Guest Author: Alex Dunbar
For hundreds of years, people all over the world have reported sightings of a hairy, bipedal giant in the wild. The creatures, or species, known as Sasquatch have been seen on every continent except Antarctica. In the United States, they have been seen everywhere; not just the Pacific Northwest. With so many encounters, not all reports result in the assessment that these are simply passive, forest giants. Some reports are downright violent.
10. Salmon River, Idaho
The infamous Bauman Story was relayed first-hand to President Teddy Roosevelt, and ultimately penned in his book The Wilderness Hunter. A well-known “Idaho Horror Story,” the story of Bauman, a Jeremiah Johnson-like, German born woodsman, and his unfortunate companion continues to terrify adventurers to this day.
The two trappers pursued beaver along the Salmon River with sparse luck. Searching for an uncharted surplus, the men entered a remote pass with “an evil reputation.” A year prior, a hunter’s half-eaten body was discovered among massive man-like footprints. Aware of, yet disregarding that detail, Bauman and his partner set up camp several miles into the dense wilderness. The next three nights they were increasingly terrorized by a massive, two-legged phantom with a foul-odor that uttered “sinister sounds.” Bauman left his companion for a short time to collect their beaver in the nearby stream. Upon returning he discovered his partner’s dead body with fresh fang marks. His neck had been snapped. Needless to say, Bauman dashed away and never returned.
9. The Otay Mountains (Mexico/California Border)
The Otay Mountains are an unforgiving, remote, and mysterious place. A popular thru-way for thousands of illegal Mexican immigrants, the harsh mountains are shrouded in decades of violence and paranormal events. Beyond reputable tales of faceless ghosts and crashed phantom pilots, retired U.S./Mexico border patrol agent Rocky Elmore reports compelling Sasquatch activity on the border.
Rocky waited until retirement to write his book detailing 20 years of supernatural phenomena, admitting there’s nothing now to lose by coming forward with these stories. His tales of border Bigfoot are backed by several sources. One foggy night tracking a group of illegal Mexicans along a tributary of the Otay River, a massive splash sent chills down Rocky’s spine. The fog prevented a visual, but he felt the presence of something large and frightening. A pack of coyotes closer to the stream retreated past him, whimpering with tails tucked between their legs. He didn’t see the individual, but felt intense fear.
Later that evening a frightened thermal scope operator admitted to seeing a large bipedal creature with a massive heat signature stalking two patrol agents. Completely unaware of the creature, the agents on foot were ordered to abandon the area immediately. The thermal scope operator frantically explained that a “large predator” had come within steps of them. Luckily the potential prey evacuated immediately, evading the phantom predator.
8. Mount St. Helens, Washington
With extensive lava tube caves, Mount St. Helens generally seems like a prime place where Bigfoot could live. After the 1981 eruption, people allegedly witnessed emergency helicopters lifting massive, hairy corpses away from the mountainside. Such majestic, pronounced mountains seem to attract esoteric activity. The area is no stranger to mysterious events.
One of the most well known encounters with Sasquatch-like creatures took place in 1924 in a rugged gorge two miles east of Mount St. Helens. The event, now known popularly as “The Battle of Ape Canyon,” details five miners fighting off a group of “hairy apes” from their small cabin over the course of one long night.
Shrill whistles and thumping noised followed the men for their week-long gold prospecting expedition in the gorge. One early evening near a spring they encountered a seven-foot tall, hairy creature staring at them across a clearing. One of the men opened fire, missing. That night, the prowler and its friends seemingly followed them home. Throughout the entire night, a large group of hairy creatures pelted the rugged cabin with rocks and banged on the walls. One even thrust its arm inside and grabbed an ax!
In the morning, the shaken men immediately left the area, never to return.
7. Bluff Creek, California
On October 25, 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin recorded the most famous Bigfoot video of all-time. On horseback, the men traveled 25 miles southwest of Orleans, California to a tributary of the Klamath River. As the story goes, they rounded the bend in Bluff Creek and stumbled upon a giant discovery. Literally. Just past the snarling root structure of a fallen tree, the men laid eyes upon the creature both their lives would forever be intertwined with. A few hectic moments later, they recorded a jaw-dropping video that would forever leave the world stunned, polarized, and hungry for more.
