SASQUATCH ROAD BLOCK

In 1966 Roger Patterson received a letter from a man telling of a terrifying event that happened to him back in 1952. Patterson then shared the letter with John Green. Here is part of what he wrote :

 

"The first part of the story took me back to 1952, when I had gone down to Orleans <California> to start preliminary work on a logging operation with men by the names of Lee Vlery and Josh Russel.


"One evening Josh told me Lee had gone up to Happy Camp, but not having transportation back, wanted me to take the Mercury and go up and get him. I had driven the extremely crooked and dangerous road up there, but not being able to find him started back alone to Orleans.


"It had been raining very heavily and after going back a few miles I found there had been a slide across the road. There was a man with a flashlight there who told me I could still get back to Orleans by way of a detour across the river. He said it was a dirt road that went through Bear Valley and would come out at the mouth of Bluff Creek a few miles below Orleans.


"I had been driving slowly down this road for about twenty miles, I guess, sort of daydreaming, when I saw it . . .  dimly in the headlights and the rain was the shaggy orangutang-like apparition of a human. For an instant I had the impression the shaggy hair of the creature was a hoary blue grey in the headlights. An ogre! I remember thinking, but the thing swiftly back-pedalled off the road and behind a tree. I automatically passed it off as imagination and drove on by the spot.


"Suddenly, without warning, the car went into a violent and unreasonable skid. I brought the car back under control, but for some reason glanced into the rear view mirror. In the dim light of the tail lights and license-display bulb, I thought I could see a savage looking face looking through the rear glass. I continued on, and when I looked again there was no face, so again concluded it was imagination.


"I had gone another quarter mile I guess, when across the road was a small six-inch sapling -- I stopped the car and got out, intending to drag it aside if possible. Suddenly I heard the swift thud of flying feet of something coming down the road. . . .  It was the shaggy human-like monster I had seen in the headlights.


"It at once started circling around me, snarling and acting very menacing. It kept this circling up for some time and once came up quite close, and I could see its face reflected by the head lights much better. The eyes were round, and rather luminous, the hair on top of its rather low and rounded head pretty short. Its eye teeth were far longer than a human's, also the chest and upper part of the torso was rather bare of hair, and also leathery looking. It wasn't too tall -- not much more than my own 5 feet 9 inches, although it had a stooped, long armed posture.


"Then it suddenly changed tactics -- it would stalk off down the road but would come charging back, like a bat out of hell, when I started towards the car. The hour was late, the thing was becoming more and more menacing, and I was almost paralyzed by this time, paralyzed by fear.


"Suddenly a plan of escape, born out of desperation, popped into my mind. Since the monster seemed to think I couldn't get away, why not, when it went down the road again, playing cat and mouse, try and get in the car and smash through the sapling. This I did, and sprang for the door of the car a dozen feet away. No sooner was I inside when there it was, trying to claw through the window. I jerked the car into gear, floored the accelerator, and can vividly remember the wet sapling glistening whitely in the headlights as the car slashed it aside.


"I remember then the scream of rage and frustration it then gave. It was a curious trumpeting sound like the scream of a stallion and the roar of a mad grizzly. The car then felt as though it were being held back by something half riding and attempting to stop it, but the powerful Mercury proved too much for it, and after a couple of hundred yards I felt no more resistance.

"To top this unbelievable experience off, believe it or not, I promptly forgot the whole experience. Then and there it went out of my mind. Not even the next day when Lee asked me if I had seen anything unusual on that road last night did I remember. (He had come later from Happy Camp with another man he hired to take him to Orleans). <The man claimed not to remember the event until he read a story by Ivan T. Sanderson about a bigfoot that people had encounters with in California>

"A few days later an incident happened that should have brought the experience back but didn't. Lee noticed a big dent in the grill of the car and asked me how it got there. I told him I didn't know. Incidentally, Lee told me that something had tried to push them off the road when they came through on the detour. He said there's something strange going on around here and let the matter drop."

When John Green interviewed the man about the letter, he decided the man was serious about the story and the man believed it had happened. Green was undecided if the event had really happened. The witness had a "normal" recall of the drive to Happy Camp and of Vlery asking about how the dent got in the car grill. The witness further speculated that his experience with the creature really happened but that he wiped it out because of some kind of shock.

From other stories told through the decades, I also wonder, if the story is true, that the creature had no real intention of harming the man. I look at the actions similar to those of the bluff charge of a gorilla, intended to intimidate and cause the other to retreat, to leave. Otherwise, if this creature were as big and as strong and as fast as the witness claimed, they would not have lived to tell the tale. All that would have been found would have been the empty car on the road, lights burning, engine running.

Regardless if true or false, it does make for a good campfire story -- guaranteed to make any drive down a dark, forested road late at night an "interesting" trip.

Nancy

"I'll spark the thought; what you do with it is up to you."




Letter quoted from "Sasquatch; the Apes Among Us" by John Green, pgg 344-346.