Washington State As Bigfoot Central

In Search of ’Squatch from The Chronicle makes one think that Washington State is the epicenter of all things bigfoot.

Published in January of 2010, the article describes Scott Taylor of the Bigfoot Field Researcher Organization’s quest for proof of the hairy hominid across the state.

Based on sightings reported by BFRO’s Web site, Washington state is effectively Bigfoot central, more specifically the densely covered Cascade foothills of Southwest Washington. The group believes Sasquatches live in complex communities with advanced social norms and complex forms of communication, including their own language

This isn’t The Chronicle’s first bigfoot article either, as it details at the end of the story:

The following are Bigfoot-related news snippets from The Chronicle’s archives:

April 12, 1982 — A retired Toledo logger said he helped create the legends of a Bigfoot creature around Mount St. Helens. Rant Mullens, 86, said he and his uncle were returning from a fishing trip in 1924 and decided to throw a scare into some miners in the area. They rolled rocks over the edge and hightailed away. Later the three miners from Kelso reported seeing huge, hairy, apelike creatures that hurled boulders down upon their cabin. The miners said they fought off the creatures with rifle fire.

Mullens said he built on the legend four years later, when he whittled giant feet out of green alder wood and a friend stomped around the banks of the Muddy River, leaving tracks for berry pickers to notice.

“I tell you, people will believe just about anything,” the solitary, retired logger said from his home in Toledo.

April 19, 1982 — H. Woodman, Napavine, wrote a letter to the editor saying he saw a Bigfoot creature in 1953.

“Going home one evening on the Rutledge Road in the Littlerock area, I drove around a corner and saw a single animal — I thought it was a bear standing on its hind legs in the road. It was taller than a 6-foot man and was brown in color. It ran across the road, leaped a split rail fence and was gone in four or five seconds.

“Sometime later, I read some literature and remembered this sighting. The animal had hind legs that were of human proportions. A bear’s hind legs are short compared to its body. When it ran away at great speed it did not run on four legs but ran erect as a man would. A bear would run on all fours… I know what I saw and the only proof I need is to remember that it was erect when it ran away.”

Feb. 10, 1997 — Ruth Steele, 73, was convinced that a Bigfoot creature was roaming the hills near her home in Dryad.

“No question about it, I seen it … I’m not hallucinating — I’ve got a good mind.”

She believed she had seen either a Sasquatch or some kind of alien three times in six months. She didn’t carry a camera with her those times, but she had begun to. All the sightings took place near rural Doty and Dryad on the semiforested River Road.

The 7-foot-something tall humanoid was covered with gray, white and sometimes black fur, she said. The animal’s face appeared pink skinned. The furry creature walked upright and wore no clothing. In the most recent sighting, in January, the creature heard her car, turned and looked directly at her. Its eyes shone red.

“It shocked the devil out of me when I seen it,” Steele said. “I thought what in God’s name is that? … He wasn’t no human. He’s never nothing I’d seen in the woods.”

During a recent sighting her daughter, Debra Steele, 41, also saw the creature. “It looked me right in the face — it scared the pants right off of me,” the younger Steele said.

Aug. 5, 2001 — The public had its first chance to see the Skookum Cast, a plaster casting of what might be Bigfoot. Wildlife biologist Dr. LeRoy Fish, Oregon, said the heel had what appeared to be a callus.

The 3½ by 5 foot chunk of plaster held the reverse imprint of what Fish and Kevin Lindley of Mossyrock said was an unknown primate.

The impression had been discovered in Skookum Meadow in Skamania County in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.

Bigfoot skeptics say Wallace could have been behind famous tracks found at the Ape Cave near Mount St. Helens.

The article also lists sightings from the BFRO database from Lewis County, Washington.

1967

Winlock — “The Brinson Monster” — Startled by a tall standing beast, high school kids who were out for a night of beer drinking at their regular spot return with a rifle and attempt to kill Bigfoot.

1969

White Pass — A Washington State University student sees a roadside Sasquatch who was startled by his headlights and then stepped over the guardrail on U.S. Highway 12.

1980

Packwood — Man reports a large scream from an animal running across the back side of the High Valley Country Club.

1990

Morton — Two men cutting cedar shake blocks near a creek hear a peculiar scream on an old logging road.

1994

Mineral — Two friends see a “dirty white” Sasquatch picking branches from a crab apple tree near a farm.

