The Work of John Green

The Ape and the IM Index
From the book "The Best of Sasquatch-Bigfoot" by John Green
Used with permission

The first four chapters of this book deal with significant events in the Sasquatch/Bigfoot investigation in the twenty-first century, but the others are a reprinting, without updating, of two books, "On The Track of the Sasquatch" and "Encounters with Bigfoot," that in various versions have been continuously in print since 1968. Paradoxically, it is the fact that I wrote much of them so long ago that makes them uniquelt relevant in 2004. Although the story is actually much older, reports of outsize humanlike footprints and huge upright-walking animals first attracted attention in 1958 when a cast of a "Bigfoot" print was made and publicized, and became more widely known in 1967 when a man named Roger Patterson took a 16 mm movie purporting to show on of the creatures. In those days such reports made news, but in recent years new evidence for the existence of the Sasquatch is usually ignored by the media. Proof that a bipedal ape shares this continent with humanity is apparently considered so big a story that it can't possibly be true. The headlines now are reserved for stories of the opposite kind, claims of proof that the Bigfoot tracks and the movie were just fakes after all. Not many people were involved in investigations on site either in 1958 or in 1967, and only two people took part in both, the late Bob Titmus and myself. Bob never wrote of his experiences, so my books were the only equivalent of that courtroom staple, the investigator's notes made at the time. At the end of 2002 newspapers and TV networks all over the world had a field day with a yarn that all the footprints were faked by a man who had just died, so Bigfoot was also dead. Even though the story was obvious nonsense its effects will last a long time, stopping witnesses from risking ridicule by making their stories public, and discouraging scientists who might be considering getting involved in the investigation. That fiasco is dealt with in full in a later chapter. As for the movie, attempts to debunk it come along every year or so, usually contradicting each other. It became widely believed in Hollywood that the man who changed the faces of the actors in the "Planet of the Apes" movies also created the creature in the Bigfoot film. He apparently never denied it while he was working, but after he retired he told Sasquatch investigator Bobbie Short, on tape, "I was the best but I wasn't that good!" The prestigious Wildlife Unit of the BBC also took a hand in the debunking game. They succeeded in making themselves look foolish by showing a pitiful attempt at a re-creation of the Patterson movie with a man in an ape suit, and by claiming as proof of fakery a copy of a letter dated after the movie was made which indicated that Roger made money by selling rights to show it. Who wouldn't? Another wing of the BBC had been one of the earliest to ante up. Why anyone would argue that selling something of value proved that it wasn't genuine is hard ot understand. More recently, a book was published in which the author claimed to have found the man who wore the ape suit in the movie, and the man who sold the suit to Roger Patterson. In each case there was no evidence, just one person's story, and the two men described two totally different suits. The man who claimed to have worn the suit said Roger had made it by skinning a dead horse. It was in three pieces and it stunk. The man who claimed to have made the suit said it consisted of six pieces and was made of modern materials. Paradoxically, this silly attempt to prove that Patterson hoaxed his film led to the discovery that the movie itself has always contained proof that it does not show a man in a suit. One of the things that the supposed suit maker is quoted as saying is that the way to make the arms in the suit look longer than human arms is to extend the gloves of the suit on sticks. Many people have noted that the arms of the creature in the film look unusually long, almost as long as its legs. Some, including myself in 1968, have published estimates of their length. No one went on to deal with the question of how human arms could be extended to match the extra length and what such an extension would look like. There is no way to establish for certain if any of the dimensions estimated for the creature in the film are accurate, but what can be established with reasonable accuracy is the length of the creature's legs and arms in relation to one another. From that ratio it is simple to calculate how many inches must be added to the arms of a man of known size in order to make them long enough to fit in the supposed suit. In my own case the answer turned out to be about 10 inches. But in order for the arms to bend at the elbow, which they plainly do in the movie, all of that extra length has to be added to the lower arm. The result, in my case, is about 12 inches of arm above the elbow and 29 inches below it-an obvious monstrosity. The creature in the movie has normal-looking arms. It cannot be a man in a suit! Many issues in the long debate about the movie remain unresolved-what the film speed was, whether a man could duplicate the creature's unusual bent-kneed walk, whether its behavior was normal for an animal, whether the tracks left on the sandbar could have been faked, and so on-but all of them turn out to have been irrelevant to the main issue. My measurements of the film, made 36 years ago, gave the creature arms that were 30 inches from the shoulder to the wrist and legs that were 35 inches from the hip to the ground. My own measurements are about 24 inches from shoulder to wrist and 40 inches from hip to ground. Scientists studying primates use almost identical measurements, the only difference being that they measure to the ankle joint rather than the bottom of the foot, to establish what is called the intermembral index, which is one of the things used to distinguish one primate from another. Gorillas and chimpanzees, with arms longer than their legs, have average indices of 117 and 107 respectively. The average human IM index is around 70. Only the ratios of the measurements matter, actual size makes no difference. Establishing an accurate IM index for the creature in the film is difficult, since no one frame shows all of both the upper and lower limbs at right angles to the camera, but it can be done, in fact a computerized study of the creature's walk done for the TV documentary "Sasquatch, Legend Meets Science" has already done it. Using sophisticated forensic animation software to follow points on the creature's body and limbs as it moves through 116 frames of the movie, the computer was able to produce pictures of its skeleton showing an IM index between 85 and 90. Forensic animator Reuben Steindorf's comment after studying the film was that making it using a man in a suit would require a lot of mechanisms not available in the 1960s. It would have to have been a highly funded project and there would have to have been trailing electric cables attached to the creature somewhere. In short, it couldn't be a man in a suit. A study of a lesser number of frames by Dr. Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy professor at Idaho State University, produced a similar result, and he also noted that besides bending its elbows the figure in the film flexes both its wrists and it fingers, "all but ruling out the possibility that an artificial arm extension could be involved." It will no doubt take a while before the impact of the IM index makes itself felt among primatologists, but they can hardly ignore one of their own standard measurements when it tells them that there really is a giant higher primate to be found in North America.

The Bluff Creek Tracks
By John Green, from the Texas Bigfoot Report
March 1st, 2003