Though the clip seems harmless, and helped spur the idea of a friendly forest giant, many don’t realize that the men were quite frightened. Their exhilaration tempered a bubbling fear, but the men admitted the creature looked quite agitated, displaying a noticeable look of “contempt and disgust” on its face. Later Gimlin would even admit that he feared the other two Bigfoot creatures he believed were waiting for them if they followed too close.
Years later, an anecdote would surface about a man who was terrorized on a dirt road near Bluff Creek by a similar creature in 1952. That night, the man drove through a rainy Bear Valley towards the mouth of Bluff Creek. When he left the car to move a fallen piece of brush, an orangutan-like “ogre” with shaggy hair and long canine teeth charged him. It circled the man a few times, retreated suddenly, and came stampeding back at high speed. Shocked, the man leapt in his car and attempted to drive away as the creature clawed the car windows. Luckily, he was able to shoot off into the night, leaving the monster in rainy darkness.
6. The Everglades National Park, Florida
In the movies, they always warn you “don’t go in the swamps at night.” Well, at least the movies we love to watch. But besides shifty vipers and drooling gators, another muck-drenched predator is reported to occupy the Florida swamps: the Skunk Ape.
A bit more lithe, aggressive, and peculiar than the “average” Sasquatch (see Patterson-Gimlin film), the Skunk Ape is most known by its putrid stench. In these creepy cases, the pungent odor often precedes the encounter, offering a little notice to the witness.
In an interview with Sasquatch Chronicles, a man named Dave recounts a night in the eastern Everglades with a friend and their pack of dogs. The hounds picked up a scent down the road and took off. A few minutes later they sprinted back in sheer panic. They leapt into the bed of the truck and refused to come out of their cages.
Dave investigated the area down the way and noticed an 8-foot-tall, dark shape with red-glowing eyes in the bush off the side of the road. He stomped his foot at the shadow. It screamed a “blood-curdling” scream. Dave shot it twice with his shotgun. Immediately after the shots, a huge uproar began in the tree-line. He admitted it sounded like two other beings rampaging through the foliage like a stampede of elephants, apparently frightened by the blasts.
Describing the figure, Chris said it looked like “a man in an extra large Ghillie suit with extra-long hair.” He even admitted that the faint detail observed eerily reminded him of a large orangutan-like creature that was photographed in a Myakka, Florida backyard in 1995.
5. Fouke, Arkansas
In 1972, the cult classic drive-in movie The Legend of Boggy Creek (which spawned a sequel, Boggy Creek II, that later became a Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic) introduced us to a sleepy southern town haunted by a foul-smelling monster. The Fouke Monster, or Boggy Creek Monster, is a legendary southern cryptid responsible for a series of aggressive 1971 encounters in and around Fouke, Arkansas. What many don’t realize is that these startling encounters never actually stopped.
The area around Fouke is remote and uninviting. The vast number of waterways, swamp land, dense timber, and soggy soil make development on most of the land completely improbable. One long, dark night in 1971 a pair of 7-foot tall apes emerged from the swamp and terrorized a young backwoods family. One of them thrust its arm through a window, swiping at a young girl inside. They scratched the house and even tackled one of the younger boys who investigated outside. The marauders were chased off by the family’s shotgun blasts.
Encounters continued for decades. While many of these sightings involved a hulking black shape shooting across the road, a few accounts were a little more too close for comfort.
One morning in October of 2000, a bowhunter sat quietly in a tree stand as dawn approached. As he waited for the catch-of-the-day to stumble through, something else decided to enter the arena. A “big black figure” appeared in the darkness and approached the hunter. Before he could contemplate what was happening, it reached up to him with a giant, black, gorilla-like hand.
The creature brushed its palm against the man’s razor-sharp broad-head arrow and wallowed in pain. Per the hunter, “It was louder than a car horn and it was at my feet. It scared the crap out of me so I started yelling back. And cussing! It ran off breaking trees and tearing down everything in its path. I sat there 15 minutes until it got daylight and left. I believe that I scared him/her as much as it scared me.”
4. Honobia, Oklahoma
In 2000, a group of Sasquatch terrorized a family living on 30 acres of remote land in southeast Oklahoma. The series of events traumatized the family and reportedly led to the violent death of a Sasquatch.
