The Track Record Update: Ray Crowe--Who Is This Guy, Anyway? The Bigfoot Bar and Grill; Sexsquatchploitation and Scatology in Human Culture; Nights with Sasquatch

So, who IS this Ray Crowe, anyway? In his time in the bigfooting field he was not just a bigfoot hunter, but an editor, event organizer, field investigator, and generalized paranormalist and Fortean. He co-founded The Western Bigfoot Society, but he was also interested in all things that go bump in the night or hoot and howl in the forest. Though Ray was a serious researcher of the Sasquatch, he also found time for literary pursuits, and as well for the pursuit of things that were just downright strange. It should be noted that Ray did not necessarily agree with every theory or sighting he published. He kept an open mind, but always "kept his skepticals on."

In the Index of the newly released THE TRACK RECORD on CD we find entries on Rip Van Winkle, Spam, Sea Monkies, Plesiosaurus, UFOs, Mothman, Men in Black (MIBs), Mars, Loch Ness, Little People, Adolf Hitler, Goat Suckers, Fate Magazine, Cyclops, Bob Dylan, Art Bell, Crop Circles, Crystal Skulls, Bubonic Plague, Alien Implants, and of course Bigfoot Tampons, Bigfoot Testicles, Bigfoot Telepathy, Bigfoot Sexual Abuse of Other Animals, Bigfoot Orbs, Multi-Dimensional Bigfoot, Bigfoot Marijuana Eating, the Bigfoot Army, Bigfoot Lost Time, Bigfoot Electricity Stops Functioning, Bigfoot Conspiracy, and let's not forget... Bigfoot Attracted Sexually to Humans. Far out stuff! But there is a lot of down-to-earth information in there, too... like Bigfoot Scat, and.... OK, I'll stop.

Besides The Track Record (see our Previous Post: now released on CD!), his apparently humorously-intended fictional work, "The Bigfoot Bar and Grill," tells the tale of bigfoot rape of a human female, the quest for revenge, along with a lot of strangely scatological humor at the expense of some redneck country folk bigfoot hunter characters. See the two scanned sample sections below, click to ENLARGE.

Image above, the book now in possession of Bigfoot Books, with sunfaded cover. To left, from a t-shirt of the Western Bigfoot Society. This image and others following of Ray Crowe had to be lifted from the fine video, SASQUATCH ODYSSEY. See our previous POST.

 [WARNING!: Some, or most, or all of the quotations that follow are of a GROTESQUE, SICKLY HUMOROUS and sometimes HORRIFIC nature, not to be read by young folks and the faint of heart, or adults who might just happen to have GOOD TASTE. They involve vast quantities of bodily excreta, as well as scenes of involuntary interspecies miscegenation. They are presented here for purposes of literary and historical analysis only!!! Note: Poooz, the character found below, is a member of a clan of Sasquatches.]

Sample quotes from The Bigfoot Bar and Grill:

"In some places that the Bigfoot visited frequently, a reek would fill the air, the stench so bad that humans almost needed a gas-mask to enter the area with... if you could find anybody foolish enough to enter the gut-wrenching stench anyway. Coming around the huge tree, Poooz almost ran into the female 'skin.' It startled him so much that he screamed in fear, 'Aiiiieeee!' dropping a handful of bear grass, turning in his fear to escape. Goldie surprised and terrified, screamed also, scared as much by the beast as its own surprised scream of terror. She had been bent over a log, doing her morning thing, and had just finished wiping; Levi's on the ground next to her, panties around her ankles, paperback romance novel in hand, when the monster appeared. She was so startled and frightened that she never screamed so loud in her life, running stocking-foot towards her tent, she left her pants, boots, and toilet paper on the ground. Realizing that the startling, screaming apparition was 'only' a skin, Poooz reacted in an instant... rushed over and grabbed the screaming and fleeing skin by her hair and an arm, kicked her feet apart, and jammed his organ into her from the rear end. She coughed and choked, then continued screaming, and wiggling to get away. The motion excited him all the more, and he hugged her closer, sinking even deeper into her. Goldie fought and scratched and bit and kicked, but soon found the harder she fought, the more the monster seemed to squirt into her. Going limp she slumped to the ground to play opossum, and she felt a final deep thrust, and a swelling between her legs... bigger and bigger. Poooz felt himself swelling, and knew that he was through. Later on, his engorged penis, almost the size of a small baseball... nature's way of insuring that an unappreciative female couldn't escape before the sperm impregnated her, would shrink again, and he could let the skin go free, of no further interest to him. Goldie felt the swelling and felt helpless. Starting to panic again at this evil smelling monster that was raping her, she again started struggling... harder than ever... and screaming louder... louder than ever." Hearing the ruckus and commotion, several of the clan wandered over to see what was happening. They quickly lost interest when they saw that Poooz was only relieving himself with a skin, and wandered off again, hunting for something more entertaining, or something to nibble. Poooz felt the skin start to try and wiggle free again. Knowing she was firmly impaled, he released her, and she fought even harder, and he found himself getting excited again. Grabbing her again, and pulling her thrashing body tightly against his swollen member, he could feel himself squirting again and again. He released her to thrash some more, which she did, and he squirted again. Never before had he squirted so much at one time. Exhausted, Goldie fell into a near faint, though still aware of the tremendous pressure in her crotch, she knew there was nothing she could do about it, but kept screaming anyway. Ramming his thing in harder and harder again and again, trying to make himself squirt even more, Poooz eventually tired after the skin fainted and quit moving. Forty-five minutes later he finally felt himself shrinking, and let Goldie tumble to the ground. Thinking nothing more of the skin, Poooz wandered off in search of the clan, completely satisfied. Tonight he wouldn't have to sing."

And then, later...

"Before Mary could hush him Joe burst out with, "a Bigfoot just raped Goldie." "No shit! So what's everybody waitin' for then... let's go kill the son-of-a-bitch," shouted Tom, crushing his empty Coors can, and pitching it at a cardboard cutout picture of a Bigfoot standing in the corner."

And there is this fine description, from a later page:

"There was another terrifying, hair-raising scream.... There was a twelve foot monster, screaming to high heaven, running at them from 100 feet away. Calvin stood, his mouth gaping. Steve and Jeff just sat there, cups in hand, staring unbelievingly. Hank reach for his rifle, but stumbled and fell over. Tom was more practical in his instant reaction. He turned and ran, brown blobs coming out his pants cuffs, hair looking like it had turned permanently white. Jeff turned to see that the commotion was, soup dripping from his chin when he turned too fast.

The monster leaped over the group, an Olympic jump of 25 feet, and chased after Tom, screaming in the most spine-tingling shriek anybody had ever heard. Mary calmly picked up her rifle before anybody else could react to the surprise attack, let the safety off, took and held half a breath, centered the sight on Poooz's back, and calmly pumped three rounds off. There were three puffs of dust and blood, all in about the space a saucer would cover, right in the center of the animals back. Poooz staggered, veered away from the frantically running and stumbling and pissing and shitting and crying Tom, and disappeared in the brush to the left. Mary said in a controlled voice, "he's hit bad... lets go before he gets away." Where the monster had been shot there was a large spatter of blood on the ground, and bits of lung tissue. Mary started off on the trail, Hank, Steve, and Jeff close behind. Calvin stopped for more samples. Tom was still helpless on the ground, rolling and groaning in his own shit. Noticing he was being left behind though, he crawled briefly towards the rapidly retreating group, then stumbled to his feet and followed, staggering along, his boots squishing from his own excreta and piss."

GHASTLY! TORRID! HORRID! Ray, what were you thinking? Maybe these were written with the intent of descriptive vérité, based upon encounters and sighting reports? We may never know... and do we WANT to?

(published June 1991, Western Bigfoot Society)

Click Text Images to Enlarge! Other text image: the Western Bigfoot Society info. sheet found in Bigfoot Bar and Grill.

Throughout the publication run of his newsletter Ray Crowe fielded information and letters from the infamous hoaxer and possible nutjob Bigfoot "contactee," Ray Wallace. He once said, ""Ray's contribution was study into the actual behavior of Bigfoot, what it eats, how it acts." David Paulides has said he may publish some of these letters, now in the possession of NABS. That should be very... interesting, indeed!

A very interesting article on Bigfoot and bigfooting at the time, the late 1990s or so, was written by Robert Sullivan and published in OPEN SPACES QUARTERLY, Volume One, Number Three. Read it HERE. There are some interesting bits about Ray Crowe and his Bigfoot group, excerpts following.... We quote:

"In many ways, the Western Bigfoot Society is typical of the Northwest's numerous grass-roots Bigfoot organizations. It counts about forty people as members and meets on the last Thursday of every month in the basement of Ray Crowe's store, Ray's Used Books, just outside Portland, Oregon. Ray has decorated the meeting room with a mixture of large footprint casts, oddly twisted willow branches, a 21.6 cm. strand of cinnamon-colored hair, maps of nearby wilderness areas, with pins marking recent Bigfoot sightings, and tabloid headlines that the group finds humorous ( "Beautiful Women Help to Lure Bigfoot," reads one. "Sasquatch Likes to Study the Ladies."). Lately, Ray has taken to putting up photos from the group's occasional field trips, like the one to the nearby Primate Research Center, in Beaverton, Oregon, or the one to the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant, in Rainier, Oregon, where Ray thinks the buzz of the power lines may act as a lure.

In the past, speakers at the meetings have included a dog trainer, who addressed Bigfoot's fear of dogs (a phenomenon often mentioned at Ray's meetings); a member of a local search-and-rescue team, who said that the media had neglected to mention that a three-year-old boy whom he rescued in the summer of 1989 from the forests around Mount Hood had credited a "large hairy man" for keeping him company during the long night; and a former paramilitary officer with the National Security Agency, who, on a top-secret mission somewhere in the rainforests of Mato Grosso, Brazil, photographed what he now thinks must have been a Sasquatch, only to have the film confiscated by higher-ups. On one occasion Ray even invited a U.F.O. expert who is a vocal proponent of the theory that Sasquatches have come from another world--a postulate that the W.B.S. as a group opposes. "They may be full of poop," Ray said, "but I figure I might as well let them have their say."

