Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1110 Skating with Bigfoot

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Tonight I will be speaking to Dori who had a sighting in Washington State. The event happened in October of this year while driving with her sister. We will also be chatting with Rene. Rene wrote a book called: Skating with Bigfoot: True Newspaper Accounts in the West Over 150 Years. A Bigfoot showed up at an outdoor skating party in Idaho in 1902, forcing skaters to flee by wagon. A Sasquatch shook a cabin belonging to a group of Oregon miners in 1904; yet another crushed the skull of a dog belonging to a group of California grizzly bear hunters in 1880 in Oregon coastal forests. This book tells the little-known, remarkable tales of Bigfoot sightings from a time when the word 'Bigfoot' had not been invented. Witnesses step from the pages of history as far back as the time of President Lincoln to share their encounters from southwest Canada, Idaho, Oregon, California and Washington state. Reports date back 150 years and include a hidden gem about Bigfoot from iconic American author Mark Twain. The reports, published in newspapers across the West, describe large, upright, hairy, bipedal creatures that seem to be half man, half ape. The details match what witnesses today say they see when they stumble across these creatures in the forest.

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that shocked me. They don't make people that that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything moves like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. What happened what are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That's son of a bitch is about six years. Mitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see a peltzer? Yes, I'm looking right in he.

Uh-uh. This is Nick from Vader, Washington, and you're listening to the best Bigfoot podcast out there, Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you. We'll be chatting with Dory. And Dory comes to us from Washington State.

She had this encounter back in October just last month. and I'll kind of let her go into it. And then we'll kind of wrap up with Renee. Renee wrote a book, Skating with Bigfoot. And it's true newspaper accounts in the West over 150 years. It's up on Amazon. If you get a chance, go and check it out. Skating with Bigfoot.

Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Dory to the show. Dory, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Yeah, and you had this encounter in October of this year here in Washington. If you would, just kind of start from the beginning. What were you doing? And what happened?

My sister and I were heading over to Yakima from the Seattle area. And we had already started. Traffic wasn't too bad. It was pretty clear. So we were heading on the I-90 east. And as we were going, as I said, traffic wasn't so bad. We were making great time. We did have some road work that we waited maybe five minutes for just before the Snoqualmie pass. And then once we pass snow qualmi, we know going to

Yakima, it is a pretty easy shot after that. We go up because we've passed the summit. And so we were heading down. I see the sign for Clealum, which is a little town along the road. And I'm looking to the side. And as I look to the side, you can see the Yakima River intertwine in and out. And I look over and don't see anything, don't see anything. And my sister and I are speaking, who was driving the vehicle at the time, and has done this several, several times. We've always lived. She's always lived pretty much in Washington State. And we come across an area just south of Clealum. And it's before Indian John Hill. And I look over to my right and I see the river and I see this, wow, a huge person is what it looks like. Looks like it has four or five jet black jackets on.

including a hat. But the hat wasn't round and it wasn't sharp point. It was more of the conical shape. And everything was black. The legs were black, which were huge. And the arms were long. And even with the quick glance, it did not appear that it was wearing any shoes. And so I was watching it.

And as I continued to watch, it was ambulating. And as it amulated, it just seemed to kind of glide. As humans, we, as our gate progresses, we, on rocky road, we go up and down and we bounce, we go side to side. But it didn't do that. It was just like a smooth walk across the rocks. And then we passed. And I said to my sister, I said, wow, that was odd. She was, what did you see?

And I explained to her what I had seen. I then texted my husband and I told him what I had saw and I said I'll I'll talk more about it later. And we saw, we just passed Injun John Hill and that's it. The next thing, we both look at each other and we see this overpass and we said, wow, that's new. And all of a sudden we just kind of both looked at each other and said, where are we? and we were on the I-90 going east past Ellensburg. Now, we've traveled this road several times, and there's always our markers that we see.

One is Thorpe. There's a little vegetable stand. It's huge. It has a gas station. And then past that is Ellensburg. Well, neither of us recall seeing Ellensburg. and I looked at the time, my sister looked at the time, it was 1028. I looked at the time that I had text my husband, it was 1021.

And we were, oh, at mile marker 125. And there's no way that you can get from Cleellum off the I-90 to mile marker 125. It's 20 miles away or so. And to do that in eight minutes is kind of crazy. So we were like, what the heck just happened? And we were talking about it. We're both saying, I didn't see Ellensburg. I didn't see Thorpe.

I didn't see any of that. And we were in the right hand side, which automatically at that intersection of I-90 and I-82, which is what we take, you take the I-82. You have to be really not paying attention to take that 90. It's very observant. It's very noticeable I-82. So we were not sure how we got on the I-90 and that time in between. So we had to go to Vantage and turn around. There's another way, but we chose to turn around and go back to the I-82.

