2010 OREGON SASQUATCH SYMPOSIUM: Day One, Travel and Meet and Greet; Update on CONVERSATIONS WITH BIGFOOT

 

BIGFOOT'S BLOG, LATE JUNE EDITION

In the vast overwhelm that is a sea dear to behold but daunting to endeavor to swim through, we prevailed in actually making it up to Oregon to attend the first annual OREGON SASQUATCH SYMPOSIUM. Also in this blog entry you'll find our response from novelist, essayist and poet, JIM DODGE, concerning our investigation of the origins of the cryptic booklet, CONVERSATIONS WITH BIGFOOT. Though it may be an eloquent evocation of what an intelligent, sentient Sasquatch creature might be like, we've found conclusively that this book is in no way based on fact, and was specifically written as a literary lark. Read our previous post HERE for the background.

See below for that and the story of our voyage into Friday, June 18th, which did not end until around 3:30 a.m. in a fairly jovial and drunken state in a room party surrounded by Bigfooters, with Cliff Barackman camping out on the hotel balcony waiting for his early morning Bob Gimlin alarm clock. We'll have some kind of synopsis and report on the actual conference, with lots of groovy pictures, coming up soon!

This is the most controversial issue to arise out of the OSS, so let us deal with it up front here, for now, and talk about ENOCH.... We love Bigfooting conferences, and try to attend at least one a year just to keep ourselves in touch and off the internet; but we must admit that beyond geographical proximity, it was the call of this fascinating curiosity, the mind of one Autumn Williams, which really drew us to this one. Controversy is breaking out all over the internet about her new book and new stance in regard to Bigfoot "Research." We'd been talking with her via email after she made her video blog statements regarding her change in research direction, and then over the phone for a number of quite lengthy phone conversations, and were quite happy for the occasion to actually meet her in person. (Sorry all you other guys, we love you, too.)

Images: The podium and wall displays from the OSS. Photos by Steven Streufert. 
NOTE: All Colored Text Parts Are Live Hyper-Links. Go for it.

Little did we know that we'd be having a few beers and a good long conversation with her Saturday night at McShane's Irish Pub. Despite our nerdiness that adimitedly fawns a bit before such a lady, we believe we can be objective in this matter. Call us a geek, a dweeb, whatever--it's probably true. Say what you will, this Autumn W. is one sincere person, a very intelligent one, someone who isn't trying (to the best of our ability to ascertain) to pull the wool over anyone's eyes to make a buck or get famous. She's emphasized this to us repeatedly. How much cash can one really obtain from a self-published book on Bigfoot, especially considering the six months to a year it takes to write one? Researcher Thom Powell said that the most one should print of any Bigfoot book should be around 4,000; you just won't really be able to sell any more than that, as the real core of Bigfoot readers is actually quite small. Not only that, Autumn tells us she wants to avoid fame and just do her own thing out in the woods. We believe her. So there.

Look to our upcoming book review of ENOCH for more on this: she is not a gullible person who will believe any story, nor any kind of new-ager out to prove some lofty nuttiness, nor is she new to taking reports of Bigfoot encounters. Look closely, beyond the veneer of looks and ostensible TV fame, and you'll find a very down-to-earth, sensible, and humorous person, one with a sharp and critically discerning mind. If she is falling for a con-job from this fellow Mike (the source for her new book), then this Mike is a consummate master of The Con, an incomparable liar. We doubt it, though, as the story is a bit far-out, but very convincing in is verisimilitude and correspondence with other Bigfoot reports. We doubt, too, that Autumn would fall for it if it weren't real. She may never have met the guy in person, but has spent enough intense time conversing with him via phone and email that she considers him a real friend as well as a witness. This goes way beyond being some goofy hoaxed Bigfoot report that all of us researchers are all too familiar with.

