professional wrestling. Instead, a young girl with elaborate sylvan face makeup took the prize, wowing the audience with her intricately designed costume.

When I encountered Darryl out in the wild an hour later, his mask off as he ate a sandwich beside his kids, I told him I'd expected him to take home top prize.

"I'm so glad she won, though," he said, wiping sweat from his brow. "She deserved it! She won last year, too, but maybe next year will be my year. But wow, it's hot in this suit today."

"Cool. Can you put it back on for a picture?" I said, all business as I slipped back into supernatural hunter mode.

For many Sasquatch hunters, the event is as much an opportunity to move some merchandise as it is to commiserate with other believers. I tried to catch a word with Emily Fleur, a bigfoot researcher and explorer who runs a website called the Forest Fleur, dedicated not only to discovering Sasquatch but also to protecting what she calls "a likely endangered animal." But she was swamped on all sides by people buying merchandise from her table, so I had to wait for her featured talk in the amphitheater at noon.

The Out of the Box Worship Center crew gave away its products for free under a giant banner that asked an all-important question: "Was Sasquatch on Noah's Ark?" Pastor Pamela Bolton handed out water and snacks along with a book about coming back from the dead, authored by a friend of hers.

"Do you think Sasquatch was on the ark?" I asked her. "Surely, there must have been two?"

"At least!" she replied, laughing. "Who knows? We won't know until we see him, I suppose."

"So you haven't seen a Sasquatch? I have to ask," I pressed on in my best "I'm a reporter" voice.

"I haven't personally, but we love thinking about what's possible," Bolton replied. "And this is just such a lovely event for our entire community."

As the sun beat down on nearby Champlain Canal and the festival's house band — sadly, not named Harry and the Hendersons — ripped through Steely Dan covers in a waterside gazebo, I made peace with not finding a Sasquatch at the festival. Besides, the big event was about to kick off: the Sasquatch calling contest, where bigfoot hunters would show off their pipes on the canal's shores. Who knows, maybe a Sasquatch would hear the calls while roaming nearby golf courses and show up, either very horny or supremely confused.

The contestants all uttered wildly different howls and hollers. The spectacle of people in fuzzy costumes screaming strange sounds lakeside had its own sort of surreal beauty, regardless of who ended up winning.

As I made my way back to my car, a woman who had noticed me interviewing attendees stopped me to talk. She wore a hat that read "Not All Who Wander Are Squatch" atop her gray hair.

"Calling it a day? Hope you had fun in our little town," she said.

"I really did," I said, failing to keep the surprise out of my voice. "I was hoping against hope to catch a Sasquatch sighting, though."

"Oh, honey," she said with a wide grin. "Trust me, Sasquatch doesn't want to see you."