Monday, December 09, 2002 The beast is dead. Long live the beast. In appropriate fashion, the headline screamed across the top of Page A1 last week: "Original Bigfoot hoaxer dies." Below was the tale of former Humboldt County resident Ray L. Wallace, who died of heart failure at age of 84 on November 26th at a Washington state nursing home, but whose name will live forever in the annals of North Coast legend.

As his son, Michael Wallace, confirmed in the wire story, Ray Wallace was indeed the hoaxer he denied being back in 1958, when two of his construction company workers reported seeing a huge, hairy animal cross a Bluff Creek logging road outside Willow Creek.

"The reality is, Bigfoot just died," young Wallace solemnly intoned.

The Humboldt Standard of Oct. 15, 1958, carried the amazing original story -- coining the term Bigfoot -- and our corner of the world has never been quite the same.

We also reported a fact that the wire story missed -- June Beal, Eureka widow of longtime Humboldt Standard editor Scoop Beal, said the editor was in on the gag from the beginning. It was just supposed to be a short-time fun thing, "and the fun thing got out of hand," she revealed.

What's this? Reports of hairy ape-men practically in our back yards, spawning an entire Sasquatch-like industry still going strong after nearly 50 years -- and now, suddenly, two independent confirmations that the whole thing WAS a hoax after all?

Is it all over, that easily? Don't bet on it.

A quick search of the Internet revealed that the North Coast's favorite furred man-thing is the focus of a legion of websites. They include: "Sasquatch Watch," the "Field Guide to Mystery Primates" and "Sasquatch, the Mounting Evidence" (apparently put up by people who didn't read last week's story). For the skeptical, we have "Sasquatch, Man in a Monkey Suit" and related sites.

And just in time for Christmas, "Own a Bigfoot Footprint, $29.95." Not a bad idea, actually, for that friend who has everything.

There are Bigfoot books, institutes of alleged scientific study, Bigfoot documentaries, movies like "Harry and the Hendersons" and even Bigfoot maps -- like the one at the back of our newsroom, which painstakingly identifies the locations of 120 Bigfoot sightings and 150 track sites.

Can all of these hundreds of sightings really be hoaxes or mistakes of some kind?

Well, yes. But that's beside the point.

Ray Wallace, and all those who followed, helped put Humboldt County on the map for many who live far outside our region. They've inspired the creation of fun community events like Bigfoot Days in Willow Creek and excited the imaginings of thousands who -- like "The X-Files'" Fox Mulder - - just want to believe.

Whatever the truth of Bigfoot, its rumored existence here has made the cultural fabric of the North Coast just a little more colorful, and that's not a bad thing.

No matter how strenuous the debunking, we suspect the legend of Bigfoot will be with us for a very long time.

As one recent counter-culture type recently told us, this hoax revelation is itself suspicious, for true believers. "The hoax is a hoax," he said, with a knowing smile.

The fact is, we're all a little like the Hendersons, and we just wouldn't want our big, shaggy, proto-human Harry to disappear forever from our dark forests and bright imaginations.

Bigfoot dead? Not a chance.

Copyright Eureka Times Standard
Article courtesy Rocky Bemis

Back to Bigfoot Encounters Main page
Back to Newspaper & Magazine Articles
Back to Bigfoot Encounters "What's New" page

Portions of this website are reprinted under the Fair Use Doctrine of International Copyright Law as educational material without benefit of financial gain.
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
This proviso is applicable throughout the entire website.