Maybe it's time for a history lesson before the last available witness, which I seem to be, passes on. The tracks that were observed in the Bluff Creek drainage in northern California in the 1950's are not just another set of tracks that can easily be set aside as something tainted by claims of fakery while other tracks are still presumed to be genuine. They are the base layer of the bedrock on which the whole investigation is founded. Their importance goes far beyond the fact that they started the process of bringing the subject to widespread public attention and saddled it with the ridicule-prone name of "Bigfoot." For all the books and websites and investigating organizations this subject has spawned and the huge public following it now has, it still involves only two facts that cannot be contested. One is that thousands of people claim to have encountered huge, hair-covered bipedal primates. The other is that something makes huge, humanlike footprints. Of all the reported encounters, in only one case is there a backing of solid photographic evidence. That evidence comes from Bluff Creek:
Far more tracks have been seen and cast and photographed at Bluff Creek than anywhere else.
Repeated observations of tracks of identifiable individuals have been documented at Bluff Creek far more than anywhere else.
The tracks at Bluff Creek have been investigated more thoroughly and by more people and over a longer period than anywhere else.
More top-quality casts and photographs of tracks have been made at Bluff Creek than anywhere else.
The tracks at Bluff Creek appeared at a time and place when and where there was no knowledge of anything to imitate, circumstances that can never occur again. The Bluff Creek tracks started the life-long quests of Bob Titmus, who found more solid evidence than anyone else, and Roger Patterson, who took the only good movie. Like most British Columbians, I grew up familiar with stories of Sasquatch giants and I had begun to investigate them seriously before Jerry Crew made his famous cast, but it was at Bluff Creek that I first saw that the huge tracks are real, and trying to establish what makes them is what I have been doing ever since. For those whose familiarity with this subject may not go back that far, a few facts: The big tracks started appearing overnight when a construction crew was building a road along the west side of the uninhabited Bluff Creek valley in the summer of 1958. They showed up every few days not just in the loose dirt on the road, but also digging deeply into the harder surface of the steep sidehill at places above the road and below it. After some weeks Jerry Crew, a bulldozer operator, got from a taxidermist friend, Bob Titmus, instructions and material to make a cast of one of the prints. A picture of Jerry holding the cast appeared in a newspaper in Eureka, and went out on the wire all over the continent. With it was a story in which the name "Bigfoot" was first published. On seeing the picture in a Canadian newspaper I immediately drove to Bluff Creek to investigate, saw a few old but impressive tracks, talked to Jerry Crew, Bob Titmus and other witnesses and inspected the terrain the tracks traversed, on and off the road. Those tracks were roughly 16 inches long and matched very closely a tracing I had of a cast of one of the tracks found at the scene of a Sasquatch sighting report in British Columbia in 1941. A few weeks later I got a letter from Bob Titmus saying that he and another man had found and cast distinctly different tracks, roughly 15 inches long, on a sandbar in the creek below where the road crew was working. I immediately returned to Bluff Creek and saw for myself that these new tracks were impressed about an inch deep in damp sand packed so hard that my own prints hardly marked it and that they were in a situation where the use of any sort of machinery to make them appeared to be impossible. It is carvings of those tracks, not the 16-inch "Bigfoot" tracks that a nephew of Ray Wallace has displayed in photographs. They are fitted with straps so they can be walked on like snowshoes, but like snowshoes there is no way that human weight could impress them deeply into hard material. In the next year and a half I was back at Bluff Creek several more times, spending about six weeks in all, and saw the 15" tracks in three more locations and also a third type of tracks, about 14" long, in another location east of Bluff Creek. I never saw the 16" track again at Bluff Creek but did see tracks that resembled it farther south at Hyampom in 1963. It was also reported seen frequently in 1963 and 1964 when logging was going on in the Bluff Creek valley, and Roger Patterson made a good cast of it there in 1964. The 15" tracks were also repeatedly seen, and were photographed and cast by a number of people in that period. Sometimes they were accompanied by tracks roughly 13", and Rene Dahinden and I saw those tracks together in three different places at Bluff Creek in 1967, in one instance being able to study hundreds of both tracks. Later in 1967 Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin went to Bluff Creek, because of the tracks Rene and I had seen, and not only got a movie of the creature but watched it making tracks which they later cast. These tracks were also approximately 14". If it is the same as the 14" from years before then there are at least four distinct tracks that have been observed at Bluff Creek, if it is different then there are five. There is also a 12" track usually discounted because it is within human range. For all of these, while they remain recognizable as individuals, there is a considerable range of shapes, toe positions, length of stride, etc., conforming to slopes, obstacles and other influences. Those are the Bluff Creek tracks that I know about. Over the years there were, of course, far more that I didn't see; many other people who investigated them; hundreds who went just to see for themselves after being told about them, and some who reported coming on them far from any road when they were timber cruising or road locating. Ray Wallace is connected to all this in only two ways that have been established. The men who first reported the 16" tracks were his employees, and it was the Bluff Creek events that started him on his long career, mainly after he moved to Washington, of producing and trying to sell crudely-faked track casts and photographs and telling outrageous whoppers about his adventures with "Bigfoots." Ray wasn't around any of the times I went to Bluff Creek and I never met him, but I was told right from the beginning of his reputation as a practical joker and yarn spinner, the latter being was amply confirmed when he phoned me and wrote letters to me over the years. There were people in California, of course, who were sure the footprints had to be faked, and some of them fingered Ray Wallace as the person they "knew" had done it, but I have outlined the massive task that would have been involved, and no evidence was ever brought forward of any way that anyone could have done it.

The Bluff Creek Tracks Continued

A magazine publisher in the East, who may not even have known that Ray had moved away before most of the events took place, pronounced a few years ago that the people who investigated at Bluff Creek were blind fools and that Ray had faked all the tracks. He also proclaimed that Ray Wallace had told Roger Patterson just where to go to get his movie. He knew that because Ray wrote and told him so. By accident or design it was this man whose comments were sought by a Seattle reporter when Ray's son announced after his death that Ray had told the family he had done the deed. Maybe Ray did tell them that, but it was a claim he never made in public, so he never risked being called upon to prove that he could do it. And whether the fault lies with Ray or with the next generation, the photographs they displayed indicate members of the Wallace family today don't know what the original "Bigfoot" tracks looked like. It is that sort of "evidence" that started a media storm in which the story grew and twisted until the world was told that not just all of the footprints, but also the Patterson movie, were fakes produced by Ray Wallace. And it is on that basis that people, some of whom even claim to take this subject seriously and continue to accept far less well-tested evidence, are now using the term "the Wallace tracks." They aren't the Wallace tracks, they are the Bluff Creek tracks. Maybe I've lived too long. I don't yet have a grave to roll over in.



Recent Developments
From the book "The Best of Sasquatch-Bigfoot" by John Green
Used with permission

