Sasquatch sightings in northwest British Columbia: Is it the beer up here?
See also: Sasquatch sightings are still a hot B.C. trend
After spending the past couple of decades pushed to the sidelines while jazzier unexplained phenomena like crop circles, alien abductions, and UFO reports grabbed all the attention, North America’s elusive, hairy ape-man is back, baby.
Community newspapers along a stretch of remote highway in northern B.C. were filled with reports of Sasquatch sightings in 2008, signaling something of a pop culture comeback for the mythical, furry beast.
One of the most recent reports took place on the night of Dec. 2, when two Mormon missionaries saw what they believe were a set of Sasquatch footprints outside their home in Burns Lake, B.C. The 20-inch-long prints were discovered in front of their porch, leading to the path to their woodshed.
“The first thing we thought was that someone was playing a trick on us,” eyewitness Tyler Beck told Houston Today.
“But we don’t know anyone our age who would do that and our house is on the southside, so pretty much in the middle of nowhere.”
The report followed a spate of sightings in the Bulkley Valley and beyond over the summer. A Terrace, B.C., resident, Larry Sommerfield, a Sasquatch hunter, told the Terrace Standard he’d come into possession of a 16-inch-long cast of what he claimed was a Sasquatch footprint – taken in mid-August near a gravel pit outside of town, not far from the Gitaus subdivision.
There were also three Sasquatch sightings in the aboriginal community of Moricetown, a Gitksan village perched above a steep, narrow river canyon in northwest B.C.
Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research is still trying to verify those sightings. One woman who called on Oct. 31 – Hallowe’en – said there had been a rash of Sasquatch sightings there. She’d even seen one of the massive, human-like creatures pass in front of her as she walked to her mailbox.
Another woman in Moricetown told her she’d seen one peek into someone else’s window.
“Since I got the initial call, I’ve had no other information,” Vike said, according to the Standard.
In late July a Houston, B.C. woman, Delores Harrie, awoke early one morning when her dogs began barking at something outside the door, rattling the handle. When she eventually opened the door, her dogs shot out, chasing something. She saw a 7 or 8-foot-tall creature on two legs walking the the side of her house.
“It was huge and it had long hair. Not fur – kind of like the kind you see on an ox and a reddish brown, the colour of the trees that are killed by the pine beetle,” she said. It moved quickly, and disappeared into the woods, her dogs in hot pursuit.
Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot (by Americans, mostly), Bukw’s and a host of other First Nations names, is the legendary, hairy, ape-like creature said to inhabit the forests of the northwest.
Considered shy and possibly dangerous, the beast is a North American version of the Yeti or the Abominable Snowman. But covered in thick, brown-black fur instead of white like his Himalayan cousin, and standing six-and-a-half to eight feet tall. The Sasquatch is probably best known for leaving sizable footprints or tufts of reddish-brown, or brown-black hair skeptics dismiss as belonging to black bears. The creature is possibly a herbivore or roving omnivore that forages but doesn’t hunt, and is thought to have a large migratory range.
The the word “Sasquatch” is Coast Salish in origin. The Katzie First Nation of the Fraser Valley, for instance, use the words Sacsquec or Saskehavas.
It’s difficult to predict if the sudden rash of sightings will continue in the coming year. But to me, the goings on in northern B.C. were a welcome respite from all the serious, gloom-and-doom news stories of 2008. And no doubt they were a welcome diversion to the folks of northwest B.C., who have been living in a recession long before it became fashionable and could probably use the smiles and water cooler discussions these stories brought them.
Related post: Sasquatch sightings are still a hot B.C. trend, new footprints suggest