According to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), the activity began when the family planted snow beans all over their 30-acre property. The beans attracted massive amounts of deer. The head of the household, Tim, and his brother Mike would then shoot the deer and store the meat in a shed on the property. Soon, a bold group of Bigfoot-like creatures established semi-permanent residence in the hills outside the property. Everything began small, but quickly escalated. Only one creature at a time would circle the home, but things soon spiraled out of Tim’s control. As the nights passed, the family grew more and more terrified:
“This creature is getting bolder every time it returns. This thing is huge, walks upright, smells like a musky urine, burned hair type odor. He repeatedly comes back in the early morning hours after midnight and harasses them until just before dawn.”
Week after week the invaders grew more aggressive. As Tim reported to the Sasquatch Chronicles radio show, the creatures stole deer meat, threw rocks, pounded the doors, destroyed items in the yard, and scratched windows all while cackling under the moonlight and speaking strange chatter back and forth. After realizing local authorities would not assist and the ‘monsters’ would never relent, they decided to battle back alone.
The saga reached fever pitch when a creature appeared in the window, angrily displayed teeth, and growled at the brothers. Tim and Mike pursued it outside. They reportedly shot and killed the Sasquatch 70 yards from the house. Amazingly, as the men prepared to collect the dead body, another Bigfoot emerged! It picked up the giant corpse, and ran back into the wood-line.
Several shotgun nights took place from then on, but removal of the snow-peas and increased resistance to these monsters ultimately staved them off for good. The events are known now as ‘The Siege at Honobia.”
3. Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most beautiful areas in the entire country. For all that beauty and majesty, there is a dark side to the 800 square mile Blue Ridge Mountain-kingdom.
David Paulides is an investigative journalist and retired, 16-year member of the San Jose police department. Paulides has sent shock waves through the country with his investigations regarding unsolved missing persons cases in the national park system. Perhaps his most chilling tale of vanishing people (and the one that admittedly disturbs Paulides the most), involves a little boy on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains.
As told to host George Noory on the Coast to Coast AM Radio Show, 6-year-old Dennis Lloyd Martin played with siblings and other children in an area called Spence Field. Their game of hide & seek ended in heartbreak when Dennis did not reappear from behind a bush near the tree-line.
Approximately one hour after the disappearance, a family hiking the river-land below the mountain — unaware of the events — reported hearing “an enormous sickening scream” and witnessed what looked like an upright, bear-like man running up a dense hillside. The “rough-looking man”, as they described it, was actively trying to remain hidden and appeared to be carrying something over its shoulder.
David will not commit to naming Bigfoot as the culprit, but the signs eerily point in that direction. Dennis was never found.
2. Pierce County, Washington
Pierce County, by far, features the most Sasquatch sightings in the United States. With a staggering number of sightings as reported by the BFRO, the area is rich in activity, and compelling activity to boot. Of the 628 reports in the state of Washington, 12% (76) come from Pierce County. And of those 76 overall reports, 31 of them are considered Class A encounter by the BFRO. This designation means that the sightings are clear and involve “circumstances where misinterpretation or misidentification of other animals can be ruled out with greater confidence.”
If you’d like a honest-to-goodness Bigfoot encounter before you die, we would recommend you shoot over to Pierce County. Here’s just a small sample of the amazing, yet frightening activity:
Class A Encounter: Two experienced big game hunters were forced to bushwhack through some overgrowth onto a remote logging road to make it back to their truck before nightfall. As the men walked down the road with their .22 rifles, they both observed a tall, black figure on two legs standing near the tree-line, watching them. The men, two avid outdoorsmen who had hunted bear for decades in that same area, were “100% sure this was a Bigfoot” and that it looked just the creature from the Patterson-Gimlin film.
Class A Encounter: Four friends were hiking near Eatonville Waterfalls one afternoon. Suddenly, they all smelled a wet, musty, dog-like odor. They turned a corner around one of the waterfalls and discovered a large, black creature crouching down and drinking water from the river about sixty feet away. One of them yelped at the creature. It turned and stared at them for roughly a minute and darted into the trees. They all witnessed this being, describing it in great detail:
– Long, straight black fur with rusty red tips
– A wide face like an orangutan
– Cone-shaped head
– Massive hands
– At least 6-foot-4
Perhaps most incredibly, one of the witnesses was a 300 pound body builder. By comparison, he admitted this thing was at least 200 pounds larger than him with enormous shoulders and overall build.
1. Keatchie Bayous, Louisiana
Mike Wooley’s Bigfoot encounter is a terrifying reminder that these beings could be deep in the wilderness, and bring you great harm.
