Young bike-riding friends were the first to see it: something big, hairy, scary. After one mom saw it, too - she described an ape peeking out from behind bushes - 30 police cars circled Durham with orders to shoot.

Over several days, more townspeople would describe the animal as a black bear, a large dog, a chimpanzee, an orangutan, a gorilla.

"George Huntington went to Brunswick and bought a bunch of bananas because he was just so sure he'd seen it," said Elaine Sears, a longtime resident of the area where the sightings centered.

But even the man with the bananas came up short. As quick as it came, the black, hairy something vanished, never seen again. Last week marked the 35th anniversary of the sightings, a mystery that's endured in some circles. Maine's own cryptozoologist plans to lead an anniversary field expedition in Durham this month to mark the occasion.

On July 25, 1973, while Watergate investigators needled President Richard Nixon to hand over his secret tapes, kids out biking on Shiloh Road had a close, strange encounter. The next day, their mother, Meota Huntington, told police she was driving down that same road when she saw something like an ape peek out from a bush, according to the Sun Journal archives.

That set off the police manhunt and a slew of new sightings. Faced with the variety of conflicting descriptions - bear, chimp, gorilla - Auburn Dog Officer Louis Pinette joked with a reporter that it could be "a hippie out looking for a free meal."

Adding to the intrigue, days after that first encounter the owner of Drapeau's Costume Shop in Lewiston told police a gorilla suit rented there in early July hadn't been returned. The man with the suit gave a fictitious name and address. Police warned that if it was someone in a costume, quit messing around.

Ernest Tebbets, who's lived in Durham all 85 of his years, remembers the hoopla. He worked at Worumbo Mill then. The consensus of the guys on the maintenance crew: a man in a suit.

"We have some characters here in Durham," he said, and laughed. "I wouldn't want to name any names ..."

"We didn't have any fears of the creature," Tebbets added. Mostly because they didn't believe anything was out there.

Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, featured on the History Channel's "MonsterQuest" and shows such as "Weird Travels," was in Illinois in 1973, but heard about the strange sightings a dozen states away. He collected newspaper clippings. "I found it an intriguing case because you don't have any gorillas in Maine."

Coleman looked into it and, with no reports of things such as zoo breaks, ruled out the idea of an escaped gorilla or ape. He's also ruled out Bigfoot and is skeptical of the costume theory.

"In rural areas, a lot of people have guns in Maine. It would be absolutely stupid to walk around during trigger-happy (times)," Coleman said.

There's credibility in all of those various descriptions, he said. "People did not have a focused and fixed image. That really bodes well for someone going through their own experience, as opposed to everyone seeing 'Harry and the Hendersons' over and over again."

Casts were made of footprints found behind Jones Cemetery. An Androscoggin County Sheriff deputy at the time said they might be chimpanzee.

The elusive critter - if there was a critter - earned the nickname Osgood the Ape in town. Two weeks after the sightings stopped, in the middle of August, neighbors in that area complained to police: Too many curiosity-seekers were tromping on bushes and ornamental plants looking for gorilla clues.

Sometime this month, Coleman and a small, informal group will return to the scene of the sightings to take pictures and measurements and collect stories.

Durham resident Elaine Sears has seen plenty of wildlife but never anything out of the ordinary in the Durham woods. All the same, she believed the people who reported sightings had truly seen something.

Not too long after the sightings, Sears' daughter was riding with friends between Durham and Bowdoin on a foggy, low-visibility night. Their car passed something that appeared to rise up from the ground, stand 10 feet tall and walk on hind legs. It scared everyone in the car.

When Sears heard the story, she assumed it had to have been that same creature. "He must have just jumped the river."