And sure enough, there was Ellensburg, there was everything else. We catch the 82, which was really easy. And we headed to Yakubon. and we did our errands and the same day trip, we returned, and no other incidents after that. But it was like the time had changed, but we weren't where we normally wore. And we never, never have taken I-90 all the way. It's always been I-82. And so it was just, we were still discussing it.

And when we did our errands, we didn't say anything. On the way back, we discussed it again. And then we let her son know. And he was like, wow, you saw Bigfoot. I said, no, it was just really huge. That's Bigfoot. And the more, yeah, I mean, it was huge from the roadside. It was dark.

There was obviously a face because I thought it had a hat on. but it was just solid black. And so that's what happened. How far away from the car was this creature? Oh, let's see, from the I-90, I don't think it was that far. I'd say maybe 100 yards because it was a really open, it's where the river really is close to the I-90. And I can't recall the mile marker.

I really can't. and it wasn't that far. It wasn't. But when you look at, when you see humans that far away, they don't look that large. And it was large. You did a pretty good job at describing it. But are there any details that still stay with you today from seeing this thing? I think the massiveness and the fact that it moved so smoothly.

And it's a very rocky area along the river there. And it was just odd. There was nothing else around it. There was no other animals. There was no other anything. And it just looked like it was coming from the river and walking not quite towards an I-90, but walking that way. And it just as if it didn't have a care in the world, it just was huge.

the hand, one hand was at maybe not quite a 90, I would say a little more than a 90 degree angle on the left and on the right was straight down. And that's how I could tell it was past its knee. It was just straight down. And it again was so massive. I, you know, I see. people a lot. I've taken care of a lot of patients and I've taken care of a patient who was 450 pounds. And this thing looks small compared to that, what creature that I had seen. What do you make of not realizing where you were at while driving? Was it just a shock of seeing this thing? No, because it was just myself who had seen it. My sister asked me what I had seen. She was driving and she, you know, is she was just totally aghast because that has never happened to her.

She knows that road left and right. She used to commute that road on a weekly basis for two years. So she knows it. We know it. It's just where we grew up. So we're not sure what had happened to that time. It just like non-existent and the normal, um, uh, milestones and mile markers were not there. We don't recall ever seeing them. And that's what was so odd about the experience. I'm not sure what caused that. But the minute I had stated, well, that was odd, and I described to her what I had seen. And then I texted my husband what I had seen. once he replied, I replied back, and that was the last text at 1021. And we hadn't gone down towards Thorpe yet.

I mean, there's another road that we always look for, and we hadn't gone. We hadn't seen it yet. And so it was just like time elapsed quicker than normal. Yeah, it's very strange. You know, I know you were kind of into Bigfoot prior to this. this. And, you know, I always say to people, you can believe in Bigfoot all day long, but when you see it, it's very different. Wouldn't you agree? Oh, absolutely. I had had a previous experience at some property we owned in New Mexico. In 2011 and August, we had gone camping on our property.

We hadn't built it. And it's next to a national forest. And we drove up, and I said, oh, my God, what's that smell? And my husband says, I don't smell anything. I said, no, it's very strong and pungent. And I said, we've had the property for five years at that point and camped a lot. And I said, hey, I don't know what that smell is. So in New Mexico, you can always carry open arms. So obviously, we do that when we're there.

Just because they've got big cats, et cetera, and we're right there next to the National Forest. And we both grabbed a weapon. He grabbed a shotgun. And we walked in it. As we were walking towards the side of the property closest to the national forest, we both saw something in the field. And it looked like coyotes, but there was something huge in black. Now, I've seen black bears on the property and how they walk and how they bend over.

This was, it was huge and it was bent over on all fours. And I turned to say, hey, there is something there. And I turned back and everything was gone. The animals were gone. And that was, you know, a split second, hey, I saw something, turned back around and it was gone. So that was the first time I was like, oh, that's kind of odd. And the rest of the trip went fine. We didn't have any other issues.

So go to June of 2012, we were moving to the East Coast, and we stopped at the property again, the camp. That's what we had planned. It was my final break before having to go back to work. And we camp out towards the back of the property, so it's more woodsy, a little bit more privacy, a little bit more secure. You can see everything coming around. And my husband, we had two dogs at the time, a dachshund, a long-haired dachshund, and our Havanese. And so he takes the boys for a walk, and he likes to hike and walk. And so he does that, and I stand by.

