My
one wish in terms of this report from thirty plus years ago is that
the investigators had tried harder to get more detail recalled. Most
likely the creature emerged, his brain registered that this was a
real life treat an d his legs took charge of the rest. I have
experienced that myself and can assure you that you get the initial
image and that is it.
However,
I do not think that Bigfoot solicits this type of response and a
Bigfoot would possibly have been recognized. On top of that the
level of travel noise is exceptional. That has never been observed
with a Sasquatch in the past as it appears to be generally stealthy.
Besides this creature was even availing itself of a cleared pathway.
Much
more important is the dead meat smell. We have already learned to
associate that with the giant sloth and its trick of caching game in
order to harvest maggots a few days later. I have seen little to
suggest that the Sasquatch or Bigfoot does something similar although
I would not entirely discount the possibility.
Primates
are well enough adapted to eating and consuming meat, that the
strategy seems unlikely whereas a creature evolved from insect and
larvae eating combined with a slow plant digestion looks way more
likely.
In
the mean time we are slowly adding good sloth reports to our
inventory. It is noteworthy that only one observer actually
recognized the creature for what it is. All others have generally
not. More commonly they do get the long claws which is missing in
this report. Those claws also are on the legs and walking upright
would also be somewhat unstable even if convenient. Thus the noisy
passage through the woods adds additional plausibility to the Sloth
conjecture.
A Monster on the
Mountain
By Nick Redfern August
25, 2012
Source: Mania.com
Situated on the southern
tip of the vast and mountainous Cascade Range – which encompasses
parts of British Columbia, California, Washington State, and Oregon -
Mount Shasta is a huge, all-dominating peak that, at nearly
fifteen thousand feet, is the fifth tallest mountain in the Golden
State,and one that has been home to human civilization, in varying
degrees, since around 5,000 B.C. It’s also a mountain steeped in
matters very mysterious – including Bigfoot.
Its wild antics hit
the local media on September 9, 1976, only a few days after the
foul-smelling thing was seen near Cascade Gulch, which is located
on the lower slopes of the legendary mount. The man that had the
misfortune to cross paths with the monster was a logger from the town
of Salmon: Virgil Larson.
In a subsequent interview
with Sergeant Walt Bullington of the local police, the then
forty-seven year old Larson explained how, at around 8.30 a.m. only a
few days earlier, he and a colleague, Pat Conway – both of the
Columbia Helicopter Company - carefully negotiated the treacherous
slope to their place of walk, having left their truck at a parking
area adjacent to the road.
It was while they were
getting their breath back at the base of the hilly area in question –
but now separated from each other by a few hundred feet, due to the
rigors of the descent - that something occurred to Larson he most
certainly was not anticipating in the slightest.
After a couple of minutes
of taking a rest, Larsen’s attention turned to the sound of loud,
thumping footsteps coming down the hill. For a few moments he could
see no-one, but quite naturally assumed it was yet another colleague
from the U.S. Forest Service.
It was not – that is,
unless, the service had some truly strange characters in its employ.
Finally, at a distance of around fifty feet, Larsen could now see
what, at first, looked like a darkly dressed man descending along a
crude pathway through the trees that the logging company had created.
With thick bushes and
trees dominating the entire scene, however, Larsen could only get the
barest glimpses of the figure as it made its lumbering way down the
hill; so, he called out, by way of wishing the character a good day.
Bigfoot, evidently, is hardly one enamored by early morning, genial
chatter.
The dark form suddenly
stopped, briefly turned its head in Larson’s direction, then began
walking again, at a noticeably increased speed – all without any
form of reply to Larsen’s greeting. Then, when the thing was barely
fifteen feet away and no longer largely obliterated from view by the
dense foliage, Larsen was at last able see the enigmatic visitor in
its fullest form.
It was at this point that
Larsen’s mind became flooded by fear and panic: there was no man in
his midst, after all. What was in his full midst for a
second or several was a bulky, black-hair-covered monstrosity that
stunk like rotting meat and stood at around a towering seven and a
half feet.
Larsen got the disturbing
impression that the creature was possibly sizing him up – whether
as foe, food or even both – and didn’t wait around to get a
better look and very wisely fled the area at high speed. Having
raced to where Pat Conway was also taking a break before
beginning the day’s activities, Larsen breathlessly related to his
amazed partner what he had just seen.
Thirty minutes later and
armed with a couple of thick tree limbs for protection, the pair
tentatively returned to the area and checked out the site. The
creature was gone, but the terrible odor was still very much hanging
around, while strange and somewhat indistinct tracks dominated the
forest floor. It was now time, both men concluded, to bring in the
sheriff.
Three Forest Service
employees, Don Wopschal, Bob Gray and Rex Lebow, soon arrived with
the previously referred to Sergeant Bullington. Interestingly,
Larsen’s encounter was taken most seriously by officialdom, which
surely begs the inevitable and thought-provoking question of: was the
seriousness prompted by other, earlier Bigfoot encounters in the area
that had caught the attention of concerned authorities?
Whatever the answer to
that potentially important question, the positive response by the
sheriff’s office did not stop the authorities from ultimately
trying to downplay the affair, however. A somewhat condescending
suggestion was made that perhaps Larsen had been frightened by
nothing stranger than a long-haired environmentalist that had a
problem with loggers chopping down the old, mighty trees of Mount
Shasta.
Neither Larsen nor his
wife was in any fashion satisfied by such a bizarre and unlikely
theory. Larsen remained in a state of emotional turmoil for a number
of days, while his wife stated that her husband was a man with
three decades of experience working in the woods and one who had been
frightened witless by his encounter. Mount Shasta had just become
even weirder, if such a thing was even conceivably possible.
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