Enough of that, though. We'll get to it later once the nutty furor has settled down on the BIGFOOT FORUMS (click to read the insane discussion thread--there are ten large pages of it so far) and elsewhere. Let us say this for now: it is more than a matter of trust; it also has to do with how we approach the natural world and the unfamiliar dimensions of the unknown. Do we proceed with respect, or do we enter as vainglorious and destructive conquerors?
A more sane discussion thread, though one not nearly as long and convoluted, may be viewed on the SEARCH FOR BIGFOOT FORUM (again, click link to view that particular thread).
Read Loren Coleman's CRYPTOMUNDO post backgrounding this issue: BIGFOOT CONTACTEES (just be forewarned: don't let the horrendous audio WalMart ad give you a heart attack like it nearly did to us--turn down the audio first!).
While you're at it, check out old "Walking Squatchopedia" Henry May's YouTube REVIEW of Autumn Williams' book ENOCH.
Go here. It is the only place right now that one may buy this fascinating book:
OREGON BIGFOOT: ENOCH Now Available

See below for more on the epic journey and evening at the OSS. For now, read onward, valiant reader....

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CONVERSATIONS WITH BIGFOOT 
A HOAX? Yes, Indeed, It Was!

If you're unaware of the contents and background of this little booklet that passes itself off as the "true story" of a Bigfoot Being conversing philosophically with a Human Ornithologist, then read our PREVIOUS POST HERE on the topic. It's fun. It's illuminating. It may even inspire you. But is is NOT a true story. Unlike the somewhat far out but believable account of Human-Skunk Ape interaction told in Williams' book, above, this one just struck us as obviously fictional and utterly unbelievable. We'd written to Humboldt County writer and HSU professor, JIM DODGE, and just now got a response. We quote the entirety of Dodge's email to us, of June 26, 2010:

Dear Steven,
Pardon my hideously tardy response but two things conspired against my usual alacrity: your message came to my HSU machine after the semester ended, and at a time when I was having some odd medical issues. . .odd enough, anyway, that they commanded my attention.

I'm stunned, flabbergasted, and incredulous that anyone--in any world, much less the "Bigfoot world"--would claim this piece I wrote on Bigfoot years ago (originally for a free street-sheet I was doing at the time, along with Jerry Martien, Mort McDonald, and other co-conspirators, called UNJUSTIFIED MARGINS) could take it as a "real and true" account. They are, at best, poor scholars, as even rudimentary research into the various claims made by the purported author couldn't survive minimal fact-checking; at worst, they are guilty of a willfully deliberate ignorance, as dangerous to good faith as it is damaging to those, like me, who enjoy using the imagination to illuminate reality.

"Conversations with Bigfoot," as you accurately discerned, was a literary lark, a bit of an elegy for nature, and a little tweak directed at media and American culture. As to your passed-along question: In my 50 years of roaming the Northern California back country I have never seen a Bigfoot creature, no sign of one (scat, footprints, hair), nor met anyone who has--granted you don't meet many folks out in the wilds. That doesn't mean I dismiss the possibility that a Bigfoot might exist, but just that I'm one of those flinty old-school realists who only believes half of what I see and nothing of what I hear without reliable verification from a few trusted informants.

I hope this unequivocally clears up all questions of fact regarding "Conversations with Bigfoot" for your readers. Again, my apologies for the tardy response.

Truly, Jim Dodge

Well, that about SETTLES it, doesn't it folks? But will NABS relent and admit it? Only Enoch knows.

BIGFOOT BOOKS in Willow Creek has one copy of this little booklet for sale, and we will be making a wholesale order for some of the remaining copies that the publisher has in the near future. You might also be able to obtain it from the bookseller/publisher, Michael Sykes at:
Floating Island Books
P.O. Box 276
Cedarville, CA 96104
1-530-279-2790
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The OREGON SASQUATCH SYMPOSIUM, Journey to the Meet-and-Greet, Friday Night.


Photos and Travel by Steven Streufert, with assistance from "Crazy Ian," who did most of the laborious driving, and tolerated our Squatchkitsch-documentation.

Here we collect our photos and a few travel observations on our trip up to the OSS. Higher quality, larger format versions of these photos are available upon request, to the right people. Click to enlarge, or else right-click and open in new window to view larger images.

