Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

May 9

Proctor Valley Monster

I was recently in San Diego and I heard residents talking about Zoobies. What the heck are Zoobies? The story of Zoobies actually started in the 60’s. In the early 60’s, two teens who get a flat tire while driving through Proctor Valley late at night. The gentleman pulls to the side of the road under a tree, gets out to look at the damage, his girlfriend becomes fearful when she hears a struggle, so she locks the doors, and the next thing she hears is a scraping on the roof of the car. When cops rescue her in the morning, she learns that the scraping sound was her date’s fingernails. He’s was dead and hanging by his feet from a tree branch, with big, animal-like footprints around the car.

alpineA local psychiatrist claims to have seen a Bigfoot-type creature in the hills near his house. he described a 6 to 7-foot-tall, hairy creature accompanied by two similar critters. He made a plaster cast of a footprint 16 inches long and 8 inches wide. He also related many strange happenings and sounds around his home. Park rangers and other investigators could never confirm the sightings, but plenty of campers, area residents, and even a sheriff’s deputy claim to have seen some large, hairy thing tromping the hills of Alpine.

One investigator into Bigfoot phenomena notes that the nearby Viejas Indians have a legend of a similar creature that guards its burial grounds.

“I started working the Alpine area (east of San Diego, California) in March of 1970. I came to the department the previous year. I was working out there in a patrol capacity for the San Diego County Sheriffs Department I was a deputy at the time and actually worked Alpine for about 2 years, from March of 1970 to April of 1972. As far as trying to recall exactly when this went down, the best I can come up with is that it was after the Laguna fire of 1970”, said Sgt. Doug Huse of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Dept in a 1992 interview.

The winter of 1971 was that about the time Sgt. Doug Huse had his first contact with the key witness, Dr. Baddour who was a prominent San Diego psychiatrist. Dr. Baddour was stopped by a two-man patrol unit. Baddour was traveling eastbound, which would’ve been from the San Diego area to what we learned later was his home in Alpine. On the front seat of his car,  he had a loaded.44 magnum revolver with a 6-inch barrel. That’s the same type of gun that Dirty Harry made famous. It’s the largest caliber hand gun you can buy. Of course this piqued our interest a little bit. I wasn’t the contact, I was what we call the cover during this particular stop. My partner’s the one who made first contact and found the gun. He secured the revolver and was asking the doctor, who’d identified himself as Dr. Baddour, why he was carrying the weapon. Baddour said it was because of a ….. and I don’t know what he actually said at the time, but my partner heard him say, “Zoobie,” ..and so from there on all our conversations throughout the department referred to whatever Dr. Baddour had seen as a Zoobie. That wasn’t what the doctor actually called it, I don’t believe, but that’s what my partner heard and that’s how the name got coined.

He described the Zoobie as a large, upright, walking hairy creature. Dr. Baddour convinced us and later other members of my department, including one of my patrol sergeants, that in truth he’d had three separate encounters with the Zoobies.

One sighting was made by his entire family within the confines of his yard and immediate area, and at one time they saw three Zoobies. What Dr. Baddour described to us was what he assumed was a father, mother and child with the largest of the Zoobies being over 6 feet tall, maybe 7 feet tall. The tallest was very hairy and much larger-framed than an ordinary man. What he described as the mother was about 5 feet tall, and the smaller one was about 3 or 4 feet tall. Like I said, the doctor convinced a number of us that he’d in fact seen something unusual.

Dr. Baddour purchased the home from a German couple. The first set of circumstances I remember was Dr. Baddour finding damage to the house when he’d just moved in. All of the light bulbs, inside and out, were the yellow bug repellent type. Baddour said the German man told me that he shouldn’t change them to white, that he should get used to the yellow light. Dr. Baddour asked the German couple if there was an insect problem and the German couple was very evasive about that, – evasive also about a lot of details regarding the house and property. The property did have some acreage. The property had some fruit trees in the front and back yards. I don’t remember what kind of fruit trees they were, but the house and trees were surrounded by a fence. One of Baddour’s complaints was that fruit was being picked off the trees at the tops, but not from the bottoms. The trees were upward of 7 or 8 feet high, or maybe 10 feet high. Anyway, the fruit was disappearing from the tops of his trees and his fence was getting knocked down. He had a wind chime at one of the doors made of brass or some kind of strong metal which frequently rang in the blowing wind, and at one point the wind chime suddenly turned up flattened. Baddour couldn’t explain it and we couldn’t duplicate it. It was smashed. Baddour did make a plaster cast of a footprint and I know we had photographs of it, if we didn’t in fact have a plaster cast of the print ourselves. But I do recall there was a plaster cast.

According to Ken Coon, a former Los Angeles police detective, who visited the Alpine area in 1971, Dr. Baddour’s “Zoobies” left v-shaped, 4-toed footprints, 16 inches long and 8 inches wide with the widest measurement across the toes. The foot narrowed down to 5 inches at the heel.

One of the sightings involved three Zoobies, sighted by a whole family. The Baddours had made it a habit to never go out after dark, but one night they were out with the son to call in their pet dog. In the dark the boy thought he saw the dog near a comer of the house and called out to It. Well, the dog came running back, but from a different corner, and what at first they thought was the dog turned out to be the smaller Zoobie. Apparently it had been laying down and it got up and stood and walked the opposite way, joining the other two, the larger male and female, and they all walked off into the brush.

