Interview with AL HODGSON, Bigfoot Elder of Willow Creek, PART ONE

INTERVIEW WITH WILLOW CREEK'S AL HODGSON,

CONDUCTED AND TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN STREUFERT, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM "C.I."

FEBRUARY 4th, 2010: PART ONE OF THREE.

This is the first forty minutes of an interview that lasted over two and a quarter hours. The rest will be posted here soon in two more segments.

Al Hodgson debunks the "Bluff Creek Massacre" theory, denies that Bigfoot are human, and throws one more question mark into the issue of the actual location of the P-G film site. Audio recordings are archived, lest some of you conspiracy theorists doubt the veracity of the following literal transcriptions.

Bigfoot Books and our associate and soundman "C.I." went up the hill and around the corner, about a quarter of a mile from the book shop, and visited Bigfooting elder statesman, Al Hodgson. He's lived in Willow Creek since 1933 (and was born before that!). Now in his mid-eighties, he was there on the ground when "Big Foot" went from being a local legend to an international sensation. In fact, he played an instrumental role in that crucial period of 1967, and made the phone call that brought Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin to Bluff Creek, leading to the famous filming of the creature. He was prominent as a local contact for all matters Bigfooty for decades, and participated in the early investigations of footprint finds and sightings. He knew Jerry Crew, who made the famous Bluff Creek casts of 1958, personally. As a member of the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum he was the guy who made the famed "Bigfoot Collection" wing happen, thus preserving the Bob Titmus materials and casts, and presenting other archival and historical materials in a domain accessible to the general public curious about Sasquatch evidence and history.

Images: Al in his home this February, holding the book Roger Patterson gave and inscribed to him. Below, the dedication and signature from Roger. Photos: by Steven Streufert. CLICK TO ENLARGE most images.

The discussion began as soon as we entered the front door of the Hodgson home in Willow Creek, CA, and covered some interesting ground before we could even get the recording device and microphones set up. What follows is a transcription, literally done, but with “ums” and “ahs,” “likes,” “you knows” and other extraneous bits mostly edited out for concision. We were sitting at the table for about five minutes before the first words were recorded. A discussion about the “human-ness” of Bigfoot was in progress. Sitting on the table before us are Al’s copy of Roger Patterson’s book, Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? (later to be revealed as personally inscribed by the author), a Six Rivers Forest Atlas topo book, some computer printouts of various photos from the Blue Creek Mountain film shot by Rene Dahinden in 1967 (before the Patterson-Gimlin Film/PGF was made) and an outline of the events of 1967 in the Bluff Creek and Willow Creek areas (private notes not shown to Al) as found in John Green‘s book, Sasquatch: Apes Among Us.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I don’t want to get into any accusations about anybody in particular…. In normal fields of study we have disagreements about things that we can discuss…

AL HODGSON: Well, if you’ve got, if you can…. Yeah, right. It’s OK to disagree as long as you don’t fight, you just talk about it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You don’t end up hating each other, and throwing around insulting accusations back and forth.

HODGSON: I wouldn’t do that anyway. I tend to be the other way.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Try to make peace...

HODGSON: I’m not a fighter. You can get me mad enough that I WILL fight, but it’s quite a bit… (laughs).

[Banter regarding recording levels excised.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It gets so hot and argumentative because we don’t have the Bigfoot in front of us…

HODGSON: No. [Shakes head emphatically]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so one group believes Bigfoot is human, and the other one, oh, it’s an ape. And it goes from there.

HODGSON: Well, I flat don’t believe that it’s a human. I mean Dave Paulides seems to think so. I don’t think so. I can see some things that would give you the idea. I don’t think so.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It looks like a humanoid, it stands upright, its got feet that go flat on the ground, and walks on two legs…

HODGSON: Yeah, that still doesn’t mean, that still don’t mean, it’s a hard… Until you get the beast itself, or you get some DNA, but even that, DNA might not prove it. I don’t know.

Images: Above, from Patterson's book; below, Al in the A and E Bigfoot documentary.

 BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah. To say it’s human you kind of have to say it acts like a human, too. There are "wild people," but they still have culture, religion….

HODGSON: But they can be tamed quite easily. I shouldn’t say "tamed," it‘s kind of a poor word….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Like, “civilized”…?

HODGSON: Yeah, civilized, better word for it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so it’s hard to imagine that if they could catch a Sasquatch, that they would be able to keep it in a King Kong cage, let alone in a classroom, or a job.

HODGSON: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, there’s stories how they’ve found…, and that one captured that one time up in Canada, you know….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Back in the 1800s? Jacko?

HODGSON: Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s stories about down in Hoopa, down in the lower Klamath down there, of one interbreeding with the Indian Natives; but that’s all, I don’t know, I just don’t really agree with it. Now I’m not saying that they aren’t possibly aroused by a woman, but I don’t think it could be anything like mating with them…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s stories about bears being the same way too, being attracted to campsites, and possibly more…

HODGSON: Well, chimpanzees are attracted to them in zoos, you know, a woman comes by and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It would just indicate that they are somehow similar, that we may be related to Bigfoot, in the same way that we are related to apes, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily human. It may just be a different form that is like us…

HODGSON: It’s a different animal, you know; but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are….

[Banter regarding recording levels excised.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: As far as the human thing, since we’re talking about that: It’s a major issue right now. Certain people like Dave Paulides, M.K. Davis and Bobbie Short, they're on the one side; and John Green is on the other side, more the ape crowd. It seems that these divisions have gone further than just whether it’s a human or an ape, its taken on a whole theoretical, almost political, division between the two.