ON THE ROAD
It seemed that we, along with our traveling partner and sometime interview and research partner, C.I., were about an hour late for just about everything we did this entire weekend. We departed about an hour and half later than we'd thought would be adequate for the trip. Ah well. The ramifications for this, later, would  prove a bit tragic; but let us tarry onward. Our first decision was to travel the Squatchy Way to the conference. We took Highway 96 out of Willow Creek, through Hoopa and the Bluff Creek area, to Happy Camp, and then over Indian Creek Road into Oregon, landing at Cave Junction from the over-5,000 foot mountain ridge.

No Bigfoot activity was observed in the Bluff Creek zone (see our previous blog entries for plenty of photos of this area! HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE for starters), though we did notice that Bluff Creek Road on the southern end is open, and Fish Lake is accessible (customers at our shop confirmed this). Word is that upper Bluff Creek backcountry roads near the P-G Film site are still closed. Also, the old Bluff Creek Company building, where Roger Patterson is said to have bought supplies for his filming expedition, is still standing, despite threats from the owner last year to tear it down.

Happy Camp is a small town that is trying to rival Willow Creek as the "Gateway to Bigfoot Country." In actual fact, there is room for two of them, as they are at the extreme upper end and we at the lower end of the officially titled "BIGFOOT BYWAY." They don't have a top-notch Bigfoot Museum like Willow Creek, nor do they have Al Hodgson; but they are doing a very good job of adding Bigfoot kitsch to their townscape.

The first thing that stands out is a massive metal Bigfoot statue looming on the north side of town. Its "fur" is made out of clipped pieces of that galvanized steel fencing material one sees in metal fences.The barrel-like metal beneath is brownish with rust. The thing looks somewhat menacing for such a small town, and for a "welcome" mascot, but it is pretty impressive.

Even the post office and the grocery store have Bigfoot statuary or signs. Is this post office statue meant to convey "Official Government Support" for the existence of Bigfoot? Who knows?

Right across the street one finds an RV park, outlet store, kitchenettes business, and a towing company, all featuring Bigfoot, within a short two block length of street.

Bigfoot Towing is especially impressive, with a fine cartoonish map of the area featuring "Bigfoot Country."

Across the street there is an unexpectedly good little diner, called Our Place. They make hot sandwiches on homemade bread. Tasty! The kitchen is actually in a metal truck trailer to the side of the building, reminding us of a shack we once lived in in the mountains above Blue Lake, CA. Bigfoot greets visitors as they enter.

Heading out of Happy Camp on Indian Creek Road one follows the creek up into a fine forested mountainous setting, with a gradual prominence of cedar trees among the firs, and a dramatic view from the summit down to the southeast into the Klamath Wilderness and the Marble Mountains still peaked in snow.

 

At a vista point on the top one may view an interesting display featuring the landscape as well as the concept of JEFFERSON STATE. This is not Bigfoot-related, but it could be if one places the emphasis on "wild and free." Here one finds out that one is on the unofficial "State of Jefferson Scenic Byway."

Cave Junction, on the Oregon side of the border and mountains is an interesting little place. We saw eight hitchhikers within a two or three mile distance at the edge of town. We also saw a gigantic caveman (Bigfoot-related?) statue at the north end. The highlight of the place is definitely a little tavern called the BIGFOOT CAVERN. The owner of this place is, according to the displays on the walls, a real Sasquatch aficionado. Outside there is great signage and door etchings, while inside there is a gigantic wooden Bigfoot statue bearing an American flag, carved by Terry Tessmer of Medford, OR. There are even big foot-shaped rest room door signs. By all appearances this is a great place to stop for a beer and hang with the locals. We, however, had to get on down that road.

AT THE OREGON SASQUATCH SYMPOSIUM, EUGENE, OREGON:

DAY ONE, MEET-AND-GREET AND KARAOKE BAR

The Red Lion Hotel was expecting us Squatchers, and the karaoke party went OFF. Up the spiral staircase in the lobby, in a surprisingly small meeting room, we found a densely packed crowd of Bigfooting Illuminati, notables and field researchers.

