New Sasquatch Sighting: Do Bigfoot Look Almost Human?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 29th, 2011
A vintage tourist Sasquatch figure, circa 1940s, from British Columbia. Photo: Fort Awesome.
At the museum and in my writings, I have documented the evolution of the “wildmen” and “gorillas” of the 19th century, and then from the “hairy humans” seen in the earlier Sasquatch forms in the 1900s-1940s to the “forest giants” mostly pictured today, from the 1950s to present.
In Bigfoot!: The True Story of Apes in America. (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003), I trace the cultural reflective influence on the descriptions of Sasquatch/Bigfoot.
New old sightings of Bigfoot come in every day. What is unique about some of these sightings, of course, is that they instantly are published because the eyewitnesses are journalists. Chris Bush of British Columbia’s Nanaimo News Bulletin is one such individual.
Here, in part, is what Chris Bush wrote yesterday about his intriguing account when he was a boy in British Columbia (I’ve left out various nonessential “local color” details, but you can go to the source and read the entire account, of course):
I was 11 in July 1969 when my mother sent me to Camp Jubilee, about halfway up Indian Arm east of Vancouver….One afternoon we hiked into the bush to camp overnight in a wide dry creek bed. As it got dark, kids hunkered down in the rocks for the night. I found a comfortable spot in the boulders….We were settling down when we heard something trucking through the woods, snapping branches as it went, seemingly unconcerned about the noise it made. A bear maybe?
The last of the twilight was fading, but the moon was full, so there was plenty of light to see by. What walked out of the woods was no bear. It was about 12 metres [39.36 feet] from us, not just walking upright, but taking big easy strides across the rocks. About halfway across the creek bed it stopped, as if it realized suddenly that we were there, and turned to look at us. It was nearly two metres tall [6.56 feet] and its body was proportioned just like a large man’s, except its forearms were a little longer than ours, so its hands hung closer to its knees.
Its body was covered in hair, but it was so fine, almost like an Irish setter’s, that you could see its muscle definition underneath. I remember his forearm muscles being clearly defined and, yup, “it” was definitely a “he”.
He just stood there and sort of regarded us for a moment as we gaped back in stunned silence. His face appeared human and was covered in an even finer layer of hair. His eyes were a medium shade and when I looked in them I remember thinking, “That’s a man.”
Then he turned and continued on his way. The sound of branches snapping started again when he entered the woods and eventually faded into the distance.
The encounter didn’t frighten me. I was simply amazed. Our silence broke when a few terrified kids started freaking out and crying.
We ran to our counsellors’ campsite in wooded area not far down the creek to tell them what happened. They were just teenagers themselves, and were sitting around a campfire talking and playing guitars. They just told us to get lost.
In the morning we found a narrow trail paralleling the creek bed and saw branches snapped off the trees about shoulder height of the creature. The counsellors found this a bit strange, but figured it must have been a bear.
I’ve seen films on TV and heard sensational stories about sasquatches over the years, but none of those have ever described anything like what we saw that night.Source
The most common visual references for Sasquatch/Bigfoot give an entirely different look, of course, than what Chris Bush describes.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Well.
This paragraph
“Its body was covered in hair, but it was so fine, almost like an Irish setter’s, that you could see its muscle definition underneath. I remember his forearm muscles being clearly defined and, yup, “it” was definitely a “he”.”
…is about as classic a description as you will see (right down to the astonishingly-frequent use of the dog breed as an analogue for the hair observed).
Except for the “definitely” when it comes to the junk. Bigfoot gonads are….well, I’ve said it here: “Littlestones” might be more appropriate from what I’ve read.
Now as to the face.
At the 2009 TB Conference, I noted to Dr. John Bindernagel that many sasquatch observations are of a very human-like nose. He professed surprise. I referred him to the TBRC and BFRO databases, where there are many such observations. But. There are just as many of an “ape” or “monkey” face. J. Robert Alley has speculated that the sasquatch may be subject to great variation on physical characters, just like us. (One could pull 20 humans together and present them to an alien who would immediately think he was dealing with that many different species.)
Of course, the variation could mean more than one species. But that’s only idle speculation.
You know what I think? It’s all subjective. At least much of it is; many have had the reaction this witness did. Many have said: it was an ape. To me that is a brand of authenticity: people are reacting to what they saw, not concocting what someone told them to imagine.
When I first saw a close-up of an orangutan, my grade-school mind immediately registered shock. THAT’S A PERSON!!!
When I first saw the reconstructed face of the Australopithecus afarensis toddler on the cover of National Geographic (“First Child”), I thought:
That’s an orangutan.
Thanks Loren. Very good post and another sighting from a credible witness. To the best of my knowledge the encounter matches those of others including myself. The specimen is surprised by the presence of the boys but not to the extent where intimidation is needed. After surveying the situation he just goes on about his business.
The sighting matches some of the encounters I’ve had with the species. If there is no reason for intimidation they will generally survey the situation and go about their way. My Best,