Since "On The Track of the Sasquatch" was last revised there have been huge changes in the overall picture. In the late 60s I was in touch with almost all of the few people who were investigating this subject, and all of us together probably knew of less than 100 sighting reports. After Roger Patterson's film caught public attention a lot more reports began to come to light, until I was recording about 100 sightings or footprint finds each year. Still we always suspected that the great majority of incidents never became generally known because most of the people involved did not know of anywhere to report then without being ridiculed. With the growth of the internet that situation has turned upside down. There are many websites where people are asked to submit such reports, anonymously if they choose. I don't know of anyone who tries to monitor all the sites, but Matt Moneymaker's Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization alone gets at least half a dozen reports a day. A lot of them are obviously from pranksters, and trying to sort out the less-obvious fakes from the genuine information is a major task, but what remains must be more than a thousand reports a year. For a dozen years I worked at getting all the information I had into a computer database and by the spring of 2001 I had worked all the way through my back files and had more than 4,000 entries, but by then it was also obvious that I could no longer keep up with the data that was available on line. The new reports have cleared up one anomaly. From the state of Colorado, with a sea of mountains and a hockey team that displays Bigfoot tracks on the shoulders of its uniforms, I did not record a really substantial report in 40 years. More recently many reports have surfaced there, several of them among the best from anywhere. There is a somewhat similar situation with reference to the province of Alberta, except that most of the new information comes not from the internet but from years of dedicated investigation by Tom Steenburg, author of "The Sasquatch in Alberta" and "Sasquatch: Bigfoot The Continuing Mystery." The most interesting thing about the flood of new information, however, is that the majority of the reports do not come from the traditional areas at all. There are far more reports from east of the Mississippi than there are from the west of the continental divide. I have done enough investigating to satisfy myself that the evidence from the Midwest, East and South is on a par with what I am familiar with in the West, but reports from those areas are not the subject of this book. The other huge change is in the attitude of some of the scientists. For many years Dr. Grover Krantz was the only physical anthropologist willing to gamble his career by publicly being a full participant in the Sasquatch investigation, and there were no zoologists involved at all. The small group that gathered for the first viewing after Roger Patterson got his remarkable movie in the fall of 1967 did not include anyone with scientific credentials. It was a different story in the fall of 2000 when the BFRO organized a group effort at a place called Skookum Meadows east of Mount St. Helens and brought back evidence perhaps equal in importance to the Patterson movie: a huge cast made where a large animal had left limb and heel prints in a mud patch. One of the three men who found the print was a zoologist, Dr. Leroy Fish, and among the five additional people assembled when the cast was being cleared of its coating of dirt I was the only one without a doctor's degree. The impression was found where the men had placed some fruit at night in the middle of a patch of soft mud surrounded by mud that had already dried hard. They were hoping to get footprints if a Sasquatch was attracted to the fruit. When they returned a few hours later the fruit had indeed been disturbed, but instead of footprints what they found was a set of large, shallow depressions showing hair patterns, and a variety of holes were identified as elk and coyote tracks, others were a puzzle. It took a while for the men to come to the conclusion that a Sasquatch had sat down at the edge of the soft mud, leaving the impressions of slightly more than half its buttocks and one thigh plus several prints where it had moved its heel around, and had leaned over onto a forearm as it reached across with the other arm towards the fruit. Successfully casting all of such a large impression would normally have been out of the question, but one of the three men, Rick Noll, was a professional cast maker as well as a long time Sasquatch investigator, and had with him a couple of hundred pounds of exceptionally strong plaster. Using aluminum tent poles for bracing, they made what became know as the "Skookum cast," preserving all the evidence except some apparent scratch marks near the fruit. As with the original impression in the mud, the significance of the cast is not obvious at first glance, except for the humanlike heel shapes sticking up from it. Plainly something large and hair-covered had set itself down in the mud, but there are elk in the area and elk tracks in the cast. Careful examination, however rules out all the common animals. Certainly no part of an elk could match the obvious Achilles tendon of the best heel print. Professor Jeff Meldrum from Idaho State University, a physical anthropologist whose special study is the evolution of bipedal walking, took on the job of cleaning up the cast. He spent several days meticulously picking away the dirt adhering to it and in the process collected a lot of pieces of animal hair, but only a very few of them proved to be interesting. The most important thing he was able to do was to determine the location of the joints in the thigh and forearm impressions, which showed the bones to be half again as long as those of a six-foot man. Besides Dr. Meldrum, I am in close touch with two other scientists who are publicly committed to the Sasquatch investigation, zoologists Dr. John Bindernagel and Dr. Henner Fahrenbach. Dr. Bindernagel, with 30 years field experience in many parts of the world, set out to determine if what Sasquatch witnesses reported added up to a believable animal. He found that it did. Further, as noted in his book "North America's Great Ape, the Sasquatch," he learned that some seemingly unlikely behaviors the witnesses described are shared with one or other of the known great apes. Significantly, some of those shared behaviors turned up in Sasquatch reports before they were observed by scientists studying the other apes. Dr. Fahrenbach did a statistical analysis of the footprint dimensions in my computer database and found that when plotted on a graph they form the normal bell curve that would be expected of a species of real animals. He has also specialized in the study of hair, and has found a number of suspected Sasquatch hairs from widely divided locations that don't match hairs from known animals but do match each other. Unfortunately the hairs have so far failed to provide suitable material for DNA identification. Jeff Meldrum had earlier laid to rest a concern felt by some laymen like myself that someday an expert in foot anatomy would demonstrate that supposed Sasquatch tracks showing long toes and those showing short toes could not both be genuine.


Recent Developments continued

Instead, after examining all the track casts and photos he could locate, he determined that not only were the tracks consistent anatomically, they also showed an ability to bend in the middle that human feet (and one-piece wooden feet) do not have. Better yet, he found that the tracks dictated a style of walking different from that of humans, but exactly like that of the creature in the Patterson movie. He has also continued the investigation initiated by Grover Krantz of fingerprint-like skin ridges found on a few footprint casts made in particularly fine material at widely-separated locations. Skin ridges of this sort do not occur on the feet of animals other than primates. They might be considered a non-slip surface for tree-climbers that have no claws. This work recently caught the attention of a police fingerprint expert from Texas, Jimmy Chilcutt, who had made a study of such "dermatoglyphics" on the feet of humans and apes. Thinking he could prove that the footprint casts were faked, he examined them, found that they showed the same unique pattern, and pronounced that they were proof of the existence in North America of an unknown great ape. Also on the scientific front, and ironically at the same time that the media were going ape over the yarn that Bigfoot had died with Ray Wallace, a really important story was published in one newspaper, broadcast one one cable network and totally ignored by everyone else. That story was about prominent figures in zoology and anthropology who are now saying that the Sasquatch evidence deserves serious study. On January 5, 2003, the Denver Post devoted several pages, including half the front page, to stories by Theo Stein, their environment writer, in which he quoted a series of primate experts giving thei stamp of approval:
"As far as I am concerned the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real possibility."-Dr. Jane Goodall, world famous for her studies of chimpanzees
"There have been so many sightings over the years. Even if you throw out 95 percent of them, there ought to be some explanation for the rest. The same goes for some of these tracks."-Dr. George Schaller, director of science for the Wildlife Conservation Society and first scientist to do a major study of wild mountain gorillas
"I think a serious scientific enquiry is definitely warranted:"-Dr. Esteban Sarmiento, primate specialist at the American Museum of Natural History
"I'm not one to pooh-pooh the potential that these large apes may exist:"-Dr. Russel Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and chairman of the Primate Specialist Group
"It's not conclusive, but it's consistent with what you'd expect to see if a giant biped sat down in the mud:"-Dr. Daris Swindler, author of "An Atlas of Primate Gross Anatomy," commenting on the back of a heel and part of the Achilles tendon shown in the Skookum cast
Unlike the Ray Wallace story, this one was not picked up by the Associated Press and no word of it reached readers of other newspapers.

Also in January 2003, the U.S. Discovery Channel aired a one-hour documentary produced by Doug Hajicek of White Wolf Entertainment and titled "Sasquatch, Legend Meets Science." The show included footage of all the people mentioned except Drs. Goodall and Mittermeier. It also called on the expertise of specialists in animation to study the gait of the creature in the Patterson movie, which they determined did indeed have a very non-human way of walking. It was also noted to have a bump that rose and fell on its right thigh which appeared to indicate a type of hernia sometimes suffered by human sprinters.

In the documentary Dr. Swindler went well beyond the statement quoted in the Denver Post, saying: "In my opinion the impression is not made by a deer, a bear or an elk nor was it made artificially. The Skookum body cast is that of an unknown hominoid primate." Like the Post story the documentary was not mentioned by other media, but unlike the story it will continue to be shown on television and is available in other forms.


On Tne Scent Of The Sasquatch
By John Green

It is common knowledge that Sasquatches are reported to have a strong and unpleasant smell-in Florida they are commonly called "skunk apes." It is probably also well known, at least to the readers of newsletters, that strong smells are not always reported; but ia this just because the witnesses were not in a position to smell anything, or because Sasquatches do not always smell bad? To contribute some information for anyone interested in this question, here are the results of an analysis of reports from the western part of North America that I have entered in my computer. In 923 descriptions of supposed Sasquatches, only 72 mention a strong smell. Nine mention a mild smell and eight state specifically that the animals had no smell. Strong smells were mentioned in less than eight percent of reports. This percentage is fairly consistent throughout the American states, percentages being: Washington, 9%; Oregon,11%; California, 8%; and the average for eight other western states, 8.5%. The percentage in Canada is lower. In British Columbia and Alberta strong smells are mentioned in only 4.5% of reports. The number of descriptions involved, 217, would appear to be large enough so that the different percentage may have some significance, but it is hard to imagine what it could be. Absence of a report of a strong smell obviously has no significance if the witness was a good distance away or was inside a building or vehicle. Restricting the survey to reports where it would seem that the witness should have noticed a strong smell if one was present gives the following results.
In contact with the animal: strong smell 5, mild 0, no smell, 5.
Less than 5 feet away, in same air: 0, *2, 3.
Estimated 5 feet away: " " " 4, 1, 4.
Estimated 10 feet away: " " " 5, 1, 14.

