|
JOHN GREEN is a retired newspaperman. A graduate of both the University of British Columbia and Columbia University, he became interested in the sasquatch in 1957 while he was owner/publisher of the Agassiz-Harrison Advance newspaper and has spent the past 38 years as one of the most active participants in all aspects of the sasquatch investigation.
His personal odyssey has ranged from hunting the sasquatch in the wild to following their trail across the continent, to tracking them by computer, and he has been the leader in the long attempt, only now beginning to bear fruit, to involve the scientific community in the search.
He has written several books on the sasquatch and is considered a pre-eminent authority in the field, having been keynote speaker at all three of the major scientific symposiums so far held on this subject. John and his wife, June, live in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. (Biography from Hancock House Publishers)
Autumn: Let's begin with a complete list of books you’ve published on the bigfoot phenomenon.
On the Track of the Sasquatch - 1968
Year of the Sasquatch - 1970
The Sasquatch File - 1973
(Also in 1973 Comstock Books published On the Track of the Sasquatch/Bigfoot, a pocket paperback book combining On the Track and Year without most of the pictures. That company was taken over by Ballentine Books, which did at least three more printings with different covers, and titled Bigfoot/On the Track of the Sasquatch.)
Sasquatch, The Apes Among Us - 1978 (joint publication with Hancock House)
On the Track of the Sasquatch, 1980's Edition, Books 1 and 2 - 1980
(All the above were published by my own company, Cheam Publishing Ltd. The covers of the 1980 books were changed and "1980's Edition" was dropped for the second printing, and subsequently Hancock House did at least one printing with new covers and with the second volume titled Encounters with Bigfoot.)
The Best of Bigfoot Sasquatch - 2004
(This Hancock House publication contains the unchanged 1980's version of On the Track in one volume with four updating chapters and an index added.)
Autumn: When and how did your interest in Sasquatch begin?
John Green: In 1957, when I was 30, events took place which led to media attention on local stories about hairy giants known as Sasquatch. This brought out new eyewitness accounts, some of them very recent, and I also I learned that people I already knew and respected had experienced things which made them take seriously what I had previously considered to be just Indian folklore.
Autumn: How and when did you become involved in the goings-on at Bluff CreeK? What did you find there?
John Green: I drove to California in 1958 after seeing a newspaper picture of Jerry Crew holding a 16" footprint cast he had made at a road construction site in the Bluff Creek valley which matched almost exactly a tracing I had of a cast made in British Columbia in a 1941 incident that I had already investigated.
While there I met Bob Titmus, a taxidermist who had examined the tracks and was convinced that a real creature, man or animal, was making them. A number of attempted explanations were circulating, usually quoting "the sheriff", but non-Indians were not aware that there were local Indian stories of hairy giants, just as in B.C. Bob Titmus had already embarked on a quest to learn what made the footprints which lasted for the rest of his life. A few weeks later he wrote to me that he had found 15" tracks of distinctly different shape made by a different individual, and I returned to California to see them. Unlike the tracks in loose dirt on the road job these tracks were in hard-packed sand in the creek bed, yet they sank about an inch deep where our own tracks did not sink at all. It was those tracks that convinced me that there was a genuine mystery involved, not a simple human hoax. Rene Dahinden was already involved in British Columbia but could not go to the U S. until the following year, when he got Canadian citizenship, and we saw new tracks made by the 15" feet. By that time there were quite a few people involved in trying to find the maker of the tracks, and over the years many more came and went, but only Rene and Bob and I carried on the search without interruption, and both of them are now dead.
I saw tracks of at least four different individuals in the Bluff Creek area in the 50s and 60s. At first there was some excitement to the search and we expected to solve the problem in a short time, but nothing significant developed until Roger Patterson got a movie of one of the creatures in the same area in 1967. I had known Roger for three or four years by that time. He had been to Bluff Creek in 1964 and had been fortunate enough to be able to see and cast a good 16" track, but his return in the fall of 1967 was because Rene and I had seen hundreds of tracks of the 15" and a 13" individual a few weeks previously.
Autumn: You are the original chronicler of reports. Please tell us about how you began documenting these reports. How did obtaining eyewitness accounts differ before the days of the internet? Describe the first computer database you put together. What were the restrictions of the program you used? What were you able, briefly, to discern from the data?