HODGSON: Yeah, you’re right. And I got right in the big middle of that one, with John Green and M. K. Davis and everything, with the, that so-called "killed one up there and skinned it," you know, and all that stuff, that, I don’t know whether you know what really happened or not…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, that’s part of what I was hoping to ask you about, you might know some things…?

HODGSON: Well I know more than, well, I don’t know.... What happened actually, I was at both sites, and at much different times. See they, what they did, John Green and Rene Dahinden, when they took and spliced the two films together, one was made at the film site, the Patterson film site, from the Patterson film, and the other one was made on the Blue Mountain…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Blue Creek Mountain?

Images: Blue Creek Mountain track, above; John Green's book; a photo taken by Green on Onion Mountain, from the trackway find that preceded the one on BCM by a few days (Onion Mountain is on the same road, right next to BCM).

HODGSON: Yeah, Blue Creek Mountain. It was there. And they completely went way up there. They put together [the films], and they were like six weeks apart. And they spliced them together so that you would have more to show people, so they took this film across…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Like, for documentary presentations…

HODGSON: Yeah, across Canada, they took this and showed it across Canada, and then somehow after, what happened was, I believe, after Rene died somehow they got a hold of a copy of that film that they took across which had those on it. And so when they saw that immediately they said, there’s a backhoe in there, they killed one. M.K. says they can see where they skinned one, and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I have pictures here, you know, from M. K…. But also, Dave Paulides was saying that they found this film in the archives of Ray Crowe, in the Western Bigfoot Society archives, that was an "uncut," earlier version of the Patterson film that had bits that "no one had seen before." And, you know, acting as if these were the same film, rather than spliced together for a documentary or whatever.

HODGSON: Now that, see, is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You see, I know him [Paulides] very well, and I told him so. I told him. I told M.K., and I told Paulides, they’re wrong. Two different sites! I said, for one thing that backhoe has a very big footprint. You can’t dig a hole with that and mess around there with a backhoe because it leaves a lot of tracks, and you can see where it dug and everything else. OK? I went up there with John Green and some other people that I don’t remember. John Green’s the only one I know for sure went up there. Anyway, we went up there the next spring…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: After the film was shot, the Patterson film?

HODGSON: Yeah, right, right. About, I think, it was about June.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that agrees with what John Green says in his book. He didn’t make it down there until the following summer, because of the roads being closed and the snow…

HODGSON: Ah yeah, sure… But anyway, we went up there, and John had every slide, every… of the… part of the film, he had a slide made of every one of ‘em, every frame. And he would, told me, I was out in front of him, and this time all the leaves from the fall had fell and covered the whole thing, and it hadn’t washed through there. The river, it never got a hold of it, never had any real high water.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Ah yeah, that sandbar sits up a bit from the creek doesn’t it?

HODGSON: That’s right. And it… Nothing got in there, OK? And he’d take that and look out through it and he’d go out to it and say, is this a right or a left, or a little further out, and he said try there, and I could feel underneath the leaves the tracks. And so we managed to go out to where he [Patterson] lost it, the end of the film, the whole way, and we could go right through there and find every track. Now, darned, it made quite a mess, but you couldn’t but know it was there, we knew we had the right place because you could tell a knot on a tree, or something to guide us by, so we knew we had the right place. And there was no indication of anything out of place, anything being buried, no indication of any equipment being in there.

Images: Al's copy of Rogers book. Below, Bob Gimlin at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up, 2009. Photos: by Steven Streufert.

 

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well Bob Gimlin has said--and this is being quoted by M.K. and his associate people--Gimlin had said there was no way they could get heavy equipment in there save with a helicopter.

HODGSON: No, no, there still isn’t.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But others claim that in fact there was a road right next to the creek. They have this picture with the truck in the back and it’s got logs on it. I don’t know if I have that with me.

HODGSON: Well you see that… [Picture is retrieved and shown to Al]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: See they’re claiming that this is the Patterson-Gimlin site, but that’s from the film that was taken by Rene Dahinden on the Blue Creek Mountain trip.

HODGSON: That’s correct, because there’s the dog, the dog was with us. And that, looks like John.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s John Green. That’s known… And they claim this guy is Dale Moffit, the guy from Canada, who came down with John, and he’s acting as the dog handler, apparently.

HODGSON: Well, you know…They had, there was four of them, I think. OK. I’ve gotta stop and think. There was John, the dog handler, Rene, and um… Yeah that’s it, that is three, I guess…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s Rene taking the film there, and there’s John Green in the middle, and that’s Dale Moffit in the white t-shirt, and then this guy is one of the central questions…

HODGSON: I don’t know… who could that be…? [Gets up to retrieve a magnifying glass]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s a fairly poor image, taken off of the internet.

HODGSON: OK, let me turn that light on.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s the best print I could get of that image.

Images: film taken by Rene Dahinden, from John Green's archives, lettering applied by MK Davis.

HODGSON: Yeah. I can’t, I thought this might help but it don’t.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: What about the one on the other side there?

HODGSON: Nah, it almost makes it worse.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: This image here is the same guy, and you can see who they are claiming it is with the lettering above it there.

HODGSON: Well, see, for some reason or other it blurs it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But you can see who they are claiming it is there…?

