BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS

Well, none of US have ever seen Bigfoot. Honest...we wouldn't lie to you! Then again, Bigfoot could have been standing a hundred feet away wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and we were too preoccupied to notice.

This is, to be blunt about it, one of the more popular regions for Bigfoot sightings. Most often, these sightings are associated with people who spend a great deal of their time alone in extremely isolated areas, doing physically demanding and often hazardous work. Miners, loggers, mushroom pickers will come back into town telling what sound like wild stories brought on by too much work, too little sleep, improper diet and dehydration. But there are just enough of these people you know to be level-headed and sensible human beings, not the sort to let themselves get so worn out that they put themselves at unnecessary risk and they tell about their sightings reluctantly. These are the people whose stories will leave you seriously wondering just what it is that's living out in those places so few people ever see.

And then there are the occasional "city folk" who experience a sighting. Most recent and prominent was that of a Psychiatrist from the Bay Area who was touring the Oregon Caves National Monument with his family. He moved to Grants Pass. We think he quit his day job.

Anyway, for those of you who are interested, here is a highly visible Bigfoot site, very informative and up to date, well-maintained.

This writer lived for some years in a part of Kerby that was way out in the woods, in a place that dead-ended in a canyon. There were a couple of nights when very strange sounds and movement of something very large and unusual through the area were noted. Hooting sounds -- not at all like those of any owls -- were heard by everyone. And the dogs, who would bark at Cougar or Bear or silly humans out pranking on their neighbors and not hesitate to run like fools straight into trouble would just stand and snarl at whatever was passing through with their hackles raised. They weren't going anywhere. They would go out on the deck and then back into the house, thank you very much. Whatever it was that came through the 'hood on those nights, we can only guess. ALL the dogs in this neighborhood had the same weird reaction. The immediate conclusion? If it wasn't Bigfoot, we'd had visitors from outer space...and it just did not seem plausible that a space alien would find anything of interest way out in that part of Kerby. There's only one guy who sells insurance and Joe from Kar Kare prefers working on domestic vehicles, so we could not figure out what would be of interest to an extraterrestrial. Bigfoot was another matter entirely. The lady across the road had llamas. And one guy selling insurance, even part-time, would be enough to get a Bigfoot's attention. There were rumors that the guy who owned all the land down at the very end of the road had some sort of deal with a family of Bigfeet, but every once in awhile one of the Bigfoot kids would just feel bored and wander off the private road onto the public one just to get a reaction out of the sparse population who lived along this road. And, really, maybe a dozen people total are going to go running into town saying...what? I heard truly bizarre hooting? My dogs were behaving in completely uncharacteristic fashion? No...we just did what we normally did, which was to either telephone or walk over to the person's house and ask: "Did you hear or see anything odd moving through last night? Were your dogs behaving even more strangely than usual?" Everybody came back with a "yes" and then the subject was dropped. We didn't want a bunch of paranormal investigators descending upon our humble little 'hood. Wouldn't do 'em any good, anyway. The moment Bigfeet see the movie crews coming in, they move out to another area.

Back to the guy in Grants Pass. For him, one Bigfoot sighting changed his life and last I heard he was a passionate believer and persistent pursuer, gathering information and continuing to build a growing database of evidence supporting Bigfoot's existence in the Klamath-Siskiyou region.

As for me, I will neither confirm nor deny the existence of Bigfoot. What I'll say is that some things heard are better left unseen. And those who have experienced a sighting and yelled about it are unlikely to be given the opportunity for a second sighting. Let's face it...if I were a privacy-loving Bigfoot and let some guy see me and he went hollering to all the papers, got local TV coverage and built a big web site, I'd feel pretty peeved about the whole thing. Here you think you can trust a human and look what he does...blows a single sighting event out of proportion, is indiscreet and gets as much publicity for himself as possible.