Blurry Creatures - EP: 281 The Ape Men of Mt. Saint Helens with Marc Myrsell

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

In this episode, we dive deep into the mysterious 1924 attack on a group of miners at Mount St. Helens, an event steeped in legend and fear. Author and researcher Marc Myrsell joins us to uncover startling new evidence that may link the harrowing encounter to none other than Bigfoot. With meticulous investigation and a passion for the unexplained, Myrsell presents compelling details that breathe new life into this nearly century-old tale. Is it folklore, or could this be one of the earliest documented confrontations with the legendary creature? Join our members: https://blurrycreatures.supercast.com/ COSTA RICA TICKETS! https://www.eventcreate.com/e/costarica2025 You can get our book of Enoch here: https://amzn.to/3xriiUB Socials instagram.com/blurrycreatures facebook.com/blurrycreatures twitter.com/blurrycreatures Thanks to our Platinum Members! Kent Denmark Outro Song: On the Run by TimeCop1983 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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What is the stuff coming out of this bag? You know, I don't think a lot of us think about maybe what we feed our dogs. And that's why we partner with rough greens. Most of us would love to have our dogs, you know, live as long as possible. I mean, I just lost my dog in December. And I would have just, I would have loved more time with Carl. And one of the things you can do to get more time with your dog is to feed them better. Dog owners don't usually realize that live nutrients, that their dog's,

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And Rough Green's really made a difference in their energy levels and the pep in their step. So if you want to do what we did, you can get a free jumpstart trial bag for your dog today. Just cover the shipping. Go to Rough Greens.com and use discount code blurry. That's RUFFF greens.com discount code blurry. Rough Greens makes any dog food better. The miners were like, this is nuts. Something's very, very wrong going. out of here. In the morning, we're out of here. They all bed down. About dark, just around dusk, something very large impacts the cabin, a heavy enough impact so it knocks out one of the split-lob chinkings between the laws, leaving a hole. The miners look out, and they said that

they can see six or seven of these creatures in the moonlight dancing around the cabin. All hell breaks loose. He just gave the facts. He never really gave an opinion except to say, I'd never seen a group of men more scared in my life. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine. The Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right, it bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event.

And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. All right, welcome back to blurry creatures. We've got a fun episode for you. We're going back in the Bigfoot space. This legendary story, an ape canyon, the Pacific Northwest of these miners getting attacked. We brought on Mark Marcell, who's just finishing up. up his full, this full 200-page book about this whole experience. He's talked to everyone in the family. He's basically done a serial episode on this ape canyon attack in 1924 with a bunch of miners, and he's got all the evidence. So we're excited to get into this story and hear everything there is. That's right. Right at the base of Mount St. Helens, there's this really famous Bigfoot event.

It's great to get back into the Bigfoot space here today. And this is one of the legendary epic stories of a Bigfoot, multiple Bigfoot encounters in the Pacific Northwest. And we've got the guy that wrote the book on it. Mountain Devil, the 1924, Ape Canyon attack, and its aftermath. It's a fantastic story and one that was told, retold, and verified by a number of witnesses. So this is one of the apex of the vortex, if you will, Nate, when it comes to Americana and Bigfoot stories. So enjoy this one. This is a fun one.

Yeah, it's a hundred-year anniversary of the Legend of Ape Canyon. And the Sasquatch story that won't die. If you want to become a member of this podcast, we just moved over to Supercast. And some of you guys have been able to enjoy the back end and the new experience there. We have all sorts of new perks available. We've got video from some of our conference for the higher tiers. And Reddit chat style comments, we're going to do AMAs. And the back end is blurrier and better than ever.

Yeah, it's shiny and brand new. It's easy. It's one click to get into Spotify and get your, your private RSS feed with all the extra bonus material directly to your Spotify account. Of course, it works with all the other podcast apps. But this has been a migration, and it's an upgrade for us at Blurry. We wanted to bring more value. We heard what you guys were asking for, and we're delivering on that.

So if you haven't made the decision to become a member or you'd like to check it out, come check it out. We're offering our original pricing, our 1985 prices, Nate says, until the end of the week. So get in at the original pricing. Lock it in before the holidays. You can gift a membership if you want to give one this holiday season. But you can lock in your original pricing before prices go up. So join the membership.

Thank you guys so much for sporting this podcast and producing it and make it happen. Let's get Mark Marcell on this one. All right, welcome back to Blurray Creatures. You know, we started with Bigfoot. We started talking about Bigfoot and we have our friend today. As a book out on one of the most popular Bigfoot stories in history. And one thing, if you get into Bigfoot and you get into the history of Bigfoot, there's like five or six stories that are just kind of everybody in the Bigfoot space.

knows and we're going to talk about the ape canyon incident. This is one of those stories. It's like almost 100 years old where these miners get attacked in the middle of the night. I'm excited to get into this story. We haven't really talked about this on the podcast. So welcome to the podcast, Mark Mercell from the Pacific Northwest. Thanks for coming on. You wrote a book on the ape canyon incident and we're going to dive into that today. But we ask everyone on the top of the show, what do you think Bigfoot is? What do you think Bigfoot is? We're always trying to figure out what this creature is. I mean, we've interviewed just about everyone from different fields of expertise on what their thoughts are on Bigfoot and everything from

a hybrid alien creature to just a regular old, you know, giganapithecus. But the, uh, the opinions on this creature just vary. So just wondering what your thoughts are on Bigfoot. No, no, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's actually an excellent question to start with. And by the way, thanks for having me on, on blurry creatures. Let me, uh, give you a little bit of a back story here. Yes, I've written a book on it, but it's actually just this little 30-page zine that I made just as a dry run on putting the story together. But the big, but the big, big, ape canyon book is hoping to, I'm wrapping it up, getting it to the editor, maybe about 200 pages or so. I hope to get it out this spring. On Bigfoot, Sasquatch, I think the best answer that I can give, what is Bigfoot?

what is the Sasquatch phenomenon? Honestly, I don't know. And I think that's what any good researcher should say. I don't know what it is. The evidence tends to point to a flesh and blood, a North American wood ape kind of creature. Looking at the animal record and the fossil record, especially for mammals,

that's what everything points to. currently as far as habitat, the possibility of a large mammal living in the woods or in many other areas as well, even in the plains, tends to point to that. Other possibilities of interdimensional being, demon, angel, UFO, I think it was Hubbleman's that said, try not to explain an unexplained phenomenon with yet another unexplained phenomenon. And so I tend to shy away from that. That being said, I do have to say I'm strongly against a term that's been battered about for about 10 or 12 years now. That term is Wu, where a lot of folks who follow cryptids or follow Bigfoot tend to discard what they call as Wu being as, say in the issue of Bigfoot, something that is more ethereal, more interdimensional.

and anybody who brings it up, they call it woo. I tend to shy away from that because even though someone may believe that, that they're from another dimension, there's 100%. I believe that there's no denying that the Sasquatch phenomenon is real. 99% of the time when someone says that they saw something in the woods, I believe it. They did see something in the woods. What it is, I don't know.