In 1981, Mike was 25 years old, living near Shreveport. He regularly hunted deer miles into the bayou. On this occasion, Mike ventured down a logging road, into the thicket, and positioned himself upon a 10-foot-tall tree stand. It wasn’t long before Mike noticed bizarre deer activity. Soon, he discovered why.
An 8-foot-tall gorilla-looking creature appeared in his peripheral vision and hopped behind a tree 20 yards away. Assuming it was just a prank, Mike began screaming at the moronic ‘joker’ to leave the hunting grounds immediately. As Mike stood off with the creature for about fifteen minutes, the details added up: the eyelashes, the square teeth, the cold breath, and the shiny hair. He realized that this was real. He readied his rifle, looked through the scope and watched its eyes. Dread washed over him:
“I got to noticin’ its eyes. It’s eyes were real evil, real sinister looking. You know, the look it was giving me. And I was thinkin’ ‘How can a human do that?'”
The creature roared and emitted a sharp whistle. A response whistle sounded from the east. Movement rang through the brush. Another creature was near. Mike took off running. The monsters pursued him through the thicket.
Somehow, he made it to his truck and fired a warning shot to stave the beasts off. It worked. When he drove off, he finally saw the other creature in his rear-view mirror. He was being hunted.
9 Comments
hubpages.com/education/Photographing-Bigfoot-One-Mans-Journey
Besides common sense and my gift of discernment for deception there are 10 very good scientific reasons why Big Foot, alias Sasquatch, alias Nanaik, alias Skunk Ape, alias Tsadjatko…there are over 100 aliases for the Big Foot doesn’t exist in any of these places. Here you go:
Bigfoot Doesn’t Fit in the Food Chain (I like this 1 of 10):
The Photographic and Video Evidence is Poor:
Bigfoot is Too Big to Go Unnoticed:
No Bigfoot Fossils Exist:
Successful Breeding Is Unlikely:
Misidentification is Widespread:
There Were No Sightings Before 1958:
Lack of Killings Despite Reward:
Bigfoot is a Hoaxer’s Paradise:
Lack of Physical Evidence:
For further explanation see the comment on hubpages.com/education/Photographing-Bigfoot-One-Mans-Journey
Besides common sense and my gift of discernment for deception there are 10 very good scientific reasons why Big Foot, alias Sasquatch, alias Nanaik, alias Skunk Ape, alias Tsadjatko…there are over 100 aliases for the Big Foot doesn’t exist in any of these places. Here you go:
Bigfoot Doesn’t Fit in the Food Chain (I like this 1 of 10):
Scientists have proven that sasquatches would need to number in at least the tens of thousands to sustain themselves over the years through breeding. If these thousands of creatures are all packing away 5,000 calories worth of meat every day, where is the deficit in the animals/plants they are eating? Considering even a slight drop in the population of any given animal (or plant) causes large reverberations through the food chain, the statistics simply don’t add up.
The Photographic and Video Evidence is Poor:
Perhaps the most damning fact to disprove the existence of Bigfoot is the atrocious quality of evidence that has been presented. The scientific community has only been given hazy eyewitness accounts, extremely vague photographs and films, and a few blatantly hoaxed footprints.
In such pieces of video or photographic “evidence”, the subject is almost always either obscured by tree branches or extremely far away. It raises the question why the person filming the event (and there have been many) doesn’t simply chase the creature, or at least try and get a clearer shot. The famed Patterson-Gimlin video (shown above) is often cited as the clearest image of a potential Bigfoot yet released – and even this is shot from an extreme distance. Sounds convenient, doesn’t it?
Bigfoot is Too Big to Go Unnoticed:
As mentioned previously, the average Bigfoot sighting places the creature at over 8ft tall. The reasonable question here is how such an enormous creature could possibly evade capture by humans. Every year new species are discovered all over the world, but they all have one thing in common: unless they’re in the sea, they are all tiny. When was the last time you heard of a new species of giant elephant being discovered? The point being that if tens of thousands of 8-foot tall, 500 pound ape-men were out there, we’d have found them by now.
