Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants

by David Hatcher Childress

  A photo of bigfoot allegedly taken in 2005 in northern Idaho with a motion-sensitive camera. Little else is known about this photo.

  Thinking it was a person from their small community who might be in need of a ride, they turned around. As the two lifelong Teslin residents and members of the Teslin Tlingit Council approached to within 20 feet, they noticed the figure was covered in hair, but standing upright the entire time.

  Though natural light was dusky, Jules saw what he believed to be flesh tones hidden beneath the mat of hair, he told Bakica.

  “I have no doubt they saw something, and are convinced it was not a bear or anything in the ordinary,” Bakica said. “They are convinced this was something out of the ordinary... And they are pretty shook up over it.”

  Bakica stated that Jules is an experienced hunter and described the figure as standing about 7 feet tall, but hunched over. They could see it was not a person. As the two parties went their separate ways, the dark-haired figure crossed the highway in two or three steps.

  Bakica said ground conditions mixed with rainfall made it impossible to pick up definitive tracks and there was no hair on branches or other vegetation. Also, by the time he went to the scene Monday morning, half the town had been out to the site, he said.

  The AP story mentioned that Jules launched a search for evidence that could document his experience.

  “I have no doubt in my mind that they believe what they saw was a sasquatch,” said Bakica. “Whether it was or not, I do not know. Just because you can’t prove something was there, does not mean it was not there.”

  According the story, other sasquatch sightings have occurred in the area. In April 1991, three Pelly Crossing residents reported seeing a sasquatch while driving between Pelly and Stewart Crossing. The creature fled back into the woods as the vehicle passed. The residents took a photo of what they claim were footprints measuring 15 inches long in the melting snow.

  The Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico Sighting

  The Taos News 2007 carried a story on January 18, of a sasquatch sighting in northern Taos County, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near the New Mexico-Colorado border. A Costilla, New Mexico man named Arturo Mart’nez, age 67, and a friend (who wished to remain anonymous) had an encounter on September 27, 2006. Said the article:

  Mart’nez and friend returned to another area several miles away from where they had been earlier in the day. This time, while driving on another fork of the rough road, they found many tops of aspen trees cleanly broken off that were strewn over the road.

  “We decided to investigate who was breaking the trees and throwing them on the road. I asked my friend, ‘Who would want to do this?’” Mart’nez explained, “These were aspens ranging in size from 3 to 4 inches to 6 to 8 inches in diameter, cleanly broken about 13 to 15 feet up the trunk of the trees. There were no tracks of bear or elk, or human tracks—no tracks of any kind, no sawdust at the bottom of the trees and what was strange, it was as if they were thrown several feet away from where they were broken. There were two big aspens completely uprooted and thrown away from where they had been growing. If bears had broken them, they would have left claw marks. Bears leave a smell on trees they scratch or break.

  “Elk in rutting battles leave the ground very disturbed. It wasn’t, and seeing many broken trees we continued on to investigate who or what was breaking them. The broken treetops were lying in the road as if something or someone wanted to say, ‘Nobody is welcome here.’ Rounding a curve, my tire blew out and things started getting very scary,” he continued.

  “We could hear elk bugling up higher and we decided to walk back down since it was late afternoon,” Mart’nez said. “We needed to get a spare, and come back to change the tire. We were taking our time checking out more broken trees, and there was easily over a hundred broken the same way. That’s when I heard the scariest noise I have ever heard in my life.

  “It started at first, sounding like an elk bugling, then turned into a scary roar so loud it kept echoing through the canyon,” he continued. “The elk up high stopped bugling. It kept making that noise at us. It reminded me of the noise the devil made in The Exorcist movie. Whatever was making the noise started breaking trees and throwing them in our direction a few seconds later.

