ALBERT OSTMAN - escape and conclusions -- part 3

"I had now been here six days, but I was sure I was making progress."

[continuing in Ostman's own words as recorded in his notebook and given to John Green.]

"The old lady was a meek old thing. The young fellow was by this time quite friendly. The girl would not hurt anybody. Her chest was flat like a boy's -- no development like young ladies. I am sure if I could get the old man out of the way I could easily have brought this girl out with me to civilization. But what good would that have been? I would have to keep her in a cage for public display. I don't think we have any right to force our way of life on other people, and I don't think they would like it. (The noise and the racket in a modern city they would not like any more than I do.)

"The young fellow might have been between 11-18 years old and about seven feet tall and might weigh about 300 lbs. His chest would be 50-55 inches, his waist about 36-38 inches. He had wide jaws, narrow forehead, that slanted upward round at the back about four or five inches higher than the forehead. The hair on their heads was about six inches long. The hair on the rest of their body was short and thick in places. The women's hair on the forehead had an upward turn like some women have -- they call it bangs, among women's hair-do's. Nowadays the old lady could have been anything between 40-70 years old. She was over seven feet tall. She would be about 500-600 pounds.

"She had very wide hips, and a goose-like walk. She was not built for beauty or speed. Some of those lovable brassieres and uplifts would have been a great improvement on her looks and her figure. The man's eyeteeth were longer than  the rest of the teeth, but not long enough to be called tusks. The old man must have been near eight feet tall. Big barrel chest and big hump on his back -- powerful shoulders, his bice[ps on lupper arm were enormous and tapered down to his elbows. His forearms were longer than common people have, but weel proportioned. His hands were wide, the palm was long and broad, and hollow like a scoop. His fingers were short in proportion to the rest of his hand. His fingernails were like chisels. The only place they had no hair was inside their hands and the soles of their feet and upper part of the nose and eyelids. I never did see their ears, they were covered with hair hanging over them.

"If the old man were to wear a collar it would have to be at least 30 inches. I have no idea what size shoes they would need. I was watching the young fellow's foot one day when he was sitting down. The soles of his feet seemed to be padded like a dog's foot, and the big toe was longer than the rest and very strong. In mountain climbing all he needed was footing for his big toe. They were very agile. To sit down they turned their knees out and came straight down. To rise they came straight up without help of hands or arms. I don't think this valley was their permanent home. I think they move from place to place, as food is available in different localities. They might eat meat, but I never saw them eat meat, or do any cooking.

"I think this was probably a stopover place and the plants with sweet roots on the mountain side might have been in season this time of the year. They seem to be most interested in them. The roots have a very sweet and satisfying taste. They always seem to do everything for a reason, wasted no time on anything they did not need. When they were not looking for food, the old man and the old lady were resting, but the boy and the girl were always climbing something or some other exercise. A favorite position was to take hold of his feet with his hands and balance on his rump, then bounce forward. The idea seems to be to see how far he could go without his feet or hands touching the ground. Sometimes he made 20 feet.

"But what do they want with me? They must understand I cannot stay here indefinitely. I will soon have to make a break for freedom. Not that I was mistreated in any way. One consolation was that the old man was coming closer each day, and was very interested in my snuff. Watching me when I take a pinch of snuff. He seems to think it useless to only put it inside my lips. One morning after I had my breakfast both the old man and the boy came and sat down only ten feet away from me. This morning I made coffee. I had saved up all dry branches I found and I had some dry moss and I used all the labels from cans to start a fire.

"I got my coffee pot boiling and it was strong coffee too, and the aroma from boiling coffee was what brought them over. I was sitting eating hard tack with plenty of butter on, and sipping coffee. And it sure tasted good. I was smacking my lips  pretending it was better than it really was. I set the can down that was about half full. I intended to warm it up later. I pulled out a full box of snuff, took a big chew. Before I had time to close the box the old man reached for it. I was afraid he would waste it, and only had two more boxes. So I held onto the box, intending him to take a pinch like I had just done. Instead he grabbed the box and emptied it in his mouth. Swallowed it in one gulp. Then he licked the box inside with his tongue.

