Expedition nets pair of eyes, calls and prints in Bald Hills
"There have been quite a number of sightings in Hoopa-probably six since the symposium (September 2003)," said Al Hodgson, Bigfoot Wing curator for the Willow Creek Museum. "One was towards Denny, two at the South Fork Bridge in Salyer, and maybe six in Hoopa."
At least two tribal members have encountered a big, hairy ape-type creature, and one archaeologist from Stanislaus National Forest said she saw a pair of red eyes at night as recently as May 7 in the Bald Hills. The tribal members said they actually saw the Tintah- k'iwungxoya:n (old man of the woods), as Bigfoot is called in the Hupa language, running. One saw him head on and the other from behind…twice in the same location.
Two sightings on Mill Creek Road
Raven Ulibarri, 21, said she saw an 8½-foot tall hairy creature carry off a bag of garbage from her shed one rainy night in December 2003, and saw it again exactly a month later around 11:30 a.m. in the same spot.
Raven lives in her parents' house (they have moved) on Mill Creek Road in Hoopa with Eugene Masten and their 3-year-old daughter. She was sitting in the bedroom with the window open, smoking a cigarette. It was raining.
"There is a trail on the side of my house, which leads down the hill," she said. "I heard steps so loud out there. I thought maybe it was a bear, so I turned the porch light on, ran out onto the porch, and looked.
"It was getting into the shed where we keep the garbage. It got out real fast and took off running. I saw it packing a bag of garbage and right in front of the trail, it dropped it. I remember actually seeing its fingers.
"It picked the garbage up and took off again. It was taking big steps, like doosh, doosh. Bears, you can kinda hear scattering off. That thing was huge. Just the way it steps, it makes the mountains echo…and they were so far apart."
Ulibarri said she stayed on the lighted porch after the creature had run up the trail. After a few steps, it stayed still. Hoopa Tribal Police Officer Joe Masten arrived at the scene and brought two men with him. They had flashlights and each time anyone walked out towards it, it would take off and then stop, Raven said. It did that three times.
"We found some hair that was caught on the plywood on the shed," she said. "So I got some tweezers and put it in a plastic bag. I talked to Al Hodgson, and he sent it to a lab."
The curator said the hair was sent to Dr. Henner Fahrenbach, a retired invertebrate zoologist and head of electron microscopy laboratory at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, and he concluded it was "a curly brown hair, with a reddish tint"…that is "too coarse for primate…and larger than any primate hair." He said it was "probably bear."
However, Larry Bollmann of Bollman's Taxidermy in Eureka said it was definitely not bear hair.
"I think it's too fine to be bear hair," Hodgson said.
Exactly a month after the first incident, around 11:30 a.m. in January 2004, Ulibarri was taking her daughter to an appointment. As she walked out to put the little girl in the car seat, the same creature was at the trail again and again it took off running.
"At first I didn't know what to think," Raven said. "Then I realized it couldn't be anything else. It definitely wasn't a person."
Ulibarri said her family, who has lived on the Mill Creek property many years, has spoken about the Bigfoot in the mountains near their houses, and Raven thinks he has been there all along. Many families have told only each other about their experiences with the "old man of the woods."
Like the story Leo Carpenter Sr. related to his family about logging equipment and heavy barrels being thrown at Bluff Creek in 1967 around the time of the Patterson-Gimlin film.
Debra Carpenter faces Bigfoot on Carpenter Lane
But Leo's daughter, Debra has actually seen the 8-foot tall primate/human face on, if only for a second or two. Debra was driving on Carpenter Lane in Hoopa April 2003 at around 6 a.m. when she saw it walking on the road. It was still somewhat dark and she had her lights on.
"When I saw it, it was walking along the side," she said. "It was almost like we saw each other at the same time. He was walking towards me and he took a couple more steps, then walked over the berry bushes like nothin', like to hide from me."
She and Bigfoot were face on and she believes it was about 8 feet tall, skinny with stringy hair. It was near a telephone pole, which she used to estimate the creature's height. She went home and told her friend, Wendell "Winkle" White Sr.