If they want to put it in terms of a large mammal, that's cool. If they want to put it in terms of an interdimensional being, that's cool too. But I think that by discrediting or discounting, everything that they say, you're kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There's probably something in their story, even if you completely disagree with their reasoning, there's something to their story that has credence and evidence that's worth looking into. I think you're right. Like there's too many accounts for us to just to throw it all out. You can't. You just have to say there's something happening here that we don't have a good explanation for,

although we have a lot of physical evidence, et cetera. This is why I think it's such an enduring and in amatic mystery. You know, especially for us here in America, in North America, where there are thousands of sightings on annual basis of a giant creature. And that's kind of where our show comes from, right, Mark, where we talk about, it's really a Mitch Headberg joke about, you know, it's even more terrifying the idea there's a blurry creature, running around because all the photos of this guy or gal, other than maybe the Patterson Gimlin film,

seem to be very blurry. Like, you really can't, you really can't see what's going on. But really what we hear to talk about is the ape Canyon incident. And that's, as you said, you wrote a zine about this. It'll be the 100-year anniversary of this incident this summer. So 1924 was when this happened. As Nate said in the beginning, this story, this encounter is become part of the lore of the Sasquatch Bigfoot phenomena. Yeah, there's always those minor stories.

There's a lot of those old minor stories that kind of crept around and I think these ones are the most credible and it's hard to, you know, I think people go to some of these more documented societies when they're trying to introduce

kind of give people the Bigfoot 101 of like the history of this creature and you know, when you have these group, like when you have a group of people that have an encounter, for some reason it feels more credible than just like a guy,

like a single guy. The guy in season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out.

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Yes, actually, we are on the 100th year and 21st day anniversary of the attack. It happened on the main attack that, the main attack that, drove the miners off happened on July the 10th, 12th of 1924. And you bring up an excellent point that at the time during the, during that week in July, there were five miners who were working the mine. And it's, you bring up an excellent point that there are five people who were there who witnessed this. and then about a shortly thereafter within days all five of them were interviewed

about the incident and it was all the interviews were published in the newspapers more than one and it spread like wildfire from there there was a rumor for a while about a deathbed confession that it was all a hoax

but there is zero evidence of a deathbed confession claiming it was all a hoax. These folks stuck to their word till they died, till they all died. And some of them spoke with their family members about it. One of them, the youngest, Leroy Perry Smith, he was quoted in the newspapers.

He was about 18 or 19 at the time before he added any kids or anything. LeBroy Perry Smith said that, I don't know what it was that I saw, this large hair-covered creature, but he said, I know that I don't want to have anything more to do with it, ever again. And he stuck to its word. He never told anybody about it. John Green, the famous

Bigfoot researcher of the 60s and 70s, he went out to Kelso Longview in Washington and interviewed Fred Beck, one of the other miners. And John said that he knew that Leroy was in town, but he didn't want to talk about it, so he never knocked on his door. So some of them shared it with their families, some of them didn't. So walk us back 100 years here, Mark. What is the ape canyon attack, Ape Canyon incident? Where is this happening? And according, as you said,

to these multiple interviews and also the sort of the prevailing story, what happened that garnered so much attention and it's stuck with people for now 100 years? You know, today we tend to put Fred back as the patriarch of the whole affair, mainly because he was one of the survivors. He was not the youngest, but almost the youngest. But truly, it was his father-in-law, a fellow named Marion Smith. Marion Smith had grew up in the Lexington neighborhood of Kelso Longue in southwest Washington.

And Marion grew up in the age of big timber in the 1880s and 1890s, taking these monstrous trees out of their long-war truck logging or, of course, helicopter logging. They were just pretty much doing it by hand. some some with steam, some with steam railroads and steam donkeys. But because of that, Marion knew that there was gold up on the mountains. And it's true, wherever you have a volcano, gold and quartz go with it. So in 1918, he gathered up friends and family, mainly family members. Marion and his cousin Gabe Lefevre and his son-in-law Fred Beck, eventually his son,

Leroy and a family friend named John Peterson. And in 1918, they started prospecting along the Lewis River looking for a placer location. And mind you, these guys, this was not a commercial enterprise. These guys had regular mill jobs that they had to go back to and make a living. So they were doing it periodically. At some point, in 1920, they turned north and went up onto the east shoulder of Mount St. Helens. and decided to lay claim to a mine that was called the vendor wipe mine. And let me get to the punch lane later, but why they chose this location?

It's up for conjecture. It is one of the most dangerous, precipitous, horrible locations to get to to start a mine. But they decided it was not a plaster location. It was a load claim, which means you're boring into the mountain. It's a very, very deep box canyon, which we generally don't have around here because of the volcanoes. They're more rolling and easygoing. But this is a very deep box canyon. And on the north side of the canyon, they decided to start a mine.

And word is interviewing one of the family members. He told me it went back about 75 feet or so. And so they started working the mine. The first two years, they were just TED camping, hiking in and 10. tent camping at the base of a very large butte where the mine laid it's called pumice butte and being tent camping they have to a hallway in their stuff every year tools dynamite stores food that kind of stuff and in those first two years i got to say mary mary and smith and actually the whole family had an excellent reputation of being quite affable and being nice

very nice people, but also they had the reputation of being very, very square, that where, what they said that they were going to do, it was something you could count on. It was something, you knew it was going to happen. If they said that something was, if they said they were going to do something, you knew they were going to do it. They were very reliable, trustworthy people. In the first two years, they started hearing weird sounds up there. Marion had, Marion had hunted and fished, and seeing everything there was to see in the woods. But he started hearing stuff that he couldn't really explain. There was this deep, deep bass thumping sound.