And I'm sitting there in my chair next to the tent, and I hear pine cones dropping. Well, that's kind of weird. It's not that time of year. I look up, I look around. There's no wind. And I thought, well, that's just odd. So I continue reading my book. And I hear one come a little closer.

I'm not by a tree, so that was kind of weird. And so I continued to, I looked around. I looked behind me. I looked up in the trees. I looked to my left. I looked to my right. I looked forward. I couldn't see anything.

I sat back. I was still sitting. And so I went back to my book. And then I hear my name. Dory. I looked up. I didn't see my husband. Dory.

I looked again. I looked behind me. The whole 360 basically. Nothing. And I called out. I said, Sam, where are you? No response. So I picked up my chair and I moved it closer to an open area next to the fence for the next to the National Forest.

And I sat there and I looked. towards the trees I looked everything that was previously behind me and I didn't see anything I looked up to the left right etc nothing and I look I went back to my reading and I hear it again what the world and then I see my husband calling coming up walking towards me and I said hey did you just call my name he goes no because I just got back I said well were you calling my name earlier He said, oh, I just got back. So I said, okay, well, somebody's calling my name.

So we did a walk around the property, didn't see anything. And then the rest of the day went fine. And he goes, well, let's go to sleep. And I said, I'm not sleeping in the tent. I'm not going to do it. I still felt uneasy that something was still watching me. And so we slept in the back of a Jeep. And he went to bed.

We both were sleeping, I don't know, must have been midnight or so, maybe one, two o'clock. And I heard this whistle. And it was a loud whistle. It was, wow, really loud. So I woke up, the docks, and then I are awake. And we're looking and we're listening and nothing. So we lay back down and we hear it again. Hear a little bit of shuffling.

Nothing much. And I thought, well, there's elk on the property. I'm used to elk. But that didn't sound like an elk bugle at all. And so we kind of just sat, poor dog and I, poor coffee and I, and all of a sudden, you hear a conversation. And I've lived in Asia, so I knew it wasn't an Asian language. And it wasn't a Slavic language because I studied German, so you hear that.

And I speak Spanish, so it wasn't a romance. language. And it just was just out of your earshot of understanding what they were saying. It was low, but it was loud enough that I could hear it. And it was three different tones. So obviously there were three different, I'm not sure what to say at that point, persons, creatures, etc. speaking, because they all were saying something different. And you could hear it in the tones you could hear it in what they were uttering. And obviously, they comprehended each other, but it was like, I can't get what they're hearing. And I'm straining to try and hear it, but I couldn't.

And so after that, it was like quiet, and then the conversation again, and then the quiet, and then that was it for the rest of the night, so about 4 o'clock. And then I just crashed for a while. The next morning I said, I think we need to go. And he goes, no, we got another day. And then I got a call from work saying, yeah, we need you to report earlier. And I went, okay. So it was my saving grace.

And that was, again, in 2012, we hadn't been able to see the property until 2023. And we stopped there. We were going to camp out again. And another situation arose where we had to leave right away. But it was very calm, didn't feel anything, didn't see anything, didn't smell anything. And it was like, wow, I really wanted to stay. So didn't think about it. And then this recent occurrence and is like, okay, so obviously I think all three times it was a Sasquatch.

I really do. Just because of the languages that on your previous shows that I've heard, you've played and the smell that's been regarded and just the massiveness of this creature that I had seen. And I know from talking to you off the air, Dory, you've actually heard the Sierra sounds. Did it sound like Ron Moorhead's Sierra sounds? Is that kind of what you were hearing? It wasn't, I pitched like that. It wasn't growly. It was like a conversation between two people. almost as if they were trying to whisper that they were talking. But there was another sound that somebody had recorded and you had played,

or they had slowed it down or something. And that's exactly almost, just at the edge of your hearing what it sounded like. I got you. So the tone was there, just the cadence was off a little bit. I wanted to ask you, you know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? And after all that weird stuff on the property and then now having this siding, what's kind of your take? What do you think Sasquatch is?

Well, I think it's variable. I think at times it is a live creature. In order to communicate, in order to have a language, in order to be seen as a solid mass, it has to be a living creature. The fact that it also speaks, regardless of people think it's gibberish or not, it is a language. I think it is part of an existence that has always been there.

We talk Native Americans and the Sasquatch here and the belief of who the creature is. But they don't say it's a creature. They say it is a being. And that I truly believe. I think it's always been here. It's been here as long as man has been around. I believe that due to explorers coming to North America,

that they brought diseases. And so, as with many, cultures, et cetera, they were dying off because of diseases. And a minute number, enough to repopulate, had survived. And I think that's what it is. So you're not so much leaning towards it being an animal? I think I'm leaning more towards man. Yeah, their behavior can be very animal-like, but there's a lot of times in their behavior where I kind of stop and go, that doesn't sound like something an animal would do. That sounds like something I would do. Kind of last question, if you had the chance, would you want to see another one?