HODGSON: Well, it isn’t Bob Titmus, I know that.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And this is the Bob Titmus from 1963 in Hyampom. [Al is shown another photo]

HODGSON: Well, you see, I was the one that caused this about Titmus. See I was mistaken, I had forgotten that it was Dahinden that went with him, not Bob Titmus.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And maybe they [MK, in an interview he did with Al] didn’t clarify which trip it was from, perhaps?

HODGSON: Well, I dunno, but this is, Bob wasn’t on this trip, there’s no doubt about it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I understood that Bob Titmus was living in Canada at the time…

HODGSON: He was, I believe he was.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Are you aware of when he moved from Redding, or Anderson?

HODGSON: Well, I’m not sure, I just don’t know, he may have, but I don’t remember. But he went up there, Bob went up there a long time, in fact he explored some of the offshore islands and he had casts from up there…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Up near Vancouver?

HODGSON: Yeah, but his boat burned and he lost all of the casts.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that’s a sad story, and all his research materials and stuff, too. But this is the guy who was actually there. [Al is shown “the pilot photo”] Would you say that looks like Bob Titmus there?

HODGSON: No, no that doesn’t look like Bob Titmus to me, no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s a picture from 1967, up on Blue Creek Mountain.

HODGSON: No, that’s just too... no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well you can probably see that this is the same guy [the pilot], perhaps, based on his shirt rolled up and the pants?

HODGSON: Yeah, I would agree.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s definitely not Bob Titmus in there. I mean, this is definitely a younger man that the Bob Titmus from 1963 on the other side there.

HODGSON: And he looks taller than Bob, Bob wasn’t that tall of a man.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: When you last saw Bob Titmus what year was that?

HODGSON: [Yawns] Hmmmmm.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You probably knew him pretty well.

HODGSON: I knew him fairly well, but I don’t remember when was the last time I saw him.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You think it might have been after the film was made here, by Patterson and Gimlin? Because Bob Titmus was said to have come down like, what was it, like ten days after…

C.I.: Very soon afterwards, he came in…

HODGSON: He came down when, I think, John called him, or told him what’s going on, and he came down. The fact is Bob went up there afterwards, a couple of weeks afterwards, and got casts of some of the tracks he hadn’t cast.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, and Lyle Laverty, did you know him? He was one of the first guys who was on the site, he was working up there, and a few of the guys who were working on the projects up there…. But then the first actual (researcher)…. And Jim McClarin got up there, I guess, too?

Images: Above and below--archival, historical: Bob Titmus, the Pilot, Lyle Laverty's famous Bluff Creek film site photo, and Rene Dahinden with McClarin's Willow Creek Oh-Mah statue, still extant on the Hwy. 299/Hwy. 96 junction..

HODGSON: Yeah, Jim did, too, and Jim of course is up in New Hampshire now, I think.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He was down in Sacramento, in politics, wasn’t he?

HODGSON: He was a strange guy, a nice guy, but he was, what Unitarian or something like that, but he’s little bit different. I don’t know what to say about him or anybody. Now he was, at that time, he was carving that statue at Soldier Park. And he at that time he was carving it and he was mad at himself because went up and was  hiking in the [Trinity] Alps or something and he came back out and found out it happened he was really mad. And so he immediately took off hitchhiking up to Yakima to see the film.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, there’s a lot of stories like that. This whole timeline of 1967 is like that, actually. I mean, I’ve got it from John Green’s book…

HODGSON: Yeah, apparently and, I don’t know, I have John Green’s book, and I haven’t read it line for line

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Nah, actually, I haven’t finished reading the whole thing myself.

HODGSON: A lot of these books I have not read completely, you know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But the parts that deal with Bluff Creek I’ve read those about fifteen times each.

HODGSON: Yeah. [Laughs, chuckles]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So, you don’t remember when you last saw Bob Titmus. Did you see him after the film was made, perhaps?

HODGSON: Oh I think so, but I can’t remember when.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He must have been down here…

HODGSON: You know I have some pictures. I’m just going to have to hunt and see if I can’t find, of Bob and John Green, and I’m not sure I have any of Dahinden…. A lot of those guys I have pictures of.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Wow, I’d love to see any of those you have. A lot of them probably have never been published or anything.

HODGSON: I understand they’re going to try to do a big deal this year for Bigfoot Days, and it might be, we may get to have all of those pictures, like the first ones of John and Bob Titmus and Rene, and even my friend [laughs, chuckles] Peter Byrne. Ah, Peter Byrne’s a bit different. I don’t know. I know he and John seemed to have a bit of a falling out.

Image: The banner used each year for Willow Creek's community event, Bigfoot Days. Photo by Steven Streufert.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And they all seemed to hate each other….

HODGSON: Well, I don’t know what to say about that, I don’t know what to say. I’ve always thought he, ah… I call him—don’t tell anybody about this—but I call him the “Great White Hunter.”

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, I’m sure he’s heard that before because it’s out there now. Everyone refers to him as that.

HODGSON: Yeah, he always had it just so-so, he always had a tie. And I understand that the reason he had that is he had something wrong with his throat.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Ah well, he was stylish [still is!]. It gave an image to bigfooting, wearing that safari outfit and a hat and an ascot tie. It would be great to see Bigfoot Days have more focus on Bigfoot.

HODGSON: They want me to be Grand Marshall but I said, NO WAY. I’ve already been Grand Marshall twice.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: “Mr. Bigfoot”….

Images: Above and below, from the fine SASQUATCH ODYSSEY documentary. Below more, John Green on BCM trackway find, 1967, archival.