Baddour was firm in his own mind that it wasn’t an ape or gorilla. It was something totally different than one of those. One of the stranger stories I recall happened when the doctor got home after dark one night. They had chickens there, and earlier he’d called his wife to say he was going to be late and to remind her to feed the chickens before night fall, which she did. When the doctor got home he had to exit his car, open the gate, drove through and stopped, then got out of the car again to close the gate behind him. He said that when he went to close the gate that night he heard a very low, very guttural voice say, ‘Here chicky, chicky, chicky…’

It was the doctor’s opinion, and we had no reason to doubt him, that the Zoobie had some type of intelligence and the capability of producing sounds like that. The impression was that one of the creature’s was imitating the doctors wife who’d called in the chickens earlier.

bigfoot

A few years ago a deputy told me he saw a dark-colored, large, upright furry creature, not a bear and not human, up in some rocks north of Interstate 8, and possibly northwest of El Capitan (reservoir). The deputy told me it was a good distance away. Also, I was involved in a juvenile diversion camp (near Julian, northeast of Alpine), and a couple of counselors from another camp came down and told us they’d see something they couldn’t identify in the mountains. After talking with them it was concluded that what they’d seen was probably a Zoobie. Another thing we found out, during our investigation of Dr. Baddour’s sightings, was that the Viejas Indians (reservation) just north of Interstate 8 had a legend about a giant hairy man that was the protector of their burial grounds, and those burial grounds were located just about 2 miles north of where Dr. Baddour lived.

Throughout the years attempts to interview Dr. Baddour by researchers not involved in the initial investigations have failed. As recently as July of 1992 the doctor, who currently has an active practice in San Diego, still refused to comment at length on his family’s Bigfoot experiences.

 

Sources:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/stories/zoobies.htm
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sasquatch

 

 

22 Responses to “Proctor Valley Monster”

  1. Patricia R

    This photo is from the film by Christopher Munch, titled “Letters From the Big Man”.
    I recognize it from there.
    It’s an interesting look at experiences a lot of people seem to have.
    Many of those experiences are quite subtle,— just a sound, some object being moved or placed in a spot differently than we’ve seen before, —and it does not take a full view of a creature to sense and feel that something or someone is nearby us.

    • Patricia R

      I just reread my above comment.
      I was really just commenting on the film, and the way it portrays the people in the story.
      The story seems to be taken from real life accounts yet it isn’t meant to be a documentary.

      I know a lot of people in real life hear sounds of many kinds and smell things and feel heavy foot steps and sense things without ever actually seeing creatures—
      the way this film is done, it shows how those situations can happen and it does not diminish or discount the person’s experience at all.

  3. Carol S

    Heard about this a long time ago; the Chicky, Chicky thing still gives me the heebie-jeebies! I would love to hear from this doctor or his wife.

  8. Christopher c

    That is nuts I always wonder just how far this creature can get without being seen in the south ,but since it is a nocturnal beast and a ridge walker we probably won’t see it unless it moves in the daytime,I thought it was real interesting when a report came in on the show from Mexico about a girl who saw one when she was riding in the back of a pickup when her father took the family on a hunting trip,that sure expanded my Sasquatch territorial range frame of mind.

  10. Papa - Yeti

    It is always a huge help in a case to have the Footprints / tracks mentioned in as much detail as possible: According to Ken Coon, a former Los Angeles police detective, who visited the Alpine area in 1971, Dr. Baddour’s “Zoobies” left v-shaped, 4-toed footprints, 16 inches long and 8 inches wide with the widest measurement across the toes. The foot narrowed down to 5 inches at the heel.

    – Here is a very good example of track detail observed, detail taken and given in the report- From ►2008 – November 21 – 2008 – Chequamegon National Forest – Western Wisconsin – At first it was not the size that caught my attention; it was “What IN GOD’S CREATION MADE THESE TRACKS” immediately my skin crawled as I looked around with my headlight to see if what we just come up on was in sight. I glanced back down in disbelief at the tracks. I was in a slight stage of shock as I looked at her, she looked at me and we both looked down at 4 well – formed footprints of some kind of scary tracks that either of us had ever seen before. I sized my shoe beside one of the tracks and realized it was about 3 inches longer than my shoe which measured 12 inches heal to toe, and about I inch wider than my shoe which measured 4 inches at its width. Whatever we witnesses the foot prints of has 2 pointed talons on the end of its foot that are isometrically the same with a rectangle shaped heel. The talons joined on each foot. They are 15 inches long and 5 inches wide with 64 – inch strides. I have a 36 – inch stride at 5 feet 10 inches tall to give an idea of the possible size of this creature, running or not we do not know.

    I do wonder if the Dr. Baddour refused to give any interviews out side of the case he was involved in / with, along with the police department. Was it because he had an agreed upon not speak to other Investigators?

  11. Kay S

    ‘Here chicky, chicky, chicky…’ Shudder! It’s like a horror movie.
    I wonder if it was trying to call the human to it, like Dr Baddor’s wife had called the chickens to her. The BF might have been thinking, ‘If this works, I’ll never have to chase a human again’.

  12. Letty

    Thanks for sharing this story! I am an hour and a half away from this area so its great to know about it. I will be doing some research into the area. Thanks for the heads up.

  13. William H

    These animals do mimic people. My family has some property in eastern OK that has had activity for years. . Several times, they have mimicked a baby crying and whistled the same way we did when trying to get our dog to come home.

  14. Derek R

    I grew up in Chula Vista, I know the legend of the Proctor Valley Monster…..awesome stuff. As a teenager we used to go out and drink beers in Proctor Valley. Never had an encounter tho…..bummer

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