Sasquatch Sightings

Account

Mike King was a very well-known timber cruiser, woodsman and entrepreneur. The newspaper stories so far found do not tell of his experience at the time that it took place, but in connection with later sightings on Vancouver Island. One story says it happened three or four years before (ie 1900 or 1901) another quotes King as saying it was "a little over a year ago" The early versions, printed at a time when King was out of the country, say that he was timber cruising alone "inland from the head of Campbell River" in an area where Indians refused to go, and that one evening he surprised a creature bending over a little water hole washing edible grass roots, which were in two neat piles, uncleaned and cleaned. At King's approach the creature uttered a very human cry of terror and defiance, ran up the hillside half way and then stood watching him. When he approached it dashed away through the underbrush. He heard its cries all that night. The body was covered with reddish-brown hair, the arms were peculiarly long and used freely in climbing and brush running. The trail showed a distinct human foot, but with phenomenally long and spreading toes. The later story, after his return, quotes him as saying he approached to about 25 feet before the creature saw him, that it was squatting by a little stream washing a kind of wild onion, that it stood up over six feet high, and that it was covered all over with long, coarse black hair, which on some portions of the body was a foot long. Forehead was low and retreating. Small eyes glared in surprise. Below the eyes the hair was short, everywhere else long and shiny. On the hands hair hung below the finger ends. Estimated weight at 240 pounds. Glared a moment, uttered a cry, a half human sort of grunt, grasped a branch and hoisted itself up the bank of the creek, then ran away through the underbrush, slightly bending as it did so, with the speed of a startled deer. Footprints were very short and broad, heel came almost to a point. The differences in hair colour, footprint shape and vocalizations in the two descriptions passed unnoticed, or at least without editorial comment.