Like most part-time Bigfoot investigators, Ray, who is now fifty-five, got into Bigfoot hunting by accident; he was doing research for a novel that included a Sasquatch rape scene and then decided to research the Sasquatch beyond the scope of the book. Shortly afterward, in 1991, he founded the W.B.S., and then began The Track Record, a monthly newsletter containing Bigfoot gossip, inspirational quotes, and the latest sighting information people have related to Ray. Once in a while, Ray publishes letters, like the one that Erik Beckjord, director of the U.F.O. and Bigfoot Museum, in Malibu, California, sent him, which complimented the W.B.O.'s work, or the letter that Ray himself sent to the United States Forest Service, citing the Freedom of Information Act and demanding to see the Mount Hood National Forest rangers' Bigfoot log book, if it exists. (Ray thinks the rangers may keep a log of Bigfoot sightings.) A few years ago, on a spring evening, Ray had his first Sasquatch "experience," as he calls it, which began when he accidentally scared an elk away from his camp, at the end of an old logging road. "I was getting ready for dinner and while I'm standing there I hear what sounded like these two giant birds arguing," he told me. "I say arguing, but they were chattering, really. And, anyway, I just assume that they were two Bigfoot, just arguing with each other-p.o'd at me for losing their elk for dinner."

For historical flavor, here is the SCHEDULE OF EVENTS from the year 2000 BIGFOOT DAZE celebration. See how much FUN they had back then!!!
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Friday Evening, August 25th:
Many people will gather to get camp sites for tents or RV?s ($5.00 night), some staying at nearby motels. We visit into the night. No fires though, fire marshal wont let us have them.

Saturday Morning, August 26th:

10AM - 12 Noon - trip to Stevenson?s Columbia River Interpretive Center Museum

(fee...group rate though). See geology and history of area and a history film clip that has Bigfoot included as local historical subject.

Following the museum, a short trip up Rock Creek in Stevenson to see the petrified forest....pick up some pieces of a fossil tree to take home.

Break for lunch - Browse for sale memorabilia tables.

Saturday Afternoon 2PM - Listen to Speakers at Bigfoot Campground. Several possible have been invited (WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A SPEAKER?), but confirmation is slow. Thom Powell will talk about the Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO).

5 PM - Break for dinner.
7:30 PM - Cascade Trio Bigfoot Stomp Dance Contest.

Sunday Morning, August 27th:
10AM - Magician performs magic show for children along with bible school. Children's drawing of Bigfoot contest, visit, browse memorabilia tables. Rob Butler will have a family of life-size Bigfoot plywood cutouts to view, etc..

11AM - Larry Lund will demonstrate how to make plaster track impressions.

11:30 AM - Retired Fish and Wildlife Expert Jim Hewkin (not confirmed yet) will display a rare collection of seven plaster tracks made by a single creature from near Colton, OR, 1968. Many other tracks and hand prints of Bigfoot will be displayed also.

12 Noon - Sally Newcomer will have a Bigfoot Family in costumes. How they live, twist trees, stack stones, wood-on-wood. Her costumes were a hit last year as ladies got married to Bigfoot.?

12 Noon - Bigfoot Chili Cook-Off...prize to best judged chili entry.
12 Noon - (unassigned speaker...invited) will have a barefoot person walk across a sandbox and explain the physics of tracks...lift off, pressure ridges, and such.
Contest...prize to entry with the biggest foot (Sally has measuring board).
1PM - Bigfoot Potlatch Lunch (Pot-Luck)...Bigfoot burgers by camp hosts Harry and Donna Schumacher, Abominable Potato Salad and Yeti Spaghetti by Theata Crowe, Ray will bring a couple of watermelons...others, please bring some food items to share for the lunch. Thanks!

2 PM - Contest Bigfoot Yells/Screams...prize to best noise, judged and taped, prizes.

2:30 PM - Contest best homemade Bigfoot Costume prize.
3:00 PM - Bigfoot race...teams with giant feet strapped to feet will compete for various prizes.
5:00 PM - End of Bigfoot Daze.
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Ray Crowe images above: Ray on expedition; Ray at Mt. Saint Helens, looking for volcanically preserved Bigfoot remains cooked in solidified ash; Ray caving, exploring the possibility that Sasquatches live in old lava tubes; Ray speaking at Bigfoot Daze, WA, circa 1998.

The odd Bigfoot-human encounters depicted in Ray Crowe's fiction were part of the inspiration for the brilliantly bad film, Ape Canyon, by ex-Humboldter Jon Olsen. In fact, we obtained our Bigfoot Books copy from the filmmaker himself. Also influential for Olsen was The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats. Excerpts from the book HERE. See our brief Previous Post on this matter.

Let's not forget that Dave Paulides, in The Hoopa Project, has put forth the proposition that there has been genetic co-mingling between human and bigfoot, and not just in some ancient time, but fairly recently according to certain Native American accounts.

And now more, along the same lines, so long as we are talking about it and have surely offended nearly every reader at this point....

NOW READING: NIGHTS WITH SASQUATCH, a truly abominable, supposedly "true" tale, "An Explosive Ordeal of Rape and Revenge Beyond Any Woman's Experience," as the cover reads. This book is, as Joshua Blu Buhs (who sold us the book) says, is "truly skeevy." From the inside endpage, ""Does Sasquatch exist? The terrifying truth behind the ancient legend. A team of young scientists sets out to explore the Northwest Mountains. Both John Cotter and Judith Frankle were trained level-headed observers with liberated views on life and love. Until they confronted Sasquatch--a half-human monster who claimed Judith as his captive mate. This is the explosive novel of a woman forced to endure barbaric, sexual lusts beyond any human experience. And a man driven by revenge... The Sensational Shock-A-Page Novel." And, from the back cover, "Judith Frankle was a perfect specimen of the modern female, able to handle sophisticated lab data and lecherous young men with equal ease. She loved the wild freedom of roaming the mountains with her man, sharing the rugged pleasures of nature. But no woman, or man, could control the primitive terror that stalked her. A half-human beast whose brutal lusts stripped every vestige of civilization from her soul. Lusts that transformed Judith Frankle into a shameless savage desperately battling to survive her shocking... Nights with Sasquatch." In a Publisher's Note, in a desperate attempt to add  faux credibility to this otherwise base and horribly bad sexsquatchploitation: "For a complete technical report of the encounter described in this article the reader is referred to Dr John Cotter's "Pleistocene Man-Ape Link Survives in Canadian Wilderness," Journal of Mammology Volume MXIV June, 1976. Also a forthcoming treatise by Judith Frankle Cotter, PhD., in the distinguished British Journal, New Scientist: "Existence of Mythological Primate Confirmed." The following account is the first publication on the subject for General Readers."

EGADS! Take this one with a grain of salt, or at least some humor, if you can.

(Berkley Medallion Books, New York, 1977.)

It would seem that Bigfoot-Sasquatch bears, as a cultural motif, all that humans see as low and unbearable in themselves. It is a little unfair to place all this nastiness on the poor forest-dwelling hominoids. Perhaps it is we who are low and beastly, and they who are good, free and Noble? Bigfoot is like a scapegoat. We humans are the ones ruled by or at least deeply influenced by "base" impulses. Wild creatures cannot be said to be base; but we are conscious of our motivations, and have ideas and perversions surrounding them. BF just shits in the woods and moves on; he/she does not get a Freudian complex about it. We at once project outwardly and thereby deny deep and hidden truths about ourselves, all while using Sasquatch secretly as a means of self-knowledge. Or something like that. We are able to indirectly admit how odd and ape-like we are through the Bigfoot proxy. The real Bigfoot surely just laughs, and moves deeper into the woods. We'd write more of this now, but it would give away too much of our current back-of-the-mind book writing project.

ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

"In that article human friend Steve read to me, when I come steal beer from him back porch, Peter Byrne, human guy who look for me for many years and never see me say (me use cut-and-paste here), 'There are a number of rivalries in the Bigfoot field. Their principal basis is of course the belief that at the end of the Bigfoot rainbow there lies a pot of gold. ...[h]ad they over the years projected a fraction of the time and money that they spend vilifying each other on Bigfoot research [they] would surely have solved the mystery by now.' Me also hear that Professor Krantz say, 'You have to watch out, because there's a lot of backstabbing.' Once me thinking of contact human, give up old game of hiding in trees, but then me hear them talk around campfire (me hear everything, you no hear me) about other human bigfoot hunter dudes. Me hear bad words, like 'liar, fake, fraud, not a real bigfoot hunter, non-believer, @#$%ing cult, boy scout type, city boy, effeminate, gay, nerd, internet geek, guano fanatical cult freak violence threatening footer geek loser thug'---stuff like that, mean, bad words. Me quote real human word me really hear. Me feel anger! Me want smash little human heads. Give ass whoopin'! Me decide never talk with human. They probably say me smell real bad, too, but me I like the smell of me. Me think human stink like bad milk and stinky fake flowery soap smell. Me say human get them shit together and maybe then me come and hang out at Bluff Creek Louse Camp. I talk about that poopy and sexy stuff I just see above in me next Bigfoot Speak.Watch out suckah hu-man!"

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we tried to stop A.G.F. ranting like that, but he demands the truth or justice or something like that come out. Personally, I've found the BF community to be quite convivial and familial, one where one can make instant friends across vast distances. The BF world is full of smart, friendly, independent, fun-loving folks; quite the opposite, I've found, of the redneck stereotype. But like many (most?) families, there are dysfunctionalities which arise. Folks, these need to end. Keep your eyes on the prize! Keep the following in mind....

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"The gift of collaboration is greater than the gift of competition."

--Tracy Morgan, comedian, heard on NPR, "Fresh Air," 2009
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Read the interesting Sasquatch Odyssey film diary here: http://www.sasquatchodyssey.com/diary.html. Ray Crowe and the "Four Horsemen of Bigfooting" are all in there. If you don't have this documentary, get it now. It is very funny, but also documents the early generation of Bigfooters before that era ended and internet-influenced Bigfootology began.

We're just now starting the Daniel Perez interview process. Give us at least a week until it appears here!
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Also, Coming Soon: "The Not-so Good, the Truly Bad, and the Hideously Ugly": three awful Bigfoot/Sasquatch movies viewed recently, and somewhat reluctantly.

A DISCUSSION WITH A SKEPTIC ON BIGFOOT

BIGFOOT BOOKS TALKS ABOUT SASQUATCH WITH A SCIENTIFICALLY-MINDED ANONYMOUS READER. CAN THE MINDS MEET ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE OF EMPIRICISM AND POSSIBILITY?

