Northfork writes “I was surprised the other day when at a friends shop getting the transmission serviced in one of my trucks. A guy I have known for over 20 years told a story that he had never told me before, and I am gong to try to get more info on it.
Somehow the topic of Bigfoot came up, and he turned from what he was doing and said, very seriously, “I believe in it. My Dad had an encounter, scared the crap outta him”. This fellow is a salt of the-earth type, I have NEVER known him to exaggerate or fabricate at all.
This man, we will call him Mel, was born and raised in the extreme northern end of California, north of Shasta. His Dad was a lifelong Logger, he worked in the woods from Modoc County all the way to the coast, and had his own operation for many years, lots of $ invested in heavy equipment and more than a handful of employees His Dad would stay in camp in an RV at the site during the week, and he remembers being a elementary school kid and riding up with his Mom on Fridays to pick him up. they’d go home for the weekend and then Mom would take him back in the wee hours of the following Monday.
One Friday when picked up his father he saw that his Dad and the rest of the crew couldn’t wait to get out of the woods. His father was usually very talkative on the ride home, but he was very quiet this day. When they got home his Dad took his Mother for a walk out to their pasture where Mel watched them stand and talk for over an hour.
He remembers this conversation because it was the first time he had ever seen his father cry. His parents never said a word to him about it, and Monday morning they took his Dad back to the jobsite. When they arrived, it looked like someone had gone crazy there. The 3500 gallon water truck, used to keep dust down on the landings, etc. had literally been pushed on it’s right side. They believe it had over 1500 gallons of water in it when pushed over. This would require the use of a vehicle at the least. The High-cable system that skidded logs to the deck, sorta like a crane, was also on it’s side. The travel trailer he had been staying in had been knocked off of it’s leveling jacks and the general living area for the loggers was pretty much destroyed.
Mel’s Dad walked around looking for vehicle tracks, assuming at first he had been the victim of vandals. (This event took place in the 70’s, vandalizing logging operations was rare…) There were no tracks, human or vehicle, going into the site or in the area, other than those made by his crew, who all wore a certain type of boot. Mel told me that his Dad found the first footprints where the side of the water truck had been parked.
The valves leaked a bit and there was a small muddy area at above where the water manifold would have been.
The footprints were over 17 inches long. They were everywhere, all over the camp and out where the pieces of equipment had all been parked on the deck.
Mel told me his father was trembling and could not control it. He and his mother left and drove to a telephone and called the local sheriff. Mel said that someone, either the sheriff or the USFS, took casts of the prints He told me that after the .gov people left he sent someone to town for plaster and made a cast of his own.
The whereabouts of that cast are something I am looking in to. Mel said his father spent the next three days shutting down the operation there, getting his machinery and people out of there and on to another cut site. His father would NEVER talk to him about this situation, he took what he knew to his grave. Today, Mel is 60, and looking back he believes when they picked his father up that Friday that his Dad had experienced something already, but that he wasn’t talking.’
I have already done the background work, all the men who Mel remembers being on his Dad’s crew have passed. His mother, however, is still alive. She is in her late 80’s and while he is reluctant to bring it up with her I think he will…if she has that cast I want Mel to get it, even if just to make a copy of it…I really hope she is willing to talk about it. Hopefully, this story will continue.”