  “Then I saw a huge creature moving through the edge of an aspen grove, about 30 to 40 feet from me. It walked upright, but hunched over, maybe 6 feet tall bent over, and standing straight was 7 to 8 feet tall with very dark fur all over. It was not a bear. Bears don’t walk like humans. I am convinced I saw what many call Sasquatch. Even with my gun, I was very scared and we left in a hurry. It seemed to be following in the edge of the trees, breaking more, throwing them toward us and making that awful noise. It was almost dark and we had to get out of there,” he recounted.

  The two men fled down the mountain, and Mart’nez said every time the creature roared the noise continued reverberating through the entire area. “I felt like at any moment something was going to grab me from behind all the way out of there.”

  They arrived on foot in Costilla well after dark, deciding no matter how scared they felt, it was necessary to return to the canyon, change the blown tire and bring Mart’nez’s vehicle back. The two men returned to where the vehicle was parked, and by the time they changed the spare it was after 2 a.m. on Sept. 28.

  “We decided to stay until daylight and try to find out what it really was we had experienced,”Mart’nez continued, “It was deathly quiet the whole time, nothing moving, no elk bugling, not a sound at all. At sunrise, we checked around, found more aspens broken the same way. Nothing else happened to us. There was no sign of anything out of the ordinary except more broken trees.”

  Not finding any other evidence of their frightening experience of the afternoon before, Mart’nez and his friend returned home. “Like I said, I know what I saw. I know it is not a bear or any other of the wildlife I have seen around here all my life. I decided to tell my story because America, wake up, these creatures exist,” he said. “Every time I go into the mountains anywhere from now on I will have a camera and an audio recorder with me. I have had other people tell me that even though they wish to remain anonymous, they have had similar experiences over the years, but don’t say much because they get ridiculed. I know what I saw and heard.”

  Similar bigfoot encounters were reported in the San Luis Valley area, on the Colorado side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, in the winter of 1993-94. The events were originally reported in the February edition of the Crestone Eagle and later the events were featured the 1996 television show Strange Universe. During the last week of December into the first week of January, seven sasquatch encounters were reported to local authorities along the Colorado-New Mexico border in the San Luis Valley. A niece of the undersheriff called to tell him that she had found some tracks that he’d better come look at. She told him that they were huge, human-looking, barefoot tracks.

  On the morning of December 31, he followed her to the remote location with a video camera to document the scene. Descending for hundreds of yards down a cow trail were two sets of human-looking tracks. One set measured 20 inches in length, while the other was 18 inches long. They descended over a variety of terrain, in snow and bare ground.

  The undersheriff’s niece told him that on the eve of discovering the tracks, she had heard her dog barking furiously outside. She went out to see what the commotion was all about when she heard huge footsteps go running by the house. Outside, she found her dog cowering inside the fenced yard. The dog had originally been locked out of the yard and she put him back outside the fence. A short time later, he started barking again, and once more she heard the huge running footsteps and a twang of something hitting the barbwire fence. After going outside again she found her dog once again inside the fence and shaking with fear!

  The following morning, while stalking a herd of deer to take photos, she happened to stumble on the giant barefoot tracks. She called her uncle to report the possib
le encounter and the tracks.

  Christopher O’Brien reports in his book The Mysterious Valley92 that the undersheriff related several other recent Accounts. One found a mother and son driving back from the mountains just after sunset on the southern part of the San Luis Valley near the New Mexico border. As they rounded a curve, their headlights revealed a sasquatch in the middle of the road with large glowing eyes and pointed ears. The mother slammed on her brakes and put the car in reverse and backed up. The bigfoot then dropped down on all fours and ran away like a dog!

  The mother and son proceeded directly to the sheriff’s office to report what they had seen. According to the undersheriff, “They were real upset about it.” This impressed the authorities enough for them to mount a search for the creature.

  O’Brien mentions two additional reports that were subsequently filed by motorists who had spotted large hairy humanoid creatures, at night, next to the highway. One report was made by a trucker who claimed the hairy giant he saw was “all white.”