HODGSON: Get somebody else! But you know what would be great, though? I don’t know if we can do it, but… get John Green to come down there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that would mean something... major.

HODGSON: You’d have to take and uh, it would probably cost somebody, probably. Well, I think it would, now.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: We’d have to really get the word out. A lot of the local people probably don’t know who John Green is.

HODGSON: Yeah, well, they don’t know. But I know John well enough that I would ask him! Now, his wife is not well, so that may be a problem. And also, the man’s got plenty of money, he doesn’t necessarily need help, but  at the same time I would say it might be a nice gesture if we offered to pay for his flight down and back, you know. Now, he inherited, his father was a politician in Canada, and he inherited. Even though John had a, owned a paper, in Canada, and uh, I can’t think of what the name of it was now…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Wasn’t it the Agassiz Herald, or something? [Actually: Agassiz-Harrison Advance]

HODGSON: Yeah I can’t remember now. But anyway, John’s a good guy. I thoroughly think he’s a good, honest guy. He’s not gonna give you a bunch of malarkey.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, I’ve always felt the same way! I told you once before that I thought John Green was like the "Moses of Bigfooting," you know, holding the tablets but, um….

HODGSON: [Chuckles]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …not to put him up on a pedestal. A lot of these people who believe in this “Massacre Theory” are coming out really slanderously against John Green, accusing him of lying.

HODGSON: Oh, I know that. I know! I know!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I mean if they slaughtered a family of Bigfoot up in Bluff Creek, and buried it, then all the work that John Green did after that, all of his books, all the work of all these other guys, all of this was a lie to cover up something that happened in 1967!

HODGSON: But you see… but you know, number one: if they buried that thing in the creek, that creek is now at least ten foot, it’s graded down at least ten feet. Now if it’s buried in there we’d have found bones somewhere, a bone went down the creek, somewhere it would have showed up.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: A big, uh, big bones…

HODGSON: That’s right! We’d have found something. And the fact is it wouldn’t have taken it very long. Like I said, it’s eroded out. I was up there when they had the Symposium you could see where it eroded down, you could see where the old creekbed was, and it went down, and the reason was….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s like seven feet, or like five, six, seven feet in places…

HODGSON: And some places are lower than others…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And when you get way down in the bottom of it that gulch there…

HODGSON: And that tells you there, but how come this was? This was right after the flood, right after our ’64 flood. And they went right up the creek and logged the creek, because all of these logs were in the creek and it was blocking the creek. So a fellow the name of Blake logged that creek.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean salvaging the logs that had been washed downstream?

HODGSON: Yep, and some of them had washed down that had already been cut, and everything else. So they went right up the creek and logged the creek. So the creekbed, then, was left at a level way higher than normal. So then after, as the years went by, it graded down to its original bed, or what it maybe, I think it is now. So it’s probably, I’d say it’s close to ten feet now that it’s come down. Where they say is the film site is NOT the film site. It’s not the film site.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, you were there in 2003, with Gimlin and Green. I was there at that Symposium, but I didn’t go up to the creek on that trip to the creek...

HODGSON: Well, I didn’t either. I was so tired by that time that I…

Images: Museum promo photo of Al in front of the Bigfoot Collection building and statue; below, a map from Barbara Wasson's book, Sasquatch Apparitions; a government topo map of Lonesome Ridge. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, Chris Murphy’s told us that he was going on your estimation of where the film site was. But then I talked with Daniel Perez, and Cliff Barackman and Bobo and those guys from the BFRO, and they say no, it’s upstream further. I talk to M.K. Davis or Sean Fries from Weaverville and they say no it’s a quarter mile downstream from that car landing spot.

HODGSON: Well, I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure where it is. But I’ll tell you who does know. He was going to take me up there. Well, I don’t know if I could make it anymore. I think I could. But I, uh…. It’s a walk-in show. You’re not going to get there by driving down like they did there [at the 2003 International Bigfoot Symposium]. And what confused me now, here several years ago, was that Mark and I went up there to the film site. Well, we went up, we had to go up the creek, and that’s how we went up before. We went up the creek, from Notice Creek, we went up…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: All the way up from like Louse Camp area…

HODGSON: Yeah, yup.

C.I.: So even in the spring of 1968 the access was up, or walking up along the creek?

HODGSON: Yes, yes it was. There was no access from above.

C.I.: Right. And because you knew how well preserved the creek had  been over the winter, you could still find the footprints, and so you could be sure that there was no possible way that any heavy equipment had been moved up the creek, or… have any kind of  a mass burial or grave or…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You would have seen the tracks on the road or something…

HODGSON: That’s correct, there was no evidence of it all the way up that creek, there was no sign. Now what confused me, we got up there, Mark and I went up the creek, we got up so far and here was a bridge. I said, we’ve gone too far, we’ve passed it. And then I find out that bridge was built afterwards. And that’s what throwed me. Now, you have to go up to that, above Notice Creek, go up to that first bridge, and get in the creek there and go up, to get to it…Now exactly whether I’d find it or not, I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well here’s the map here,  This is Louse Camp, Notice Creek, and here’s the spot where the film site is supposed to be right near that “R” [does not correspond with the images provided on this blog page].  That’s the spot, either down here or up here. It’s not the biggest topo map but…

[Al is shown the Six Rivers Forest Atlas, Lonesome Ridge quadrant. Some following map pondering “ums” and “hmms” and attempts to locate this bridge have been excised.]