It was so low and bass-like that he couldn't really tell where it was coming from until all the rest of the comrades, all the rest of the miners were around him. And the sound happened, and he realized it wasn't a joke. Also, at night, they would hear this high-pitched whistling, sound coming from one of the one of the ridgetops and after a few minutes there'd be an answering call

from another ridge top back and forth all night long around 1923 leroy was going to the spring site morey actually was going to to one of the streams near their tent because it was his turn to wash spots and pans and there's a small sandbar there and right in the center of it there was this large a human-like footprint. And he gathers the rest of the guys around and says, look at this. And they really couldn't explain it. Marion in particular, because of his work

out in the woods, all those years, he had heard from other people, other workers, mainly loggers, the tale of this large kind of hair-covered wild creature or wild man that had been out there. He had never seen one,

but he knew the stories and it got him of thinking. Despite these odd incidences, the assays on the gold mine were good, and it was enough so that they decided when they returned in 1924, they were going to build a cabin, a cabin that was going to be sturdy enough to hold their stuff to withstand the snows. That's the main thing going on up there. This is way up at the timber line of Mount St. Helens, and I'm not sure. but we're talking, we're talking like seven or eight feet worth of snow in that area.

And the earliest, the very earliest that you can get up there today is maybe second week of June. And by Thanksgiving, you have to be out of there. You're going to get snowed in. In theory, one could stay up there year around,

but in December, all you'd be doing is surviving. You would be working the mine or anything like that. So when they returned, they did. They built a cabin right by the mine. And you have to understand that it's very, very difficult to get to. There were roads into, say, the region, but where they parked at Spirit Lake was the closest road. And that's about five miles, six miles from their work area. And so hiking in, bringing in all your stuff, you have to hike up the top of Pumas Butte is maybe about 300 feet-ish tall. And then you're going to, you. You have to go down extremely scrably, steep, dangerous slope about 900 feet in order to get to the cabin at mine site. But that's what they did.

They built the cabin. They weren't working on the cabin full time. They were doing it part-time while they were working the mine. Fortunately, about five months ago, I got this glorious picture of the cabin from one of the family members of the descendants. and I just had a pretty grainy, very kind of blurry picture, if I will. Blurry picture out of the cabin before that. But I just got this great picture of the cabin that shows Fred and Leroy in front of it and shows the magnitude of the construction.

These logs were, oh, say the largest was about 18 inches in diameter or so, and then smaller down there. And they cut down the trees and built the cabin just simply by hand with hand tools and maybe block and tackle. These guys were made of metal that we are not made of anymore. These guys were just dynamite. They're not only mining, but they're like, hey, we're just going to build a like an undemolishable cabin out here in the middle of nowhere,

down 900 foot slope and up a hill to make sure that we can, this thing will survive winters and outside hell. This is our side project. That's, that's, I have to tell you, I've become great friends with the daughter of the youngest of the, minors. Betty is maybe about 75. And I've gotten to know her grandsons as well, three or four of them. And we've gone out to that area and gone down to the site. And I can see why these guys were like, okay, yeah, let's do a gold mine. And hey, let's build a huge cabin, knowing the,

knowing the Mitchells, Jared and Jake and Braden, these guys are full of energy. They're pretty a little dangerous on the slope because of their energy and how excited they are. So knowing the Mitchells and seeing that this could be in insight right into their family 100 years ago, yeah, it'd be something that family would do. While they were up there in early parts of July, late June, Marion and Fred are going to the spring about 100 feet north of the cabin. and they see this hair-covered creature peeking out from behind a tree about 300 feet away. They'd kind of keyed up with those weird sounds, and Fred had his gun with them, and took three shots of the creature.

And word was that you could see the bark skinning off the side of the tree as the creature was kind of doing peek-a-boo looking at Marion and Fred. And they go down there, and sure, it was the right tree, because they could see where the tree. because they can see where the bark gets kidnapped off from Fred's bullets, and there was no animal, there's no hair, there's no blood, there was no spore or anything. And they look up the hill up in front of them, and they can see this creature peeking out, looking behind them, just walking up the hill, just taking a nice, lazy walk. Seemingly, the bullets had no effect at all. So Marion ordered everybody.

Nobody leaves camp without being armed. He didn't know what the hell this was. Nobody did, but it was obviously this large bipedal creature. So they returned back to their families on July the 4th for the festivities. And that's kind of the weird thing about these guys and their story. Again, they had a great reputation, but their families and friends were hearing this story of this eight man that they had shot at and a pretty incredible story.

So the friends and family couldn't really rectify it. It was a round pig trying to go in a square hole for them, you know, or vice versa. So the guys returned after the 4th of July, and that's in that week, things went downhill very, very quickly. Leroy is returning from the spring with water. The guys are in the mine. And this big bruiser, Sasquatch Mountain Devil-like creature, comes out of the brush. You have to understand that this is a very, because of the slope, this is a very, very limited area where one can stand.

It's incredibly steep. When they started the mine, they blasted out of shelf and started mining into the mountain. When they built the cabin, they blasted out just a flat area enough to build a cabin. But it's all very treeed and brushy. And this creature comes up. Leroy takes three shots into the creature about 50, 75 feet away. but he couldn't have missed, and the creature turns around, goes back into the brush, unaffected. On July 10th, on Thursday, afternoon, it was the end of the workday, and all the miners are in the cabin,

except this poor young guy, Leroy, who is again returning from the spring with water, and the creature comes out again, Leroy takes one shot into the creature, the rest of the guys in the cabin hear it, and they come boiling out of the cabin. Marion Smith said in an interview that he estimated about 16 rounds went into this creature between all of them. Wow. And that the individual either falls off the cliff into the canyon or crouches down and climbs down into the canyon. I've been able to, I spy at the bottom of the canyon from the mine, and I couldn't climb down there, but a large ape-like creature probably could, so I don't know. But the point is, is that at that time, in the afternoon of that Thursday,

