It was late one February night, and Baker was wandering through
the woods along the lower Molalla River. He didn't see the beast. But
the 28-year-old security officer and outdoorsman believes he had a
close encounter with the creature also known as Yeti, Yayoo, Skunk
Ape or Sasquatch. "It's out there, and it's a lot more intelligent than people
realize,'' Baker said.
After all of these years, reports of the elusive giant continue
to trickle in from the forests of the Northwest, the foothills of
Ohio and the swamplands of Florida. And despite the persistent lack
of hard evidence, investigators continue to dog the beast, risking
savings and reputations to find proof that Bigfoot exists.
`I have every confidence it will happen,'' says Ray Crowe,
founder of the Western Bigfoot Society, a Portland-based nonprofit
group that is considered the largest of its kind. ``I'm just
concerned someone else will beat us to it.''
Crowe estimates that 50 to 100 researchers are actively pursuing
the creature around the world, using sophisticated search tools
ranging from infrared cameras to DNA-retrieving dart guns and seismic
sensors.
Still, the most conclusive evidence on record is the primitive
1967 footage known as the Patterson film, which shows a blurred and
jerky image of what appears to be a large, hairy beast running
through the woods. "No one can knock that picture,'' Crowe said.
These days, with the technology to alter film and video easily
and realistically, Bigfooters know it will take more than footage to
prove the beast exists. They need a body -- dead or alive. "That's the only way,'' Crowe says.
Crowe, 60, has been looking for Bigfoot since 1991, when he began
transforming the basement of his used bookstore into a Bigfoot museum
and meeting place. The society was born, quickly growing to 250
members, and Crowe began to publish the Track Record newsletter every
month.
It was Crowe who took the call about some strange goings-on near
Molalla. Baker, who has hunted in the area since he was a child,
believed he had come across the spot where a Bigfoot creature had
made its bed at the base of a ridge.
Several months old by then, the giant footprint Baker saw pressed
into the ground was long gone. After ducking through a thicket for a
closer look, Crowe concluded that the matted grass was more than
likely made by a camper's sleeping bag. The broken branches were
clearly cut by machete.
Still, there was no explaining the eerie scream that echoed
through the canyon. Or the stench, which is often reported along with
a sighting: ``That sucker was ripe,'' Baker said.
And it wasn't the first such report in the area. In 1992, Sharon
and LeRoy Jones were camping nearby when they say they heard
something banging on the cage of their pet rabbits. They say they
then saw a Bigfoot dart back into the bushes.
There are dozens of accounts on the Internet:
-- Near Colton, southeast of Portland, in 1995, a bow hunter
sensed he was being followed, turned and saw a Sasquatch staring at
him about 25 feet away.
-- At a logging camp near Detroit, a small town southeast of
Salem, in 1970, a 16-year-old girl reported seeing a Bigfoot with
breasts stealing meat from the family's cooler.
Crowe writes up nearly all the sightings in his newsletter,
although he warns readers to keep on their ``skepticals'' and is
leery of reports that link Bigfoot with UFOs, psychic connections and
different dimensions.
The greatest problem is not weeding through the sightings, but
getting information about them in the first place. Often, people are
too embarrassed to come forward or don't know whom to call, he said.
Publicity had been boosting the Western Bigfoot Society's
exposure in recent years, and reports were rolling in more
frequently. But they've slowed in the last year, after the fire
marshal banned meetings larger than 10 people and Crowe decided to
shut the store down. He hopes to replace it with a stand-alone Bigfoot museum, which
he plans to build along Interstate 5 as soon as the funding is found.
His group still meets weekly at a northern Portland restaurant,
where on a recent Tuesday a lively debate ensued about what sounds,
if any, Bigfoot makes. They're a diverse bunch: an archer who once heard unidentifiable
screams on Dixie Mountain in the 1970s; an industrial- pump salesman
who has taken to baiting Bigfoot with Spam in steep canyons
throughout Northwest forests. And there's Peter Byrne, who with his khaki clothing, field vest
and silk ascot, would look more at home on safari than in suburbia.
For five years beginning in 1992, Byrne led the Bigfoot Research
Project, the most technologically advanced search for Bigfoot in
history. Funded by a $1 million grant from a benefactor who wants
anonymity, Byrne and two assistants were equipped with a Jeep, police
gear, military search equipment and a toll-free phone number
(1-800-BIG-FOOT).
Dozens of volunteers were on call in case of a sighting. Two
helicopters were on standby, one equipped with infrared equipment.
Biopsy guns were readied to extract pellet-size samples of tissue for
DNA testing. But the the best the searchers got was a 31-day-old report from a
policeman who believed he saw a Bigfoot walking along the Oregon
coast.
The project ended last year, and Byrne is still working to drum
up more funding. In the meantime, he and the others continue the
search on their own time and money. Their motives vary. A few seek the fortune to be made if the
creature is ever proved real. Some just want an excuse to spend time
in the woods. But most say they're motivated by the mystery.
Todd Neiss, 37, has no doubt he saw three Bigfoot creatures
during a 1993 demolition exercise with the National Guard -- a
sighting corroborated by three others. "If people don't believe me, that's their problem,'' said Neiss,
now a vice president of a transportation company. "My point to find
these animals is not to say `Na-na-na-na-na-naaa, told you so.' It's
because I'm so fascinated and intrigued, I have to see them again.''
(Source: The Salt Lake Tribune / By Lauren Dodge (AP) - Oct 4 1998)
MOLALLA, Ore. -- A seasoned Bigfoot enthusiast, Charles Baker knew
the signs: the matted grass, the twisted branches, the stench that
set the dog off and the shrill scream that made it silent.
-- In Portland last year, a student reported seeing a Bigfoot
while videotaping a class project near the Washington Park Zoo,
although his father believed the sighting was an excuse for losing
his new video camera.
Sightings haven't been limited to the Northwest. There is an
active Bigfoot society in Ohio, where one man recently claimed to
have videotaped a white Sasquatch. In Florida, recent reports of the
"skunk ape'' can be found on the Internet.