HODGSON: There might be a bridge right here, see it shows a road here, it’s kind of a small road…

C.I.: Yeah, right, now that’s marked as 12N10, and it’s currently closed to cars, vehicles. It’s been bulldozed, berms at each end, both the north and the south. I assume there was something there, a bridge or a ford…

HODGSON: But ya know, a fellow by the name of Kenny Pugh, in Orleans is the one that says, he says I know, you’re right, it’s not where they say it is.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Remember, in 2003, I think you guys drove down off there onto this little spur [Pointing to 12N13H on the map] and got down to a parking area…

HODGSON: That’s right…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: and you probably walked up stream about less than a quarter mile or so and got to that big bend, where all of those big root balls are in the creek?

HODGSON: That must be right here, it must be that bend…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s right where that “R” is there…

HODGSON: Yeah, right in there, I think you are right. But this is, in here somewhere, but I don’t know. I’m confused too, eh....

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well it’s hard to correlate a map to the ground if you’ve been walking on the ground all your life.

HODGSON: Being in there so few times, you know what I mean? But I know that talking to Kenny he says that bridge was put in after the flood….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well there’s that 1958 bridge you know that’s over Notice Creek right down near Louse Camp…

HODGSON: Yep.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But when you were up there did you feel you were at the right spot in 2003, with those guys? I heard that Gimlin didn’t necessarily recognize it too much either.

Image: the panel of speakers for the 2003 Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium, including Al Hodgson, Bob Gimlin and John Green (standing behind Gimlin in this photo, unfortunately).

HODGSON: I was, I didn’t think…. Even before that, there was no road to come down to the creek at that time.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we’re trying to figure out…. That road was apparently built for a clear cut….

HODGSON: What was it, I think, it was a special road that came in there. They undoubtedly had a special landing there, and hauled up at that spur. Now there would be no reason to put that road in afterwards, so it had to be there before. And it wasn’t there, when the film site…. So the film site was some other place. Now, exactly where, in fact, was it even below that site, because we didn’t cross it when we went up there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hmmm. You mean when you walked up the first time, up the creek?

HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You were with your son when you did that?

HODGSON: No, that was the second time, that was just a few years ago. The first time was John Green.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And when you went with John Green you had to go up the creek all the way?

HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But, it’s well known that the site that John Green filmed was the right one, because the trees all lined up, and he was there just months after…

HODGSON: That’s right. That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And, you know, he had Jim McClarin walk… Were you there when he made that film with Jim McClarin walking the trackway?

HODGSON: No, I don’t think so.

Images: from John Green's film site follow-up, featuring Jim McClarin walking and superimposed with the Creature.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hmmm. Well, I’m pretty sure that was made on that trip. Anyway, he had a camera and he was filming and was trying to compare the exact location where Roger had shot the film. And he had Jim McClarin, who was like six foot five walk in the trackway, and then he lined them up just as perfectly as he could. But it’s obvious that that’s the right film site, that he found then?

HODGSON: Are you sure it was Jim McClarin, though? [Gets up to retrieve a framed photograph]

C.I.: But he is credited in several different places with that film, it’s in several of the books....

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s well known to be John Green’s. But maybe he went on the trip with Al, and then he went in on another trip?

HODGSON: It’s not this one here, is it? [Returns with a framed photo of the film site.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Oh, well isn’t that your son there?

HODGSON: Yeah, right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That would be Mike…?

HODGSON: That’s was Mike, yeah, when he was going to Humboldt State, I think.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Did John Green take this photo, too?

HODGSON: No. Peter Byrne.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I was going to say this looks like the Byrne photo. I have a copy of this on my computer. But this was the correct film site that you…

HODGSON: That is definitely the correct film site.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And from where you were in 2003, where do you think the correct film site was?

HODGSON: It was downstream from where we were at.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Downstream???

HODGSON: I don’t know exactly where…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You can’t quite gauge the… because you were on two different trips you don’t really know the distance between them?

HODGSON: The best thing I think is check with my friend.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He’s still around in Orleans? In the phone book?

HODGSON: Yeah, I think so. Kenny Pugh. He’s a nice guy.

Images: Al's framed Peter Byrne photo featuring Mike Hodgson on the film site; middle, from I.C.'s GPS unit, the Bluff Creek headwaters; below, the film site seen from upstream of the "big bend." Photos, first and last: by Steven Streufert.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s a lot of controversy over the film site, but I think that’s not as significant as a lot of these other controversies that…

HODGSON: I agree with you. But it makes a difference, though. In a way.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we have a hunger just to find the right place and settle it. Before it’s too late and no one who was there can go up there and say this was the right place….

HODGSON: Well, I certainly agree with you. I agree with you. I think that’s the best bet right now, and I would love to go with you. But I don’t think I can. Ahhh… I think I can. But I don’t think my son would go with me.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, maybe this summer?

C.I.: The current road down from the ridge is usually in good shape for a good four wheel drive. You can get there without too much trouble. But then, it will take some bushwhacking up and down the creek to try to find the location. But it would certainly be closer, from your look at the map, be closer to start there and go downstream than to come upstream from the Notice Creek bridge.

HODGSON: Well, I don’t disagree, but you know, if you know what you’re looking for. But I would talk to Kenny Pugh. Because he’s a nice guy, he’s a bit different, but he’s a nice guy. But he was a forestry ex-, retired ex-forestry…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So when was he at the film site, originally, in the early days? Was he up there after…

HODGSON: I honestly don’t know. He came, he was stationed here in Willow Creek for some time, and that’s how I got to know him. He was stationed for some time in Orleans, and then he retired up there, and I can’t really tell you exactly.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s just like the site has changed so much from what it was then, and not just the creek but all the trees that have grown in. And my understanding of 1967 is there was a dirt road at least along the creek that they used for logging access…

HODGSON: Well, way UP from the creek. It was way above the creek.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It wasn’t down in the creekbed?