Up to 5 feet the percentage of strong smells, in 24 reports, is 37.5%. At 10 feet, in 20 reports, the percentage drops to 25%.
With some animals strong smells are associated only with the adult males. Most Sasquatch reports do not involve any identification of sex, but it is usually assumed that most are males. My files contain only one report in which a Sasquatch is identified as a female and said to have a strong smell.
*A single report, that of Albert Ostman, has a disproportionate effect on the statistics. He claims to have been carried home by an adult male and then to have been close to a young male and a young female. In conversation, although not in his written account, he said that the adult male had a strong smell, the two juveniles mild smells. If his account is left out the number of reports of mild smells drops to seven, and the percentage of strong smells reported in British Columbia drops to 4%.


Witness Activities
By John Green

Prominent figures in any debate as to whether Sasquatch exist are the hunters/trappers/prospectors/etc. who have spent a lifetime in the woods without seeing one of evidence of one. It is a fact that most people involved in these activities do not report having seen anything, but it is also a fact that some do, and that their reports represent a significant proportion of the total. In the 1,340 Western reports in my computer, 1,301 activities by witnesses are identified. Of these 139 were not accidental, in that the witnesses had gone looking for what they had found because someone else, whose activity is not identified, had seen something before them, or, in few cases, because they were specifically "Sasquatch hunting." Of the remaining 1,162 activities, more than 10 percent, 125 witnesses, were hunting; 34 were logging; 23 were prospecting; 10 were trapping, and another 77 were involved in various outdoor occupations. Altogether these account for almost a quarter of all reports. When it comes to finding tracks this group plays an even larger role, accounting for 38 percent of track reports. Their information is significant, also, in that they are more likely than the average witness to have considerable familiarity with wildlife (by a ratio of 17 to 10), and to have made their observation under good conditions of lighting, time and distance (43% compared to 25%). Hunters rank second only to hikers in finding tracks (30 to 36), and to people in cars in reporting sightings (95 to 209). Other commom activities for people reporting sightings include: at home, 85; outside on foot, 72; camping, 65; walking, 61; hiking, 48; fishing, 38; working outdoors, 33; on boats, 26 (plus 14 fishing from boats); logging, 18; prospecting, 17; inside a building, 17; on horseback, 16; flying, 12; on a motorcycle, 11, and playing outside, 9. Obviously there are a lot of different ways these categories can be combined, for instance everyone travelling by motor vehicle, 271, including snowmobiling (9) and on a train (4); or everyone travelling on foot, 182, including jogging (1). There are significant overlaps. People fishing from boats are automatically in two categories, and most hunters, for instance, would be either on foot or in a vehicle. For some reports both categories are specified, but for most only one. Something else to take into account is the number of people who are engaged in each activity. Nowadays many more people travel in vehicles than on foot, and the number of potential witnesses in buildings must be much greater than the number in vehicles. Perhaps statisticians can determine whether or not these figures relate appropriately to what could be expected in encounters with a real animal. I don't have that expertise, but the relationships do seem reasonable to me.
John Green, December 1995


White Bigfoots
By John Green

I have 1,660 Sasquatch sighting reports in the computer in which a color was mentioned. The number of white ones is 77, or 4.63%, or one out of 22. There is an east-west difference. Only 28 white in 846 western reports, 3.31%; 49 in 814 eastern reports, 6.02%. The database doesn't contain any information specific to albinism. I can not recall even one description of a white Sasquatch, or any Sasquatch with either pink or light blue eyes, but the eye color is seldom seen. There is no correlation between northern latitude and the percentage of white Sasquatches. You can't split the data along lines of latitude across the continent because the area involved in the west is considerably farther north than that in the east, but in each case there is a higher percentage of white reports in the southern section than in the northern. In the east, white reports south of the 39'th parallel are 6.45%. North of the 41'st parallel the are 6.3%. In the west white reports are 5.03% south of the 44'th parallel and only 3.6% north of the 46'th parallel. With regard to time of year, the results are curious, maybe even significant. The percentage of white reports in winter is approximately double the percentage in summer, in both sections of the continent. In the east white reports are 13.97% of all reports in winter, 6.08% in summer. In the west white reports are 7% in winter and 3.34% in summer. It should be kept in mind, however, that winter reports are rare, so the numbers ivolved are very small, just 13 white out of 93 reports in the east and 7 out of 100 in the west.