the miners were like, this is nuts. Something's very, very wrong going out of here. In the morning, we're out of here. they all bed down about dark around the just around dusk something very large impacts the cabin heavy a heavy enough impact so it knocks out one of the split lob chinkings between the laws leaving a hole the miners look out and they said that they can see six or seven of these creatures in the moonlight dancing around the cabin all hell breaks loose start raining down boulders and rocks on to the cabin. They started climbing up on the roof trying to beat their way in. The miners tear apart

their bunks and try to unblockade the door. And they built up the fire and screaming and yelling, go away, please go away. We're all going to go home in the morning and everyone's going to be happy. We won't come back again. They were terrified. One of the reporters that returned to the site a week later did point out and showed in a photo that something was trying to dig under the foundation that night trying to get at the miners. So there's shootings of the roof, screaming and yelling, building up the fire, rocks are raining down all night long. Dawn comes, it's all quiet. And they have the courage to unblockade the door and open it up. And all around the cabin are these large footprints, 14, 15 inches long. There's boulders and rocks

scattered everywhere. A stack of leftover roof shakes that they're. had made, was discombobulated and spread around everywhere. Grab your guns, grab your tobacco, and let's get out of here. And they split. Walked back down to their truck and went first to the Spirit Lake Rangers station where Bill Welch, the Forrest Ranger and his wife, Wilma, were living in the residence. And they knock on the door, well, Marion knocks on the door. The rest of the miners skidallow to the truck.

and Welma Welch, the ranger's wife, answers his door. Is Bill around? Is Bill around? I got to talk to him. Bill comes out from the barn. And Bill's like, what's going on? And he says, well, Marion says, well, Bill, I just want to let you know that we got one. We caught one.

We got a mountain devil. And Bill says, Mountain Devil, huh? Yeah, okay. Wolverine? Nope. No, a mountain devil. A cougar, Marion? No, no, Bill, a mountain devil.

I was like, well, okay, okay, I just want to let you know because in case we saw one and Marion had checked in before the 4th of July and told Bill about it, I just wanted to let you know that we bagged one up there. Okay. So Marion goes to the truck and Bill Welch follows them and looks inside and Bill said in an interview years later, he had never seen a group of men more terrified in his life. There was something very, very wrong with these miners. They were scared. They were profoundly shaken.

So the guys make the trip back down into town, and they stop at the Blue Ox Tavern to do what I would do first, and they did get a drink. And so they talked to the barn vendor and told them what happened. They said initially on the hike out, nobody say anything to anybody they're going to think they're crazy but the thing that i've always thought about is that this morning out here on the pacific coast you know 830 i'm about to come on you know show with my friends with luke and nate and i get hit by a truck and i survive how could i come on this show and not tell you what you guys wouldn't believe it i just got hit by a truck a minute ago yeah

it's with these guys they get into town how can they not talk about it So they tell the bartend and word spreads around town. They get interviewed and it hits the newspaper. And at the time, we had the Associated Presswire. And so it was very early on. And then from there, it spread all up and down the West Coast. I look at newspapers anytime I travel to see how far the ape canyon story spread. And it made it into British Columbia down south around San Diego.

and then about far east I've been able to tell in Missouri. So it spread like wildfire. And then what ensued the great ape hunt of 1924, where everyone went up, where every young guy with a gun went up there trying to find one of these eight men like creatures. So usually, I think my time was pretty good, because usually it takes me about three hours to tell the story.

Yeah. But that's the short elevator ride to the eight gang. It's like, dude, I love it. It's one of those things where it's like, I think, when you're trying to run a gold mine, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to your gold mine. Yeah. The last thing you want is every dude up there trying to,

it just lends to the credibility of the story. If they were trying to make it up, I mean, there's a, there's plenty of places you want to draw attention to. And I would say we were finding, you're pulling valuable rocks out of the mountain. You don't want people to know where that is. So it doesn't make sense that it would just be like a,

like a made up story that a, a bunch of guys were just trying to con and get their buddies all laughing. I don't even know. What do they stand to gain out of it? Now that I hear the story, it's kind of wild to think that it could be a hoax. The interesting thing about the incident is that I often think that today we like to think of family members or people who lived 100, 200, 300, 300 years ago as being sort of podunk superstitious, you know, backward thinking folks that, you know, they believe in everything, superstitious, don't walk under a ladder, you know, 23 Skadoob, stay away from black cats, that kind of thing.

But it's not true. It's the same as it is today in any kind of cryptid, UFO, Bigfoot encounter. Immediately, as there is today, there was this rash of trying, I would explain it away series that these guys did not get attacked by mountain devils. They did not get attacked by ape-like creatures. The two first explained away theories is that they were drunk. They were boozers. It was in the age of prohibition. People said that they went to the cabin and never saw any evidence of bottles. The other weird explanation is that they were spiritualists. They were having seances up there. And my joke is that I really like to drink beer and wine. And I've played

around with the Ouija board once in a while, but at no point had I ever thought that my house is getting attacked by large haircovered creatures, right? The other explain to a Wayfury is that up at Spirit Lake about six miles north, there was a YMCA Boys Camp. And there was a letter to the editor written by one of the kids' fathers. And he said, I got it. I got it. My son confessed. It was he and two other camp and they're the ones who threw the rocks on the cabin. And the story was that they snuck out after bed check one night. And, well, the day before they had encountered the miners at the mine, and the mine brandished their weapons and like, hey, you kids, get out of here.

And the kids were mad about it. And in retribution, they snuck out after bed check and went up the six-mile hike, up Pumas Bute, down to the cabin, and threw rocks at them. And they're the ones that did it. I found a great little paragraph that explained that the YMCA boys did hike up there. There were about 70 of them and camped at Pumas Bute and then returned Thursday morning. It specifically said that all the campers were back in camp on Thursday. So they weren't even there on Thursday night, July the 10th.

And arguably that if these 14-year-old kids had actually perpetuated the attack and these minor shot back at them, the real news story would have been five minors getting arrested for shooting at three unarmed young kids. But that wasn't the story. The real story was these guys were coming off the mountain and telling the world that their cabin was attacked by large. covered mountain delts. Mark, getting to know these people, and I love the anecdotal story about the energy and the grandsons and how you're like, this is totally, I can totally see why they did what they did.

