by John Zada
So we spent a little while talking and he was kind of jumping all over the place from story to story about what he heard, what he smelled, and what was there. He was scared stiff and insisted that he’d learned his lesson.
Then, in the middle of his rant, as though he’d just remembered, he screamed, “Look!” and pointed to the top of the cabin. I looked up and thought, “What the heck is that?” There’s two windows at the Deer Pass cabin and it was right above one of the windows: an enormous handprint! It looked like whatever had made it rubbed its hand in the soot of an earlier fire.
He said that something had come during the night and was banging on the side of the cabin. The attack, he said, started early in the night, while he was inside. It began with rocks and branches being thrown at the walls. He said he was absolutely terrified and as the night progressed, more things started happening. Banging. Shaking.
He said, “I swear it was a Thla’thla! I swear it was because what could put a handprint up there?”
I looked at it again. It was huge, and you could still see it because the dirt or soot was still on the walls. It wasn’t a perfect handprint by any means, but you could see it was a handprint and there was more than one along the walls of the building. And there was no way that this young man could have gotten up there. The Deer Pass cabin is high. It sits on stilts. The space beneath the cabin is used for wood storage. There’s no ladder at the cabin and it was just too high. The print was just too big.
He then went on to say that the creature was mocking him. It was terrorizing or scaring him. It could have gotten into the cabin at any time if it wanted to through the windows and door.
He said the creature finally went away after he screamed at the top of his lungs: “Leave me alone! Please just leave me alone! I’m not going to hurt you! Just leave me alone!” And I guess when it heard the fear in his voice, it disappeared.
Addendum 2
Hoodoo Valley Postscript
A year after my trip, I visited the Great Bear Lodge, a remote bear-viewing camp at the southern edge of the Great Bear Rainforest. I traveled on the invitation of one of the owners, Marg Lehane, an Australian I’d met in Winnipeg a few months before.
One evening, after an unforgettable but completely drenching day viewing grizzlies in the field, Marg and I found ourselves chatting over a glass of wine beside a huge wall map of the region. As we compared notes about the beautiful places we had both visited in the Great Bear, I related the stories I’d heard in Wuikinuxv about the Hoodoo Valley—which I pointed to on the map. When I told her that logging companies had reported strange incidents there over half a century ago, I could see the gears turning in her head. She admitted to knowing nothing about the place, but said that a colleague of hers might have been in the area at the time. She promised to ask him whether he knew anything, and she would put us in touch if he did.
Weeks passed and our conversation slipped my mind. But then one day I received an email from her:
When you were at the lodge, we talked about a valley in the Rivers Inlet area with some unusual happenings. My business partner knows the exact valley you were referring to. He went into the valley after the two logging operations there went broke to retrieve some of the machinery, and said that it was a creepy experience. He would be more than happy to chat with you about what he knows.
Later that day I began a correspondence with seventy-two-year-old Lance McGill, who lives on Vancouver Island. This is his statement concerning his knowledge of the Hoodoo Valley:
That valley, the Sowick valley on Owikeno Lake, is a really beautiful place. It’s chock-full of fir, cedar, and hemlock. My family was in the construction business. And I’d first heard about it when my dad bought a Caterpillar D7 off the first logging company to go broke in there in the late 1950s. I can’t recall the company’s name, but they apparently had a hell of a time in there. All sorts of mishaps. Nothing went right.
Between 1965 and 1967 I was working for a logging company called Kerr and Dumaresque, which was pulling timber in various parts of Owikeno Lake. While it was there, another logging show, run by Carlson Logging out of Port Alice, got the rights to go into Sowick—that problem valley. I actually knew Carl Carlson, the owner. We’d sometimes come across him and his crew on the lake or in the village. So we knew directly from them what was happening there.
As with the previous logging company that had gone into that same valley, nothing—and I mean nothing—went right for Carl and his boys. Their trucks and machinery constantly broke down. They malfunctioned or crashed for no apparent reason. There was an uncanny number of accidents. Many people got hurt, some really badly. They couldn’t get their camp set up properly. The natives wouldn’t work for them. The few that did got freaked out and never came back. It’s normal for things to be a bit rough and difficult on a logging show. But this was way beyond normal. No matter what those guys tried to do in that valley, everything went wrong.
When Carl’s yarder donkey exploded and caught fire—the engine was turned off and it was raining cats and dogs at the time—he decided to pull the plug on the operation. “That was the last straw,” he told me later. “I’m never going back in there for any kind of money,” he said. He thought the place was haunted or cursed. The incident with the yarder happened on the same day that all those guys got out of there in a panic. It was as if they were fleeing from Godzilla or something. They ran for their lives, leaving everything behind.
It was shortly after that when I was approached by Carl to go in there and recover some of the equipment he’d left behind. No one else would do it—no one from his old crew. Neither would the natives living in Rivers Inlet. I wasn’t superstitious in any way. Nor did I believe in the supernatural—or things being haunted. So when he desperately asked me to help him it was easy to say yes. I asked my friend Bill Trailing to come with me.