In regard to our previous blog posting involving those shall we say "controversial Bigfoot issues," a certain "Anonymous" said in our Comments field:

"How can there be a massacre of creatures that do not exist?"

And then Anonymous said...

"No Bigfoot. No cry."

This led to us contacting him to discuss Bigfoot a bit more in-depth. What follows was done by email, often with two threads going at one time, back and forth, so it is a bit freewheeling and a touch disjoint at times. Bear with us. We feel there are some interesting points made in there.

Image: "Thinker-Squatch" confabulated by Steven Streufert, who is a somewhat sloppy Photoshop artist.

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ANONYMOUS: Ain't no such thing as B/bigfoot. Waiting for Godot. Good for laughs. Good for a window into what's going in the minds of the fringe of humankind. But that's it.

I've read your blog. Your considerable intelligence and apparent talents are going to waste. They are being wasted on a dispute with a fool who is, like Don Quixote, attacking windmills, while you defend the windmills, both of you agreeing they are something more than windmills. There is an imaginary movie on the screen. You defend what is on the screen. Another says that what is on the screen does not show the full reality of the fictitious fiction-predicated fiction that follows. Bottom line is, it's all fiction. Why argue over fiction.

There is no bigfoot. Never was. Never will be. The Patterson-Gimlin film is a hoax. The whole thing is a sham. It's obvious. If there were a bigfoot, there'd be certain evidence of it by now. A creature that size cannot exist without a breeding population of some size, bones, etc., and, if it is intelligent, other signs of its society. Why not focus on elves and dwarves and trolls? If you want to comment on the social phenomenon, write a book about the bigfoot culture? Either you can be a Tolkienesque fiction author or you can be a social commentator. Other than that, why waste time on this fiction?

This little feud also shows that it's just like everything else involving humans - much ado about nothing - except in this case it's much ado about REALLY nothing.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You may be wrong....

I guess I don't know what else to do these days, really. Plus, Bigfoot is fun and fascinating.

I suppose what I am doing is kind of like full-immersion anthropology.... And I do tend to believe. Bigfoot is one of the last real mysteries in the visible, objective world... I mean, what we can see with our eyes and physically sense.

ANONYMOUS: There ain't no bigfoot. Take my word for it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So, let's make this the start of an interview for the blog, eh?

ANONYMOUS: Nah. You need publicity. Not naysayers. No interview. There ain't no bigfoot. Take my word for it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Afraid of the debate, eh?

ANONYMOUS: I see no debate. There are real things that I struggle with that are right in front of my nose that are up for debate. A modern-day fairy tale is not one of them.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: We miss so much, always looking at those things right before our noses, always seeing things from the nose perspective....

ANONYMOUS: We don't miss that much. There are MANY noses. We are not talking a microbe here that would only be seen if the right soil sample were put under a microscope. We are talking a creature bigger than a man. There is no way that and the artifacts of its existence would be missed. It is so incredibly improbable that Bigfoot exists that it is a sign of insanity to even believe in it. This is religion. This is a sad pastime for minds that are bored and unchallenged. There are indeed many wonders out there, but it requires some patience and some discipline and learning to address these questions. Bigfoot is just cheap thrills. Bigfoot is a wannabe "scientist's" adolescent drive-in movie sex.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: How do you KNOW????

ANONYMOUS: Logic. Occam's razor militates against the existence of Bigfoot... BIG TIME!

Large animal. Intelligent. Ape or even hominid. THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL that this large and sophisticated creature, with a breeding population that would have had to last from the last thawing of the Ice Bridge to the present, would not leave REAL evidence of its existence. If such a creature were real, there'd be bones, discarded tools, burying grounds, nests, a lot more footage of the creature, almost certainly animals captured, etc. It is, in fact, INSANE to believe otherwise.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: A lot of things that do exist would be considered highly unlikely or non-parsimonious if they did not in fact exist. What if you had never heard of one, and I proposed the idea of a panda to you? Or a whale? There is a lot of evidence of Bigfoot, just none yet accepted by many scientists. Google Jeff Meldrum Bigfoot, see what comes up.... Occam's Razor is a mental tool, not an external fact. Belief in Bigfoot usually IS based on evidence, or even actual experience, for those who believe.

ANONYMOUS: There are Pandas and smaller whales in zoos and aquaria. Larger whales have been photographed and filmed extensively. The marine realm is much less accessible to us than the deepest forests, yet we have evidence of myriad "improbable" marine creatures. There is NO hard evidence of Bigfoot. None. Just a movie that is almost certainly a hoax and lots of footprints, which are easy for humans to make and of which the large part are, even amongst Bigfooters, clearly considered hoaxes. It is a billion-to-one against a Bigfoot exiting on logical grounds. So... applying the principle of Occam's razor, a thinking person must conclude that Bigfoot almost certainly DOES NOT exist.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Not everything is logical, on it's surface. Logic does not always have predictive power. The universe is full of surprise and things of wonderment. At one time Westerners scoffed at the idea of the panda. And the gorilla....

You can cite all the animals in the zoo, but perhaps Sasquatch is smarter than they are, with a much smaller population. One of the premises of the reality of Bigfoot is the idea that they are highly adapted to avoid humans; they would have had to be so to survive alongside our species as homo sapiens spread out across the land bridge. I think you exaggerate those "odds" against its existence. For instance, the Gigantopithecus lived for some odd million years, and the only way we know of it at all is a few dozen teeth and two partial jawbones.

ANONYMOUS: The universe is indeed full of surprise and things of wonderment, but they are always things that can be rendered credible or explained in some logical framework. Things outside of that are the realm of hallucination, superstition and religion.

No matter how smart Bigfoot is, it cannot exist without a breeding population. At the very minimum, we are talking, say, 200 individuals, but even then it's hard to see how enough genetic diversity to maintain a species that would not succumb to deleterious recessive traits could sustain the species. Now, that's AT LEAST 200 individuals who would have the chance of encountering one another. And if they are intelligent and human-like, everything suggests they'd live in groups. They'd thus logically be concentrated into small units, yet disperse enough to avoid detection. But there'd have to be enough to maintain a viable breeding population in America over tens of thousands of years.

American Indians are genetically related to the much larger population of East Asians. Where is the evidence for a similar larger founder stock of American Bigfoot in Asia? Abominable Snowman legends? Moreover, the smarter it is, the more likely it will leave artifacts of it existence. Is it a human-like ape? It's going to be intelligent and social and leave real artifacts of its existence. Okay...let us just concede then that maybe a minimal population of these creatures exist. They came across from Asia, but became extinct there, only surviving in legend. They evolved to be afraid of humans and to hide from humans. Fine. Still, there'd be some remains of them. Bones. Burial grounds. Something. Unless they are super-intelligent aliens or ghosts. It's in the same category of plausibility as UFOs or ghosts. Gimme a break.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There are logical explanations for the possible existence of Sasquatch; it's just that there has not been the full objective verification of a confirmable body or part that would have been distinguished as such. Read the Meldrum book, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. There is a lot of evidence that goes beyond hoaxery, apparently. Even the Patterson film has never been conclusively proven to be fake. People just say, Oh, that could not be real, even when it is right there before their eyes! Look closer and you will see the convincing details, too.

ANONYMOUS: Sasquatch as a microbe of a micron in diameter that has not been detected: okay. Sasquatch as a very large and intelligent ape that ranged far and wide and crossed from Asia to America without any definitive trace: near impossible.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Right now, up in the Klamath and Siskiyou wilderness area I would venture to guess that there are NO "noses" out there. There is a LOT of open and inaccessible land. Any remains would be a needle in a haystack to find. Some would argue with you about "signs" and traces. Many involved are not insane or deluded or something like that, but simply SAW one, clearly, right before them, leaving tracks behind that were later cast. How do YOU know they were hallucinating?

And actually, bigfooting is a much more fun and healthy pursuit that sitting around in a laboratory all day under fluorescent lighting. To these guys, myself included, it is also an enjoyment of nature, and one of the last non-internal adventures left to us humans.

ANONYMOUS: Bigfooting is fun. There you go. That explains the phenomenon. Seriously.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, first, from the sightings there would seem to be a population that ranges through most of the parts of North America that provide forested, isolated, and normally high precipitation zones; or there are several regional groupings. If anything, encounters are proliferating.

ANONYMOUS: Big area. Breeding population means they can all encounter one another. Encounters proliferating could just mean alcohol is proliferating.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Family groups have been sighted. A fellow in my shop whom I know to be rational and sane told me he was out hunting and saw three of them as clear as day down the hillside. No mistaking them for a bear or humans. What do you say to that? I hear such things ALL the time around here.

Image: Original source unknown, found on internet site.

ANONYMOUS: Sightings? Why all the sightings? With so many sightings proliferating in the age of cheap digital cameras and cell phones with camera/video capabilities, shouldn't digital evidence be increasing? Sightings. Hallucinations. Drunk or otherwise.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: The background population is considered to be either a branch of earlier hominid, or else the Giganto type of ape. There are plenty of examples of relic populations of animals being found.


ANONYMOUS: Evidence of migration from Asia to America? Fossils usually exist for this type of thing. No? Ahem...

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There HAVE been artifacts and remains found, but none have either been preserved for modern science or been found convincing enough to be accepted by the mainstream. What do you make of hair found that tests out as "unknown primate"? What do you make of the incredibly scant evidence for Giganto... which is, despite that, a known species?

ANONYMOUS: Where can I see these artifacts? What museums? Or can I at least see photos? Face it, you are in the realm of RELIGION. The weird Bigfoot Religion. Amen!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But you admit... it is "NEAR" impossible? You said it "ALMOST certainly" does not exist.

Reports are numerous of Sasquatch being seen but then basically just disappearing by blending in with their surroundings, or of odd sounds, and rocks being thrown, but with the actual sighting being totally elusive. If real, they are very sneaky, clever, and perfectly adapted, without the need of tools and cultural artifacts. Despite this, they ARE seen, they do leave traces, however frustratingly inconclusive.

ANONYMOUS: They must be as sneaky as bin Laden, who is dead. Give me a break...

Yeah, I admit it NEAR impossible as in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX5jNnDMfxA

[He presents a link to a scene from "Dumb and Dumber:"]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And yet, you believe in bin Laden, and with no evidence you believe he is dead? Osama was alive once, and MAY just be hiding, not dead.