Does Sasquatch Migrate? By John Green There has always been speculation that Sasquatches might migrate with the seasons, so it might be possible to establish that they would be passing certain points at certain times of the year. I have looked for evidence of this in my computer entries in three different ways: Relationship of altitude to the time of the year. Relationship of direction of travel to the time of year. Relationship of location to the time of year. None of these has shown any consistent pattern that would indicate migration. Average altitude of incidents is highest in the summer, which is probably normal for most animals, but it is lowest not in the winter but in the spring, and the difference is less than 400 feet. Since human observers also would tend to be at higher altitudes in warmer weather there is probably no significance in these figures. Direction of travel could be expected to be the most promising indicator, since a migratory pattern would surely be south prior to winter weather, and north when winter is over. Alternatively, near the coast, there could be a movement west in the fall and east in the spring. Unfortunately I have only 126 track reports and 82 sighting reports in which direction of travel is indicated. Even making some of these do double duty (counting "northwest", for instance, as both north and west) the numbers are small. There are 14 northbound reports in spring compared to 9 southbound, which looks a bit promising, but in fall there are 27 northbound and only 20 southbound. In fact 54% of the directions noted were northbound, and if that were statisticially valid all Sasquatches would eventually end up in the Arctic Ocean. The only season when a majority headed south was summer, 25 southbound, 19 northbound. East-west results were similar, with 54% headed west, and the greatest imbalance, 21 west to 13 east, coming in the spring when migration theory would have suggested travel in the opposite direction. Looking at location, there is a complete jumble, with the distances involved probably too small to mean anything even if they were consistent. Perhaps the results could be summed up by noting that if the average latitude and longitude is worked out for reports in each of the four seasons, the locations for all four come within a circle just 30 miles in diameter, which, incidentally, is in Oregon just southeast of Portland. For altitude and direction of travel the study used all the reports containing the relevant information, but for location only reports from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and the northern half of California were used. Methods used were amateur in the extreme, since I have only rudimentary abilities both statistical analysis and use of the computer, but I am confident that they would have been adequate to show evidence of migratory behavior if there were any. Elapsed Time Of Reported Sasquatch Sightings By John Green I am indebted to Henner Fahrenbach for the suggestion that the estimated time that a Sasquatch sighting is reported to have lasted might depend on some characteristic of the witness. He raised the possibility that Sasquatches might be attracted to human females and wondered whether observations by females would tend to last longer. A study of 899 sightings reports in my computer came up with the opposite result. For those sightings in which a time was estimated the average for males was 4 minutes, 37 seconds, while the average for females was only 2 minutes, 3 seconds. The difference was obviously enough to be significant, but significant of what? A possible answer is suggested by the fact that the reason a Sasquatch was present does not directly affect the elapsed time of the sighting, nor does it matter how long the Sasquatch was hanging around before it was seen. The clock doesn't start until the witness sees the Sasquatch, and it stops when either the creature or the witness leaves the scene. It might well be that sightings by men lasted longer because men were more likely to stand their ground and continue the observation. A check of sightings when the witness included both men and women gave a figure for elapsed time very close to that for sightings by males, an average of exactly 4 minutes. That opened up a whole new line of questioning, however, since such a sighting automatically has at least two witnesses, while most reports involve only one. Might the time also depend on the number of witnesses? That speculation proved to be a productive one. Sightings by lone males averaged 3 minutes, 18 seconds. Sightings by two men averaged 4 minutes, 12 seconds. Sightings by more than two men averaged 9 minutes, 51 seconds. Reports by more than one women were too few to be significant. Less than 30 percent of sighting reports contain time estimates in figures. Another 60 percent note only that the time was "brief" or "considerable." The trend here is not so marked, but it is the same. The percentage of sightings described as "brief" was 56% for females, and 45% for males. For single males the figure was 50%, for two male witnesses 42%, and for more than two males 32%. People who dismiss Sasquatch sighting reports as lies, mistakes or hallucinations are not noted for giving the matter much thought, but perhaps they should spend a little time on this question: If they are all imaginary what reason would there be for the time estimates to differ according to the sex of the witness or according to the number of witnesses? John Green P.S. In another publication Peter Byrne stated that Sasquatches do not look directly at people, and gave the Patterson movie as an example. This is just nonsense. I have 219 reports in which the witness stated that the Sasquatch was watching them, and the one in the movie turns and looks directly at Patterson, who was so intimidated by the look that he never took another step towards it. Average Heights By John Green I have 1,695 reports on file in which a height in feet is estimated. The average height is 7.41 feet. In the West the average is 7.53 feet and in the East the average is 7.30 feet. Height estimates exceed 10 feet for only 33 individuals, which is just 2 percent of reports. It is assumed that individuals with estimated heights of less than 6 feet are not adults, then average adult height becomes 7.64 feet overall, 7.77 feet in the West and 7.51 feet in the East. There are only 35 reports in which a Sasquatch is identified as a female, only 2 percent of reports. Average female height is 6.94 feet overall, 7.00 feet in the West and 6.83 feet in the East. Bigfoot Did Not Die From the book "The Best Of Sasquatch-Bigfoot" by John Green Used with permission After the death of a man named Ray Wallace in December, 2002, surviving family members told the reporter who wrote his obituary that "Bigfoot" had also died. Ray Wallace, they said, was Bigfoot. He, not a huge, unknown animal, had made the big tracks that were first reported in 1958 on and around a dirt road his company was pushing through the Bluff Creek valley in the northwest corner of California. Family members agreed that they had always known about it and that Ray did it as a joke on his employees, walking around wearing a huge pair of carved wooden feet. For proof one of them showed a photographer just such a pair of carved feet, with strap harness attached. The story was nonsense on the face of it, since everyone who had looked into the subject knew that huge bipedal tracks had been reported from all over North America starting long before Ray Wallace was born. No matter, apparently it was just the sort of tall tale many editors were waiting to see and eager to tell. They were so sure the whole Bigfoot phenomenon had to result from fakery that they rushed into print and on the air proclaiming to the world over and over again that the whole Bigfoot thing was just one man's hoax. Of more than 50 papers that spread the story, and even more radio and TV stations, not one bothered to check its accuracy. Apparently none of them realized what the tracks in question were actually like, and they had no interest in finding out. Had even one of them bothered to learn all that was involved and then asked the Wallaces to show that they could duplicate it all walking around wearing the wooden feet, it would have killed the story they were having so much fun with. I am not saying it can be proved that those tracks were not faked, or that Ray Wallace could not have been involved, but proving that many of the tracks could not possibly have been made in the way the Wallaces described would have been easy. As the tale spread it got even more nonsensical. The Wallaces had said, as just about every Sasquatch inverstigator already knew, that Ray had made fake Bigfoot photos and movies, featuring his wife wearing a fur costume. But they also said that Ray had nothing to do with the famous Bigfoot movie taken by Roger Patterson at Bluff Creek in 1967. The media firestorm. however, eventually made Mrs. Wallace the subject of the Patterson movie, with Ray as the cameraman. One story also had Ray sending younger members of the family as far away as British Columbia equipped with other carved wooden feet, to make all the big footprints ever seen everywhere. And to give an aura of authenticity many of the stories called it a "deathbed confession," although the obituary made no suggestion of any such thing. It was clearly presented as something his survivors had long believed but not as a dying claim by Ray himself. That was strange enough, but what was stranger still, the media became so caught up in shouting that the Bigfoot hoax had been exposed that they would not allow any other voice to be heard. In two months not one newspaper would so much as have a reporter talk to someone, namely me, who told them that he had investigated the original incidents back in 1958, and had ample proof that Ray Wallace and the wooden feet could not have been responsible. To give readers a sample of what kind of story teller Ray Wallace was, here, in part, is a message that I e-mailed to many of the newspapers that had printed the story: "So Ray Wallace supposedly told his family that he created "Bigfoot" by walking around in California with a pair of huge carved wooden feet, and his family supposedly believed him. And the media has now told the whole world that "Bigfoot" was just Ray Wallace. Alright, but shouldn't the world also know what Ray Wallace has said of some of his other achievements?" "Bigfoot used to be very tame, as I have seen him almost every morning on the way to work. I would sit in my pickup and toss apples out of the window to him. He never did catch an apple but he sure tried. Then as he ate the apples I would have my movie camera clipping off more footage of him. I have talked to several movie companies about selling my movies whichi would last for three hours. The best offer I've had so far is $250,000." -Ray Wallace letter to the Klam-ity Kourier, Oct. 1, 1969 "Please send me your correct address. I want to