HODGSON: Oh no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There was not any kind of road there? Because this picture here was supposedly taken on the sandbar just southwest of the film site, because there are trucks there. Well, maybe we’re all wrong assuming that was where this picture was taken?

HODGSON: You’re ALL wrong. This is up on Blue Creek Mountain…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Up on the ridge?

HODGSON: Up on the ridge.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s not…. This is the picture with the red hands and the bodies and the…. This is the one where MK is saying there’s blood on the ground and…

HODGSON: yeah, I know…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …the skins are lying there on the sand bar, it’s vague, you can’t tell, it looks kind of like it could be on a sandbar in the creekbed…

HODGSON: But this is not the creekbed! That’s a road right up on top of the ridge.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: A couple thousand feet at least up from there….

HODGSON: I tell you there’s a guy, if he’ll talk to you, I don’t know if he will or not. He was the one who discovered those tracks, on Blue Creek Mountain. He lives in Hoopa, he’s an Indian fella, I don’t know if he’ll talk to ya, I don’t know….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He was there on that work crew?

HODGSON: I believe that he was the foreman on that road at that time. And he told me, Al, I was the last man out that night, and I was the first one in the next morning, and those tracks weren’t there. And it was a long ways down there if anyone had come in by foot. And it had sprinkled a little bit, and you could see there was no new tracks when he came up the hill, there were no tracks except for the tracks in this dust.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: As I understand it, maybe you would know better, the Onion Mountain Road went down to Louse Camp eventually, and then they started building the road over Blue Creek Mountain….

HODGSON: Yeah , they changed the roads all around. I don’t know how exactly they changed them, but they changed the roads all around.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And that road was being plowed through, a new road, I think John Green’s book says it was a new road being built, and that’s why the tracks were so fresh there in the dirt.

HODGSON: A lot of things happened there. The flood had done such a number on the roads that they went in and put the roads someplace else because of slides and so forth.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean the roads that went down below more?

Image: Terrain map containing the Onion Mountain to Blue Creek Mountain area, down to Louse Camp.

HODGSON: They stayed back out of the creek. Exactly how they went I don’t know. I was up there several times before that and then I was up there a few times after, but not too many.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: What’s the name of the Hupa man you said found the tracks?

HODGSON: He’s, um, now I can’t, I’m losing it here… Dud Orcutt. They call him Dud. Not Doug, “Dud,” that’s just a nickname. He has flashbacks from the Korean war, and has a tough time, so…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But Bud Ryerson was running that show up there then…

HODGSON: Yeah, I think that was his show. He might have been subbing for someone, I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I have a timeline here of events from 1967.

HODGSON: Is that right?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: This is all taken from John Green’s book. He says in February of 1967 he came down with Rene Dahinden. He says they stopped to visit Roger Patterson in Yakima, and then he says they came to Willow Creek, and they heard of some recent [BF] activities, and they met Syl McCoy, in February of that year. Had you, at that point, had you met John Green? You must have met Rene Dahinden?

HODGSON: I met the both of…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I mean, in the 1958 business, right?

HODGSON: No, ’58 I did not know all of those guys. At that time I just flat out thought it was a hoax and had nothing to do with it. [Laughs Out Loud] And so, I did not know them.

Images: Syl McCoy at Hyampom with track casts found there; an old post card of Willow Creek, part of Hodgson's Department Store is seen in the lower left corner.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so, you were running the store and probably got a lot of reports coming in at that time….................?

(40:38 of 2:17:11)

END OF PART ONE.
PART TWO TO FOLLOW SOON.
KEEP CHECKING BACK (or just subscribe)!
Transcribing this is an incredibly hard slog.
This is only the first THIRD or less of the interview.
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Con-texts of this blog, save for archival or historical images (fair use for research), copyright 2010, Bigfoot Books Intergalactic and Steven Streufert.

Please feel free to quote with citation and link to this blog included.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

... is still hibernating this week. 

He was mad enough last time in regard to those film guys. Were they working for Tom Biscardi, or what?

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Bigfoot Sighting Investigation: ODEN FLAT; AL HODGSON Interview Completed; Film Guys Driven out of Happy Camp; QUATCHI, Olympic Mascot

The 2010 Winter Olympics to be held in Vancouver, BC, Canada, BELIEVES in Sasquatch. Or, Bigfoot believes in the Olympics, in an official mascot role, complete with an overly cute product line featuring plush stuffed figures, lapel pins, commemorative coins, t-shirts and other goodies guaranteed to improve your love life.


"QUATCHI," as the fuzzy little, ear-muffed character is called, is an appropriate choice, as this area of Canada is the true birthplace of wider awareness of North America's favorite cryptid hominoid, predating the "birth of Bigfoot" in 1958 by at least three decades. J. W. Burns, working on the reserve of the Chehalis Indians, some sixty miles east of Vancouver, coined the adaptive neologism, "Sasquatch," back in the 1920s. Derived from the various First Nations names for the creature in which they shared common belief and culture, it soon became the accepted name for the being.

The Games run from February 12th to the 28th.
View the QUATCHI product line through their official merchandising site, The Olympic Store. Click on the "Mascots" tab to see the other cutsie critters supporting the Olympic endeavor.

