Stories of large Big Foot beasts who walk upright continue to pop up around North America, with the Pacific Northwest and BC having more than their fair share of tales. No one has ever shot a Big Foot or found a dead one, but sightings, foot castings and the occasional videos continue to surface.
Here is a pretty compelling video relating a sighting of a possible Sasquatch in the Chilliwack River Valley in 1985 by a visiting couple from Kansas City. At the time, Chilliwack Valley Road was a gravel road, but the campground existed and there are plenty of details related by a local who spoke with the American campers.
Not from the Chilliwack area, but a story by TV’s Survivor Man (and Canadian) Les Stroud relates a story of an encounter in Alaska. He relates reluctantly that he heard what sounded like “an ape” laughing and grunting and crashing through the woods.
And here Les is in another interview about the same experience.
Then we have this report from the Chilliwack Progress in 2008:
“”A seven-foot Sasquatch has been spotted near Chilliwack, a witness says.
And two local Sasquatch hunters are convinced the sighting, reported last month on Mount Cheam, is the real deal.
“This was a legitimate sighting, not a bear, not a deer or anything else,” said Bill Miller, a full-time Sasquatch hunter who lives in Harrison Hot Springs.
The Sasquatch was sighted on June 19 at 2 a.m. when a husband and wife were travelling down the mountain after watching the city lights from a lookout point. The wife was busy fiddling with CDs when the creature crossed in front of them.
“He grabbed his wife’s arm and said ‘did you see that guy cross the road?,’” said Tom Steenburg, a Sasquatch hunter and Big Foot author, who interviewed the couple two days after the sighting.
“His wife started asking him questions, like what was he wearing. He said that he wasn’t wearing anything, he was just really hairy. She asked how tall he was. He just said that he was really big. Finally she asked, was it the Sasquatch? No, he replied. It couldn’t have been, there’s no such thing as the Sasquatch.”
The man who saw the figure described it as having “long arms, down to his knees,” a “very heavy, big upper body,” a “thin waist,” a “flat stomach,” and no neck, “just kind of a head.”
He compared it to being “big like a wrestler, flexing its back and chest.” He also said it was about seven feet tall, covered in black hair, and walked on two legs.”
Than there is a report by an off duty bus driver who claims he saw a Sasquatch on Vedder Mountain Road one night in 1966. This was reported before the release of the Patterson-Gimlin Film, with a description of the large ape like creature very much like that in the film. If you want to dive deeper into the mystery of the Sasquatch, check out In Search of Giants: Bigfoot Sasquatch Encounters
Is Sasquatch real? If he is, than the forests around Chilliwack are as good a place as any for him to hang out.