ANONYMOUS: Yes, because there is no evidence he is alive now, but there is evidence he once was. Evidence!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: If a rock hits you on the head in the middle of the woods with no other humans around, and you heard strange vocalizations and found big footprints, how would you explain it?

ANONYMOUS: I'd say you were then suffering from post-concussion hallucinations.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I meant... a small rock. And where did it come from? A mischievous squirrel?

Yes, bigfooting is "fun." So I argue it is a very healthy, sane pursuit. I like the idea of mysteries and unexplainable things; but I have experienced certain things in the woods I cannot explain, and I know people who HAVE seen them in states of total sanity and clarity.

ANONYMOUS: Me too. The wind. A poetic moment.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Look at science. Many of its propositions seem utterly absurd or incomprehensible (like multidimensionality and quantum physics), and much of it remains in the realm of hypothesis and theory (like string theory).

Image: Original source unknown, found on internet site.

ANONYMOUS: Not true at all. Completely unabsurd and very comprehensible if you know science.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Whales can encounter one another over vast spaces of oceans. Why not Sasquatches across the mountains and woods?

Actually, there has been an increase in photo evidence, but they are nearly all very dark, tiny, blurry, inconclusive. Blobsquatches. The creature is not posing, you know? And this equipment is normally of very limited quality, resolution and capacity. If I took a picture at night with my cell phone camera of my daughter standing on the edge of the woods in my yard one would only see a dark blur.

The artifacts are held by researchers, as museums won't have them. Dr. Meldrum has a ton of great evidence I his lab. There is an element of faith, and of Mystery, I'll admit that. It's part of the fun and fascination. And, I'd argue that Bigfoot is way more plausible than God, yet billions believe in That!

ANONYMOUS: Whales don't pose either, yet, in an alien (to us) aquatic habitat, they make their presence known in film and photos. They spend a tiny fraction of their time breaching, yet we have the evidence. Sasquatch, a terrestrial creature, can't even give us that? What a spoiled sport. He is nocturnal. I guess the confident stride of PGF is an anomaly, then. Artifacts held by researchers? Any researcher worthy of the name would have it documented and publish it, a.s.a.p. Bigfoot is more plausible than God, but that doesn't say much. Tinkerbell is more plausible than God.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There is nowhere for a whale to hide when it breaches. That is why they are sitting ducks for whaling ships and sightseers, despite considerable brain size and all. No one ever SEES Tinkerbell. The stuff HAS been published. It's just kind of hard to get peer review. Look into the works of Meldrum and Grover Krantz.

ANONYMOUS: Can you send me the evidence? If it has been published, that should be easy. Otherwise, it's TinkerFoot to me.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I don't HAVE to believe in Bigfoot. God requires belief and faith. Bigfoot just shits in the woods, walks across the road, and then eats blackberries in the yard. It's very simple, actually. No heaven, no hell, no dogma; just a well-adapted creature living in the forest and mountains in the real world. To me it is relieving to not have superstition and belief. Bigfoot is anti-religion, anti-human culture, its very opposite.

ANONYMOUS: Tinkerbell is the same, and her shit has also not been found. Anyway, who cares? There are a lot of myths. Evidence?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Like Rene Dahinden said, "What if I hit you over the head with one of those footprints' plaster casts? Would that be real enough for you?"

ANONYMOUS: Does buying an extra-large condom mean you have an extra-large dick? Same logic.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You can't verify the empty space in the condom, nor really hit someone over the head with it. But many of the footprints have very convincing anatomy. Good enough to convince anthropological anatomist, Meldrum, anyway. Any guy can buy a big condom, but can he USE it???

ANONYMOUS: Anyone can make a "cast" of my penis that is two-feet long. That is not evidence of being Long Dong Silver.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But would it have dermal ridges, and convincing anatomy? Perhaps "unknown primate" pubic hair remains, too?

ANONYMOUS: Oh, does all that show up in Bigfoot foot casts? Wow. They must really be into foot-casting, pressing their dermal ridges and sprinkling pubic hair on them as well. Smart Bigfoot. Good boy. Heel.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: The pubic hair would have come from your theoretical penis casting. Normal remains of an organic, biological mammalian foot placed on the ground. Ask Meldrum. Primates have dermal ridges on their feet, too, you know. Bigfoot will have his say!

ANONYMOUS: If you believe in Bigfoot, you are as irrational as any theist. Evidence. Show me. They have published shit evidence on other animals before. Where's the Bigfoot shit evidence?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Bigfoot shit HAS been found, or so it is proposed. Big, nasty, stinky ones, containing parasites not known in other animals. I had a bird shit on my head once--could that have been Tinkerbell?

ANONYMOUS: If  I had evidence of this, I'd publish a.s.a.p.. It'd make me famous. Any scientist would do so. If it were real. Bigfoot flies with Pinocchio

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hey, Pinocchio becomes a "Real Boy."

Where's the Bigfoot scat evidence? Well, I can't really say. But the problem with excrement is it decomposes quickly in the field and smells really bad. The parasite scat thing happened in the early sixties. Science journals don't like to publish Bigfoot stuff, so it ends up in the Bigfoot genre books and web sites.

ANONYMOUS: There you go. I guess excrement doesn't decompose so quickly when it is important.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: If a turd falls in the forest, and no one is there to see it, does it really fall?

I think this is part of why I like Bigfoot: It is not human, just a free floating possibility and it represents freedom; and yet it has its feet on the ground, as it were.

Bigfooters love science and scientists, by the way, or at least when they have open minds they do....

ANONYMOUS: Yeah, whatever. If you publish this it could be perceived as justification for hating scientists. They don't need more anti-sciene BS. Other scientists are already enough for scientists to deal with.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You should see how they revere the scientists at Bigfoot conferences...!

ANONYMOUS: ...those who validate preconceived notions and ideology.

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Editorial NOTE: From here the conversation evolved into Existentialism and Politics. THE END, for all Bigfooting purposes.

Some readers on the believer side may wonder why we published all these criticisms. Well, please keep in mind: these are questions we have to face all the time. It is good to consider them, and to hone and perfect our responses. We say: welcome skepticism and criticism, but then CHALLENGE it with logic, evidence, and accuity.

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COMING UP: A CLOSE READING OF THE HOOPA PROJECT.

Many of the readers of this blog may wonder why we came out as so critical of David Paulides, author of The Hoopa Project. Well, we felt much of that needed to be said. Our intention was mainly to explore the issue of "The Bluff Creek Massacre Theory," which we had tried to delve into with Dave and MK Davis in interviews. We were unable to crack that nut with them. We also wanted to challenge certain ideas about the timeline of events surrounding the making of the Patterson-Gimlin film. Along the way, in our effort to defend the honor of John Green and Bob Gimlin, not to mention the memory of Roger Patterson, Bob Titmus and Rene Dahinden, some interpersonal issues arose with Mr. Paulides. Our interview with MK fizzled out when he would not talk about certain issues. Really, we wanted to stick to the just the issues, but we felt some of these things to be of deep importance within the Bigfoot community. And so we talked about them. However, we had told Paulides before that we felt The Hoopa Project was among the bigfooting classics, and would last over time--we STILL think that is so.

DON'T GET US WRONGLY--we read both of Mr. Paulides' books (the other is Tribal Bigfoot), and found both to be mainly quite fascinating reads. We STILL recommend them. Mr.  Paulides is a dogged investigator with some unique angles, and did some excellent work especially by focusing deeply on particular areas, delving into them, and revealing both new information on Bigfoot/Sasquatch sightings in those areas, and also unique characteristics that would have been missed in superficial or more glancing inquiries. However, our qualified problems with these books and their conclusions and methods remain. There are issues with the facts in some major and important areas, there are issues of logic and methodology that need to be addressed. There is the issue of history, and the books' serious lack of citation and crediting of prior books and research done by others. We wish to again explore The Hoopa Project, and in an analytical close re-reading we intend over the course of the next few weeks or months to unearth what we liked in this book, and to reveal and explore what bothered us about it during our first read and subsequently. We hope that NABS and their friends will not see this project as an outright and biased attack. Rather, we wish to be fair, and give credit where credit is due, but yet to discover areas that could be corrected and improved. The book has great value, and we hope that in the end perhaps Mr. Paulides could be encouraged to issue a corrected and revised second edition of his interesting book.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

 Me got woken up by New Years hu-man noise. Me start thinking, me not go back to sleep. So me have idea. Me get angry again about hu-man crazy acting and thing they think about ME. Me will set them straight. Now I talk to human friend who write and he like my idea. Next time on this blog-thing hu-man write ideas. He call it PROPOSITIONS FOR A NEW DECADE IN SQUATCHING.

Me spell that right? It be  up here next time, if hu-man not hibernate too.

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The text of this blog entry is copyright 2009, Bigfoot Books and Steven Streufert. Please present with citation and blog link if you are quoting. Thanks!

Interview with AL HODGSON, Pillar of Willow Creek and Bigfooting History, PART THREE

PART THREE OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH WILLOW CREEK'S HISTORICAL BIGFOOTER, AL HODGSON,

CONDUCTED AND TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN STREUFERT, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM "C.I." ON FEBRUARY 4th, 2010:
PART THREE, OF THREE, CONCLUSION.

This being the third part (of three) of the interview, the reader should really read PART ONE HERE and PART TWO HERE first. If you don’t, you’re really missing out! Permanent links to these blog entries will be found on the right hand column of this site.

This interview was conducted with Albert Eugene Hodgson in his Willow Creek home, just around the corner from the Bigfoot Books shop, by Steven Streufert, with assistance from “C.I.,” who wishes to remain anonymous. Bigfoot activity, other than Al's involvement, has been reported in this hillside, forested neighborhood.

Almost by accident, and initially a skeptic, Al Hodgson became one of the most important figures in the history of Bigfoot research. It was his phone call to Roger Patterson that led to the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. He was also the first person they called after filming the creature. His connections to the community, and his position as a public figure and businessman, linked up Bigfoot witnesses and researchers for decades. He did early primary investigations with Betty Allen, local journalist and pioneering Bigfoot researcher, starting in the early 1960s. He was there before Bigfoot became a household word, and became a go-to guy for Bigfoot information after the famous 1958 Bluff Creek events and trackway finds. It is Al's memory that preserves much of the history of this phenomenon, and we've sought to explore it all with him.

