February 10, 2006

John Green on Glen Thomas and William Roe

This article was originally presented at the 2003 International Bigfoot Symposium by John Green. This is the 7th part of more to come. Posted with John Green’s written consent.

The first part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The second part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The third part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The fourth part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The fifth part is available on Cryptomundo here.
The sixth part is available on Cryptomundo here.

Another witness who contributed some unique elements of information did have evidence to show.  

Glen Thomas, a logger living in Colton, Oregon, eventually claimed four separate sightings – which is more than enough to set alarm bells ringing – but his first story, of watching a big male sasquatch dig deep into broken rock high up on a mountain ridge to get at hibernating rodents, was backed up by the hole in the rocks, five feet deep, as steep-sided as a well, and obviously beyond human ability to duplicate without machinery.

He also had something to say bearing on the family hypothesis. A female and infant were with the big male and shared in eating the rodents, but Glen noted that the young one was always careful to keep on the other side of its mother from the male.

Glen Thomas did not tell his first story until after the Patterson movie was public knowledge, but another account of exceptionally detailed observations came to light not just before the movie, but before the first “Bigfoot” cast was made in 1958.

William Roe, a man whom I later learned had an established reputation as an accurate observer of wildlife, told of watching a six-foot, very heavy, hair-covered, obviously female creature in a small clearing on a mountain near Tete Jaune Cache, British Columbia. He said it was eating from a bush, not berries, but the leaves. (A full-size copy of a drawing of the animal, made by his daughter at his direction, is on display here.)

The Ostman and Roe stories had a lot to do with my becoming caught up in this investigation so long ago, but there was another that was even more instrumental. That was something that had taken place at Ruby Creek, British Columbia, in 1941. As a sighting report it was nothing special, a women living in an isolated home on an Indian reserve told of seeing a hairy giant approach from the nearby woods. She fled, but a group of men went to investigate and found a series of huge humanlike tracks, which, among other things, indicated that the track maker had stepped casually over a four-foot railway fence.

I was told that story in 1957 by one of the men involved, someone I already knew and respected, and I later spoke with three other people who had seen the tracks. I was also told that a deputy sheriff from Bellingham, Washington, had come to investigate at the time. He had since died, but from his son I obtained a tracing of a footprint cast that he had made.

When I came to this area in 1958 I had that tracing with me, and, as you can see, it is almost a perfect match for a tracing that Bob Titmus had made from Jerry Crew’s “Bigfoot” cast.

Ordinarily at this point I might go on to tell of seeing some old tracks on the Bluff Creek Road on that occasion and of returning to see the second type of tracks found by Bob Titmus, and also of my experiences with Roger Patterson before and after he got his movie. The time to deal with those events, however, is tomorrow afternoon in the panel discussion, with other people who were much more closely involved than I was.

For the first time at any symposium, you will have the opportunity to hear directly from Bob Gimlin, who was with Roger on that fateful day, from Ed Patrick, who was with Bob when they found the new tracks, and from Ed Schellenberg and perhaps others, who were there when the original Bigfoot tracks showed up on the Bluff Creek jobsite.

To be continued tomorrow…

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