"After a few minutes his eyes begun to roll over in his head, he was looking straight up. I could see he was sick. Then he grabbed my coffee can that was quite cold by this time, he emptied that in his mouth, grounds and all. That did no good. He stuck his head between his legs and rolled forwards a few times away from me. Then he began to squeal like a stuck pig. I grabbed my rifle. I said to myself, 'This is it. If he comes for me I will shoot him plumb between his eyes.' But he started for the spring, he wanted water. I packed my sleeping bag in my packsack with the few cans I had left. The young fellow ran over to his mother. Then she began to squeal. I started for the opening in the wall -- and I just made it. The old lady was right behind me. I fired one shot at the rock over her head.

"I guess she had never seen a rifle fired before. She turned and ran inside the wall. I injected another shell in the barrel of my rifle and started downhill, looking back over my shoulder every so often to see if they were coming. I was in a canyon, and good travelling and I made fast time. I must have made three miles in some world record time. I came to a turn in the canyon and I had the sun on my left, that meant I was going south, and the canyon turned west. I decided to climb the ridge ahead of me. I knew that I must have two mountain ridges between me and salt water and by climbing this ridge I would have a good view of this canyon, so I could see if the Sasquatch were coming after me. I had a light pack and was making good time up this hill. I stopped soon after to look back to where I cam from, but nobody followed me. As I came over the ridge I could see Mt. Baker, then I knew I was going in the right direction.

"I was hungry and tired. I opened my packsack to see what I had to eat. I decided to rest here for awhile. I had a good view of the mountainside, and if the old man was coming I had the advantage because I was up above him. To get to me he would have to come up a steep hill. And that might not be so easy after stopping a few 30-30 bullets. I had made up my mind this was my last chance, and this would be a fight to the finish. . . I rested here for two hours. It was 3:00 pm when I started down the mountainside. It was nice going, not too steep and not too much underbrush.

"When I got near the bottom, I shot a big blue grouse. . .

"I made it down the creek at the bottom of this canyon. I felt I was safe now. I made a fire between two big boulders, roasted the grouse. Next morning when I woke up, I was feeling terrible. My feet were sore from dirty socks. My legs were sore, my stomach was upset from that grouse that I ate the night before. I was not too sure I was going to make it up that mountain. I finally made the top, but it took me six hours to get there. It was cloudy, visibility about a mile.

"I knew I had to go downhill. After about two hours I got down to the heavy timber and sat down to rest. I could hear a motor running hard at times, then stop. I listened to this for  a while and decided the sound was from a gas donkey. Someone was logging in the neighborhood.

"I told them I was a prospector and was lost . . . I did not like to tell them I had been kidnapped by a Sasquatch, as if I had told them, they would probably have said, he is crazy too.

"The following day I went down from this camp on Salmon Arm Branch of Sechelt Inlet. From there I got the Union Roat back to Vancouver. That was my last prospecting trip, and my only experience with what is known as Sasquatches. I know that in 1924 there were four Sasquatches living, it might be only two now. The old man and the old lady might be dead by this time."

And so the story ends.

Tall tale? Or truth?

Let's start with John Green. He and Ostman enjoyed a friendship after meeting that lasted over a dozen years. Green never considered Ostman a liar. Green had Ostman examined by experts from different fields and skeptical newspaper reporters also grilled him. Maybe not all of these people believed the story, but none of them were able to trip him up, trap him in lies, or found any way to discredit his story.

Green also said that in 1969 an old friend of his told him he had first heard of bigfoot in the early 1930s from a trapper at Toba Inlet. The trapper said he knew a young Swede who claimed to have been carried off by one. [Ostman?]

Ostman had told the story a few times shortly after it had happened. But he soon stopped because no one would believe him. Unfortunately, he could not recall the people he had told.  Green felt that there was no way that Ostman was able to describe the size, shape, hairiness, the facial features, teeth, fingernails and all those other details and use them in the description he wrote out when the common idea of sasquatch was that they were "giant Indians".

Also unfortunate was that by the time Ostman told his story, he was a semi-invalid and he did not know the loggers who helped rescue him, and did not recall any names.