The previous segment goes up to a timing of 01:30:30 of a total of 02:17:11 on the MP3 audio file. This file exists as proof against the conspiracy theorists, and will be posted to the bigfooting community once we find the proper server. At the end of our previous segment Al mentioned a book he was reading, one on pre-deluge Biblical history.We’d been talking about his deeply Christian friend, Jerry Crew, and the 1958 Bluff Creek footprint trackway finds.

And now, we continue toward the conclusion with this last third.

AL HODGSON had said: I believe in Christ by the way… but I’m not very forceful… and that’s when I got into this book here….

Continuing…

AL HODGSON: You know it’s interesting--ancient history is good to that book [the Bible]. Besides, the fact, what it is about that book is they are able to go clear back to Noah. English people, and the Irish, all those European people, they go clear back to Noah. It’s amazing how they’ve done it. But, it was all written before. This guy [the author of the book Al has been reading] just found the, researched it, and got the pieces, and put it together.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: One time you had told me that you were less interested in Bigfoot these days, and more interested in Creation.

AL HODGSON: Oh, I am, I’m very interested in Creation.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Do you ever grow tired of the Bigfoot questions, and feel you’re stuck in it…?

AL HODGSON: Well, I’m not necessarily tired of it, but I, sometimes--I haven’t got time for some of this junk. I don’t have time for it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There’s more to life than Bigfoot?

AL HODGSON: That’s right. This is very interesting. In fact there’s one chapter on dinosaurs. It’s amazing.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: What about the “Giants in the Earth,” the ones that are in Genesis, that some people think are Sasquatches? Enkidu, or…

AL HODGSON: Well [chuckles], in here there’s a place [flips through book] where they’re talking about a bipedal beast of some sort… But they don’t, it doesn’t sound like…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There’s Esau, from the Bible, he was one of the sons of Abraham, wasn’t he? And he was born furry?

AL HODGSON: Israel, you mean? Isaiah? [Isaac, actually, we found out later.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Esau.

AL HODGSON: Oh. Esau was one of them.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: His brother was born like a normal person, and Esau was born hairy, with reddish colored hair…

AL HODGSON: Oh, there were two. That’s right, yeah, yeah. They were twins.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There are some Biblical Studies guys who are also interested in Bigfoot who think that the Sasquatch, you know, was actually living side by side with humanity, in the early days, in the Old Testament…

AL HODGSON: Ah, well, I don’t know. It’s possible, like this on dinosaurs. It’s possible this one, it sounded like… maybe a Sasquatch. I’ll have to go back and look it up, because its talking about “bipedal.” And I said, Uh oh. But it doesn’t quite sound like it because they’re talking about different colors, makes it sound like a fur, but I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There is a lot of strange stuff in the Bible, though.

AL HODGSON: Yeah, but this is, actually… All this does maybe is kind of prove that the Bible is correct, particularly when it comes back to all the way back to Noah, the Flood.

Image: Noah's Ark, or just a weird rock formation?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You have to wonder how Sasquatches could have survived the Flood. Like, how could they have gotten them on the, on Noah’s Ark. They wouldn’t have been able to catch one to put it on the…

AL HODGSON: Well, the thing of it is, all of the other animals got on there. And there’s lots of theories on how that happened, too.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well we’ve got giraffes and lions in the zoos, but no Sasquatches. So I’m kind of wondering how Noah got one on there.

AL HODGSON: Well, they don’t know. It does not say that. All it says is that all the breathing animals got on the Ark, but it doesn’t say the meat eaters and so forth. But we don’t know how they survived…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There probably were some mountains. They probably survived up there in the high, Himalayan-type mountains, the Bigfoot just stayed up there during the Flood.

AL HODGSON: According to the Bible everything was covered with water. And I would say that is true. I have no way of telling. But, you know something? At one time these mountains were completely covered. Up there, Ironsides. Think about that. That was covered, completely covered. Now, the geologists will tell you that—they’ll tell you that’s true. At one time all of this was completely covered.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There were glaciers through here at one time.

AL HODGSON: Well, it could be. It was, Dr. McGinnity [sp?], it was Humboldt State, I took one year in Geology, I knew just a little bit. But anyway, he said that at one time those high mountains were down there at sea level, at one time. And then they raised like that, all this igneous rock, it hardened below ground, and then it raised up. It eroded the soft parts away, and that’s where you got your mountains, and way down the canyon, it was all washed out to sea. That’s... some geologisrs—they think that themselves. But anyway, I enjoy Geology. I’m sorry I didn’t pursue it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There’s a lot of it around here.

AL HODGSON: Actually, I took one year. After the war I took one year of Geology at Humboldt State, but they discouraged me. They said, well, you’ll never make a living at Geology. You’d better be a school teacher.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Little did they know, the modern petroleum industry and all of that.

AL HODGSON: That’s right. Well, a few days later I was back in Illinois—in fact, I met Frances back there—and they needed geologists. All those wells, you got down so far they had to have geologists down at the well. There were a lot of things they had to do, so geologists were needed; but here, in Arcata, at that time that was just a teacher’s college. So they were pushing teachers, and I... wasn’t a very good student anyways.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, you did well with your store all of those years. Right?

AL HODGSON: Well, right now, believe it or not—and cross my fingers about it—I’m writing a book. Right now. And it’s down to where I’ve got the chapters, I’ve got the story that’s going to be in there, and now I’m trying to, adding to some of the things, that I haven’t put in to it. As a matter of fact, right now I’m writing about the 1954 earthquake. Pretty tough quake, in Eureka. I was working at Humboldt Machine Works in Arcata at the time. And it’s a big, one big, it was in an “L” shape [the building], it was about sixty feet wide and about a hundred and twenty feet long. And I was in there, I was down here and it hit here [gestures on the table to depict the building and his location in it], and when the earthquake, when it happened, I could hear the roar starting at this side of the building, and coming towards me. And the dust that was falling as it came. And, on top of that, there was a bridge crane in there, and all we could think about was, Where’s that bridge crane?

Image: Al Hodgson in the A-and-E TV documentary, photographed by Steve Streufert from VHS.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, I would run away.

AL HODGSON: We didn’t want that thing coming down on top of us. So, we went out the door and we crossed the road, and it was running in waves about that high [gestures, indicating the ground was rippling and rolling up to a certain height].

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It was nothing like this little one we had here recently.

AL HODGSON: No. That was just nothing compared to it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I was on the road… That was like 6.0…

AL HODGSON: No one you know was injured in it?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: No, I was on the highway, going towards Eureka, and I just felt like maybe I had a flat tire or something. It was all wavy…

C.I.: So, you felt it in the car?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah. We were away from the major impact, a little bit.

AL HODGSON: Well, the ’54 earthquake, this one guy, I can’t remember who he was now, he thought he had a flat tire, and he, before seatbelts and everything, opened his door and looked out and it dumped him…. [Laughs all around]

C.I.: I can’t remember how big that was, but it was a…

AL HODGSON: Six point seven, I think it was.

Image: The Forest Service's Lower Trinity Ranger Station, where Al met with Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, along with Syl McCoy who worked there, after the PGF was shot and sent for delivery; photo by Steven Streufert, 2010.

C.I.: We just barely felt last month’s quake in Redding. You could just feel the little vibration in the floor, like someone was walking heavily in the hallway or something.

AL HODGSON: We didn’t feel it here. I felt, I didn’t feel it at all. I was just coming in with a little wood in my arms. But I got in, the dog was barking, I said, what’s going on? Frances said we had an earthquake. It wasn’t long until Mark called and said are you all right? I said yeah. And he said, well, I just got home and it was shaking pretty good. He says, I’d better get down to the office and see what’s going on. But he’d just left Costco, he says I’m sure glad I'm not at Costco. And some of the people that I know were in Winco [a warehouse grocery], and I suppose it was all dark in there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I wouldn’t want to be in there. We were heading to the mall with my kid, to go on that Bounce-a-Rama thing. If we had left 15 minutes earlier we would have been in the Bounce-a-Rama, with the ceiling tiles falling down and the glass breaking, dark, lights out. So we were lucky. We just got delayed, and we were on the nice, comfortable marsh, bay, freeway area. It stank, though. All that sulfur came up out of the Arcata marsh…

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah? Well, I’ll be darned. That’s the way it used to be in the old days, when we first came here. It stunk like bad. Well, the sewer, they just dumped it into the bay.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we just, it was in the marsh, I guess, that digesting, naturally digesting… Once the earthquake hit it seemed to release that from the soil, and from the water. All of a sudden… wow. I thought a sewage line had broken along the bay or something.

AL HODGSON: That quake, the ’54 was bad enough. Now, my father was in the San Francisco earthquake.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Now that’s was a major one, the 1906 one? It had all the fires and everything. That was bad, disastrous….

Image: Al Hodgson after our interview with him, posing with Roger's book. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2010.

AL HODGSON: ’06, yeah. He lost everything. He didn’t have much at the time, but he was staying at a hotel and he went over to, he wasn’t concerned about all that stuff. In fact he said he [unintelligible] that morning, after the quake, he put his old grubbies on because he would go downtown to see if the office he was working in was still there or whatever. And he said that he went over to Oakland and sent a telegram home to say he was OK; and when he came back, he got back in the city, fire had caught up there and burnt the whole town, all his stuff was gone. He said that, he told me one time, in his letter he said, he could’ve stepped out on the, from the second story window, where they lived on the second floor, you could have got out of there onto the ground. In one of his letters he says I don’t want to go back so bad, because San Francisco is a sandhill. That’s about the truth, too. I’ve read some stories, I started to read a book about San Francisco, and I said, ah, I’ve had enough of that. I’m not gonna read it. It’s just too terrible, all the gruesome things that happened and everything. Just like there in Haiti right now, excepting that Haiti didn’t have the fire, but there were rescues...

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There wasn’t much standing left to burn.

AL HODGSON: No, no. Yep.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well I guess we’re kind of at an end point.

C.I.: I guess so...

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Do you have any other things…

C.I.: Well, I think we’ve covered the timeline issues, and the general history, and the current conspiracy theory belief brought to us by the internet…

AL HODGSON: [Laughs mischievously] He he he! Yeah.

C.I.: Is there anything else you can add, just about your experience with this whole Bigfoot thing over such a huge part of your life? One thing, about giving interviews: many people that I’ve talked to before, afterwards, after giving an interview to someone, have been concerned about something that wasn’t portrayed right, or taken out of context. Are there any interviews that you’ve given over the years that you feel were not used correctly?