Yeah, if I could do it for a little bit longer, I would. Of course, the distance was perfect. But I would just because I think it's an opportunity to observe something that not everybody gets to see and that they do. exist years ago when we, I mean, we always grew up with the understanding of Sasquatch. I originally grew up in eastern Washington and you always heard it, right? We lived closer to Mount Adams at the time. And so we always heard the creature. We always knew it existed, but yeah, sometimes as you get older, you kind of go, yeah, maybe. So my husband had asked me one time what I thought the actual existence percentage was.

And I said, maybe 5%. Maybe because of the rarity, et cetera. And he says, no, I think it's higher than that. And again, I truly believe it exists. And I believe we are encroaching more and more in forested, areas and by doing so kind of pushing them outside their boundaries. But I also believe they're migratory because we never had any experience in the New Mexico area at all prior to this, prior to 2011. And so I think, as you said earlier, they are capable of thought processes and comprehending what's going on and understanding.

what is occurring around them. I hear you. I wanted to ask you, you know, when you guys were passing it in the car and you kind of looked over, and again, I realize all this happened very quickly, but how tall do you think it was? Oh, at least seven to eight feet. It was just, you could just see the size. You know, when you see somebody from a distance, you can see how. you know, how tall they are. You can say, oh, that's a really short person. And sure enough,

you get close and you see that they're sharp person. I'm a nurse, and so we used to kind of grasp, but we would see a patient in bed and estimate their height and their weight before we would ask family members their height and weight, and we would measure our way, or weigh them in a bed and get their weight. And nine times out of ten, mine were more accurate. So there were a couple of patients that we had were six and a half feet tall. And I was spot on with them. So I'm thinking it's closer to the eight foot side, if not more. They just was huge. Yeah, that is huge. You know, I got a buddy of mine, he's six, six, and he's like a giant, you know, when you're talking another foot and a half on top of that.

You know, I really appreciate you taking the time to share this very recent encounter with your sister and a little bit of background about the property out there in New Mexico. I really enjoy chatting with you, Dory. Thank you so much for coming on. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for listening. I really, it helps.

I can speak with my family, my side of the family, and they actually believe me. Hispanic culture, you believe in a lot of different things. But thank you for having me. I really appreciate that. Next up on the show, I want to welcome Renee. Renee, thanks for coming on. Yeah, thank you for having me. Yeah, we're going to talk a little bit about your book tonight,

Skating with Bigfoot. True newspaper accounts in the West over 150 years. It's available on Amazon. Just look up skating with Bigfoot. Before we go into your book, you had this encounter up at Mount Hood. If you would, would you kind of start from the beginning? What were you doing? And what happened?

Yeah. I was probably about 19, 20-ish age. I can't pinpoint the exact year. But my grandmother had passed away. And her husband, my grandfather, had passed away many years before. And so we were just kind of on this family nostalgia trip to go up. to the Mount Hood area because it's an area where my grandfather had grown up in his family. When he was a boy, they were sheep herders. They spent a lot of time in the Mount Hood Forest.

And he had a baby sister who'd been buried up there in this little kind of makeshift cemetery. And we had all these other spots that we used to go as kids with him to go Huckleberry picking and so on. So we just kind of went on this trip up there one day. Just threw some stuff in the back of the van. my boyfriend's van saying, hey, maybe we'll camp for the night, you know, if it gets too late. But we were just going up, my mom was with us, we were just kind of driving aimlessly down different roads to try to find these places. And we didn't have the location. And this was, of course, before cell phones, GPS, all of that. So we were just trying to go on memory. And we just kind of

zigzagged our way into the forest. And, you know, we'd take a right here and a left there and turn around there. And next thing you know, we find ourselves really deep in. And the sun was starting to go down. And so we decided to just go ahead and stay for the night. And we really didn't have supplies other than we had thrown in some blankets and a tent. And, you know, we didn't even have anything to build a fire. We didn't have anything. We were really not prepared at all. But we just decided to, you know, call it a day, get up early in the morning and went to sleep early. And I'd say a few hours later, I woke up just freezing cold. And it was either that or the sounds woke me up, but I woke up to what I thought were gunshots,

echoing across kind of the shallow canyon. We had put our tent, we just parked our van in the middle of the road because we hadn't seen cars in hours, I mean, hours up there. I mean, we were really in a desolate spot. And we weren't even worried that anybody would come along and need the road. We just parked her man in the middle of the road. And there was like this little patch of grass kind of between the road and the canyon where we had pitched the tent. So in the night, when I heard these sounds, I at first was annoyed thinking, you know, why is somebody shooting off guns when we're sleeping?

