West Coast Sasquatch Announce First Recorded British Columbia Sasquatch Vocalizations
Posted by: John Kirk on January 21st, 2006
British Columbia Sasquatch researchers are getting some serious recognition from the media following the announcement by Gerry Matthews and Ken Kristian of West Coast Sasquatch Research that they have what may be the first Sasquatch vocalization ever recorded in this province. In today’s Globe and Mail newspaper there is an article about their findings that makes terrific reading.
The vocalizations (which can be heard on the WCS website) were first heard by an elderly retired couple in the Chehalis Flats region along the Harrison River. They finally placed an 8mm video camera on a garbage can outside their back door and low and behold the strange vocalizations were captured for posterity. While nobody knows for sure what a sasquatch sounds like, the creature making the loud cries sounds very similar to an animal I personally heard while camping at Birkenhead Provincial park north of Whistler, B.C. in 2003. While at our campsite, my wife and I heard the loudest scream we have ever experienced emanating from a hillside 300 metres to the west. The scream was so loud that it sounded like it had come from the adjacent campsite. It lasted less than 15 seconds, but the lung power required to make a cry that loud was clearly beyond that of a human being.
If you attended the Sasquatch Research conference in Bellingham, Washington last May, you would have heard recordings made by John Andrews and his team which came from an isolated area near Darrington, Washington. The cries from the Darrington recordings, the Chehalis vocalizations and the cries my wife and I heard are all uncannily similar. They resemble the vocalizations of no known animal in the Pacific Northwest and it is distinctly possible that they could well be sasquatch sounds.
Ken Kristian, Gerry Matthews, Thomas Steenburg and Sebastian Wang are the core nucleus of West Coast Sasquatch and these four intrepid researchers have been really busy this past year with many forays into the bush in search of this enigma. They have interviewed witnesses, set up bait traps (not ones that would harm a sasquatch but that would trigger a camera), experimented with a homebuilt infrared camera unit that they hope would capture a sasquatch image even in total darkness and followed up on sightings by examining the locales where these took place. They are to be congratulated for their due diligence having seemingly paid off.
Thomas Steenburg with a cast of the original bigfoot in the bush near Mission B.C, January 10. Photo: Lyle Stafford/The Globe and Mail
I plan on going out with the West Coast Sasquatch team to the area where the vocalizations took place and to see if we can obtain any further evidence that this may indeed be the first BC sasquatch vocalization on record.
I’ll let you know what we find.
About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998).
In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur.
Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC.
In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.
HAHA!
I just had a funny idea! With feet like that, Bigfoot should learn karate!
If people know what a Thylacine sounds like, why don’t they do this where the animal may still live, but year round to have a greater chance of getting clear cut evidence of the Thylacine.
The recording sounds more like the camera was placed inside a garbage can, it does not sound like the camera is out in the open, maybe a bionic ear was hooked up? Sounds like some sort of mike other than the camera’s was in use. Also you can hear someone adjusting the camera, moving it during the recording. Also had a strange scratching sound at the begining of each call like you would hear if scratching on a record player or rewinding a tape and hitting play on the wrong cue. Honestly it sounds like a real sasquatch recording, have heard that myself but it also sounds like a hoaxed recording of a real call. This is just one of those situations where you need the entire story of how the recoring was obtained and then compare that recording to the story to see if the noises heard fit.
I went to the WCS website and listened to the recording and read the comments. I didn’t hear no dog barking in the house and I don’t think I heard a Bigfoot. What I did hear sounded like an alley cat at night recorded with a lot of static.
Stosh
What the heck was all that?
If you listen very closely to the tape, don’t lean in toward your speaker, you can hear the dog barking. I think it is a terrier type dog, something small. And if you listen to the whole recording, some of the whoop-like calls are longer, and some are short, while some sound louder (closer?) others sound a bit farther off-perhaps the creature was walking around, coming closer and moving away again? All I know is if I heard that noise I’d definitly be trying to record it so I didn’t think I was nuts!
Lessien
That recording is so clipped that it is useless for research purposes. Possibly they’ve tried to normalize the file and went too far. If there is a better, raw, version of that file it should be posted. As it is, that file can’t be used.