AL HODGSON: There was, the most trouble I had with anything was the documentaries. I don’t intend to do any more like that. I don’t have any idea what this guy, Stepon [the film guy, an “Anthropology” student who had just flaked on plans with Bigfoot Books, and did an interview with Al the day before], I have no idea if that was a “documentary.” I don’t know, I have no idea what they…. I went all out for the National Geographic, and what they take out of it…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They edit you…?

AL HODGSON: Yeah. They make it sound like it was all a hoax. Or they got people to say the other side and say that it was a hoax. I wasn’t happy with it at all. So, I’ve just about had it. Like, with you guys, everything like this, I don’t mind it at all. It’s these guys who try to make it out like a hoax, after you get through they go see somebody else and try to find out a hoax. Yeah, OK. Tell me about it, don’t try to hide it….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, they should show you what they’re going to use before they put it in, Maybe it should be in the contract…

AL HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …"the person in this film will have review privileges of the end product." Because so many people come and they make movies, film people around here, make them look goofy, or silly, or redneck or ignorant or…

AL HODGSON: Yeah. I just got disgusted with it.

C. I.: The National Geographic people you’re talking about were the ones who filmed during the, uh, Labor Day weekend?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That was for the Bigfoot Days…

Image: Denali Brown at Bigfoot Days, 2009. Photo by Steven Streufert

C. I.: They were here, what was it, 2005, 2006?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You know, I can’t remember. It might have been five. Do you remember Al? They filmed the Bigfoot Days parade. I remember them going right behind us, and we didn’t get in the film because it was right over our heads.

AL HODGSON: I just don’t remember, for sure, when they were here.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s hard to keep all of those years straight, a few years ago, let alone in 1958.

AL HODGSON: Yeah!

C. I.: The actions of the crew have been spoken of in other places in town.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I know. There’s a lot of people who get bitter about Bigfoot and stuff, after Tom Biscardi or some guy comes in here and makes fools of them.

AL HODGSON: I think that’s what happened to those guys up in Happy Camp.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, a lot of people have told me that since that they don’t even want to talk about Bigfoot anymore. They’ve had it. They’ll tell their friends and family, and maybe a few other people, and that’s about it.

AL HODGSON: You know, they didn’t even ask me about it.

C. I.: We should wrap up by saying that that makes us doubly thankful for your time today.

AL HODGSON: Well, I haven’t really known Steve here too much, but I know him pretty well to know that he’s a decent guy.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Thanks! I remember you from when I was a little kid. I remember reading about it. Your name was in the Bigfoot books that I read when I was ten, from the library. Like when I read John Green’s books and stuff. I read all of those little pamphlet ones. So when I moved to Willow Creek. I’m like, oh my god, Willow Creek, Al Hodgson…. And then when I met you and saw you around town I said, he’s still alive, he’s still here!

AL HODGSON: [Laughs]

Image: The plaque honoring Al, a stalwart public servant, at the Willow Creek Community Service District's water treatment facility. At the mouth of Willow Creek itself as it flows into the Trinity River. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2009.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It was amazing to me. That all seemed like it was so long ago, looking at all those old black and white pictures.

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I wanted to ask you about Ray Wallace, if you can just say yes or no.

C. I.: Oh, we forgot about him!


BIGFOOT BOOKS: Did you know Ray Wallace?

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah, I knew him.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And what did you think when that story came out that he hoaxed all those footprints and stuff…

AL HODGSON: I don’t think that’s true at all. I knew him. He was a prankster, and I don’t… He was the kind of guy that would like to pull a trick….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: For fun though?

Image: Al Hodgson after our interview with him, posing at his kitchen table where it was conducted. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2010.

AL HODGSON: …but he wasn’t the guy to do all that. And he brought me casts one time, about that long [gestures, indicating an absurdly large print cast], obviously carved, they were about that thick. And he wanted me to put them in the window.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He wanted to sell them? He had his own little business where he would set up by the roadside and sell Bigfoot….

AL HODGSON: Well, he was something else, but I don’t think he was out pulling all this other stuff. In fact, I talked to one man that I knew and he was raised—his father apparently passed away, I don’t know exactly whether both of ‘em—and Ray raised him. And he says, he’s a good old guy. He doesn’t do that stuff. But he knew he was a bit of a prankster. I think what happened, partially what happened up there, his son and his wife, his stepson and his second wife, I think it was, I’m not sure. But anyway, I think that was all put up. I think it was, maybe egg him on? He was an old man, and maybe a little bit senile, and did... something. He wrote me some of the dad-guminest letters.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Oh yeah?

AL HODGSON: [Laughs]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, Dave Paulides published a bunch of those on his website. They were talking about UFOs and stuff like that, Bigfoot and the space aliens…

Image: The Wily Coyote, Ray Wallace, up to his old tricks. Historical.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. I do not, I don’t want to say at all that he didn’t do some of that, really. No, but all the big... he didn’t do all of that, but anyways….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You probably heard stories at the time though that some of the guys were hoaxing…

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I’ve talked to some of the older people around town, who were once loggers or worked on road projects, and they… That one guy who lived out in Orleans, he used to own the inn out there, his son was telling me he used to hear the old timers out talking on the porch, and they were like, let’s go out there and make some fake footprints. The loggers would come down there and get whiskey and drink on the porch, and so he heard a lot about it. At least joking about it.

AL HODGSON: Well, joking about it… It’s one thing to say you’re going to do it. It’s another thing to do it, too.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But to do it well, convincingly….?

AL HODGSON: Well, when they had the symposium, they offered a hundred thousand dollars for somebody who could make footprints, and make them so that they’re really, truly… and no one could do it. And you got no offers to even try it. But what happens is, if you make a fake track... in fact, they made some right out here. Jim McClarin and John Green right out here in our shop. They made some casts, and made some tracks, out of wood. And it makes you think… a board has not action, no action at all. You can stomp them in there, yes, even straight down, but there’s no action, and you couldn’t do it. If you went across…and we had no takers.

C. I.: It would sound like free money!

AL HODGSON: Yeah!

Images: Two shots of the area where Willow Creek gets its fine drinking water, Willow Creek at the Trinity River, dedicated to Albert E. Hodgson. Below, next door is "Bigfoot's Den" at the Willow Creek Hotel. Photos by Steven Streufert, 2010.

C. I.: So many people on the TV, they look at the movie for like five seconds, and they declare it a fake…

AL HODGSON: Yeah.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They scoff…

C. I.: …they don’t spend any time or effort or any money to show, to make a suit or some footprints that can produce something convincing compared to the evidence we already have.

AL HODGSON: That’s right.

C. I.: I’m still amazed that anyone talks to anyone from the media at all!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, especially when they do such a shoddy job with monkey suits and ah…

AL HODGSON: Yeaaahh. I don’t even mess with some of that. Bobbie Short, she got angry with me, and I said that’s enough, let’s forget it. I don’t even bother with that.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Bobbie Short seems to like you enough to quote you in her conspiracy theory stuff.

AL HODGSON: [Laughs out Loud] Ah. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: “Al Hodgson declared that Bob Titmus was there, no doubt about it!”

AL HODGSON: I wished I hadn’t-a said that, but I was wrong!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Did they kind of trick you? Like, they just showed you a picture and, "who does that look like?"

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah. And I thought…. They asked me who was in that print, and I said, well, it might be, I thought, it might be Titmus. Because I thought, John, maybe it was Titmus who came down with him. But it was not Titmus. It was Rene Dahinden who came down with him. But I was... I didn’t remember that.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And from what you can remember, Rene Dahinden and Bob Titmus, they didn’t like each other that much?

AL HODGSON: No, no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They probably wouldn’t have wanted to travel down together…

AL HODGSON: And before it was over Rene and John weren’t getting along either. And what happened there?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Towards the end more? Later on?

Images: MK Davis manipulation of the Dahinden film on BCM; Patty on Bluff Creek; below,John Green with his track collection that may one day reside in part in the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. But Rene, he, like I said, as far as I was concerned, he was flying about that high off of the ground [gestures up high] anyway. His favorite saying was that I remember was “People are seeing bloody holes in the ground!”

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean Rene Dahinden?

AL HODGSON: Yeah, everything was bloody to him. He was a Swiss. He was something else.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He had that great thing he said, “People ask for physical evidence of Bigfoot. What if I take one of these plaster casts of the footprint tracks and hit you over the head with it. Would that be physical enough for you???”

AL HODGSON: [Laughs all around.] Oh yeah.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You know, that’s just great—I wish I could have spent time with that guy. Now there’s a guy I’d want to go Bigfoot hunting with. At least you’d have good humor around the campfire, even if Sasquatch were never found.

AL HODGSON: Ha ha ha. Yep! But anyway, I’m not going to worry about it anymore. I will tell what I know, but that’s all I can do. I can’t tell ya what I should know or nothing else, and sometimes I’ve forgotten.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: One thing you could tell us is, how did you become convinced that Bigfoot it real? I mean, you’ve told me this story, but…. Like, you believe more now than you did back then when you said you thought it was a hoax, right?

AL HODGSON: Well, you know, the thing of it is… and John Green, he kind of like got after me a time or two. He says, when he found out I didn’t really, necessarily, I.... He said, Al!!! [Laughs] But, right over there [points to his living room] is where I became convinced. We used to have a Bible study one night a week. I can’t remember what night, but anyway, we had it. This one night, John had called me. Bob [Titmus] had passed away and he wanted to know if his casts had come down here, that were from down here, providing that we build a museum. And he said he didn’t want just a room, he wanted a building. I go, OK! And finally I talked to the museum and talked them into building a new building for them. So I made then the deal to bring them down here. So, this night, after the Bible study was over I told them what I had done. And, so, this one couple stayed behind. And, I had no idea, what, I mean…. And she says, “Al, I saw one!” And I didn’t hesitate, and I said, “OK.” I’ve seen enough of the size of that and all, and it pushed me over the edge.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: She was someone you would absolutely believe, always reliable, not seeing things, and not making stuff up.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. That’s right. Yep.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s, I mean, for me it’s like, I have not really seen the Sasquatch, but I’ve heard so many people I’ve met, they’re good honest people…. The more I stay here the harder it is to disbelieve than it is to believe!

AL HODGSON: You know, even Mary Roberts, you know about that?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Mary Roberts… Wait, oh...

AL HODGSON: What happened was, that, actually they didn’t see him, but you know how they say it’s a terrible smell?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean Mary Roberts, from the hardware store [Roberts’ Mercantile/Ace]?