But from the family point of view, right? And you said before there was no deathbed confession. These people stuck to it until the end. There wasn't they like, hey, we spoofed you kind of a thing. What does the family take on this? Because I know you're finishing a book, as you said in the beginning. I don't know if it was in our pre-roller when we started it, but you're writing a, comprehensive book on this incident. And you have, of course, had the zine, which if you try to find it

online, it's sold out. So congrats on that. It's a pretty popular, it's pretty popular, apparently. But what is the, what's the take from, from these families? I was considered to be the insiders, really, because this would have been something that's been told and passed down to their kids and also not to their grandkids. Well, it's fascinating. I guess I should say that over the 200 years, and so there's two, two parts of the families that I've talked to. What is, Rod back, and he lives out in Idaho, and he's the grandson of Fred Beck. Rod had gotten to a point with his dad, Fred's son, where around 12 or 13, Rod went to live with Fred, his grandfather in Kelso, up until adulthood, until he moved out and got a job. And I talked to Rod, and he said,

knowing his grandfather, Fred, he said that what the story is, what Fred wrote about, in his book in 1967, I fought the eight men of Mount St. Helens. Rod said that what Fred wrote about was 110% actual factual. It was that he believed Fred 100%. Rod had visited the site in the very, very early 70s and saw how dangerous and how incredible and crazy it is. But he said that what Fred says goes. The other faction is quite interesting.

Leroy, the youngest of the minors, 18 or 19. Leroy's son and daughter is still alive. I haven't made contact with the son, but I made contact a few years ago with the daughter, Betty Mitchell. And this weird, you know, long hair, hipster researching Bigfoot. when I called out Betty's number and calling an older woman, I chickened out. And I didn't drop the Bigfoot bag on Betty right then. I was like, hey, you know, Miss Mitchell, I'm just doing a family history research project

about your family. And I dropped volumes and everything. You know, is this your dad? Is this your grandfather? Is this your uncle? And she said, yeah, that's my family. Yeah, absolutely. Betty, as I, Betty,

Betty found out eventually about what I was really researching. I was researching her family. And the crazy thing is, is that Betty told me that she grew up in Kelso Longview, where these guys were headquartered.

She knew about the ape canyon incident. She knew about Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Mountain Devils attacking these guys. But oddly enough, she didn't know that it was her dad and her family until I told her. Oh, wow. She, that's what about Leroy saying, I never want to have anything to do with it again.

He never told his daughter, ever. She knew about the story, but didn't know it was her family until I showed up on the scene. She said that, oddly enough, when Leroy died, cleaning up dad's stuff, she said that they found this little burlap sack in his dresser drawer. with gold nuggets in it. And she said, we never really figured out where that came from. And I was like, man, Betty,

that's an ape canyon gold, man. It's great. So after, I started looking for this site around 2011. And I was just by myself at first, went up there about three or four times. And every time I would poke my way down Pumice Butte a little bit further,

a little bit further until 2013 when my friends asked me, hey, what are you doing these days? And I told him the story. It's like, oh, we got to go. You got to take me with you. So I took friends up there in 2013, my first overnight. And only a couple, only one of my friends had the guts once they saw the area. Only one of my friends had the courage to actually go down that slope with me. So it's my friend Gabriel, Temi, and he and I went down there, and after a lot of messing around, we first found scumps of the trees that the miners cut down in order to build the cabin.

I was able to confer previously with the archaeologist of the National Forest, where in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest. And he told me, the archaeologist told me that the area, that side of the Butte had never been commercially mined. it's just too dang steep even though today that side of the of the butte was very very little affected by the eruption in 1980 and you can see it there are these large large trees i mean very large there's one of the largest dug firs by the cap and site must be about seven or eight feet in diameter just massive trees that you know are well over a hundred years old so um with that area had never been commercially logged, I knew that if I could find stumps, stumps can last a very, very long time out of the woods. And I knew if we could find stumps, I knew we would be close.

And on that trip in 2013, we found a stump, we found another stump, we found another stump, and then break out the metal detector, and we were able to find the foundation logs about six, well, no, like three or four, about four or five inches underground with the nails still driven into the law. We were able to find some of their tools, found a spoon, bailing wire, and that was in 2013. So last year, the great-grandsons, Jake, Jared, and Braden Mitchell, they had heard, they're not really into Bigfoot, but they heard the story from the grandma, Grandma Betty. and Betty said, yeah, there's this weird guy in Vancouver who I talked to. He's a nice guy. And she told him the story at these young Mitchell guys who are like 23, 25, and just full of energy,

are really, really excited about their family history, really excited about the story. So on the 99th anniversary, I went up with some friends, and the Mitchells wanted to join us. They couldn't. They wanted to go back about two weeks later. and you know my ape canyon hangover lasts a really long time it is exhausting getting up there so i'm like i can't go back up you guys so i gave them quote unquote detailed directions about how to get to the cabin site detailed directions mean okay you go down the hill and there's a tree okay then there's a rock and there's another tree i tried to give them as best description as i could about how to get to the cabin That weekend, on their third try, they finally figured it out.

And they, okay, oh, this is what Mark's talking about. Here's the cabin site. And they were nerding out about that, about the cabin that their family had built. And from the cabin, the record is that the mine was about 80 feet away and 30 feet below on the shelf in a really very dangerous area. and I had been there twice and I got to tell you I was within about 25, 50 feet of the mine you can't see it from anywhere

until you were standing right there at the entrance. I was right there, but I didn't go far enough. But the Mitchells did. They went just a little bit further and I told the guys, I told Braden Mitchell when you guys get back from the mountain, you need to

tell me because I directed you there and if all you guys are injured or dead, I feel responsible. Yeah, yeah. It's on me. It's Mark's fault. Exactly. Exactly. So I get a text from Braden and he's like,

hey, had a great time. We're all safe. And by the way, we found this. And he sends me a singular photo of a whole of the and then he loses reception. And for about three or four hours, I'm looking at this picture of a hole in the rock

and I'm like, is it 40 miles away? What's going on? Thanks to Millian, Braden and finally he gets back into reception. And yeah, last August, their mine was found. They were pulling gold out of there. Obviously, if they found gold nuggets in the midst

of Leroy's stuff. And they were working it, right? We don't work on mine for too long. that doesn't produce. Exactly, especially one that's, you're dealing with, you're dealing with, you know,

a load claim where it's dynamite, clearing out the rubble, hand, you know, it's just hand tool. It's hard, hard work. But the word is,

is that it went back about 75 feet at the time. Now, currently the mine is not blocked, but it's kind of filled in. It's on a very steep slope. So just through time, rocks and stuff have come down and filled it in.