John Green: Of course we always kept notes, clippings etc. about incidents we investigated, and I even had some accounts officially sworn to, but systematic record-keeping evolved slowly. At first there were not many reports to deal with, and the few investigators tended to make and swap recordings of the witnesses' stories. I probably was not the first to make systematic paper files, but I certainly carried it on the longest and did the most travelling to contact other researchers. I also organized a group in 1970 to interview witnesses for the first attempt to use a computer to try to find patterns of behavior that would assist in the search. That computer study was not productive, but for almost 20 years I carried on with an information exchange in which many active investigators participated. We were dealing with an average of about one hundred reports, new and old, each year. In 1992 I started putting my files into a computer, using a much more comprehensive questionnaire than in 1970, and software with what was for that era exceptional searching ability. The result was about the same. I can answer a lot of statistical questions, and a few scientists have studied aspects of the data with results they found convincing, but there are still no useful established patterns identified.
Autumn: It seems that most field research is done in short bursts on weekends and holidays. In your estimation, has anyone made a VIABLE field research effort (i.e. stayed in the field long enough to obtain the necessary data)?
John Green: Bob Titmus is the only person I know of who carried out field research continuously for a period of several years. No useful data resulted. Dr. John Bindernagel is attempting to do it now, and I expect there are others, but there is every indication that what is needed is a fully-funded long-term effort by some institution or organization able to draw on and dedicate deep resources of skilled manpower and sophisticated equipment, and nothing of that sort has ever happened.
Autumn: Approximately how many accounts have you chronicled? How many of theses have you personally investigated in the field?
John Green: I have recorded about 5,000 reports, but many are very indirect and/or of little substance. I have no idea how many I have personally investigated, but the number would be in the low hundreds, certainly not the thousands.
Autumn: What’s the most compelling evidence you personally seen to date?
John Green: The Patterson movie, the Skookum Cast and the Glen Thomas hole in the rocks.
Autumn: What's the most interesting account you investigated or track find you've documented?
John Green: The most interesting account was Glen Thomas' observation of three sasquatch obtaining hibernating rodents to eat by shiffing them out and then the large male digging down to them by pulling out large large slabs of rock until he had made a hole about five feet deep with sides that were almost vertical. The strength required to pull out rocks at the bottom with all the weight of the rocks above resting on them is almost unimaginable, but we could not see any other way the hole could have been made. Moss on the surrounding rock surfaces ruled out anyone having made a wide excavation and then rebuilding the sides to leave a vertical hole.
Autumn: Why, in your opinion, in almost 50 years, hasn’t the subject been accepted by mainstream science?
John Green: Apparently because almost everyone, scientists included, is so sure there can be no such animal that they have never taken a serious look at the evidence.
Autumn: Why, in almost 50 years, do you think MORE tangible evidence has not come to light?
John Green: Because so few resources have been devoted to finding evidence or to examining what has already come to light.
Autumn: What, in your opinion, is the best evidence to date?
John Green: Thousands of eye witnesses, hundreds of track casts and photographs, the Patterson movie.
Autumn: Do you feel that the advent of the world wide web has helped or hindered research?
John Green: The web has helped immensely in bringing out more evidence and putting investigators in touch with developments.
Autumn: What do you feel would be the best approach to field research to gather HARD evidence of these creatures?
John Green: I don't claim any expertise in this area. I just want to see the people with the necessary skills and resources take it up.
Autumn: What do you feel has been your most important contribution to this field?
John Green: Sharing the information I have accumulated.
Autumn: How do you think you’d feel/react, coming face-to-face with one of these creatures yourself? Have you ever encountered one in the field?
John Green: I would hope to react much as I do on seeing any other large animal, but I have no way of knowing in advance. I think the danger would be less than in a face-to-face encounter with a grizzly, which I expect I would find very frightening, but whether that opinion would be any help in the actual event, who knows?
Autumn: What do you feel is the most important NEXT STEP that can be taken in order to solve this mystery once and for all?
John Green: The more people who do field research the better the odds of a lucky encounter being convincingly recorded. Aside from that I think the most promising course is to keep trying to get scientists of reputation to study the available evidence. Eventually the realization will dawn that one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time is waiting to be made.
Autumn: How did your spouse handle your interest?
John Green: She was involved from the beginning, including the first trip to see footprints in California, and has always been supportive.
Autumn: What advice would you give the next generation of researchers?
John Green: Participate in whatever aspect of the search you find satisfying, so that you will enjoy the time you spend; share your results, and count it as success whenever anyone succeeds. It is a bad gamble to try to solve everything yourself.
Autumn: If you could do anything differently, what would you have done?
John Green: Lots of small things, but I have no reason to believe that any of them would have made a significant difference.
Autumn: Are you continuing to chronicle reports today?
John Green: My main involvement now is in trying to get existing evidence properly studied by scientists whose reputations would give their findings significant impact. Otherwise so much is going on that I no longer try to keep track of what everyone is doing, let alone deal with the thousands of reports available on the internet. I don't plan on doing any more writing or public speaking, but exceptions tend to come along.
|