Image: The lower area of the Bluff Creek PGF site. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2009.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. Yeah. But anyway she, this one night, Mary was working on the books [accounting], and Jerry was tired, he went to bed. And it was summertime, and the windows were open. And the stink, the stench, was so bad that she woke Jerry up to find out, what on Earth is this? And it was there, it wasn’t there very long. It was gone. And so, what was it? Was this one? Because, this was… a lot of them associate that very loud stink with, and in fact was, I don’t know what you saw.... Binder… John Bindernagel, in his book, he said that some great apes have glands under their armpits that they can…and so, maybe, I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It smells like something you’ve never smelled before, apparently, musky, kind of rotten…

AL HODGSON: That’s right. It’s so terrible. But it’s obviously something that they can do at will.

C. I.: Seems like it.

AL HODGSON: Anyway, she was working in the museum, and her husband was a timber man, and he was working on a, he used to work for the tribes in their timber, scaling logs, the timber, to find out how much timber is in an area and so forth. Somebody hired him out to do something else over the weekend. So he went out and encountered this terrible smell. But he left, you know, and he said, you suppose that’s Sasquatch? And he came and told his wife, and she told me, and he finally told me about it. But what was it? I don’t know.

C. I.: It’s an interesting story, or the stories are important, I think, about the smell. Because from what I’ve read, the first time anyone talked about this was talking about Bigfoot or Sasquatch, and then knowing that these gorillas and maybe some other primates do this also came afterwards. So why would someone make this up about a Bigfoot, when no one knew that anything does this? Well, except a skunk! That’s a really interesting bit of evidence, and it’s really powerful because people have been reporting this for a really long time. It’s only relatively recently that we find out that there are some known apes that do this.

AL HODGSON: Yep. That’s right. The first I ever heard of it was John Bindernagel’s book. I don’t know.

C. I.: Someone else had written about that, too, but they might have the same source.

AL HODGSON: It could be. I don’t know. But it’s interesting.

C. I.: There’s something happening out there…

AL HODGSON: But you know, the one thing, too, though. I’ve had a lot of people ask me, well, where are they at? Do I have to go to Bluff Creek to see them? Uh-uh. They’re out here, too [gestures out the window to the local neighborhood].

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I’ve had them. I’ve had reports from right behind my store. I had something come into my yard, which is just a little over a mile along the ridge here, stomping in my backyard…

AL HODGSON: Where do you live?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Up Panther Road. Right up at the top, Panther Road. It was coming down the hill and it sort of tripped or something, and went, “Whump, whump, whump!” Really heavy, you know, and it didn’t sound like a deer, kind of bound, bounding…

AL HODGSON: Yeah, deer don’t make that much noise.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I hear people tell me of Waterman Ridge, all over you know…

AL HODGSON: Well, it’s sightings, I… when the National Geographic were coming I advertised, if anybody had seen one, let me know. I had this call from up in Orleans, kind of…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Weitchpec?

Images: Above and below, Google Earth (2010) aerial views of the Willow Creek areas in question. First, just east of the town, showing the area where yours truly lives and had a possible BF encounter; second, downtown out west to Boise Creek Campground; third, the area a touch further east including the Hodgson house and the Bigfoot Books shop.

AL HODGSON: No upriver.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Happy Camp?

AL HODGSON: Towards Happy Camp.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Seiad Valley or whatever they call it?

AL HODGSON: So anyway, I returned the call and asked where’d you see it? And she said, four miles west of Willow Creek!!!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah…!

AL HODGSON: Four o’clock, one morning…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: On the 299?

AL HODGSON: And she said, I drive a produce truck. Hmmm. And she came through there early. But anyway, just things like this. There have been several sightings between here and Boise Creek.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, just right out of town, pretty much.

AL HODGSON: Yeah, and one I’d heard about, these guys I knew about, I knew about them, but they didn’t tell me. I knew all these guys. They, several of them saw it, just below this look-out, up on Brush Mountain, but they knew long before they finally told me, just two years ago, that they saw this one up there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Who were they, though, who saw them out there?

AL HODGSON: One of them was Brown, down here, ah…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Local people?

AL HODGSON: Which Brown is it? I can’t remember now.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Just local people…

AL HODGSON: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Because I’ve heard, up at the Brush Mountain Look-Out, the woman up there has footprint finds and…

AL HODGSON: Ah, I’ve wondered about her, but I’m not really sure. I don’t like to call anybody a liar, but I don’t know, I’m not sure what to say. I really try to think, maybe she did, but I was kind of… You know, some people want to see one so bad, and I don’t know, I would not say she’s a liar, believe me.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You could have somebody who is a liar who could also really see a Bigfoot1 But I’ve had other reports, sightings just last summer, on the Friday Ridge Road, like an actual sighting.

AL HODGSON: Well, it actually could be!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And the year before that there was a sighting back further up. And then before that was the woman seeing them up on the Look-Out.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. I, see, I’m out of the loop, anymore. I don’t hear all of those things that happen today. The fact is, people ask me, Paul [unintelligible], asked me, here, just a little while back. But I don’t know, I’m just out of the loop.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I’ll call you, if you want to hear about the… you could come with us right now to the…

AL HODGSON: Well, I don’t mind it. I’m not going to go out chasing all over the… because I don’t want to hear it, you know….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: By the time you get there they’re probably long gone anyways.

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah, sure they are.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I think, you know, maybe just stay put where you are. Like, my yard, it’s back up on this hill. I’m already Sasquatch hunting just by sitting there…

AL HODGSON: [Laughs] Ha ha ha ha! That’s right!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …reading a book, or whatever.

AL HODGSON: That’s right. But, you know, these, I don’t know how they travel, but my suspicions a lot of the times, is up some of the streambeds, and the nearest stream…. If fact, I know mountain lions are this way. They’re going up there. And Steve Paine, he’s right there by the mouth of Victor Creek, well not the mouth but, it goes right into that hole there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, right where his house is?

AL HODGSON: Yeah, and, he sees a lot of cats there. They use that, they come down those creeks.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Don’t I know it. I used to live up on the top of The Terrace, just right around the corner from there. And we used to have mountain lions all the time. The lady across the street from us fed all the stray house cats. So the raccoons would come around for that cat food, and pretty soon other creatures, skunks and…, pretty soon you’d be hearing about mountain lions coming. We had them walking right down the street, in the middle of the road. And there’s that creek that runs right behind Delaney [Street] there. They are definitely cruising that area, eating cats and…

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah. Sure. And they just normally travel those streambeds. Now, like in here, we rarely have anything in here. But over in China Creek or Butterfly Creek, either one, they come down there quite often. And they get out from the creek itself a little bit, but not usually this far out. They’re traveling more in the creekbeds and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That Bloody Nose Creek, it's kind of like a rugged canyon all around it.

AL HODGSON: It’s a little bit different there. It comes out on top and there’s houses right up against it, almost. But all that area, it’s different anyway. But I don’t know what to say.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, I think we’re at a point where we kind of should stop, because it’s been a couple of hours anyway.

AL HODGSON: [Laughs]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And we were supposed to go see these other people.

AL HODGSON: Uh oh!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: If you want to come, we were going to go out to Oden Flat, there’s been a Sasquatch sighting. I know you have to stay…

Image: Historical; one of the 1967 Blue Creek Mountain footprints.

AL HODGSON: Ah no, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t go out. If you see something good, let me know about it, but I don’t need to, ah…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There was a sighting! A young fifteen year old girl and her friend were playing out in the yard, with a few other friends out there. The dad was gone, he’d gone away, out in his truck driving. And they saw something behind a bush, and it looked like a bear, you know. And she was standing there like, wow, what is that moving there, at the edge of the woods. And once she started looking right at it, it reached up an arm and grabbed a branch and pulled itself up and stood up. It was like seven foot-something, standing there right in front of her. It was kind of like twilight and shadowy, but she was able to see the form, and the color, the shagginess of the hair and how long it was. Four feet wide in the shoulders….

AL HODGSON: Wow. But you know, well, sometimes you don’t know about kids, either. Now this one, they told me about this one, [unintelligible] in Eureka, and I passed it on to Dave, Paulides. And so, he talked to her, and all went fine, until he asked her to sign an affidavit—didn’t do it. And so that kind of tells you it’s probably not true

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I don’t know how Dave does it, with the affidavits, because my experience is people will tell me about Bigfoot after maybe seeing me in my shop a few times and one day they’ll say, kind of shyly, I’ve SEEN one of them.

AL HODGSON: Well, the thing about it is, if you’re taking all the whole thing, and if you really are serious, unless don’t know what an affidavit means, it just means you swearing that that’s true. And so, you shouldn’t have no reason…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But you have to put your name… A lot of people around here, they don’t want to be made fun of, they don’t want their name on the…

AL HODGSON: Well, I understand that. I don’t blame them there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They’ll tell me their story because they’ve grown to kind of trust me and…

AL HODGSON: They trust you. That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And I ask them, can I write some of this down and put your name on it, put it on my blog, and they’re like, NO!!!

AL HODGSON: NO!!!

Image: Footprint casts from the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film creature, in a display set up by Cliff Barackman. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2007.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I ask, and where do you live? Well, I can’t tell you exactly where I live because I grow pot out there, or something…!

AL HODGSON: [Laughs] Ha ha ha!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And they don’t want a bunch of Bigfoot hunters coming on their property, either.

AL HODGSON: I know. No, they do not. And you know, there’s so much pot now.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s everywhere.

AL HODGSON: I’m against it, but I think the only thing to do is to legalize it. I hate to say it, but I think it’s the only thing. Because it gets so far out of hand now that they’ll never get control of it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s like the Mafia of something, taking over.

AL HODGSON: That’s right!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You can feel it, the criminal feeling of the…

AL HODGSON: But you know, I met a guy not too long ago, and he was telling us, that he knew this guy, he had to stop to see him, and he had a hundred thousand dollars in cash in the cab with him, and he said he had more in the trunk.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Jeeeez.

AL HODGSON: But he says, you know, I can’t get out of it now, I’m in that, and there’s just no way I can get out of it. But he said there’s lots of money in it and….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And why would you want to work for a living when you can…? Why open a hardware store or a bookstore…?

Image: The high water sign in Willow Creek, Hwy. 96, marking the level of the Great 1964 Flood, spoken of by Al in an earlier part of this interview. It forged the famous Bluff Creek gravel bar in the PGF. Photo by Steven Streufert, 2010.