Of course, you know, a second later, I realized, oh, yeah, we're in the middle of the forest. there are no campgrounds anywhere near here, not even close. And I was really shocked at how someone could get up there where we were. And then I was really afraid because it was really dark. And you could barely see your hand in front of you. And I remember thinking, I hope they don't shoot us accidentally. And I just thought that maybe they were up there just kind of partying and shooting cans or targets or something like that. But then I became really afraid because it kept going and going and I didn't hear any other sounds.

And I started thinking, oh, my gosh, you know, I hope somebody didn't follow us into the forest. Because it had been quite a few years earlier, but someone had been shot in their tent up at a lake on Mount Hood. And they never found the person who did it. They had just driven up, shot a person in their tent, and drove off. And so I honestly started getting fearful that maybe somebody had followed us in or something. Although we never saw anyone or anything. But once I started to wake up and sat up and realized that it really wasn't gunshots I was hearing. It was more like these huge kind of sounds of wood hitting wood.

And I would describe it as like a major league baseball player hitting a home run, but like times 100, really loud. and the sounds were coming. Not, I realized it wasn't just one location. It was like a quadrant is what I would say. So it was probably maybe wasn't, I would say it was like maybe 180 degrees or a little less. So it was kind of off the side, but definitely not one location. And then I was really afraid and thought I should probably wake everybody up in the tent. But, you know, I'm of course thinking.

nobody's coming towards us. I just kind of strained my ears. I didn't see a car. I didn't see lights. I was listening for voices. I heard no voices. I heard no voices, heard nothing other than these sounds. Keep going like every minute or two minutes.

It'd be like whack. And then a little while later, whack and on and on. And I thought, well, if someone's going to come over here and do something to us, you know, there's really not much we can do. we didn't have a weapon at all. We were so ill-prepared. We had nothing, literally nothing, but ourselves. And so I guess I just, my mind kind of came up with the scenario,

and I figured it must be Boy Scouts. It's all I could come up with. That it had to be a large group of people, and they had come up and they were maybe practicing baseball, which is ridiculous because we were so far in the forest. Obviously, there's no baseball field. There's no field. It's pitch black and we were so remote that, I mean, it's really not even, you know, probable.

But it's all I could come up with. And I didn't even consider Bigfoot a real possibility back then. So that thought never entered my mind at all. I laid in my tent. I was still very afraid. No one woke up, strangely. I didn't wake them up because I guess after a while, I figured. figured no one was coming for us, which was kind of my biggest fear. And so eventually, I just fell

asleep. I don't know how, but I did. And the next morning, I told my family about it. Hey, did, did you guys hear that? Did anybody hear? And no one had heard it. They slept right through it, which is shocking, but they did. So it was just very strange, very strange. I know this happened to you many years ago. At what point did you kind of look at? back and go, I wonder if that's what that was. I wonder if it was these creatures. You know, it's not until like, I'd say the past 10 years. Like this was over, you know, like 30 years ago. It was just like in the past 10 years when I've really kind of gotten into learning about Bigfoot, listening to your podcast, other podcasts, you know, watching all these videos.

I mean, I've gone down the rabbit hole, as I mentioned to you. You know, I've written a book about accounts in the past that I found. But it's, I've, um, I've, um, I've, um, I've written a book about accounts in the past, um, that I found, but it's just something that occurred to me, kind of like a light bulb went off in my head. And I could never understand where those sounds were coming from in the middle of nowhere. I mean, the middle of nowhere. And I thought, could it be like Woodnock? You know, back then, I had never heard of such a thing. I didn't know anything like that.

And honestly, I think it could be. I don't have any other explanation for it. We never saw people again. We didn't see people up there. We saw no signs that people were up there. And I mean, we had been on roads all day long, like gravel roads, dirt roads, just, you know, roads that are not traveled very often up there. Very remote location. And I could never find this place again if I had to because we just kind of meandered our way down one road after another and ended up at this spot.

Yeah, up there at Mount Hood, it's not hard to get lost or be out in the middle of nowhere very, very quickly. You wrote this book, Skating with Bigfoot. True Newspaper Counts in the West over 150 years. And it's up on Amazon. What kind of made you want to write a book about this? It's because I kind of went down the rabbit hole like I was telling you. You know, I love the topic. I love your show.

