Sightings
"Preconceptions seem to determine what scientists are prepared to see, and one thing most scientists are definitely not prepared to see is apelike creatures in the American Northwest"
(Cremo & Thompson, Forbidden Archeology)As the early European settlers moved westwards into the northwestern United States and western
Canada they began to record stories of the Sasquatch, which had long been a part of the traditions
of the Native People of this region. As early as 1784, the London Times reported the capture of a
huge, manlike, hair-covered
creature at Lake of the Woods, Manitoba (Shackley 1983, p.35).
In 1840, after spending nine years living among the Spokane Indians of the Pacific Northwest, missionary
Elkanah Walker described them as believing in the existence of a race of giants which inhabit
a certain mountain, off to the west of us. They inhabit its top... They hunt and do all their work by
night... They say their track is about a foot and a half long...
(Cremo & Thompson 1996, p.595).
Nineteenth century newspapers record many encounters between Bigfoot and the early settlers. The July 4, 1884 edition of the Colonist from Victoria, British Columbia descibed the capture of what may have been a young Sasquatch from alongside a railway line near Yale, British Columbia. The creature, nicknamed 'Jacko' by his captors, was described as being "half man and half beast," four feet seven inches tall and weighing 127 pounds. "He has long, black, strong hair and resembles a human being with one exception, his entire body is covered with glossy hair about one inch long... and he possesses extraordinary strength." Mysteriously Jacko seems to have disappeared while en route to London, never to be seen again (Shackley 1983, pp. 35-36).
Fearing he would not be believed, Albert Ostman did not tell his story until many years after it happened. In 1924, he went on a hunting and camping trip to the head of Toba inlet, near Vancouver Island. One night, while he was asleep in his sleeping bag, a male Sasquatch picked him up and carried him over the mountains to a valley surrounded by cliffs. There he remained, for six days, as the captive of a Sasquatch family (father, mother, son and daughter) until he eventually managed to escape (Green 1978, pp. 99-110).
On July 13 of that same year, the Portland Oregonian carried a story about Fred Beck and
his companions, who encountered the fabled 'mountain devils' or mountain gorillas of Mount
St. Helens this week, shooting one of them and being attacked throughout the night by rock bombardments
of the beasts.
Many years later, in 1957, Beck's story was retold by his son in a book
with the rather sensational title of I Fought the Ape Man of St Helens.
Prior to the late 1950s, media coverage of Sasquatch stories was mainly on a local basis. All that was set to change however when, in 1958, a road crew working in North West California discovered their activites were attracting a night time 'visitor'. Over a period of several weeks, the men found many enormous, manlike footprints in the mud around their worksite. The site foreman took a footprint cast to the local newspaper, the story was picked up by the wire services, and "Bigfoot" became national news.
Although eyewitness accounts of encounters with Bigfoot number in the thousands, taken individually they don't prove a great deal, but, as Dr Jeff Meldrum has pointed out:
The cumulative weight of all eyewitness reports on the other hand are much more difficult to dismiss. Obviously, once one has acknowledged the possibility and/or probability that such things exist, then the consistent and also the novel features of anatomy and behavior, distribution, etc. recounted by eyewitnesses are quite useful.
A Triple Sighting
In the summer of 1988, a 12 year old boy was fishing for crayfish on a small creek in Grays Harbor County, Washington when he looked up and noticed a white Sasquatch looking at him from the opposite bank, approximately 20 feet away. The creature was over 6 feet tall, with a pot belly, bloodshot blue eyes and a pink complexion. Its nose was wide and pink and it had buck teeth. The boy threw his belongings down before scrambling onto his motorbike and leaving the area. The Sasquatch, showing a pronounced limp, continued down the creek bed.
The boy wanted to retrieve his belongings but was too scared to go alone. Eventually he managed to persuade his father, who didn't believe his story, to go with him. When they returned to the area and examined the creature's footprints they found the right foot was crippled.
Bob and his son Larry, were going camping at the Wynoochee Reservoir, Grays Harbor County, Washington. It was the fourth weekend of July 1995. They arrived at the campsite on a very clear morning and decided to continue on to the waterfalls at the upper end of the lake to look for mountain sheep with their spotting scope. Bob was scanning a very rocky area about half-a-mile away, just above the lake, when he stopped.
"I'll be damned, they do exist!" he exclaimed.
"What?" asked Larry.
His father explained that he was looking at two Sasquatches, a black one and a white one, who were chasing each other and wrestling on the ground. While he was watching the two creatures walked to some rocks and sat down, as if to have a rest. Larry noticed that, judging by the way it limped, the white one appeared to have a bad leg. Six or seven other people had also stopped to watch the creatures playing, the sighting lasted for 20-30 minutes, before the Sasquatches finally walked out of sight. Despite repeatedly checking the area with the scope over the course of a three-day weekend Larry and Bob never saw the creatures again.
Wildlife biologist Dr. John Bindernagel explains why Sasquatch sightings cannot be attributed to bears (requires RealPlayer).
In the first week of October 1996, Frank was chain sawing firewood on a logging road in the Oregon Cascades about 10 miles east of Estacada. His wife Barbie was sitting in the cab of their truck with their baby and looking down the road, where about 100 yards away two other men were also cutting wood. Barbie saw a white Sasquatch, "as white as a towel", emerge from the forest and step onto the edge of the road about 25 feet from the two men, before it turned and walked back into the forest with a pronounced limp. The men leapt into their truck and drove off. As they passed Frank they stopped and he told them he was going to investigate. "Well, it's right in there! Go have at it!", one of them said. "We are getting out of here!" Before leaving they told Frank that the creature was about seven feet tall, with a pink complexion and blue eyes. Frank went to the point indicated by his wife and looked for footprints. In a few places the creature's feet had slid under the leaf litter, making imprints in the soil, and he was able to take a plaster cast of a right and left footprint. The casts showed that the right foot appeared to have lost its big toe, leaving a swollen or bunioned stump or base. The remaining toes seemed displaced from their normal positions, with the second toe assuming the role of the missing big toe.