When people in Rivers Inlet heard I was going in there, every single one of them told me I was nuts. “Birds don’t sing in that valley,” one of them told me. Another guy from the Johnson family told me a story about three native hunters who went missing in there years before. The village later sent a search party for them and found their bodies with their heads missing. I dismissed all of it as colorful stories, superstitions. To me, everything that had happened in there was just a bunch of old-fashioned bad luck—pure and simple.
As I just mentioned, I’m not a religious or superstitious person. But when Bill and I got into that valley, we both felt something horrible. It was a creepy feeling, like something cold blowing on the back of your neck. The forest was dead silent. No breeze. Nothing moved. Even though we were outside, it felt as though we were sitting indoors in a silent room. To this day I can’t explain it. It was a strange feeling that everything was wrong. That we weren’t welcome there. Even weirder was this sort of presence. I felt that we had company with us, that someone or something was always watching.
I thought maybe I was imagining things, or had been influenced by all the people I had spoken to. But when I talked about it with Bill, he said he felt the exact same thing. In fact, neither of us had felt anything like it before—or after. It was so negative that we decided to cut the job short and just leave the valley that same day, with what few small things we managed to gather.
From what I understand, all the big machinery is still in there. No one’s been back to retrieve it. To this day, no one from the village will go in there. I don’t blame them. After experiencing what we did, neither would I.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the years devoted to creating this book, I have incurred an enormous debt of gratitude to the many people who helped make it possible. I wish to thank everyone in the communities I visited who appears in this story and the many others whom I met, traveled with, and/or spoke to behind the scenes. Their combined input helped me to develop a modicum of understanding of the rich and complex region I knew so little about before. I’m especially grateful to those who spared their time and energy to share t
heir very personal Sasquatch-related experiences, and with a stranger at that. In the end, I was able to mention only a small fraction of those anecdotes. Nonetheless, each was part of the larger patchwork of stories that influenced my understanding of this phenomenon.
I owe huge thanks to the Heiltsuk, Wuikinuxv, Kitasoo/Xai’xais, and Nuxalk First Nations and their members, who embraced me with an openness and hospitality that paved the way for many a new friendship.
Very special thanks go to those in the region who hosted me and/or facilitated aspects of the journey recounted herein. In Bella Bella and Koeye: Jess Housty, Alvina Duncan, William Housty, Marge Housty, Larry Jorgensen, Qqs Projects Society, Chief Harvey Humchitt and his family, Ian McAllister and Pacific Wild, Captain Brian Falconer, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the crew of Achiever, Shearwater Fishing Lodge, Sean Nagurny, and Chris the sea bus pilot. In Wuikinuxv: Lena Collins, Alex Chartrand Jr., and Chris Corbet. In Klemtu: Tim McGrady, Spirit Bear Lodge, and Clark Robinson Sr. In Ocean Falls: Rob and Corrina Darke. In Bella Coola: Leonard Ellis, Daniel Ellis, Michel Bazille, Bella Coola Grizzly Tours, Clark Hans, and James Hans and his family. In Courtenay: the late John Bindernagel and his wife, Joan.
Producing a travelogue is not a simple linear progression of research, travel, writing, and editing in that exact order. In my case, those streams ran in parallel until the very end. I made additional visits to the Great Bear, sometimes for freelance assignments, at other times to work on the manuscript, but always with the intention to deepen my knowledge about the region. I’d like to thank: Geoff Moore, the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast Tourism Association, and Destination British Columbia for assisting with my first trip to the area. Ingmar Lee and Krista Roessingh on Denny Island for putting up with the itinerant wannabe west coaster from Ontario who occupied their guest cabin on more than one occasion. Maple Leaf Adventures; Tom Rivest and Marg Lehane at the Great Bear Lodge; Desiree Lawson and Aaron Ditchfield; Howard Humchitt; and the Simon Fraser University bird crew, all for various micro-adventures, voyages, creek walks, and jaunts along the coast.
For suggestions on some of the psychology literature I have journalist, editor, and author Denise Winn to thank. A few friends came to my aid, lending their editorial insights while pushing me across the finish line. I especially want to thank: Andrew Boden, Ivan Tyrrell, and John Bell, who made useful comments and recommendations in the final draft stages.
My agent Carolyn Forde—by coincidence an erstwhile fan of Art Bell’s radio programs on the unexplained—was fortunately drawn to this story. I am very grateful for her faith in the project and for her tenacity in finding a home for it.
I offer thanks to the team at Grove Atlantic in New York for believing in this book and for doing what we comfortable, risk-averse Canadians are not well known for—taking the leap. It was an enormous pleasure collaborating with everyone there—especially with editors George Gibson, Corinna Barsan, and Emily Burns, whose revision alchemy transformed the work for the better. Their infectious and imperishable enthusiasm for the project helped keep the work enjoyable at every stage. I’d also like to thank Julia Berner-Tobin, Deb Seager, and Kait Astrella, also at Grove Atlantic, for their help.
I also offer my heartfelt appreciation to B.C. author, naturalist, and artist Briony Penn, who provided the wonderful maps found at the front of the book, and the devil’s club illustration that divides sections of the work.
I finally extend my gratitude to friends and family for their support over the years. And to Lori, in particular, for her love and unwavering encouragement and the many rambles she accompanied me on in the backcountry around Squamish, Chilliwack, and Harrison Lake, where Sasquatches, as it turned out, were never too distant.
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