Here's Something

Kevin Reed

Bigfoot on the KP

When I was 10 years old or so, I collected books on shark attacks, UFOs, World Records, the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and stuff like that. That was back when people still talked about UFOs being silver, saucer-like disks that landed and whisked hapless individuals off into space to be probed before returning to Earth.

Remember the Bermuda Triangle? Where’d that go? Just sort of went away. Bigfoot made a comeback recently with those two jokers in Georgia claiming to have a dead speciman in their freezer, except that they wouldn’t let anyone see it.

Of course not. That’s how psuedoscience works. No evidence.

Along these lines, it was fascinating to learn of a Bigfoot sighting on the KP, documented on the web in 1998, concerning a sighting in 1979. Back in 1979, of course, Bigfoot was still a hot item. Topical. Why, there was even a bionic Bigfoot that starred with Lee Majors as a guest character on the Six Million Dollar Man TV show, jumping off 3-story buildings and foiling evildoers, eventually getting its own spinoff show. I remember the Bigfoot action figure as well.

In 1979, west of Vaughn, on Rocky Bay Point Road, a family saw an “upright figure covered in black hair” walking across the road. The time was somewhere between 8 and 10 at night. This creature was “like a hideous ape with arms dragging,” and was estimated to be over 6’ 9” tall. I think it’s terrific that we have our very own KP Bigfoot sighting, yet another dash of Americana right here at home.

Of course, if you believe in Bigfoots roaming around, it’s a bit strange that there have been no more Bigfoot sightings out here since then. It seems more likely that the sighting was of a very common occupant of our area, the black bear. Certainly explains the black hair and dragging arms. Because I’m pretty sure Bigfoot’s arms are the normal human length, at least per the only film we seem to have of the beast in the last 50 years. Most of us have seen that 1967 film footage of a suposedly “female” Bigfoot walking through a forest in California someplace, looking back at the camera.

Today, this looks oddly like a guy nicknamed something like Tater-head trudging through a logged forest in an old Hollywood gorilla suit. In the film footage, Bigfoot’s arms are pretty much people length, certainly nothing that would drag on the ground. You know what else is odd? Don’t you think, that in 41 years, with the legion of video-camera equipped, Snicker bar dropping, bug-slapping tourists seeping through all the forests of the northwest and California, that not one of them have produced a scrap of new video of this mythical critter? Or even a clear photograph!

We have shots of rare insects, giant salamanders, rare mammels, and we find skulls and bones from every animal that we know about, but oddly no Bigfoots in that mix. Huh. The only photos we do have look like they were taken by a cough-syrup-addicted knucklehead tumbling head over heels down a wooded slope, snapping photos all the way down.

Why? Cause thar ain’t no Bigfoots! But we do have lots and lots of black bears, so remember that it’s summer and they’ll be looking for water, maybe in your back yard. If you see one that looks like a Bigfoot, stand really still (at a safe distance) and try to focus the camera before you snap the photo. The whole world would love to see a clear photo of a Bigfoot.

Kevin Reed lives in Lakebay.