AL HODGSON: But you know, the thing of it is, now he has no life. He can’t get out. The Mafia and such, is here. I think that’s the only thing you can do, there’s so much pot growing in this part of the country.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I’d love to see it legal, just so they don’t have their criminal black market anymore.

AL HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You know, make it legal, make it grow in the backyard, instead of ruining everybody’s houses and stuff.

AL HODGSON: Yep. This house right down here, that was a grow house. They’re all over town.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You kind of worry when your kid lives next door to one, like mine did. They were growing, I don’t think they are now, but at one time you could hear the fans running all day, all night. They had suspicious behavior out in the front yard. You just knew what was happening. Drapes closed…

AL HODGSON: Oh yeah. Well you know, one day, I never knew what pot smelled like. And I smelled it a couple of times, and somebody told me kind of what it smelled like, like it stunk. And then one day, what, it was horrible! And I looked down here and it was coming from this fireplace, right up here.

Image: Bob Titmus with some of his impressive track cast collection, now housed in the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum. Historical.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They were burning it in the…, they were probably burning the scraps, stems and stuff?

AL HODGSON: Yeah, the scraps.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Oh man. That’s a lot of nerve there!

AL HODGSON: I know! I thought I’d tell them, be careful what your doing, because burning pot in the fireplace is… [Chuckles].

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It seems like advertising...!

C. I.: Yeah. [Laughs] Smoke signals!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Come on here, rob my house!

AL HODGSON: We go over to Burnt Ranch most every Friday, a Bible study up there. And we, in the summer time, by, up here, you can smell it halfway up through Burnt Ranch…[small edit] Horrible smell. Got up to Hawkins Bar… AGAIN!!!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, there’s a lot of pot growing and stuff out here. Trinity County is worse than Humboldt.

AL HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: They consider Willow Creek like a conservative town…

Image: Another view of the Lower Trinity Ranger Station; photo by Steven Streufert, 2010.

AL HODGSON: Yeah!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: If you go out there it’s just open, like nobody cares.

AL HODGSON: Uh huh. You know this guy who owns the feed store down here?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Farmer Brown?

AL HODGSON: Yeah, he’s going to build his own place because he’s made enough money off the pot growers and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s like the most successful business in town right now, I think. I mean the most successful… legal one….

AL HODGSON: That’s right. Yeah. But you know… I tell ya. Like I said, at the same time, I don’t see any other way out. It’ll be better that way I think than to leave it the way it is.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Get Bigfoot to police it?

C.I.: Very logical!

AL HODGSON: [Chuckles. Photos are taken of Al posing with the book that Roger Patterson inscribed and signed to Albert Hodgson personally.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: OK, thanks!

C.I.: That looks pretty good.

Image: Mr. Hodgson's well worn copy of the 1966 Roger Patterson book. Photo by Steven Streufert.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s amazing! I think… You’ve had that book since 1967 or something?

AL HODGSON: Yeah, I don’t know exactly. I think it was just right after the… You can see it’s been well read.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, you’ve probably showed it to a lot of people over the years, too.

AL HODGSON: My brother had it for a while. I think every teacher in Hoopa probably read it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that book, I mean, without the signature that book is very hard to get now.

AL HODGSON: Oh, I know it is.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It costs about sixty to seventy-five dollars for a good copy, forty-five for the ones that are falling apart, with the pages breaking out, which is about half of the ones you see.

AL HODGSON: [Laughs] Well, mine’s getting kind of dog-eared!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, it’s signed, so it’s priceless. I don’t know how many signatures Roger did on his books.

AL HODGSON: Yeah. I have no idea, no idea.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, OK. We’re kind of needing to get lunch, aren’t we? [It is now about 5:00]

C. I.: I know it’s getting late. I’m just afraid to turn off the recorder unless there’s a last minute Revelation!

AL HODGSON: [Laughs]

Image: Another classic photo of Roger Patterson and his tracks. Historical.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, that could be in Part Two....

AL HODGSON: If I have anything more I’ll write you or something.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: We could go “off the record” and talk about other things, like MK… Dave, MK and Dave, you know, or Bobbie…

AL HODGSON: Well, you know, I like MK. But I, but he, he had a bad habit though….

[Here the recording abruptly ENDS. The "bad habit" above was MK's dropping in to see Al after ten o'clock at night, BTW. See below for more….]

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END OF AUDIO MP3 RECORDING FILE. After this the conversation continued on for about ten more minutes, but it was officially off-record and so we will leave out any kind of summary. See below for a few follow-up questions.
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BONUS QUESTIONS, Feb. 19-28th, 2010!

Via email we asked Mr. Hodgson a few more questions, and for more elaboration. More may follow, but we'll see. We asked...

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hi again, Al. There are a few questions I realize now I should have asked you. Perhaps some day we can do a second round?

Al, how well did you know Ray Wallace, or did hear about him around the Willow Creek community? What were your encounters with him like? What are your feelings or knowledge about the idea that he hoaxed many of those early Bluff Creek footprint finds, from 1958 to 1967? Did you ever hear about hoaxing of Bigfoot being done by anyone else around here at that time?

AL HODGSON: Good morning Steve. To answer your question referring to Ray Wallace.... Yes I knew him, in fact for several years, but not real well. He had the reputation of being a prankster. He had a recording about Bigfoot and [what] was supposed to be of Bigfoot [howls, etc.] on one of the old 45 records with the big hole in the center, and was angry because I didn't want them. Another time he brought two huge casts in and wanted me to put them in one of our windows. Must have been about two foot long and 10 or 12 wide. I think he knew a lot about Bigfoot, but I couldn't tell which was true and was not.

We knew his brother Shorty as well as his wife. Our kids went to school together and Cub scouts. I still have some of his letters he wrote to me. There were a lot of stories about him and what he had done, but I don't know a thing that I could lay at his feet.

How well do you know your neighbor Jay Rowland? If you could get to know him real well, he knows a lot, but Jay is kind of funny. However, he knew Ray a lot better than I did. He worked for Shorty Wallace and stayed up there during the week in a tent. I understand when he came out of his tent one morning there were fresh tracks around his tent.

Image: Ray Wallace with his silly roadside attraction collection of "Bigfoot" track casts. Wait, doesn't that look a bit like Rant Mullens with the Wallace casts? Oh, the conspiracy thickens! Historical.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So, do you have any recollection of when Ray or Shorty were actually in the area living or working up on the Bluff Creek projects? If so, do any of these correspond with the times of the Jerry Crew tracks of 1958, the Onion Mountain and Blue Creek Mountain footprint trackway finds of 1967, or were they here at the time of the Patterson-Gilmin film? It would be good to rule out some of these things, especially as some of those wooden foot stompers he had do look a lot like some of those 1967 prints. And regarding Ray, did you get the impression he really believed in Bigfoot, or was he just trying to make money off of it or gain attention?

Also, did you ever hear from or of other folks and locals talking about doing hoaxes? I've heard from that Delaney guy whose father used to own the inn in Orleans, and from Joe Ramos of Willow Creek, and a few other old-timers, that they knew of such hoaxing activities. I get the impression that it was considered a fun thing to do while working up in the hills, when those guys were a bit bored or sitting around the campfire at night kidding around after work.

AL HODGSON: I know that Yellow Creek Co. was here about 1956 and that Shorty was here at that time, but they had other jobs, where I don't know. I really don't know. People are talking about wooden feet--I'm sure they have never tried to make tracks. Other than one or two where it was just right, it can't be done, there is no action. You can make one or two if you can place your wooden foot down in on sand and have a place above to do the placement, but to make a string [trackway] and over rough ground [?]. We offered $100,000 to any could do it and we had no takers. I have heard of people saying tracks were a hoax, but I don't know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Thanks for your time on these questions. You know I could probably ask them for weeks and never get to the end of it. Anyway, could you tell me anything about this...?

I'm wondering, can you recreate the conversation you had with Roger Patterson and what happened that night after they had gotten the film up in Bluff Creek? I mean, what did Roger say, how did he act, what kinds of things did you, Syl McCoy, Roger and Bob talk about in that one to two hours (as you'd said) time you spent that night (at the ranger station, right?) before they went back up to their camp?

I'm curious--after they called you on the phone, where did you meet them, who was there, and where did you go to talk further? What was Syl's perspective? Was Frances there, or your sons?

Images: Roger Patterson with track casts;, Historical.

We know the basics. He called you up and said, Al I filmed that son of a buck! And your wife Frances had said something like, either he had really seen a Bigfoot or he was on LSD. Right? Stuff like that we know; but is there any more to the story that many may not have ever heard? What was the sequence of events? Do you know what their possible plans were, I mean, before they got rained out up in Bluff Creek?

Also, can you recall any other things that Roger and you had talked about over the years that may not have been published before? Or, do you have any impressions or stories about him you could tell? I'm sure you understand, but because there is so little left of Roger other than the film, his book, and a few stories, and because he died so young, we're all hungry for any little tidbit of knowledge or appreciation we can get of the guy. I mean, especially from YOU, someone who knew him. THANKS!

AL HODGSON: xxxxxxxxxxx [Answer not yet received. We will post it here along with any follow-up question when Al has had the time to reply.]

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Researcher Cliff Barackman has blogged about our Al Hodgson Interview recently, twice actually. Check his blog, NORTH AMERICAN BIGFOOT... on Part One HERE, and on Part Two HERE. You'll get a bit more history and a few cool images of Al Hodgson as well. Be sure to check out Cliff's record of the 1963 Al Hodgson footprint find from the Notice Creek/Bluff Creek area HERE. Cliff's main site, which you should view and bookmark, is http://www.northamericanbigfoot.com/.

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WATCH THIS BLOG IN THE FUTURE FOR A POSSIBLE SECOND INTERVIEW WITH AL.

We realize that a lot of this interview focused on certain minutiae and esoterica particular to the bigfooting community. We hope to ask Al more general and historical questions in the next one, hopefully revealing more about his personal history and the background from which “Big Foot” was born.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

... is still hibernating this week.

Oh wait! He just rolled over in his sleep and muttered, "Skeptics, my ass!"

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Con-texts of this blog, save for archival or historical images (fair use, for research only), copyright 2010, Bigfoot Books Intergalactic and Steven Streufert. Please feel free to quote with citation and link to this blog included.