UPDATES:

This last week was a busy one, and some of you may have noted that we lagged in posting a new blog entry. Since then our humble Bigfoot's bLog has been listed as a featured "Best Bloggers on BF Research" selection on the newly revamped and ever-cool BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) website. Web hits have doubled, sometimes tripled here since then. Thanks to you, Matt and Bobo!!! We are certainly humbled to be in the same row with Autumn Williams, Cliff Barackman, Daniel Perez and Scott McClean, the Blogsquatcher and Loren Coleman!

BFRO NEWS FLASH! The BFRO now has a YouTube account, and you can view some of the best video evidence for Bigfoot out there for free, including, now posted, the "Squeaky footage from North Carolina, 2009," which was taken by investigator Mike Green, and first shown publicly at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up (personally, we find this one very interesting and quite credible). Check it out!: BFROVIDEOS CHANNEL.

It's been said before, but really hit home last week for us, that a bigfooter should never trust anyone from the outside who shows up with a film camera wanting to make a Bigfoot documentary. We learned our lesson well when we were contacted by two guys from that ever so squatchy land called L.A., CA. Ostensibly part of a graduate thesis project in Anthropology, this project proved to be wholly unprofessional. Be warned, bigfooters. If you hear from two guys wanting to film you under these circumstances, take pause. They came up here and started in Happy Camp, north of Willow Creek, spending only a day there before they were run out of town by the locals in big trucks. Word from the town is that local folks generally mistrust everyone who comes up there asking about Bigfoot, having been burned back in 2005 by none other than Tom Biscardi (see our previous post on the exploitative Happy Camp Bigfoot Debacle and other Biscardi issues HERE). We are inquiring with local Squatcher, Linda Martin, about this. Can you blame them? It is a wonder that anyone still reports Bigfoot encounters anymore with huckster flakes like this running around. What they did to us wasn't so bad, save that they absconded on promises to hook up for a planned sighting investigation and an interview with Bigfooting elder, Al Hodgson that we had arranged. Instead, they just used us for our connections to these people, did some shoddy interviews without contacting us, not even answering their phone, and then fled town with a bunch of lies about getting food poisoning at the local Mexican restaurant. They left a trail of disgust and befuddlement behind them. Be careful whom you trust! We're already regretting signing that filming consent form and letting them interview us. Luckily, the time spent arranging those interviews has paid off. Read on....

Fortuitously, bigfooter "Crazy Ian" (BFF) of Redding was in town, and we rallied back to our plans without those losers. First we had a good talk with the local Willow Creek Forest Service ranger, Jim (tip: he has great Bigfoot stories, and he keeps the Six  Rivers Forest Atlas topo books in his desk, and they ARE for sale; the office is just down Hwy. 96 a half mile from downtown Willow Creek).

Our first main order of business was to interview Mr. Hodgson. Al was there in the very earliest days of Bigfoot in the Willow Creek area. He knew Jerry Crew before the famous 1958 footprint casts were made. He was the one who called Roger Patterson about the trackways found up on Blue Creek Mountain in 1967, a fateful call that led to the capture of one of the creatures on 16mm film up on Bluff Creek. Without Al it could be said that there would have been no PGF. Anyway, now, thanks to Al, there will no longer be any grounds for the so-called "Bluff Creek Massacre" theory. He has REFUTED ALL of it, including the odd notion that Bob Titmus was there gunning down a Bigfoot family. The interview went on for over two hours, so it will be a while before we have finished transcribing it. Look for the AL HODGSON INTERVIEW coming soon to this blog! Watch out, GCBRO, Paulides, Short and Davis--you're in for a challenge!


ODEN FLAT SIGHTING SITE INVESTIGATION:

Image: from Google Earth, showing the site near the lower center. Click to enlarge. 

We blogged back in September 2009 about a sighting east of Willow Creek, just past the little hamlet of Salyer. See our previous post HERE. The resident, "Fisherman" Ken Hodges, had reported to us back in May of that year encounters in the Fish Lake area, near Bluff Creek, which he believes are evidence of a migratory Bigfoot family group. Read that blog entry HERE. Back on September 11 of that year his now 15-year old daughter had a sighting in the forested yard of their family home. Having gotten to know them better since then, we were invited to their residence to investigate.

Sitting on the front porch steps of her house with a friend, the daughter, Kimberly, kept hearing the sound of snapping twigs coming from the bushes at the front of a creepy miniature manzanita forest to the east of the house. They sounded like broken branch sounds rather than something treading on the debris of the forest floor. Looking over she saw something dark crouching down among the understory. Initially she thought it was a bear; but then when she started looking at it the thing reached up an arm toward a branch above and stood up on two legs.

The father, Ken, stood on the spot and demonstrated the arm reach for us. Kimberly assured us the thing was way taller than her father, and about four feet wide at the shoulders. It was in the evening, with the sun down behind the mountain to the southwest, but there was still light. The creature looked back at her, just standing there, but no facial features were detectable from that distance. She and her friend saw it. Her friend suggested she go into the house and grab a crossbow, just in case. When back outside the creature had retreated back into the back woods.

Images: Above, rough height comparison between 6-foot 4-inch Mr. Hodges and the ostensible nearly 8-foot tall Bigfoot; the view from the creature's end, toward the front portch; below, the spooky, squatchy manzanita thicket into which the creature withdrew.

