Page 81 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

Mysterious Creatures 61

ried several yards across the compound. In An alleged Bigfoot
another, a 300-pound drum of oil had been photographed in 1967
stolen from the camp, carried up a rocky near Bluff Creek,
mountain slope, and tossed into a deep California. (AP/WIDE
canyon. And in each instance, only massive WORLD PHOTOS)
16-inch footprints with a 50-to-60-inch stride
offered any clue to the vandal’s identity.
When media accounts of the huge foot-
prints were released, people from the area
began to step forward to exhibit their own
plaster casts of massive, mysterious footprints
and to relate their own frightening encounters
with hairy giants—stories that they had
repressed for decades for fear of being ridiculed.
Not to be outdone, Canadians began telling of
their own startling encounters with Sasquatch,
a tribal name for Bigfoot, that had been circu-
lating in the accounts of trappers, lumberjacks,
and settlers in the Northwest Territories since
the 1850s. Long before the frontier folk discov-
ered the giant of the woods, the Sasquatch had
become an integral element in many of the
On October 20, 1967, near Bluff Creek,
myths and legends of the native people.
north of Eureka, California, Bigfoot hunters
Perhaps the most remarkable and most Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin managed to
thoroughly documented account of a shoot several feet of movie film of what appears
Sasquatch from those early days in Canada to be a female Bigfoot. With its glossy black hair
occurred in 1884 and was recorded in the shining in the bright sun, the Bigfoot walks away
Daily British Colonist, July 4, 1884. In the from the camera with a stride that is human. It
immediate vicinity of Number 4 tunnel, 20 has pendulous breasts, and it looks back at the
miles from Yale, British Columbia, a group of cameraman as it walks steadily toward a growth
railroad men captured a creature that could of trees. It does not appear to be frightened, but
truly be called half-man and half-beast. The it is obvious that it wishes to avoid contact.
men called him “Jacko” and described him as Experts say that the creature in the filmstrip is
looking much like a gorilla, standing about over seven feet tall and estimate its weight at
four feet, seven inches and weighing 127 around 400 pounds. It left footprints 17 inches
pounds. The only sound that issued from him long, and it had a stride of 41 inches. Patterson
was a kind of half-bark and half-growl. Jacko and Gimlin felt that they had at last provided
was described as having long, black, strong the scientific community and the world at large
hair and resembling a human being with the with proof of Bigfoot’s existence.
exception that his entire body, except his
hands and feet, were covered with glossy hair
about one inch long. His forearm was much
longer than a man’s forearm, and he possessed THE seven-foot forest apelike creature is known
extraordinary strength.
as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Wauk-Wauk, Oh-Mah, or
The man who became Jacko’s “keeper,”
George Telbury of Yale, announced his inten- Saskehavis.
tion to take the man-beast to London, Eng-
land, to exhibit him. All traces of Jacko van-
ished after the rash of news stories recounting After his examination of the Patterson-
the details of his capture. Gimlin film, Dr. John R. Napier, director of the

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