There he was, the grooviest cowboy and world's most famous Bigfoot witness, BOB GIMLIN. Bob signed our copy of Roger Patterson's book. Tres cool!

Despite only knowing each other on the phone and by email, the wonderful AUTUMN WILLIAMS recognized us and gave us a sweet hug. Her mom, SALI SHEPPARD-WOLFORD, and her both signed our copy of VALLEY OF THE SKOOKUM for us.

There was JEFF MELDRUM, as always, holding down the scientific basis of the Inquiry. It seemed our conversation continued right from where it left off last we saw him at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up. He signed our copy of SASQUATCH: LEGEND MEETS SCIENCE.

Author of THE LOCALS, THOM POWELL, was there, as ever, expressing wry wit and humor, looking a bit scruffy. He signed our copy of his book, and hammed it up for the camera.

It was great to find ourselves known and remembered in the Bigfoot world, and have folks recognize the work we've done on our blog. Among these friends were independent field researcher, CLIFF BARACKMAN, who was hanging out with crypto-linguist SCOTT NELSON.

Also present was the ever-present CRAIG WOOLHEATER of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy and owner of the fine Cryptomundo web site. He, in fact, offered us a guest blogger position on that web site. What an honor!

Bay Area researcher JERRY HEIN was there, as always, with his cool collection of Bigfoot knick-knacks, crafts, signed photos, and cool Bob Gimlin and Autumn Williams button pins. SHARON LEE, The Bigfoot Field Reporter, was there (background) doing a live broadcast for her BlogTalk Radio show.

Also, we were pleased to meet more at length than last year hard-rocking Squatcher, PAUL GRAVES, who was one of the Yakima Three organizers, with Tom Yamaron and Bobo Fay.

Last but certainly not least, we got to meet in person the tireless organizer of the OSS, TOBY JOHNSON. It's always great to put a real face to all the folks we may know through the internet or only over the phone. Toby did an amazing job--here's to to him, and to NEXT YEAR!

And after that the night the party went off with a wild karaoke night featuring many of the Bigfooting crew, including a singing battle between Sharon Lee and Autumn Williams. It went on late into the night, and really, way too many beers were consumed for people who had to get up around 7:00 to get to the horrendously early 9:00 a.m. keynote presentation by Ms. Williams.

A good time was had by all, BELIEVE ME!

(Sorry, we just had to post this last photo again.)

After the bar closed Paul Grave's room at the Red Lion was chock full of partying Bigfooters. Thom Powell, Cliff Barackman, Jerry Hein, Beth Heikkinen, we and others, and another fellow on guitar whose name we never caught, plus others, talked it through into the wee hours--and we paid for it the next day!

 OK, then, that's it for now. We'll have our stuff on the actual conference coming up soon!

Images, above: By Steven Streufert, or taken with his camera, save the last one, shot on video by Henry May, and lifted from YouTube before the stunning and hilarious vampy version of "Do Me, Baby" was taken down from the site.

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One More Thing: Mystery of Mysteries... Right on the heels of their first show in over a year, THE BIGFOOT SHOW has suddendly appeared with yet another show, #13. Two in one week? What is going on? Check it out via iTunes, or download the MP3 HERE.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

All of you all argue all the time about me being ape or maybe hu-man. What insult! Me NOT ape. Me NOT hu-man. Me MY OWN MAN, um, me mean APE, no, I mean, I ME OWN BIGFOOT! I no follow rule. I am ashame to even be on same family tree as you, hu-mans. Me SHAKE tree, me snap trunk, me toss it and all of you into lake! Then we see who related to who, hu-man!

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This blog is copyright 2010 by Bigfoot Books and Steven Streufert, save for a few photos here and there borrowed for "research purposes only." The views herein are solely those of the mysterious source of these writings, and have no actual connection with any group, like the BFRO, that we are in any way affiliated with, and should not at all be considered as representative of those groups and their founders or members. We are our own voice, howling in the wilderness of free speech, and want to keep it that way, and want you to know it. Images and text may be quoted and borrowed with citation, acknowledgment, and a link to this blog, along with gifts of beer and fine tobacco. Thanks in advance!

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!