I love hearing people's stories. And, you know, my interest in this was kind of peaked many years ago before my Mount Hood experience even when I was driving up to the Puget Sound area with a friend to visit her dad's cabin. And she, it was about one in the morning. We were driving along. And we were on this, you know, another kind of desolate road that headed out there. And there's this grassy, marshy area. And she pointed to a spot in the grass and kind of. confided in me that she had seen she and another girl on a previous trip had seen you know had

seen a big foot standing there like it's been a couple of weekends before and she didn't really want to talk about it too much she I didn't ask her a lot of questions back then strangely back then once again I didn't even think it was a possibility that this was real so I just kind of thought that's interesting but it really planted a seed and Of course, you know, over the past 30 years, I mean, I've gotten really into it. But the book has all these really fascinating accounts of a Bigfoot that showed up, for example, in the early 1900s and chased away ice skaters on the Pont Neuf River in Idaho. And this was when people were still using wagons. And they jumped in their wagons.

They took off. They got away from it. And a hunting party of 20 men came back later to find it. and it was long gone, but they did find tracks in the snow. That was just one of the stories that I found, and I was doing the research, that I just was blown away by this. You know, I found so many fascinating stories. Yeah, skating with Bigfoot, if you get a chance, go to Amazon and check it out.

I ordered a copy of it. I really enjoy reading old newspaper accounts of what people were seeing. you know, 100 years ago. I was blown away, really. And that's why I had to write this book and put it because I, I just started researching and I guess I got lucky. It was like finding the needle in the haystack. But I was going through old databases and I, because my whole thought was,

you know, people always say, well, if they're, if Bigfoot's are real, then why aren't their accounts from the past? I've heard people say that so many times. And I myself thought, well, yeah, there are accounts from the past because Native Americans have been talking about Bigfoot forever. But those stories are hard to get from those communities because usually they share information. You know, they pass down from generation to generation, not so much written stories. But I still thought, you know, with all the newspapers that existed back in the day, well, newspapers used to be the only form of communication, you know, somebody had to have written something. And so that's what got me thinking.

And I was shocked by what I found. I mean, the stories that are out there, there are fascinating stories, and there are tons of them out there that have been printed in newspapers going back to the time of Abraham Lincoln. Yeah, there is a lot of accounts. The frustrating part, though, is once you get past like 1960 and before, you won't find Bigfoot or Sasquatch. You got to figure out what the locals called it. you know, the creek bottom monster or the wild man of, you know, whatever mountain there next to, which is kind of frustrating at times. Yeah, you're exactly right.

And that's how I found it under all kinds of different names. They called Harry Man, Monster Man. One newspaper from 1880 called it the Demon Monarch of the Forest. And that was my favorite one. The demon monarch. That says a lot. Yeah, I'd like to hear some of the accounts from the book. Is there one or two that kind of stay with you or really stuck with you when you're researching this?

Oh, my gosh, yes. There's so many. Where do I begin? I think people would be really interested in this one. There was one that I wanted to share with you because I've heard you say so many times on your show mentioned Fort Lewis in Washington State. And there have been a lot of accounts, I guess, that have come out of there in, you know, modern, times. And I was blown away. I found an account from 1876. So that's 148 years ago. There was an account of a man named R.W. Hall, of course, that wouldn't mean anything to us,

but that was his name. He described towing a boat up in the Puget Sound. And he came up and he was towing it specifically in Woodward's Bay. And he, and that's, you probably know, but that's like a short distance from, you know, Fort Lewis. Anyway, he was towing it and he said that he saw something moving in the grass on the beach. And he said his back was covered with light hair about an inch and a half long. At first he thought, you know, it was an animal. And as he approached, he realized that he described it as a boy, about three feet high, who stood up. And he described it as being quite small, but its body was covered, you know, with hair. And he described the hair on its head as being longer. He said, the strange creature had been laying under the log until he was

just within a few inches of it. And then he said it ran away with such speed that he couldn't keep it in view. And he referred to it as an it. So not like a human. So I found that one really fascinating because I've heard you talk about Fort Lewis or, you know, the viewers talk so much about, you know, Fort Lewis. And there was one report too that they described it as having the agility of goats. So they put it. And they described in one account that they were literally scaling up a rock face. And there's another account in the book that this is one that really blew me away too, that they're describing at one time a group of people saw these creatures, saskatches, straddling logs to cross a river. And I had never heard that before. So I

thought that was really interesting. Yeah, that is interesting. And most of the encounters are here in the Pacific Northwest, correct? Like Washington, Oregon, Idaho. Yeah, exactly. And honestly, I didn't go into California much at all. Maybe there's one short story that I couldn't resist putting in. But it's because I felt like there's so much from the Pacific Northwest already. And I wanted to include Southwest Canada because there's so much that happened just between the border or near the border of Washington State and Canada.

