John Green and the Sasquatch Death Curse

Historically, we do know late May was significant in British Columbia, regarding Sasquatch and the Native Peoples. Indian Agent J. W. Burns (who coined the term “Sasquatch”) recorded how the local First Nations people felt their Forest Giants were very real, during the May 23, 1938 celebration of a festival known as “Indian Sasquatch Days,” held at Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. Harrison Hot Springs was where John Green called home, and was later elected mayor there.

But now John Green is gone. His legacy lives on. And he leaves much to ponder in the research he did. One thing he seems to have proven: There is no Bigfoot curse. Nevertheless, Green was squarely in the middle of revealing that this “Sasquatch hex” actually existed.

As I observed in my book, Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America (2003), some people believe, “To encounter a Bigfoot is to die.”

For others that might be translated into “to study Bigfoot is to die.”

This early consideration grew out of one often-told story by John Green (who was born February 12, 1927). Writing about the Ruby Creek incident of 1941, Green, who was the first to chronicle it, mentioned that for “an Indian to see a Sasquatch was believed to be bad luck, in fact the observer was in danger of dying.”

Then Ivan Sanderson propelled the “if you see a Bigfoot you die” legend into the lore of the field with a short passage in his 1961 book, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. Therein, Sanderson referred to the primary witnesses in the Ruby Creek incident, the Chapmans: “It is just as well that we crossed the Fraser River just when we did, and so met the Chapmans, because about a month afterward they were drowned crossing at the same spot late one night. The irony and tragedy of this event upset me greatly…. The Chapman family at the time of the incident consisted of George and Jeanne Chapman and three children.”

The Chapmans had their sighting in 1941 and died in 1959–about 18 years later – although the point Sanderson was making is that relatively soon after he interviewed them they died. The folklore lives on.

People die. It is part of the human condition. In actuality, there is no “Sasquatch death curse.” There is only sadness that we have no control of when death occurs. And that someone has moved on.