Olympic Peninsula man reports Bigfoot sighting Police find no sign of the creature |
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June 16, 2002 AP- Sappho, Washington - Police followed up on a reported sighting of the legendary and ever-elusive Sasquatch, also called Bigfoot, but came up empty-handed. "We were unable to locate, identify or capture the Sasquatch,"' Forks Police Chief Mike Powell said. The report came from a man living on Burnt Mountain Road in this community, about 30 miles northeast of Forks. The man, whose name was not released, said he spotted the hairy, human-like creature near his house Monday. An animal control officer checked the area but found no signs of the creature. That took the burden of figuring out how to deal with such a discovery off local law-enforcement officers, Powell said Friday. "I don't know why we would impound him or where we would keep him," he said. Sightings of the creature, reputed to lurk in the shadowy Pacific Northwest forest, are rare, but Monday's wasn't the first in this neck of the woods. In June 2000, Gene Sampson found two sets of large footprints in the woods behind his home and that of a neighbor on the Hoh Indian reservation. Sampson also reported finding trampled trails in a densely forested area, with branches and bark broken off trees about 20 feet up. And he heard the sounds of the alleged creature above the wind, he told the Peninsula Daily News. Sampson's report drew the attention of a Sasquatch advocate and expert Grover Krantz of Port Angeles, who died Feb. 14. The retired Washington State University anthropology professor was an expert in cryptozoology, the study of secret animals. Krantz,
author of "Big Footprints," thought the prints at the Hoh reservation
could have been from an adult male and an adult female. He believed there
could be as many as 2,000 Sasquatch roaming the western woods from California
to British Columbia "Some people seem to think they're out here,"
said Powell, who added that he couldn't remember another sighting in the
Forks area. Clallam County Undersheriff Joe Martin said he hears reports
of Sasquatch sightings on the North Olympic Peninsula about once every
five to 10 years. "Out west, that's not an uncommon thing,"'
he said. "But it's very few and far between."
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