  Yet another report was filed by a man who claimed he witnessed a pair of bigfoot “stalking a herd of elk” on the side of a mountain. He was close enough to see them “signaling to each other” while watching them through his binoculars.92

  O’Brien also mentions a New Mexico Cattle Inspector who lives in Rancho de Taos, New Mexico, who said that he had used binoculars to watch “a white bigfoot” clamber up a rocky slope during the late fall of 1993. It ascended the seemingly-impossible slope in minutes. The inspector became even more impressed with the creature’s agility when he tried to make the same climb the following day. It took him over two hours.92

  To me it is always interesting to hear stories of white-haired sasquatch. Perhaps the white hair would help it blend in with the abundant snowdrifts that blanket Colorado in the wintertime. Or, perhaps the white sasquatch is an older sasquatch, whose hair was once reddish-brown, but is now white or grey—like the changing of pigment that happens in aging apes and humans. More on that later.

  Bigfoot in the Upper Peninsula 2007

  Bigfoot got into the news in Michigan when he suddenly was spotted near Manistique. Located in the Upper Peninsula at the eastern edge of the Hiawatha National Forest, Manistique is a major fishing, hunting, boating and camping area with large sections of uninhabited forest to the west, north and east of the lakeside town. So it may come as no big surprise that the Associated Press reported on June 26, 2007 that sasquatch had been sighted repeatedly around the town.

  Under the headlines “Scientists set to prove ‘Bigfoot’ is no myth,” and “Bigfoot Field Researchers say almost every expedition yields a sighting,” the story said:

  Researchers will visit the Upper Peninsula next month to search for evidence of the hairy manlike creature known as “Bigfoot” or “Sasquatch.”

  The expedition will center in eastern Marquette County, following the most recent Bigfoot eyewitness account, said Matthew Moneymaker of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

  “We’ll be looking for evidence supporting a presence. ...We hope to meet local people who might have seen a Sasquatch or heard of someone else who had an encounter,” Moneymaker told the Daily Press of Escanaba.

  Most experts consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes, but there are a number of authors and researchers who think the stories could be true.

  Among all U.P. counties, Marquette County has logged the most reported Bigfoot sightings with four, Moneymaker said. Bigfoot encounters also have been reported in Ontonagon, Baraga, Dickinson, Luce and Schoolcraft counties.

  In all but three of 30 expeditions in the United States and Canada, BFRO investigators have either glimpsed Bigfoot or gotten close enough to hear the creature, Moneymaker said.

  Indeed, it seems that Manistique and the Hiawatha National Forest would be good places to search for sasquatch, though no reports of bigfoot being captured in Upper Michigan have so far been reported by the local media. A seven-second clip of a sasquatch walking through the woods near Bay City, Michigan was posted on Youtube.com on July 23, 2008. It very clearly shows a white-haired sasquatch walking through the woods, swinging its arms by its sides as it disappears behind a tree. The clip, which is short and without any voice over, is so sharp that it would seem to be a hoax, though it seems like a lot of trouble to go to, including making the fake sasquatch suit (a white one, at that), for a seven-second video for Youtube. The absence of any explanation or provenance for the clip seems suspect. As with many videos of bigfoot, we will probably never know if this is an authentic sighting or just another fake.

  Kentucky Backyard Bigfoot 2009

  Newspapers carried a bigfoot story that ran locally in Kentucky and nationally (Weekly World News) and internationally (The Telegraph in Britain) on September 8, 2009. The story featured photos from Kenny Mahoney of Fairdale, Kentucky who had set up a motion-sensitive camera in his backyard to take photos of any passing wildlife. Mahoney said that he was expecting to get photographs of squirrels, raccoons and other small animals, but instead got photos of a “gorilla-like creature” in his backyard.

  Said Mahoney, “It looked like it had the outline of a head, and like, gorilla-type shoulders, and then the arms crossed is what it looks like to me.”

  He told reporters that he is very doubtful that the creature in the photo is bigfoot, yet he has no idea what it could be. His wife showed it to a local wildlife expert who thought it might a bear. Certainly, the photo was of a fur-covered animal, but the expert could not say what it was.