So many different accounts have come out of there that, you know, it ended up getting printed in, you know, papers in the states, especially in Washington State. But yeah, it focuses on the Pacific Northwest mostly. I found them all fascinating, but there's a few that are, you know, I guess a little extra fascinating. One is, I think most people, you know, at least are, you know, up on Bigfoot stories of the past, of course know about the ape canyon incident in 1924. You can probably describe it better than I can, but where the Sasquatches supposedly attacked a cabin belonging to a bunch of miners who were up there trying to establish a land claim. And from what I remember of the story, they gave up their land claim pretty much and left and abandoned it. And I know there have been people who've written books about this. And I even saw a documentary where a couple of people went back to try to find the cabin.

I mean, it's long gone, but they thought they found it. Anyway, this was in 1924, and of course this was well-known. Fascinating story out of Oregon, 20 years earlier, 20 years near the town of Sixes, which is east of what is now Cape Blanco State Park on the southern Oregon coast. There was a report of, they called it the Sixes Wild Man. And the title of the story was, the newspaper story was Six's Wild Man, visits the cabins of miners and frightens the prospectors. And the author of that story wrote that for 10 years, stories have come out of Coos County that described what they called a wild man and a terrible monster which walked erect, is how they put it. And they said that lots of miners and gold prospectors had seen it.

Well, when this particular article came out, which was April 17, 1904, they reported that the big, Bigfoot had been, or Bigfoot had been seen three times in three weeks in this particular area. And so the article goes on to talk about this man, two men, of course we wouldn't, their names wouldn't mean much to us, but one's man's name was Ward and another was Burleson. And it said they were sitting by the fire inside their cabin one night when they heard something walking around the cabin that resembled a man walking. It then came to the corner of the cabin, took hold of the corner, and showed. shook it vigorously. They then said that the creature made a frightful noise, and they said they'd heard it before in the woods. And one of the men, Mr. Ward, walked to the cabin door, and he could see it. He said it could see it plainly, and it walked away. He shot at it with

his rifle, but he missed. Now, the story isn't clear on the timeline, but it goes on to say that Sometime later, a Sasquatch also showed up at Mr. Ward's friend's cabin in about five in the morning and did the same thing. And it said that Ward opened the door and fired his gun and missed again. And in retaliation, apparently, the Bigfoot hurled a four-pound rock towards Ward's head. He missed. And then the Bigfoot fled to the woods. And the article says, I'll read what it says here, I have it. It says, many of the miners avow that the wild man is a reality.

They've seen him and nowhere of they speak. They say he is something after the fashion of a gorilla and unlike anything else in either appearance or action. They also goes on to say that he can outrun or jump anything that has ever been known. Yeah, the Sixes Wildman is a pretty famous case. there's many, many people that saw that creature. And you'd mention the miners up at Mount St. Helens. They'd actually made a pack before they left that they weren't going to tell anyone about what happened, not even family.

And so they all kind of go their separate ways. And people are wondering how it ended up in the Colombian, which is a local newspaper. And one of the guys came down, I can't remember if it was Woodland or Castle Rock, goes into a bar, starts drinking, and spills his guts on everything that took place up there on the mountain. And that's how it actually got out in the Columbia and the newspaper. When you were kind of going through all these accounts, was there anything about their behavior that kind of surprised you?

Well, the only thing I would say that surprised me was how similar it is to today's accounts. I mean, it's almost identical to everything. everything eyewitnesses report today, which to me really lends credibility to it. You know, I mean, it's just everything from the way they describe how it's so agile and bounds away. And they, you know, it's their one minute gone the next. You know, it'll just bound off into the forest. And they described in some of the reports, the long arms. They described, you know, like it, they described like how it seemed to be cured.

in so many of the reports. There's a report from, gosh, it's like a right there in the 70s near Albany, Oregon. A mint farmer had seen one. Lots of people were seeing them at this certain time frame in the 70s. And one even reportedly jogged along this farmer's truck for a while and looked in. And he said that it just seemed, you know, it was like very curious. I mean, it's just like the stories that you hear today are very similar. The one, though, that stood out as being really different was the one where they were straddling logs.

I never heard of that. There was one that was as late as 1980. And, I mean, that is not ancient history, at least not to me, that I'm older. But it was a group of teenagers who were parked along the Sandy River. They made a late night McDonald's run. and they were parked sort of like near the, you know, small town of Corbett in the Columbia River Gorge, kind of that general area. And they saw one come out. At first they thought it was a bear.

