30th Anniversary: Mt. Tam Thing
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 24th, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle
April 23, 1980
Eerie Screams
Marin Mystery–A Night Creature
By Peter Stack
There was talk in Mill Valley yesterday that an “animal-like” figure that screeched horribly during an encounter with two policemen was the legendary hairy Bigfoot of Mount Tamalpais.
“It was a weird thing all right, but I never said anything about Bigfoot–somebody must have made that up,” said Patrolman Dan Murphy.
Murphy and his partner, Edward Johnson, were dispatched at 1:16am last Friday to investigate a report by a frightened woman that something was “screaming and screeching and growling” below her hillside home.
The woman said she couldn’t discern whether the sounds were human or animal.
For years there have been rumors of periodic sightings of a large, hairy humanoid prowling hills and valleys of Marin’s Mount Tam region. The existence of the omnivorous nomad, sometimes known as Sasquatch, has never been confirmed, but there have been frequent reports of him throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Murphy said he and Johnson answered Morris’ call like any routine assignment.
“When we got there, we heard the sounds too. They were strange, high-pitched sounds like something was screaming or howling viciously,” Murphy said yesterday.
The two officers nervously hiked down the wooded slopes while training their flashlight beams through the underbrush. It was pitch dark and windy.
“I heard this heavy breathing ahead of us,” Murphy said, adding that there were, “crackling and rustling noises as if something was approaching through the brush.”
According to official reports, Officer Johnson warned Murphy that he heard something coming from off to one side of them as well as from dead ahead.
The two policemen drew their service revolvers and slowly retreated uphill. But as they withdrew, Murphy caught a glimpse in the beam of his flashlight of a “large, dark-colored THING.”
“it was walking on its hind legs,” Murphy said. “I saw it climb an eight-foot retaining wall and dissapear into the brush.”
Later that morning, the two officers returned to the woodsy setting under the first glimmer of dawn. Once there, they found a thick trail of blood, which they followed through the heavy brush.
Suddenly looming before them was the disemboweled and badly mangled carcass of an adult deer. The animal’s neck had been ripped open and its belly torn open.
“There were no tracks or anything around,” said Murphy.
The deer’s carcass was removed by the Marin Humane Society, but no autopsy was made, so only speculation remained as to what killed the animal.
The humane society guessed the attack was probably by a mountain lion.
From the files of Kyle M. and many of us.
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.