So currently it's about, well, about 20 feet deep or so. Okay. But, yeah. Was any of this stuff that you're finding? Was this impacted it all by, and you said minimally, but did the St. Helens eruption, throw a bunch of debris on top of some of these places where you're looking to find, like the cabin site.

And is that part of what obscured the ability or it was just a matter of time, just sort of the time marches on that just sort of covers these things? disappears them. Yeah, two things with that. Fortunately, early on, I was able to get a mighty tone. It's quite a large book. It's a USGS publication of a compendium of different geologists. I think it was published in 84, where different geologists went around the mountain, and they were studying the impact of the eruption. Fortunately, one of their study areas was Abe Canyon in Pumasbute. And you can see today, when the mountain erupted, mud flows came barreling down the mountain, went up the side of Pumas Butte and scoured it, the west side of it, but it could not overtop it onto the east side.

And the main forest was going out north out of the mountain. Ait Canyon is on the east side. As far as the steam and ash and pumice, it mainly just went straight up into the stratosphere, and the wind carried it off. These geologists pointed out that on the east side of Pumice Butte, which was spared from the eruption, they noted it was that ashen pumice was only about two inches thick. Okay. Which is kind of amazing because we're only a mile from the mountain, from the heads were the top of the mountain. I mean, the mountain is right there in front of you, but the east side was very, very little affected.

These mud flows, went up Pumasbute, fell down, and they drained into the canyons and muddy river, sparing the east side. where the cabin and mine is. As far as the cabin goes, Fred Beck in his book, 40 years later, said that he heard that the cabin had burnt to the ground. I completely disagree.

The cabin, even 40 years later, would still have been there. I mean, it was a very, very formidable cabin. So a fire of a size to burn that cabin to the ground would have to be such a large fire, it would have burnt down this massive forest around it, you know?

Also in the, I found no evidence of any charcoal at all. So I think it was mainly diffused in the snows, just time, just munching down the cabinet, it just kind of like turned into nothing. Yeah, I was going to say, like, you know, I had some questions and thoughts of just thinking about Bigfoot stories I've heard over the years of, you know, there's all these pictures that kind of float around in these campsites being destroyed after the fact.

And these things are territorial. Obviously, you know, there's a bunch of evidence to suggest that they build these wood structures to keep to kind of like mark their territory almost. That's what people think they are. And if there's anybody moving into, I mean, obviously this is like Bigfoot terrain, but it's not human terrain. So no humans have probably come into this area. And they're, they're pissed. They don't want anyone there. and they could have torn parts of the cabin apart, you know, from the stories I've heard.

They could have ripped, they could have blocked, you know, had a reaction like that. Who knows, but it's possible that could have happened. And do you think that my other question is like, if these miners didn't shoot at them, do you think the story would have gone differently or? Yeah. If they did not shoot at them, it would have gone very differently. The first encounter, the first sighting before the 4th of July, when Fred, and Marion shot of the creature from the spring, I think if that was it, the creature turned and

walked up the hill away from them. I think that just that alone would have made these creatures leave the miners alone. Even though those are three shots, free pot shots. Obviously, the creature cannot be affected by 30, 30 bullets. I mean, you would need a polar bear gun to take one of these things down. If it was just that, probably, they would have left them alone. But every time the creatures showed up, they were shooting at them. And you can see where this is going. And I completely agree with you, Nate, that, yeah, if the creatures wanted to get in and tear these guys from limb, they would have. But I think that as far as the Mountain Devil Sasquatch, Bigfoot point of view, I think the whole incident on the attack of the night

of July 10th was like, this is your last chance. We mean. mean it get out of here and they've made their point up it's like the alamo it's like this is this is the last stand i had a couple questions about the story that i'm sure you've given into you know when when they come down and report to the rangers that they shot and got one did they recover that body is that what they're saying are they're saying they just shot it and it's out it's laying out in the wilderness because that's that's a really interesting because this is one of those things that we've we've had guys in the show that said they've shot and killed bigfoot, you know, in the modern, modern era. And, and there's always something weird that happens around that. But did they,

you know, they pop the, they pull the tar pup off the back of the truck and there's, there's a, a bigfoot in there or they were just, they were just relaying that they, they, they'd pumped 11, you know, 11 rounds into into one. There's no way this guy, this guy's still alive. You imagine backpacking that body out of that canyon? Well, yeah, I mean, probably not. That's a, that's a fair point, Nate. It's a fair point. Yeah. So getting it out of the canyon and taking it six miles to the closest road. Yeah, for sure. Now, the thing is, my thoughts are, even though 16 rounds were reported to go into this creature.

Oh, 16. I don't think that they killed it. I tend to feel like they were such a small caliber. There's something else going on. There's another, there's another research project, historical research project involving Bigfoot that I've worked. that I've working on down in southwest in Oregon that happened 20 years prior, which is remarkably similar to ape canyon.

It was a gold mining area, and there are stories of bullets going into these creatures that they just seemingly were unaffected. I'm only assuming that these folks who were going up there had a caliber that could not take down an 8. Like a 22, right? Or something like that. You're just not making it happen.

the largest that I've been able to determine is that Fred Setti out of the 30-30 Winchester and Leroy had a Remington auto loader so you know you could take down a deer rifle and with a really good shot you could take and take down an elk maybe with a 30-30 I'm not a gun guy so I'm not I'm not really hip to it but I know that you need a much larger caliber to take down a thousand yeah like a big animal you talk about big game hunting yeah you need a big A big round. Or even like grizzly stories, you know, they'll take six or seven shots right to the face.

And then sometimes the last shot will take it down. And, you know, whoever's shooting, you know, soiled his shorts because he thought this thing was going to go down. But I mean, that's like a 357 magnum. You're talking like a real large. Usually that's a grizzly gun or a 50 caliber handgun. Yeah. That's a big round. And it's multiple of those big rounds.