Debra told her experience to Autumn Williams, a cryptozoologist who investigates sightings all over the U.S. for the show Mysterious Encounters, which aired on the Outdoor Life Network in the beginning of 2004. Discovery Channel producer Doug Hajicek films the investigations.
The crew went to Carpenter's Hole on the Trinity River during the Bigfoot Symposium weekend to shoot the interview and while there, Debra said they all heard a chilling howl like those often recorded and said to belong to Bigfoot.
Winkle said he saw tracks at Carpenter's Hole about a week before the symposium. His friend Dennis and Debra saw them, too.
"There were a few tracks and they were deep, but it rained," Debra said. "You could see the dents, but nothing like they were."
While these sightings are in and around Hoopa, many sightings in the past have been reported in the Bald Hills, just east of Hoopa. And one haunting set of eyes made its presence known very recently.
BFRO expedition sees pair of eyes in the dark…5-6 feet away
The Bigfoot Research Organization (BFRO) held an expedition May 6, 7 and 8 on a Thursday, Friday and Saturday, traveling Bald Hills Road east from Orick towards Hoopa. About 25 people attended in all, who were broken up into groups. One foup included Kathy Moskowitz, an archaeologist and anthropologist from the Stanislaus National Forest who did a rock art presentation at the Bigfoot Symposium in Willow Creek last September.
Moskowitz has been studying Bigfoot most of her 35 years of life and Montra DuMond, another one of few women Bigfoot researchers, is Kathy's research partner and was also on the expedition with the group.
About nine people were in Kathy's group and they were "call blasting" at around 10:30 p.m. near the boundary of Redwood National Park on Bald Hills Road.
"Several participants were near this tree line and they were getting very upset," Moskowitz said. "They felt like something was watching them. One man had a real bad fear response. So I went down there and also felt like something was watching me. Then I took them out and brought down two more participants without telling them why. About 30 minutes later they were backing up away from the trees. I asked what was wrong and they said, 'Something is watching us in the trees. We're getting bad vibes.'"
Without letting Montra know anything, Kathy told her she wanted to show her something. They went down to the trees, about seven feet from the tree line.
"There's something watching us in that tree," Montra told Kathy.
"The hair on the back of my neck was standing up and I was getting more and more upset," Kathy said. Just as Kathy was about to reach out to grab her friend, she saw a set of eyes.
"About five or six feet from us, actually in front of a tree, was a set of red eyes," Kathy said. "The eyes weren't like flaming red, they were more like a glow stick. This was at 10:30 at night with no moon and no light at all."
The eyes flickered as Montra watched them. Just then the eyes started to rise up and continued until about six feet tall. They watched the two women the whole time.
"They didn't waiver," Kathy said. "You could see the eyes were attached to something. They weren't just two lights moving around. Then it closed its eyes or something and then it disappeared. We both turned to each other and said 'Did you see that?' and then I grabbed her and we walked back up the hill where the guys had been watching us."
"We would hear it walking in the trees, twigs on the ground snapping, pause, snap," she said. "It was obviously something on two legs. The next day we went back out and they (BFRO) found some prints in the tree line above our heads. It looked like it had walked the whole tree line."
Moskowitz said the BFRO groups had been spread out along a ridgeline, looking into a canyon and they heard calls about a quarter of a mile away.
As far as proving the creature exists, Moskowitz said it's going to take blood and tissue for DNA analysis.
"We do have scat, but you can't get DNA out of it unless it's handled correctly," the anthropologist said. "If it sits out very long, it's not worth anything. We have hair that was analyzed to be unknown primate."
But, no body?
"I've been in the forest my whole life and I've only seen one dead animal," she said. "Nature returns to nature. After 15 years of walking outside, you'd think I'd see more, but I haven't. I think that's how it's going to be found is by a hunter walking in the woods. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they've come upon it already and just passed it off as a bear."
5-24-04
Rita Swanson (formerly Molhoek) writes for the Hoopa People Newspaper. Hoopa is just north of Willow Creek and just south of Bluff Creek (the site of the 1967 Patterson/Gimlin film). She holds a journalism degree from Humboldt State University. The preceding article was originally published in the Hoopa People Newspaper, February 13, 2005 and is reprinted here with the author's express written consent.
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