I suspect they’ve downsampled also, since it’s running at 8KHz. That’s way too low for good sound, but the clipping is the main trouble.
What’s the deal with that photo? Is that guy for real saying that’s a cast he made?
That looks exactly like the Wallace footprint casts.
I just signed up today (Preimar) but have been watching your site for some time…..I wanted to ask questions / comment on the Jan 22 article by John Kirk, “West Coast Sasquatch Announce First Recorded BC Sasquatch Vocalizations”…..
I was quite surprised to see Birkenhead Lake mentioned by John Kirk in the article and his camping excursion there in 2003. We have a cabin in that area and have been up there off and on for ther last 15 years or so. I was wondering if he was camping there for pleasure or was it because of reports in the area?……I was told by a local mushroom picker in October 2003, during a slow year, that the best place to pick was an area where local First Nations from Mount Currie had been spooked out by “something” a week earlier and he proceeded to call them something like ‘ crazy indians’ and mentioned a hairy beast of some sort and rolled his eyes as if he thought they were crazy……just wondering if it maybe was the same reason he was there (the reported sighting)???
Do you any of you guys plan another trip to the area and need someone to help out? I am very interested in this subject and would love to get involved in helping some ‘professionals’ out to possibly learn some more about the subject….I also have some other stories from the local area as well as a personal experience some years back, which I still cannot really explain.
I have not heard any ‘calls’per say in that area since I have been there that I could really atribute to sasquatch so I was quite curious about John’s experience (although I have heard lots of owl calls and coyote howling at various times of the year). If I read it correctly, he was probably camping at the provincial campsite on the north end. He mentioned that the call came from the west, which would mean it probably came out of Sockeye Creek valley, an area that has intrigued me since I started hiking the local area and it still gives me the creeps when I go up there……I have ventured into the valley on numerous occasions with others who feel strange when they are there as well…….I have been wanting to take a camping trip into the valley but I don’t want to go by myself and no one seems to want to go with me from my family. I have also taken some short excursions to the Fraser River area over by Lillooet looking into some old hunting stories of sightings I have seen on the internet…..anyways…….as you can see, this has sparked my interest and I would enjoy any response yourself or John could afford.
Thanks for your time,
Pat
This isn’t anything new. Growing up as a kid in Hope (just east of Harrison), on the edge of the woods, we would sometimes get woken up by these screams late at night. They wouldn’t last long, and whatever it was it didn’t cross the highway into town. You have to remember there are many strange people living in the woods up there, and a lot of strange things happen.
One guy I remember in particular would walk out of the woods in spring screaming at the top of his lungs and he cut straight through town, only to go back as quickly as he came out before the cops came. Didn’t quite sound like the screams I’d hear at night, but it was just as powerful, it would echo through my part of town, and people would go running into their houses whenever they heard it.
There’s a lot of creepy stuff that goes on up there in the valley, but I don’t think it’s bigfoot.
Just as an update. I am one of the couple (and we are not elderly, mid 50’s)that contributed the vocalization of possible sasquatch. What was presented online was a copy that was put onto VHS and then recorded from the TV with a handheld tape recorder. We have just met with Ken Kristian and gave him the original tape that we found as we were getting our video camera ready for a trip we were taking. We thought we had taped over the original. They quality of it is much better that what is on the website now.
Boy this one is sure in need of updating I was very surprised to find that the results of our follow up investigation is not mentioned here.
On April 5th, 2006 at 09;30 am Gerry Mathiews and myself discovered what was responsible for the vocalizations known as the Chehalis sounds. We witnessed a coyote making the calls. We think it is a rarely witnessed location call by coyotes.
Thomas Steenburg
Deer Mr. Steenburg. I know this is going to sound a bit odd since you have already put this investigation to bed, but, I know people who have “tin ears”. My brother in-law for example can’t discern the character between a trombone and a clarinet. Now, I’m not going to accuse you of anything here, I’m just stating a known fact. My question for you is; did you record the coyotes either on audio or video to later compare to the original recordings of the suspicious calls? If so, is there somewhere where I can listen to them to make my own assessment? If not, then why not?