Kimberly was too shy to be photographed for this blog, but she went with us exploring the sighting area with her father and told us fuller details of the event than we had previously heard. Fur was noted to be shaggy, not short, maybe four inches long. No out of the ordinary odor was noted. It moved very silently when retreating. She did not observe the creature's retreat, but later her father found what he assumed was the Bigfoot's trackway of escape, with foot marks smudged into the ground where the creature had been squatting, and impressions along the route back into the woods.

We found longish hair snagged on some barbed wire back in there, and retrieved samples for analysis. It was clearly not that of their family dog, who was also with us on the investigation. The hair was black and greyish in color. It could have been from a bear. It was found on the escape route of the creature, though, and along a clearly  notable game trail heading from the south toward the thicker woods and the Trinity River below--a very clear transit corridor for animal life in the area.

We were shown a couple of old impressions in the ground, still holding the basic shape of a large foot, with a distinct heel area and possible toe prints. They were not clear enough to cast, nor to get a decent photograph, but one could put a foot down onto the top leaves and forest debris and feel the footlike shape beneath dwarfing one's own shoe size.

Images: The as yet inconclusive hair find; below, an old footprint, the best photo we could get in the failing light, contrast revealed with an angled flashlight; at bottom, the deeper back woods leading down to the river, with attractive grass for deer, and a dirt driveway creating a natural bottleneck for animals using the aforementioned game trail; far below, the dog that beat the cougar goes squatching.

From this point Mr. Hodges told us about some things that might to some seem the product of an active imagination; but with the confirmation of his obviously sincere daughter's sighting description his words become doubly compelling. He describes repeated and apparently increasing anomalous activity going on across his home site that seems to indicate not only habitual use of his land by a group of the "unknown" creatures, but also possible growing habituation to human presence.

During the first couple of years living at the location he didn't notice much, but when he started in these past two years the practice of camping out in his own backyard during the warm parts of the year he began to notice things. Most notably he claims nearly nightly sounds of the banging together of flat river rocks, which produce a distinct clacking sound. These unique-sounding rocks would have had to have been carried up from the river below. He notices that they are often associated with odd deer behavior, as the animals flee at the sounds. He thinks that the Bigfoot creatures may be hunting the deer that are numerous on his land. He believes, based upon the evidence he hears and sees, that there is a group of the Sasquatches, with one driving deer down to the waiting ambush from the others. We asked about this, but he says that no carcasses, bones or gut piles have been found.

As the land is bordered to the west by steep rock cliffs, and to the east by a wider highway, more homes and a highway rest stop, the wooded land he lives on can be clearly seen as a natural corridor from the mountains to the river. Rock hurling incidents have also occurred on the site, with one larger one flying horizontally out of the woods and almost hitting a friend of his who was sitting at a bonfire in the fire ring in the front yard. Mr. Hodges reports also the odd occurrence of small pebble-sized rocks hitting and clacking against his metal front door once he has closed it behind him after smoking a cigarette out on the porch at night. He thinks that the creatures are possibly observing him and the family's activities from the bushes to the south from his front porch. Hodges assures us that no neighbors or mischievous kids have been frequenting his yard; and, besides, none of these neighbors stand seven-foot-plus tall, nor are they covered in brown shaggy hair from head to big foot.

Ken Hodges is determined to get images of whatever these nocturnal visitors are in the warmer months coming up, when the activity always increases. He will be calling us as soon as the first instance occurs, so look to more updates coming in the future!

UPDATED BIT:

Just so you know (based on comments on the BFF), the rest stop is a little ways down the road from the site. Here we were trying to emphasize how the home site is fortuitously located for wildlife (Bigfoot?) access from mountain to river. Numerous bears and mountain lions have been sighted around there as well, including one cougar that got into a battle with the family dog (the dog won and treed the cat). As one drives out of Salyer there is a precipitous drop from cliffs down to the river. No animal could use this way, and besides, the roadway would trap them and prevent escape, so narrow as it is. Coming down into the Oden Flat area the land flattens and opens, so deer and other creatures are very common moving through there. To the east of the property the highway widens and has less forest cover around it. This is our theory as to why the creatures frequent this particular corridor.

There HAVE been roadside sightings along there in the past.The roadside rest would be a good place to squatch for the CURIOUS ones who might wonder what the humans there are up to. Ken Hodges is a lifelong resident of the area around Willow Creek, and has spent most of his life in rural areas and out in the mountains fishing, mushroom gathering and camping. He knows a lot of the people, for instance, in The Hoopa Project. He is a fount of Bigfoot information that is derived from experience here, not from reading the books or watching TV documentaries. We are hoping to get the BFRO involved on this one soon, maybe get some thermal video ability on-site, once any new activity is reported.There have been other sightings reports from up on Waterman Ridge, just north of the Hodges land, so this situation seems very promising.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!  

Me say it before, me say it again. Never trust hu-man. They come with camera, they come with gun, they tell lie and drive over Bigfoot home with truck, they steal land, cut down tree, take all and leave mess behind. Why you think me hide? It NOT from fear, it from disgust. They make film, try make money, they even worse than pig. They not smell bad like Bigfoot supposed to smell. They smell bad like bad moral, no care for anything but city slicker selfs. Me speak. You listen if you smart. You want find Bigfoot you be like Him, walk silent and carry big stick. Bonk bonk on the head!

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This blog text and site investigation images copyright Steven Streufert and Bigfoot Books Intergalactic, 2009. They may be quoted and used with full citation and blog link. Thanks!