Jacko Item Added To Cryptozoology Museum
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 21st, 2011
On February 20, 2011, John Green tribute filmmaker Zack Klyver donated to the International Cryptozoology Museum a piece of the rock ridge upon which Jacko reportedly stood in 1884. We deeply appreciate this new addition to the collection.
The story of Jacko – that of a small, apelike, young Sasquatch said to have been captured alive in the 1884 – is a long established bit of Bigfoot tradition.
The Daily British Colonist July 4, 1884, article about Jacko details the encounter with a smallish hairy creature (“something of the gorilla type”) supposedly seen and captured near Yale, British Columbia, on June 30, 1884, by a railroad crew. It was allegedly housed in a local jail.
In 1958 John Green found and interviewed a man, August Castle, who remembered the Jacko talk of the time, but he said his parents did not take him to the jail to see the beast. Other senior citizens remembered mentions of the creature, but no one could produce any truly good evidence, other than eyewitness accounts (except for the British Colonist article and similar news items) of Jacko.
The story’s appearance in Ivan T. Sanderson’s 1961 Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life propelled the Jacko incident into history. Other authors, including John Green, René Dahinden/Don Hunter, Grover Krantz, and John Napier, would follow.
John Green (with Sanderson’s widow) wrote of the Jacko story as a piece of probable historical journalistic fiction in the article, “Alas, Poor Jacko,” in Pursuit published in 1975.
I retold the story in my book, Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2003), on pages 41-42.
The complete description of Jacko, is as follows: “Something of the gorilla type standing four feet seven inches in height and weighing 127. He has long, black, strong hair and resembles a human being with one exception, his entire body, excepting his hands, (or paws) and feet are covered with glossy hair about an inch long. His fore arm is much longer than a man’s fore arm.” (from “What Is It? A Strange Creature Captured Above Yale ~ A British Columbia Gorilla,” Victoria, British Columbia, Daily Colonist, July 4, 1884).
John Green’s 1978 book, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us expresses his feeling that “it doesn’t look good for Jacko.”
It is important, nevertheless, to get an actual artifact of this history into the museum.
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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.