And it still doesn't, one shot doesn't do the, do the job. Yeah. They hit it a couple times. Now, none of the miners returned except for two of the miners, and they just returned once. About a week later, they took a couple of the Rangers, Bill Welch and another ranger, Jim Huffman, and two or three reporters up to the site a week later. And that's one of the some of the photos that I was talking about. just about five months ago, I was so fortunate.

I was able to track down one of the third generation, essentially a grand godder, of Bill Welch, the Ranger. I was able to talk to her and never before seen, and it was just in the family photo album, Bill and Jim Huffman took pictures of their trip a week later, and these were just stuck in the family photo album. called this woman, name is Sandy. And I was like, hey, I'm Mark. I'm the Eighth Canyon guy, and I'm doing research. And Sandy was like, I know exactly what you're talking about.

My grandfather's brother was Bill Welch. And she shared with me the about 12, 13 incredible photos of that trip, the week after the attack of Leroy and Fred and the site and all this great stuff. Jim Huffman is in the photos. And the story was that Jim Huffman said in the interviews that he threw a rope down below the mine and climbed down into the canyon. He was an ardent, ardent denier that this thing happened at all. He was like, this is a hoax. These guys are lying. He climbed down into the bottom of the canyon.

And he came back up and he says, there's no body down there. So I tend to think that, no, the creature was not killed. Injured? probably but I think the idea of him falling dead into the canyon it's nonsense I think you just climbed down and ran away yeah man if you look this event an incident and event up right it says that it was of course it says it was debunked they're always debunked of course of course they did right is my response to that but the rangers as you talked about was a husband and welsh did they did they not believe these guys or what what's fascinating about that any statement or

entry. In Wikipedia, anything that the Rangers debunked it, of course they did not debunk it, but that all originates back to one person. Jim Huffman. Jim was the head ranger for the next district

south at the Lewis River, and I don't understand. He told more than one reporter that these guys were lying, and he said, and there was a story of him taking his knuckles, and dragging it through the mud and said,

see, there's your apron. He was trying to reproduce one of these footprints and say, see, that's what they're doing. They're just faking the whole thing. I don't know why he had such an ardent nyer. What's really fascinating is that if he really truly didn't believe that these miners said what they said,

why did he take the trouble of going up the following week with his equipment, With his camera equipment, he got great photos. Why did he go up there? Why did he climb down into the bottom of the canyon if he was so sure that this was all nonsense? Bill Welch, the other ranger, was much more on an even keel. Bill was interesting because he never said once, I don't believe these guys, but he also said, he also never said, I do believe these guys.

He just said, this is what happened, just the facts. and he just presented for the rest of his life. He just gave the facts. He never really gave an opinion except to say, I've never seen a group of men more scared in my life, but he looked at him in the truck. Yeah. And here's the other thing about Bigfoot,

so I think is fascinating, is that everybody who spent time in the woods when you have these encounters, especially hunters, hunters, rangers, folks that spend a lot of time in the wilderness, they always say that they know it's something different and it's terrifying. And the level of fear inspired by, you know,

Mountain Devil, the Sasquash, Bigfoot, is always, it's on a whole other level. It's not that you ran to a grizzly, which by all means it's terrifying, right? These things tear human, humans, limb from limb. It's terrifying, but it's not, you know when you're seeing that. It's not a bear on upright. It's not these things, it's something different.

Yeah. I think this story is so interesting because, yeah, like you said, as you compile your research, and I'm excited for your book to come out. I really, really am and love to grab a copy when it's done. But you don't do all these different things, again, to reiterate, If you're faking something. You don't keep it to your, tell your deathbed and die with a secret.

You don't leave a functional, actionable mind that's producing. You don't, you don't do these things. You don't show up and make a fool yourself to Rangers. You know, to what end, right? Like you're, and you don't, honestly, you don't grab a bunch of people, take them back up there and tell them where it is. You know, if you're pulling, if you're pulling gold out of, out of the mountain, you just don't do those things.

It's, it's, no, a lot of the, explain it away theories don't make any sense. There's more to do on the project where I'm working with the head archaeologist of the National Forest to excavate, excavate the mine more to get further back into the mine and hopefully take samples that we can assay and determine that there really is gold there. Fortunately, I just found an archive in the National Archives from the National mint of the time and the national mint was in charge of assaying gold. So there might be a record of an acid of this mine at the time. So we can compare it apples and oranges. One fascinating, and it's not an explained away theory, but it kind of turned into one. There's this great man

named George Toskey, his say Anglo-white name was Hugh Philip Hallow, Hugh Philip Howell. and George Toskey was a member of the Scalalum Nation out of Puget Sound, and he grew up with his mother and grandfather in traditional Native indigenous kind of atmosphere in the teams and 20s. He went on to publish a newspaper called The Real American. And on the very last edition, out of Hokkien, the Real American dealt exclusively with Native American affairs. And it was really an avant-garde paper on the... the very last day, on the very last edition of that paper, Totsky published an article.

This is about a week after the attack. He published an article on the ape canyon story. It occurred this bold headline. It says, ape attack, I believe if I quoting this right, ape attack declared to be Cietic Indians. And in the first part of the article, he explains the whole incident. And then he said, that there's this small tribe of Indians who live way up on the mountain, and they're very reclusive. They don't want to be bothered. They're very small in number. And Toski explained that it was these Indians, see a tick. Ciatich is also as pronounced. They're the one who perpetuated the attack. And that story, that headline stuck well into the 70s and 80s that who attacked the cabin.

well, these Indians did. But Totsky was always trying to educate the general public about Indian affairs. And it wasn't until you read the entire article that Totsky goes on to explain that the Ciotic tribe that lives up there happens to be seven or eight feet tall and covered entirely with reddish brown hair. Right. It's interesting, though, because like the first thing I think about in parallel is Diotlov Pass incident in Russia

because it feels the same way where you have sort of this attack and you're in this tent and these things are coming trying to come in and you've got people barricaded and I know there's also been talks about how they explain that away

it was a KGB operation or whatever it is but the parallels there are interesting because that's a Yeti portedly than one of the other ideas around that incident is it's a Yeti attack and to me there's some there's some absolute parallels there Let me ask you this, though. The other thing I was thinking about when I'm listening is that area, right? Obviously, not too changed by St. Helens and the eruption. Do people still have in report incidents of Bigfoot activity having encounters in Cape Canyon?