send you a picture of one of the male Mt. St. Helens apes that the loggers took this spring as they were feeding apples to an old pair of BFs and the female was carrying a baby, but she never came close enough for them to get a good picture, they got some close up pictures of this 9 foot tall male, I just borrowed the negatives. I want to send all of the BF researchers a picture." -Ray Wallace letter to John Green, Dec. 2, 1984. (I sent the address but haven't seen any pictures-nor has anyone else!) No editor anywhere printed that information, so I tried a different approach pointing out by e-mail and in some cases also by phone that the claims made in the obituary were a far more successful hoax that any that Ray Wallace had ever carried out while he was alive, and outlining the items of physical evidence available to prove that the story was nonsense. No newspaper would discuss that either. Demonstrations were put on for both CNN and FOX News in which their own people, walking on fiberglass copies of genuine 15" tracks, learned that deep tracks can't be made in firm sand that way, even, in the case of CNN, by two men weighing a combined 440 pounds. The TV people who actually tried it and photographed it were quickly convinced, but in each case when the brief news segments were broadcast that was not mentioned and the Sasquatch researchers were ridiculed for refusing to recognize the reality of the Wallace claims. Finally, in an attempt to reach the public with an account of the true situation, the museum at Willow Creek, California, which has on display casts of many of the tracks involved, offered $100,000 for the first person who could demonstrate how humans could have faked them. That story was sent to 800 editors but except for a few local papers that were approached directly the media ignored it completely. There was nothing new about such an offer except the amount. A $1000 challenge had been issued on TV back in 1958, with no successful takers. I have had a $5,000 offer in print for the past 25 years, with no one even enquiring. The fact is that in the 45 years since the original "Bigfoot" story broke, no one has ever been able to demonstrate how the tracks could have been faked. Where does Ray Wallace fit in? The men who saw the tracks were employed by his company, but he was seldom there. He was based at Willow Creek, a couple of hours from the Bluff Creek project, but his friend Ed Schillinger recalls that he was usually away somewhere trying to drum up future contracts. Bigfoot Did Not Die, Continued Ray did have quite a reputation as a practical joker. Speculation that he had a hand (or foot) in making the tracks surfaced early on, and was by no means ignored, but on investigation was dismissed as being impossible and silly. The problem was to figure out how anyone could have made the tracks, something that hasn't been done to this day. Ray himself issued outraged denials, insisting, as was only common sense, that monstrous footprints showing up on his worksite were disrupting the job and costing him money. Some time later he apparently developed a yen to share the attention Bigfoot had stirred up and began to spin his outrageous yarns. Later still, probably after he had moved back to his old home in Washington State, he began making and selling obviously fake casts. I used to see them at a lodge on Mount St. Helens which also sold my books. One thing that he never did, at least in public, was to claim that he had made the Bluff Creek tracks. Had he done so he would, of course, have been called on to prove he could do it. What about the wooden feet that the current generation of Wallaces have displayed? So far there is nothing to show when in the last 45 years they were made or by whom, and none of them match the shape of the original "Bigfoot." The best pair does match the 15-inch track found later in 1958 on a sandbar in the creek and cast by Bob Titmus. They are somewhat crudely carved, and presumably they were made in imitation of those casts. For them to be accepted as the originals with which the tracks were made someone would have to demonstrate how they could make imprints an inch deep in hard-packed sand and make deep, rounded toe impressions with their shallow, square-carved toes. Were those or any of the other fake feet the Wallaces have shown ever used to make tracks that anyone accepted as genuine? It is certainly possible. This could have been done in soft mud, dirt or sand. Trying to match deep tracks in firm materials by wearing big wooden feet, however, is like trying to do it wearing snowshoes. People who do know some of the problems involved and yet would like to believe that the tracks were faked have come up with some really far-out suggestions: the depth was achieved with false feet mounted on tractor tracks; heavy concrete feet were hauled up and down with logging cables to make tracks on the steep slopes; the long strides were made by hanging onto the back of a moving truck; Ray Wallace faked the tracks of a monster because he wanted to get out of his contract so he was trying to scare his men into abandoning the job. The media obviously believe that possession of big fake feet that can be worn is proof that the owner has used them to perpetrate a hoax, but most of the people I know who have made them, including myself, had the opposite idea. They were made to find out what could be done with them and what could not, and what fake footprints made with rigid, carved feet would look like. And did Ray really tell his family that he had faked all the tracks? I had a reason not to question their claim that he did. I was once present when another notorious yarn spinner told his children and grandchildren an equally outrageous tale. I am told, however, that later his son admitted that Ray had never actually said it, they just assumed it. As to his claim that he told Roger Patterson where to go get his movie, a description he included in a letter to another researcher made it clear that Ray did not even know where that place was or what it looked like. $1,00,000,00 Reward From the book "The Best Of Sasquatch-Bigfoot" by John Green Used with permission Here is the text of the Willow Creek museum offer: $100,000,00 for BIGFOOT TRACKS. One hundred thousand dollars is being offered by the Willow Creek China Flat Museum for anyone who can demonstrate how the "Bigfoot" tracks that were observed in the Bluff Creek valley in northern California in 1958 and later could have been made by a human or humans. This offer is genuine. It is not a joke or a publicity stunt. The money has been arranged for, and the first person or group who can meet the conditions of the offer will receive it. Everyone should understand, however, that the conditions are not easy. The offer is a direct result of recent publicity which has created a perception that the Bluff Creek tracks were just a hoax carried out by a practical joker walking around wearing a large pair of carved wooden feet, but it is not meant as a challenge to the people who originated that story, who may well be perfectly sincere. The offer also is not a prize for technological achievement, such as being the first to build an effective footprint-stamping machine. It relates entirely to the question of whether the real tracks which brought the "Bigfoot" phenomenon to public attention could have been made by humans under the real conditions of the times and the places in which they appeared. The museum has casts of some of the tracks concerned, a few of them copies but mainly originals, available for inspection. It also has some related photographs, and published accounts of what was done and observed in connection with the tracks. There are also people still available for consultation who studied the tracks when they were made. A formal document setting out the requirements to qualify for the award will take time to prepare, but a successful applicant will have to be able to make flat-footed, humanlike tracks with more than twice the area of human feet and longer-than-human strides which do the following: Traverse a variety of terrains, including climbing, descending and crossing steep slopes covered with underbrush; show variations of shape and toe position and stride accomodating to the terrain; sink into firm ground to far greater depth than human footprints specifically as much as an inch deep in hard sand where human prints barely penetrate at all; leave hard objects in the ground, such as stones, sticking up above the rest of the track. The applicant will also have to be able to make these tracks under the following conditions, although not all in combination: In the dark, hundreds in a single night; in places where it is impossible to bring any vehicle or other machine or any equipment except what humans or animals could carry; without doing anything to attract the notice of people a few hundred yards away. The reason that full specifications could not be included in the announcement was that the museum hoped publicity about the offer would lead to contact with the former roadbuilders and others who had seen tracks in the 50s. They were needed because it appeared that aside from myself everyone who had gone there to investigate the tracks in 1958 and 1959 had since died. As the chapters in this book titled "Bigfoot at Bluff Creek" and "Blue Creek Mountain" will explain, I had seen a great deal of a 15-inch, differently-shaped track that was found in the fall of 1958, but little of the original 16-inch tracks on the road project. Some record of what the tracks were all about is available in the newspaper files of the day: Willow Creek-Bigfoot has been a familiar character to this part of the world off and on over a period of years.-Eureka, California, Humboldt Times, Oct. 7, 1958 In soft places the prints were deep, suggesting a great weight.-Jerry Crew, Humboldt Times, Oct. 5, 1958 He described the tracks as being pretty heavy. Quoting Julian Paulus regarding big tracks seen on a road job near Korbel in the spring of 1958.-Humboldt Times, Oct. 5. 1958 The footprint looks human but it is 16 inches long, seven inches wide, and the great weight of the creature that made it sank the print two inches into the dirt. Crew says an ordinary foot will penetrate the dirt only half an inch.-Associated Press story from Eureka, Oct. 6, 1958. Judging from the deep indentation of the tracks he must be somewhere between 400 and 500 pounds. He must be quite an agile fellow leaping logs at a single bound and tracking throughout the wilderness covering a large territory quickly.-Edward Van Schillnger, stake setter on the Bluff Creek Road project, Humboldt Times, Oct. 8, 1958. The first actual line of tracks definitely jolted me. On the hard ground where Philip Ammons' number 12's made a very light imprint, the track of Bigfoot sunk a half, to three quarters of an inch in depth. Twenty clear deep footprints marched along the side of the traveled portion on the road. Eighteen more were seen at intervals where the trucks had not run over them. We followed them down the road for some distance and found them down the road in both hard and soft earth. Bigfoot's tracks are in perfect proportion to what one would expect in their stride of sometimes 60 inches, 52 inches or the one short step over a small mound of dirt which was 40 inches. Even the depth to which the track had been pressed into the ground was in keeping with their size.