1996

Morton — Two people spot a Sasquatch bathing in a pond and periodically slapping the water with huge hands.

1998

Randle — Two hunters hear unusual “whoop howl” in stand of old growth forest.

2000

Morton — Mother and daughter see “large animal with long reddish brown hair” cross the road.

Morton — Woman stops her vehicle to look at what she thinks is a bear in a roadside ditch, but when it stood up, she thought it was a gorilla. She said the Sasquatch appeared to be injured and bleeding and had a “sad look” as it crossed the road in front of her car.

2001

White Pass — Family traveling from Tacoma report a Sasquatch standing in the road.

2002

Mossyrock — Riffe Lake fisherman and his son see a Sasquatch walking in a clear-cut forest near the shore.

Randle — A man and his wife are awakened by a loud scream similar to a peacock, but louder and with more timbre. The man went outside and mimicked the call and was answered six times.

Packwood — Elk hunter is spooked to find giant footprints in snow.

2003

Morton — Night watchmen for a logging company hear a strange short scream with a deep tone and two days later describe a figure “like Andre the Giant stepping over a rope.”

2004

Doty — A dozen teenagers camping at Rainbow Falls State Park hear a strange scream after putting out their camp fire.

Mossyrock — A wife and her husband hear two strange screams while out elk hunting and camping near a clear-cut forest.

2005

Salkum — A man driving down a dead-end country road sees a nondescript “gray patch” get up and move two steps into the woods.

2006

Doty — A man hunting in a wooded area comes into direct contact with a Sasquatch, which screamed at him and then “said something” he couldn’t understand.

2007

Winlock — A man lets his dogs run in his back yard when he hears a strange scream come from Olequa Creek.

2009

Salkum — Three men sitting in a drift boat on the south side of the Cowlitz River hear a sound like a “chimp screaming” from dense brush directly across the river. They said the sound carried on wailing for a minute or more.

I think it is important to note that while BFRO is the worlds largest known database of bigfoot sightings, there are many sighting that go unreported to BFRO and it should not be consider to be all sightings.

3 thoughts on “Washington State As Bigfoot Central

  1. Years and Years ago out in Snohomish Washington some friends and I heard bigfoot more than once. We didn’t know what it was at the time, this was well before the internet was a big thing and there were recordings etc.

    We told our friend’s mom who had seen bigfoot out by the old grange which is where I heard it the first time. At the time there wasn’t access to all the information we have now but in hindsight I think what we heard that first time was actually three bigfeet sounding off their location to one another. We heard three calls, close together in time but at wildly varying distances. The sounds were following the line of a gully that was behind the few houses out there at the time.

    My impression was that the creature was moving very very fast, inhumanly so, simply because of how quickly the calls followed one another and moved towards us from far to close. We didn’t stick around to see anything.

    The thing that struck me was the instinctive reaction I had to the sound. I felt it in my chest and something about it just set off my fight or flight. I was in a car so flight seemed to be the best option at the time.

    The second time I heard it was about a month later, late at night about a mile and a quarter from where I heard it the first time. I was up in a field at my friend’s house with another friend of ours. We were going to play paintball the next day and we were up talking about the next day. We had walked up there to look at the night valley and when we went up we had several dogs with us. The next thing we knew the dogs vanished. All around the valley we heard dozens of dogs barking, there was that familiar roar and every dog went silent. By the second roar we were burning for the house as fast as we could run. Again, in hindsight, it sounded like sounding between individuals because of how fast the distance between the calls changed.

    As for the sound itself I had never heard anything like it. I have hunted and camped in Washington since I was old enough to walk and I’ve heard everything the Northwest has to offer for large animals that could manage that much volume and deep resonance. This was no elk, no deer, no coyotes. Years later I saw a bigfoot documentary where they played an alleged bigfoot scream and it was exactly the same. Terrifyingly so.

    I’ve talked to other people who lived out in the Snohomish area and I usually don’t get through my description of the sound of the scream before they jump in and finish the description for me. It’s like bigfoot’s presence in the Snohomish area is a well known secret among long time residents of the area and nobody talks about it unless they’re with someone who’s seen or heard of it.

  2. Thanks for your comment Matt. Everyone has the right to an opinion and to express it.

    PS. I think your Caps Lock key might be stuck on.

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