I grew up on the outskirts of the Siletz Indian Reservation along the central Oregon Coast. It’s true rainforest out there thick, wet, and wild. Looking back, I believe my father was having Sasquatch encounters throughout the 1990s.
He would say things like, “There was a man in a ghillie suit watching me from the wood line,” or tell us about a massive footprint he found outside the house after a light snowfall.
At times, he said strange, pungent odors would drift up from the creek behind our home sharp and acrid, like cat urine.
On one occasion, he told me he saw a man walking across our field in the dark. He was convinced the figure must have been wearing night vision goggles, because no ordinary person could move that confidently, or that quickly, through such rough terrain in total darkness.
When I turned eighteen, my family moved to southern Oregon, where we’ve lived ever since. I spend a great deal of time in the wilderness I love camping and my obsession with researching Sasquatch truly began during a trip to the Applegate with my late husband. We were camping at a lake we loved called Squaw Lake.
We had a large, family sized dome tent that we slept in with our three children. I’d bought it for our wedding so I could stand up and walk around inside while getting ready. I believe it was about six feet tall at the center.
My husband liked to leave the rainfly off so we could watch the stars with the kids as we fell asleep. One morning, he said to me, “Casey, I woke up in the middle of the night to a face peering down at me.”
I laughed and said, “A face? What….like a bear?”
He snapped back, “No. Like a face. And a bear couldn’t stand over the top of the tent like that without falling over.”