It stood up. They realized it wasn't a bear. And one of the girls just said, you know, in the article, he seemed very calm and at peace. And it seemed like he was studying us, is how she put it. So I just thought that was really interesting. I've heard that before, too. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all. The Sandy River is actually notorious for sightings.

A lot of people go missing in that area as well. You know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? What's your take? What do you think it is, especially after reading all these different articles? My take is, you know, based on all the reports I've heard, I think it's a real flesh and blood creature. And I think that because, you know, I've heard stories about sass watches that seem to be maimed in some way or injured. I've heard reports. One was in the book that I wrote about, you know, a white one that was showing up. And it could have been white, but it could have been maybe it was going gray. There's so many reports of them looking for food. And it just kind of, and they've also, as you know, there's been a lot of reports of, you know, people who've seen smaller ones or even families.

family groups. So to me, that says that sounds an awful like an animal, you know. But there's no doubt that they must have some extra, I'm going to call it extra sensory perception. And I don't mean like they can read minds. I don't mean that. I just mean like extra sensory like a dog has extra good hearing and can hear things that we can't. I think their senses are way sharper, way better. You know, animals, I think of this sometimes, you know, there's lots of reports of animals who can predict earthquakes or start acting weird before an earthquake and doesn't make any sense because you can't predict an earthquake. But clearly they're picking up on something. They're dogs, you know, that can sense, you know, seizures before a person has them.

And somehow they pick up on something. I mean, a human could never do that. never do that. So I think they have some sort of extra perceptions that we don't have for sure. And that's why I think it would be very, very difficult to catch one. And I think that's what we, no one has caught one up until now. But there have been reports of people shooting them. And there is, you know, there's another report in the book that I wrote about a guy in the Dowell's Oregon who shot one in the face in the 70s. And And he was out rabbit hunting.

And he reported that it really didn't do much to it, as he put it. It just kind of made it, you know, go back a bit and didn't really harm it that much. So I hope someday we'll have something more definite. That's what I'm hoping in my lifetime. But I think it's going to be really difficult. And again, the book is called Skating with Bigfoot. True Newspaper Counts in the West over 150 years. And I don't know if you came across this or not, Renee.

Sometimes you get the argument from people, oh, they were just writing these for what we would call today, like clickbait. I don't think so. You read these old articles and they read like factual events that happen to someone. No, I agree with you 100%. And I say that in my book. Like in the forward, I point out that, sure, you know, people are people through the ages, is my opinion. And like, are there pranksters in the old days? Sure. Are there people who would tell tall tales?

You bet. But these details are so credible and the way they describe it. And a lot of these were really upstanding people in their community. And there was one particular article where the author of the story was sort of vouching for the guy who told the story. Like, you know, these were small communities. So everybody knew everybody. So, you know, he knew the guy that had gone off and told the story and he said, or came back and told the story of having seen a big foot. And he said, you know, this man is considered one of the most honest men in this area. You know, he's an outdoorsman. He's spent all his life in the woods. And he's of the most upstanding character. He doesn't drink. He's not one to tell tall tales. But he said, you know, this is what he reported. So it was like he was vouching for him that this is a real story. Yeah, I found the story is very credible.

Yeah, I agree. And most of these accounts, it's not some random person. It's like, you know, our town doctor saw this thing. Exactly. And there are people like there was one account from 1933 out of Seaside, Oregon. And, I mean, the guy, he was one of the men who saw a Bigfoot was a part of a search party. And he was the Seaside City attorney at the time. And, I mean, he's quoted, you know, by name.

name. And you think back in those days, I mean, that would really ruin your reputation if you, I mean, you know, why would somebody make up a story and then come back to town and tell it? I mean, you know, you don't need to make up a story if you're the Seaside City Attorney and you went into the woods to look for some people who've gotten lost as part of a search party. I mean, you just think how ridiculous that would be. And in that particular case, there were two other men in the search party who also saw the Bigfoot at different times, different sightings. when they were looking for these people who've gotten lost. So I find all the stories really credible that I came across, yeah.

Yeah, I can't wait to check out the book, Skating with Bigfoot, true newspaper accounts in the West over 150 years. You can get it on Amazon. Renee, thank you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed chatting with you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, and I really enjoyed talking to you. And I want to thank you so much for your podcast, because I can't tell you how many times. I've been listening to it in the car or while making dinner, and it makes those jobs super enjoyable. So thank you so much.

I appreciate that. Thank you so much for the kind of words. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com. you can become a member and get additional shows. I will see everyone after Thanksgiving.

I want to be the first to wish you happy Thanksgiving. I'll be spending it with family and friends. Have a good night, everyone.