Absolutely, absolutely. There's a couple of things that need to happen for a Sasquatch encounter. Number one, a human needs to be involved. Right. You know, to see this creature, to see this animal. or have something happen while they're there. And then the next thing that needs to happen is that human needs to report it to somebody who has running a database or they need to tell somebody, you know, that we can know it. But yes, there happened. There was a woman who was camping in her trailer along a Forest Service road

and her little dog starts going crazy. And some big bruiser is out there pounding on her trailer like crazy. She doesn't go out, but she looks through the window, and at night, she can see this large, shadowy creature up there. There have been numerous ones. Up there in 2013, I got to tell you, I heard something all of us did. There were five of us camping up there, coincidentally, in 2013, and we all heard something, and it was more than one. It was along a ridge line, and initially at dusk, up on the ridge line, about 1,000 feet away. we can hear something up there on the ridge line talking to us or just talking. And it was a howling, gibberish, chattering, howling kind of talk.

And it went on and on and on very, very loud. And then it went quiet for a minute. And then down the ridge line, we could hear a second one going and talking and talking. And they're just talking back and forth, talking back and forth. And a little bit there was a third one. And then a fourth one and way down, almost. to the rip. We heard a fifth one. And it goes on and on and on. We had no idea. It was like nothing ever ever heard before. And there was nothing to do after two or three hours,

except getting to your tent and pull your sleeping bag up over your ears and close your eyes, you know, I'll make it go away. And then eventually in the morning, I started hearing it again. So I just like six o'clock or so. So I closed my eyes and went to sleep for another hour. and when we all got up making coffee, Ben said, did you guys smell that? And he said, right in camp, right in between all of us, there was such a pungent animal musky, awful smell that it woke him up. And we all said, well, did you look out?

He's like a colonel. I didn't look out. Yeah, there's multiple unexplained, unexplained phenomenon. I've explained sounds, all seeming to point to a large hair cover of Bigfoot, you know, of sighting and stuff. So it's still going on today, absolutely. Man, Mark, your research is next level. It's like, it's like true crime for Bigfoot, you know. It is.

I love it. I think this makes this story so compelling, right? I think it's why it sticks around, you know, 100 years later is that not only is it one of the terrifying one. There are plenty of terrifying Bigfoot encounters, right? But then I think what makes this most compelling is just not to beat the drum again, but you have a group of folks. It's not just a single person. And you have all

the elements we talked about before that really lend credence to the veracity, to the truth of an incident that happened in 8th Canyon in 1924 that caused a bunch of hardened miners to abandon their posts and never returned.

Well, let's, yeah, let's look at the same year in comparison. And 1924, there was the Albert Ostman incident where he was essentially kidnapped and taken to a watch, right? And so that is a problematic story big time. Osmond didn't talk about it until he was interviewed by John Green 40 years later. And there's no physical evidence left behind like a cabin or anything and Osman was just a singular human. So it's a great story, but it's almost impossible to come up with any kind of corroborating. You can't corroborate or verify.

There's no, there's no, there's no tangible evidence. It's just a, hey, this guy says this happened, which, you know, it is a great story. But there's no qualifiers. There's not, you can't dig anything. You can't dig anything. You can't dig anything other than an interview, which it, you know, I, I don't dig anything. other than an interview, which it, you know, I don't know.

I love this, Mark. Man, I think this is it's always fun to get back to Bigfoot on our show and really talk about some of these things. I just, I think it's, it's that one thing. It's Americana, right? Like it or not, it's really woven itself into the society of America and North America, right?

It's this, it's on this enigma that's yet to be explained and yet, you know, you get these stories that perpetuate. through, even through a century ago. It really is. If you come up here to the Pacific Northwest, there are certain totems that we have. The Blackberry, you know, you see images of Blackberry everywhere.

The salmon, we see images of salmon everywhere. What else do we see Bigfoot? We see Bigfoot image everywhere. It's basically our totem. It's, you know, our guy, you know, who defines who we are up here, the Pacific Northwest and truly all of America, like you said, it is Americana. You're right. Also, stories are great and I am always, my ears are always ready for someone's encounter and I'm going to ask them questions and I am a safe space.

Anybody who wants to tell me their story, I'm going to listen and I'm going to be respectful. And it's sort of like a PTSD kind of thing where when people have an encounter, they can't unsee it and it's looped in their head and they have to, they have to find that safe space to talk about it. Stories are great, but we all need to work on, and that's my gig. I'm not out there actively looking for Sasquox. There are lots of other people who do, and they're better at it than me. But my gig is the historical research and finding evidence of that historical incident, you know, some sort of physical evidence, like a cabin in the woods or something. That's my contribution. And so, like as stories,

are great, but we need to hardcore start working on gathering and data-to-day we're going to cataloging the evidence. Actually, I appreciate that. That's how you'd be able to case. Well, Mark, thanks so much. It's been so fun. Hey, let our listeners know where they can find your work if you want to, what things are working on and then perhaps even share when, you know, maybe not when, but where your book

will be coming out. They might be able to find that when it does come out because I know we want to. Yeah, you bet. So if you want to try. I, Facebook, you can find me at Mark Mercell, and I talk about lots of other things than Bigfoot, so you'll probably unfriend me in like three hours or something like that. Which is okay.

Also, just like it sounds, monsterhistory.net is a website, and I don't run it because I'm too much of a dinosaur. A friend runs it, and I'm working on getting my friend to update it more. So there's that. I don't know exactly when the big, Cave Canyon book is coming out in spring, but I'm really not supposed to talk about it too much. But rumor is, is that a full-length documentary is coming out in spring as well. It's a great rumor.

That's a wonderful rumor. It's something I heard. I don't know anything about it. We won't share that with a couple hundred thousand of our friends, I promise. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks, Mark. Hey, you're welcome back anytime.

Maybe when the book comes out, we can. do a reprise and revisit Ape Canyon for you and plug that and talk about the things we can't talk about until then. But great for your time. Thanks for being committed to sort of the empirical part of this story in particular and keeping this, keeping this alive because I think it's such important piece of the story. And to have verifiable and actionable evidence is such an important part of building a case. So keep on doing what you're doing, man. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Glyze.

I had a great time. And yeah, you can count on me to keep on going. All right. Well, thanks, Mark.