Visser said he made his confession, which appeared in the online edition of the Knoxville Journal-Express, because "there's so much bad news now," and he thought the tale of how one bored guy put an entire town in a tizzy might "lighten things up" a bit. Visser, 69, still lives in Harvey, a little burg east of Knoxville with only a post office and tavern.The obvious question - why did he wait so long to fess up? - has a simple answer. Visser heard about a similar hoax in California that didn't die until the hoaxster did."I didn't want to wait that long," he said.The winter of 1977-78 was especially memorable. The snow was piled high by late February. Visser had time on his hands and an idea in his head."I kind of rolled it around a while," he said.He strapped a pair of military snowshoes he'd received from a fishing buddy and took a little walk on the outskirts of Harvey.Visser, an avid outdoorsman, said he was inspired by a friend in Pella who once made bear-shaped feet from plywood, laid down prints to fool folks, then laughed himself to the ground until he cried just thinking about it.Visser jogged in the snowshoes to create tracks about three feet apart that looked like footprints made by a large, ambling primate.The trail appeared to cross a tall barbed-wire fence. At the base of a nearby railroad bridge was a packed depression in snow that looked like a bed where the creature had lain, complete with smaller dent where it rested his head.

Visser was back at home when he realized that he'd created no tracks that left Bigfoot's bed, so his wife, Jeannine, drove him back to the scene with the snowshoes.The next day, "a thousand cars" turned up at the site, Visser recalls.Harvey's postmaster, Catherine Van Waardhuizen, had seen the tracks on her way home, according to the local newspaper. She breathlessly told her son and daughter-in-law, who drove out to see for themselves."Does "Bigfoot" prowl through the woods near Harvey?" was the headline. Cliff Worthington said he'd follow the tracks to find out where they led. Shirley McCombs said she found a strange tuft of hair on the barbed-wire fence. Visser, whom the newspaper called "the most determined tracker," volunteered to join the hunt. He even took along his .22-caliber rifle to make it look good.

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