-Willow Creek correspondent Betty Allen, in the Humboldt Times, Oct. 9, 1958 $100,000,00 Reward Continued We though he might weigh as much as 400 pounds. He made firm footprint in the hard ground. Measuring the footprints for a distance of more than 60 feet we found the average stride to be 50 inches. We checked this against the stride of a man 6 feet 4 inches tall, with long legs and his stride was 30 inches. We were told by people who saw footprints made when this unknown man was running that they were 10 feet apart. He does his traveling at night. We learned these tracks have been appearing for the past 10 years. -Seattle taxidermist Al Corbett quoted in the Humboldt Times, Oct. 1958. They say (the source of authority who isn't sure but talking) that the tracks are made by spacing carved feet a certain distance apart on the threads of a tractor, or on a roller used to smooth the road. Is that possible? Individual measurements show some tracks to be sixty inches apart, some fifty-two inches and others 40 inches apart. Here and there, they show on one side and the other, sometimes as a small mound of dirt. Sometimes the tracks step easily up or down rough terrain. It is not necessarily in the path of a roller. In other places the tracks are within inches of the edge of the road in others in varying distances from the oiler rig or trucks. The ground may be that which tractors have run over. Sometimes the surface is perfectly smooth. The weight of the entire foot varies in depth, and according to the surface on which Bigfoot has been walking. It doesn't respond to the "mechanical" explanation. The case of the wooden feet that "they say" are in existence if true they must be magnificent models of workmanship. each toe is separate, tiny lines of the human foot are visible. Then one asks if the toes are hinged to give the startling realism of action observed in the big tracks there are those who answer with a "yes." On Thursday morning the latest evidence debunks a lot of "mechanical" claims. That morning, the big tracks of Bigfoot were observed plunging down the side of a hill in the roughest of shale. The huge dug in (sic), the weight caused the feet to slide. What a way to treat someone's carefully developed mechanical handiwork? There is $1,000 (over $10,000 in today's money) which could go to the fund for the badly needed hospital project of the Community Health Association at Hoopa in the "wooden feet" could be located, proven to be wearable, to produce Bigfoot's tracks. So far, the quest for them has been as fruitless as Coronado's search for the famed "Seven Cities of Cibola."-Betty Allen, Willow Creek correspondent, in the Humboldt Times, Oct. 31, 1958 Crossed the creek and there on the other side were the huge prints going upstream however he seemed to have been just snooping around when the tracks were made up and down banks, in and out of the timber and underbrush, down the creek and back, over huge boulders, logs and piles of debris. They measured 15"x6 1/2"x4 1/2". His print in this hard, damp sand was "to 1" deep where my print beside his was 1/8" deep.-Taxidermist Bob Titmus writing to John Green, Nov. 7, 1958. Dr. R. Maurice Tripp, geologist and geophysicist, has a cast of a footprint 17 inches long he made in the Bluff Creek area. Dr. Tripp's engineering studies of the soil properties and depth of the foot print of which he made a cast show the weight of the owner of the print to be more than 800 pounds.-San Jose News, 1958 or 1959. What Is the Sasquatch? By John Green, from the paper of the same name, from the book Manlike Monsters On Trial Based on a study of more than 1,000 reported sightings of manlike monsters, this article presents a statistical survey of the characteristics of the beings seen and of conditions under which they were sighted. The author notes similarities between these sightings and those contained in Russian studies. He concludes by making inferences from the sightings concerning the nature and distribution of the creature. Whether a real creature is responsible for the many eyewitness reports of giant hairy bipeds in North America has not been established, and that may remain the case for many years. It can surely be assumed, however, that if such a creature does exist, then a substantial proportion of the reports involve genuine observations of it, and from them, if they prove consistent, an accurate picture of it can be drawn. It is my contention, based on the study of approximately one thousand such reports, that a consistent picture does exist and that it is not the one which is usually presented to the public. The reports portray not a semi-human, but an upright ape; not an endangered remnant of a species, but an extremely widespread and secure population; not a fearful monster, but a remarkably inoffensive animal. If all the old and new information that has been assembled refers only to imaginary beings, then there should be no limit to the attributes with which those imaginary beings might be endowed by their creators. They could describe animals, or men, or something in between, or they could picture something or a variety of somethings entirely different. In that case anyone taking an interest in the subject is free to make of the Sasquatch whatever he chooses. There are no limitations. But suppose that there actually is a living creature involved. If that should be the case, then it can surely be assumed that most of the stories of encounters with such a creature have a factual rather than an imaginary basis and that the information contained in the stories does in fact describe the creature. It follows that if we are in fact compiling information about a real creature then we cannot make of it whatever might suit our own fancies. It has to be the creature that the witnesses describe. We are dealing with reports of something that walks upright like a human but is entirely covered with hair and is usually much larger than a human. I have no way of knowing how many reports about such creatures there may be, but from North America alone I have more than a thousand on file, plus several hundred more concerning footprints of a suitable size and shape for the animal described. With such a volume of reports, even allowing for the fact that an unknown number of them are manufactured or mistaken, some validity must be assumed for those attributes and actions that are frequently described, and consideration should also be given to those that are not described at all. There should be enough information to tell us not only what the creature is, but also what it is not. The following is a digest of some of the significant points that I have been able to glean from careful study of the reports: 1. Sasquatches are significantly larger than humans, and not only in height. Small hairy bipeds are reported fairly frequently, but only nine percent of the reports involve creatures described as being smaller than men, while seventy-four percent involve creatures larger than man-sized. Since the standard of comparison is the largest type of human, the adult male, it seems reasonable to assume that all Sasquatches are consistently taller than humans of comparable age and sex. The average of all the height estimates is more than seven and a half feet. In California and Oregon the averages exceed eight feet, and nowhere are they significantly less than seven feet. Perhaps more significant is the heavy build described. Compared to an average man, fifty-seven percent are described as "very heavy" and thirty-four percent as "heavy," with only six percent "medium" and three percent "slim." Viewed from the front, seventy-eight percent are described as "wide" compared to an average human, and sixty-eight percent are described as "wide" from the side view also. 2. They are solitary creatures. Only five percent of reports involve more than one individual, and only one percent involve more than two individuals. 3. Their hairiness is of the animal, not the human. Only eight percent of observers thought the hair was longer on the head than elsewhere on the animal, and descriptions of long head hair or of bodies only partially covered with hair do not constitute even one percent. 4. The proportions of their limbs are more humanlike than apelike. Compared to a human and in relation to the general build, leg length is noted as "medium" in fifty-five percent of descriptions and arm length as "medium" in fifty percent. 5. From the shoulders up there is less resemblance to the average human. Shoulders are termed "wide" in more than ninety percent of descriptions. Seventy percent of necks are "short" and twenty-five percent have "no neck." Flat faces, large flat noses, sloped foreheads, and brow ridges are noted in nearly all descriptions resulting from close observation. What Is the Sasquatch? continued 6. They are omnivorous. Gordon Strasenburgh describes such animals as herbivorous, but that cannot be supported. Of sixty-four reports that I had by 1977 mentioning things apparently taken or carried for food, exactly half involved some form of meat. 7. They are largely nocturnal. In spite of the fact that there are far more human observers around in the daytime and that humans see very poorly at night, almost half of the sightings reported have been at night. The time when tracks were made is not generally known, but when it has been almost ninety percent have been made at night. 8. They are not active in cold weather. Everywhere except in Florida there are only half as many reports in winter as in summer or fall, and tracks are rarely found in snow. Less than nine percent of the reports, including tracks and sightings, mention snow. Oddly, there are also few reports in spring, and consistenly less tin May than in April. At my most recent count, out of 804 sighting and track reports for which a specific month was known only thirty-nine were in May, compared to fifty-three in April and fifty-six in June. There were forty-two in each of February and March. Leaving out the Florida reports there were thirty-six in February, thirty-seven in March and and thirty-seven in May. 9. Sasquatches make considerable use of water. I have six reports of tracks ending in bodies of deep water, five reports of Sasquatches swimming, and a dozen of them standing or walking in bodies of water. In one survey I did of 289 track reports, eighty-three were beside water. Of twenty-eight reports located near towns in four states east of the continental divide, seventy-one percent of the towns were right beside a stream or lake large enough to be shown on an ordinary road map. A sample consisting of all the towns in two counties chosen at random in each of those states indicated that on the average only fifty-one percent of towns were beside water. Almost all of the foregoing observations involve substantial numbers of reports, although the numbers vary from several hundred down to a few dozen. The one exception concerns details of the face and head, which are based on as few as a dozen observations. There are in addition a number of significant observations that have been reported only a few times: 1. The only time Sasquatches have been reported sleeping they were in the open, although it was snowing and there were trees close by. 2. I have sic reports of running Sasquatches being clocked by people in cars. Speeds reported were thirty-five, forty-five, fifty to sixty, seventy, and eighty miles per hour. None of these reports were from west of the continental divide, and I have not talked to any of the informants. 