No Bigfoot Fossils Exist:
Simply put, there has never been any fossil record of a large mammal resembling the Sasquatch in North America – despite the same soil preserving everything else that ever lived in the area, including dinosaur bones. Predictably, Bigfoot enthusiasts have a counter-argument: fossils have been found of one creature dubbed Gigantopithecus Blacki, the fossilized mandible of which is pictured above. This creature, essentially a 10 foot ape that weighed approximately 1,200lb, existed a hundred thousand years ago when it roamed an area in what is now China. Obvious aesthetic connections could be made between the two creatures – but no Gigantopithecus Blacki fossils have ever been found in America. It seems that something like Bigfoot did once exist, but thousands of miles from where the vast majority of sightings occur.
Successful Breeding Is Unlikely:
Scientists have established that in order for the existence of Bigfoot to be a zoological possibility, there would have to be tens of thousands of them breeding. But how would such a massive population be able to successfully locate potential mates, if even humans are incapable of finding them? The idea that sasquatches are being bred in families and are mating successfully with other groups of sasquatches is simply impossible – and yet such a situation must exist for these creatures to continue breeding. Coupled with the fact that almost all alleged Bigfoot photographs and videos show only one creature – implying that they travel alone – the odds of them being able to find each other to mate and produce offspring are small indeed.
Misidentification is Widespread:
An estimated 80% of supposed Bigfoot evidence can be readily attributed to hoaxes, but that still leaves the other 20%, right? Sure, but it would appear that even these sightings can be put down to misidentification. A recent study has found that many alleged Bigfoot sightings could easily be American Black Bears walking on their hind legs. The bears stand up to 7 feet tall when walking in this way, and although they don’t share the same characteristics as Bigfoot, for hardcore believers (and those seeking attention) the line between wishful thinking and common sense is conveniently blurred. Amazingly, the photograph shown above was initially displayed as a legitimate piece of Bigfoot evidence, just to illustrate the point
There Were No Sightings Before 1958:
Admittedly the title of this entry is somewhat misleading, because there have been sightings (although very few) of “wild men” all over the world, long before the fifties. But many Bigfoot enthusiasts forget that sightings of the cryptid are an entirely modern phenomenon. In 1958, several gigantic footprints (later shown to be fake) were discovered around the area of Bluff Creek in California. The prints drew significant media attention, and the term Bigfoot was coined in the newspapers. Ever since this event, alleged sightings of the creature have been cropping up all over the place. This is an important point: sasquatches cannot have appeared out of thin air, and if they did exist before the fifties, why weren’t they spotted earlier?
Lack of Killings Despite Reward:
I’ll begin this entry by mentioning that there is currently a genuine $1,000,000 reward for anyone who can bring back the body of a Sasquatch. Think about that for just a moment. Now consider the the tens of thousands of reported sightings – none of which have resulted in a Bigfoot being shot dead. Once again, the figures simply do not add up.
Bigfoot is a Hoaxer’s Paradise:
Although this does not directly disprove the existence of Bigfoot, it is important to point out that there are plenty of motives for people to create a hoax. People may simply seek attention, fame or wealth – just like the men who covered an ape suit with a dead squid (pictured above) to try and cash in on that $1,000,000 reward.
Lack of Physical Evidence:
For a minute, imagine that we have had tens of thousands of giant ape-men roaming around North America since the fifties. Surely such creatures would leave us at least one piece of indisputable physical evidence? We have none at all – no bones, hair samples, blood samples, skin samples, or any DNA evidence of any kind. One single hair strand would provide enough DNA to prove a new species existed. Besides, you can forget about DNA evidence for a moment to ask: where are the bodies? Unless they are immortal, there must be hundreds of Bigfoot remains out there right now. Why hasn’t anyone ever found one? We seem to have found plenty of footprints, but of course, that isn’t physical evidence.
It did not say 223. It clearly said 22. Big difference In ballistics. before you call” boys”. Read and understand.
Boys…read .223…not your grandpa’s rabbit rifle…same load as used effectively in Vietnam…many a dead gook can attest to.
Cheers
That was my first thought too. Big game hunters carrying a .22? Sure – it doesnt say they were actively hunting big game but mentions they were avid bear hunters (probably for comparison) but it makes it sound like they were claiming to be gig game hunters yet only had .22’s. This is the type story that gives those of us who actually witnessed these creatures a bad name. Its not the people telling their story. Its how the story was written and portrayed. They want to give the reader that doubt.
Pretty interesting, but those “big game hunters” weren’t going to bag any big game with their .22 rifles in Washington State. Maybe they were hunting squirrels & rabbits…