  Some newspapers, like The Telegraph, said it was “one of the clearest ever photos of Bigfoot.” Mr. Mahoney, like many people, does not want to seem to be gullible and a believer in sasquatch, so he cautiously contends that the photo is a mystery. No one has made the accusation yet that he is trying to pull off a bigfoot photo hoax, so the conclusion of many researchers, including myself, is that this is a genuine photo of sasquatch.

  It is interesting to note that hairy apemen, even ones with white hair, are being seen every month or so across the U.S. and Canada. If more would-be photographers would put automatic cameras in their backyards, we might get more and more pictures of bigfoot and his smelly kin the skunk ape. As I have suggested before: with the prevalence of cell phones and digital cameras and other new technologies, we should be getting more and photos of sasquatch—and we have been! I predict that more and more people will be surprised to find that there is a gorilla-like creature creeping into their gardens at night!

  And what of the strange tales of white-haired sasquatch? While yetis, sasquatch and bigfoot are generally said to have reddish-brown hair, there are many—too many— reports of white-haired sasquatch and yeti. Are they old sasquatch that have gone “rogue"? As with many animal species, there may be a tradition that older, once dominant males are outcast from standard sasquatch society (presumably in deep wilderness somewhere) and are forced to fend for themselves. They may become “loner sasquatch” and, like rogue lions, tigers or bears, venture closer to human society in order to raid garbage dumps, gardens, chicken coops and such.

  Ken Mahoney’s backyard photograph.

  Indeed, in an earlier chapter we learned about yeti breaking the necks of powerful yaks and eating their brains—something that a normal yeti would probably not do, but a starving rogue yeti might take the chance of raiding a yak pasture and coming close to humans.

  Is this why there are so many sightings of the unusual white-haired sasquatch? Is it because he is old, and has been forced to roam away from the remote mountain forests or river swamps into areas where roads, trailer parks and rural towns lay dotted across the vast North American continent?

  Another curious feature of many yeti-sasquatch encounters is a sexual element. Often, teenage women seem to be of interest to bigfoot intruders. In most cases where bigfoot has peeped in windows or tried to get into a shack or trailer, a young woman was inside, as in the case of the Fouke/Boggy Creek Monster and the recent incident a
t the White Mountain Apache Nation where the police had been called because of a Peeping Tom bigfoot.

  Indeed, bigfoot has a keen sense of smell. A sasquatch can smell humans; he can smell sex; and he can smell if a woman is menstruating. A menstruating woman, or a teenager girl who is going through puberty, might be of special interest to young male sasquatch—and there is evidence that this is so. We even have the older tales of females being kidnapped by lonely sasquatch or yeti.

  In fact, in at least one of the Du Pont Monster sightings, reported in the Ottawa, Illinois Times on July 21, 2005, there was a menstruating woman involved in an encounter. A couple had been having sex in the backseat of a car, and a used tampon had been tossed out the window. This apparently attracted the well-known bigfoot of the area. The Du Pont Monster had also been seen by campers in the area. In one incident related in the Ottawa Times story, campers smelled a strange musky, pungent odor, like an old mop, and could see the creature ~ vaguely in the light of their campfire.

  The strange bigfoot-like beast involved in these sightings is known as the Du Pont Monster to locals because it is often sighted aound the sprawling dynamite factory and grounds, formerly owned by Du Pont, along the south bank of the Illinois River just east of the town of Seneca. In the thick forests and hills is a special bend in the road and a hollow at the bottom of a ravine. At this special spot, favored as a lover’s lane for the Seneca area, folks seem to encounter the Du Pont Monster most often.

  Weekly World News headline.

  In August of 2007 I stood at that spot late one night with some friends and someone who had encountered the monster while looking for snakes in the forest. At this bend in the road, he had seen bigfoot from the waist up, looking at him from a distance. At night, he claimed, the sasquatch would throw small pebbles at him and his friends if they camped in the area.