3. I have six reports of Sasquatches shaking or hitting vehicles, five of them jumping on vehicles, and five of them pushing at or damaging buildings. 4. I have eight reports of Sasquatches seen to throw things at people, without hitting anyone, and seventeen of them chasing people, without catching anyone. Five people have reported being rushed in what appeared to be a bluffing action. Reports of Sasquatches looking in the windows of houses and even vehicles are fairly common, but it is far more usual for a Sasquatch encountering a human to leave, often hurriedly. 5. Three people have reported being grabbed at while in their vehicles, and four have reported being picked up and dropped, but none have been much hurt. All reports of people being killed by Sasquatches, of which I have seven, have been very indirect or very old, usually both. There are perhaps a dozen reports of Sasquatches being seen to kill animals, but I have never been able to talk to any eyewitnesses. 6. Reports specifically identifying females and young are very rare. I have only nine substantial and specific descriptions of females and only three of young animals seen with adults. 7. One observer has reported two incidents in which it seemed that a Sasquatch did not have an opposable thumb, or at least did not use it in that way. I have no specific report of a Sasquatch using the thumb in opposition. There are also a number of things about Sasquatches that seem to me to be significant because they have not been reported: 1. I have no report of a Sasquatch throwing anything overhand or in a straight line. 2. Although the creatures have been reported making sounds in almost nine percent of sightings I have only one report of anything that could be considered a possible form of speech. By far the most common sounds are screams. 3. I have no report of a Sasquatch using fire. 4. I have no report of a Sasquatch using any object as a tool and only a very few and indirect reports of one carrying anything that could not be considered food. 5. I have no report of a Sasquatch having a home, even in a cave. 6. Although I have talked to people who say they have shot at Sasquatches I have no concrete evidence that anyone has ever killed one, and I have no reports indicating that they have learned to fear guns. What Is the Sasquatch? continued Those are the observations that I wish to make based on my own research. In addition, there is a colleciton of Russian observations published by the late Professor Boris Porshnev. He notes the following points: Height five to six feet, but with great variations; bodies covered entirely with hair; neck appears very short with head right on top of trunk; teeth like a man's but larger; bridge of the nose usually flat; thumb less opposed than a man's, objects often grasped between fingers and palm; toes and fingers have nails, not claws; creatures capable of running as fast as horses and of swimming swift currents; breeding pairs remain together, but males range over wider territory; no permanent homes; they do not make tools, but can throw stones; both meat and vegetables eaten; they are active mainly at twilight or at night; in northern regions they sleep during the winter; they avoid leaving tracks by walking on hard ground; towards man they are not usually aggressive. I do not think that anyone could fail to note that except for the size of the creatures there are not many points of difference between the reports studied by Professor Porshnev in Russia and and those that I have been summarizing, while on the other hand there is exact agreement on many specific points. It should be noted, however, that the difference in size alone puts the two creatures in very different relationships to their environment. The Russian creatures are literally man-sized. There is no mention that they are any bulkier than men, and they are no taller. A six-foot man of substantial build weighs about two hundred pounds. An eight-foot creature of proportions one-and-a-half times as large would weigh about one thousand pounds, and a nine-foot one would weigh fifteen hundred pounds. I have given the information from my own files in order to draw conclusions from it about the nature of the animal described. The Russian information, even though it may refer to a different species, will generally support the same conclusions: 1. The Sasquatch is not normally a dangerous animal. It has the size and appearance of a monster, and it might frighten to death a person with a weak heart, but there is nothing in its record to suggest a species that preys on humans or tends to attack them for any reason. In fact if those people who tell of being grabbed or picked up are telling the truth it is a creature that makes very restrained use of its strength in its infrequent contact with humans. Iti s not uncommon, however, for humans to disappear in wild areas and never be found, so one might bear in mind the possibility that a lone human attacked by a Sasquatch might not be able to return to tell the story. 2. The relationship between the Sasquatch and Homo sapiens has not been proven to be any closer than that between our species and the other great apes, except in shared posture and means of locomotion. The physical attributes that we do share will make the Sasquatch a very important animal in man's quest for knowledge about himself, but it is not likely a "missing link" in his evolution or a "near human." With the exception of his upright posture and loss of hair, man's difference from other primates are mainly in his brain, and those differences obviously result from a radical departure, a very long time ago, from the normal primate lifestyles. While all other species have relied on physical abilities and on instincts to hold a place in a competitive world, man has shifted his reliance to his brain. Millions of years ago he learned to use objects to increase the effectiveness of his muscles, and from that developed the making of tools and weapons for specific purposes. He also relied on the co-operative effort of many individuals, and somewhere along the line he learned to increase greatly the effectiveness of that co-operation through verbal communication of ideas. The precise manipulation of objects with his hands and of sounds with his throat and tongue, repeated through countless generations, have been the keys to the development of his tremendous brain. At the same time he has ceased to rely primarily on physical strength, with the result that pound for pound he has only a fraction of the muscular strength of his primate relatives. The creature described in the Sasquatch reports has obviously taken an opposite route, although by no means the same one as the other apes. Unlike them it has learned to swim, to see in the dark, and to survive in a wide variety of climates. As a result of its greater versatility it has become a highly successful species, able to establish itself, if all the reports refer to a single species, all over the world. In that respect it is like man, but unlike him its adaptations have been entirely physical. It does not need or appear to desire the company of its fellows, so it would obviously never have needed to develop sophisticated vocal communication, and there is no indication that it has done so. Its size and strength have plainly proved to be sufficient both for protection and for obtaining food without reliance on tools or weapons, and it has never even learned to throw things effectively. Hard though it may be to accept, there are reports indicating that it has developed speed of foot sufficient to flee or to catch almost any other animal. Certainly it has never lost its fur coat and is able to get along in cold weather without either clothing or fire. There is simply nothing in its lifestyle that would ever have put pressure on it to develop its brain, and it obviously has not done so. Some suggestions have been made that its elusiveness in relation to man is proof of intelligence, but in fact Sasquatches are reported seen quite frequently, almost certainly more often than cougars would be if they could not be hunted with dogs. In short, if upright posture is what makes an animal a human, then the reports describe a human, but if it is his brain that distinguishes Homo sapiens from his animal relatives, then the Sasquatch is an animal-an upright ape-and nothing more. What Is the Sasquatch? continued 3. The Sasquatch is not an endangered species in most of its range. On the mountainous western slope of the continent there are many hundreds of thousands of square miles of suitable habitat for it in which pressure from animals is minimal. In fact there is far more territory available for the Sasquatches than there is for the humans, and the volume of reports from every area where there are humans to do the reporting indicates that virtually all that territory is occupied. East of the mountains there is a wide area of level, open country that the Sasquatch apparently does not occupy, but there is nothing to suggest that it ever did. In the vast area drained by the Mississippi and its eastern tributaries as well as along the east coast there is presumably a great deal less forested area suitable for Sasquatches than was once the case, but there are plenty of reports to indicate an established population throught out the area. There is room for disagreement as to how many animals would be required to occupy all of that territory, but considering that the number of grizzly bears, which require large territories and occupy a much smaller area, is always estimated in multiples of ten thousand, the Sasquatch population must surely number at least in the thousands. It would appear that the "skunk apes" in Florida may be endangered by the destruction of their habitat to provide land for housing, and there may be other specific areas where populations of Sasquatches are threatened, but if man does threaten Sasquatches in any way it is obviously the land developer who is responsible, not the hunter. There ius no record of man ever successfully hunting a single one.