Peter Byrne : "There was a great deal more detail in Ostman's original account of his experience, and to my way of thinking, the more detail there is, the more believable a story is."

Justice of Peace Lieutenant Colonel A.M. Naismith said he "found Albert Ostman to be in full possession of his mental faculties, of pleasant manner, and with a good sense of humor." "Ostman certainly believed the story himself."

Dr John Napier stated he believed the story. However he did find one thing in the story that "does not ring true". He cited Ostman's statement that the sasquatch family ate "grasses with sweet roots, spruce and hemlock tips and tubers that the mother and son collected." And that he saw no evidence of eating meat. Napier felt that creatures of this size would have needed a more "substantial diet".

Francis Hatching disagreed with this opinion. He stated in "The Mysterious World: an atlas of the unexplained" : "Odd though it may seem, the coniferous mountain forests of the North American continent are largely unexplored, and there is no compelling reason why a quite large population of unknown beasts should not exist there, surviving on a frugal and mostly vegetarian diet."

Although Napier doubted if sasquatch could survive without meat in its diet, he did further state : "Eyewitness reports which provide strictly circumstantial evidence are very persuasive." He offered no opinions on why the sasquatch in Ostman's story did the things they did and added : " There must be something in north-west America that needs explaining, and that something leaves man-like footprints."

Rene Dahinden also believed the story. A leading factor in that was that for as many times as Ostman told the story, answered the questions asked, he never shifted in detail.

There are a couple of things that do present some questions. It is difficult to validate the story by where Ostman says he was camping at the time and from where he said he emerged from the woods into the logging camp.

If the basic direction of travel was northeast, where he came out is over 60 miles south, southeast of the head of Toba Inlet. That would mean that he had to have been carried at least 50 miles over several mountain ranges. He was said to be an experienced woodsman, so if he were making up the story, one might think he would have constructed a more reasonable route, one that would make sense.

In my view, I'm not certain he headed and ended up where he thought he was when he made that final camp from which he said he was abducted.  He also could have been mistaken in what mountains he was looking at when he emerged from the sasquatch canyon. He  could have been mistaken in how long and how far he was carried. After all, he was stuffed down inside a sleeping bag, with little air. It is conceivable that he may even have lost consciousness or been so disoriented that he was not an accurate judge of time.

Any of those items could make a difference in validation factors of his story.

Others have complained about his description of the sasquatch and of their activities. To me, this just makes his story more believable. In that area, at the time this event happened, when white men heard of the sasquatch, the giants on the mountain, the general consensus was these were giant HUMANS with lots of hair on their heads, not hair-covered bodies.

Some also said when the story first came out that the sasquatch were "too human". Claiming a family unit. Assigned roles to the "family". Sleeping areas and beds. Playing. A permanent living area. 

First of all, Ostman did say he felt the area was a temporary "camp"; that he felt they were there because of the plants there and the feeding opportunity. That is was not their permanent home.


Second of all much evidence has been brought forward now of family units being observed. Some of the  claims seem far fetched, but there are others that have a ring of truth to them.


One has to consider that the sasquatch are not born full size and adult. They must be new borns and advance through the years to adulthood. Do we know how long childhood lasts? Or adolescence? Adulthood? No. We do not. But it also makes sense that if there are young sasquatch, then there must be some sort of parental involvement in their upbringing.  And therefore, some sort of family unit.


The final proof for me is this. At no time did Albert Ostman seek money or fame when telling his story. And to me, that means a lot.


Nancy


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





Many thanks to the following sources :

"Sasquatch, the apes among us" by John Green

"The Bigfoot Book: the encyclopedia of Sasquatch, Yeti, and cryptid primates"  by Nick Redfern

"Sasquatch : North America's enduring mystery" by Rupert Matthews  

"Great mysteries: Bigfoot : opposing viewpoints" by Norma Gaffron

"The Bigfoot Casebook" by Janet and Colin Bord


"Albert Ostman", Wikipedia


"Ostman Abduction Story Stands Up" by Loren Coleman/June 29th 2010/ /cryptomundo.com/bigfoot/ostman2010/


"Albert Ostman" by bigfootencounters.com