I think most people who would read this blog already know the story of “Ape Canyon.” Long story short, a group of miners near Mt. St. Helens in 1924 claimed that one of their number shot a large hairy figure, and presumably killed it, and were then attacked in the night by a group of “mountain devils” from all sides. They claim the beasts beat on the walls and threw rocks at the roof and walls of the building. The cabin had no windows, only a door that was hastily reinforced shut to prevent the mountain devils from forcing entry. The miners reportedly shot through the walls and roof but never took clear shots. The following day they emerged from hiding and found a multitude of footprints, some measuring over 18 inches in length. Presumably scared out of their wits, they vacated the area. The men made it home and eventually the story made its way to the papers and caused a massive stir and resulted in a hunt for the creatures by detectives, journalists and even big game hunters. The story is famous in the Bigfoot world and is often rolled out as an example of early Bigfoot stories and myths. It is also often cited as an example of the more physical nature of Bigfoot, being that there were multiple witnesses, they claim to have shot and killed a Bigfoot, and they found footprints surrounding their cabin the next day. Never in a million years did I think Ape Canyon would be a “woo” Bigfoot story but here I am.
I cannot take credit for discovering this, that honor, and of course the inspiration for this whole post belongs to Dr. Jeb Card, a professor of Anthropology at Miami University. He is also a frequent guest of the podcast “Monstertalk” and is one of the hosts of the podcast “In Research of” where he and Blake Smith dissect episodes of “In Search Of”. Both are podcasts that I highly recommend. So, Dr. Card was posting about his favorite spooky things on twitter ( Dr. Card is also a quality follow on twitter if you are like me and are interested in the more academic angles of all things weird, or as he puts it, weird shit-ology). One of those daily threads talked about what I’m about to mention here, Dr. Card calls it “The Weird Washing of Bigfoot” in a twitter thread Here.In the thread Dr. Card details how genuinely weird the story of Ape Canyon is, and how much, virtually all of it, of that weirdness has been ignored over the years in favor of the more grounded “Bigfoot is just another animal” versions of Bigfoot. In the thread Dr. Card details how one of the miners, Fred Beck, published a a pamphlet “I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens” in the 1960s. The pamphlet is available in its entirety onlineHere.
When you read the words of Beck the hits just keep on coming. He details his experiences during the attack, which is fine, he also claims to correct a few details. It’s only later in the document that things sort of go off the rails. In chapter three beck drops a bomb…
“I will reveal thoroughly what I know them to be. First of all I will say that 'they are not entirely of the world.' I know the reaction we experienced as these beings attacked out cabin impressed many with the concept of great ape-like men dwelling in the mountains. And I can say that we genuinely fought and were quite fearful, and we were glad to get out of the mountains but I was, for one, always conscious that we were dealing with supernatural beings, and I know the other members of the party felt the same.‘
Beck comes out and says that the creatures are supernatural beings. I had literally never heard this before, never had I ever heard “woo” stories associated with the famous Ape Canyon incident. Beck continues to regale the reader with tales of his psychic exploits. He claims to have had psychic experiences as a youth, and that he and the other miners discovered their mine with the help of psychic means. He also tells how he and his colleagues saw a spiritual being take the form of a large Native American man, and another in the form of a friend. He includes these stories to tell of his ability to manifest things, and details how Bigfoot, or abominable snowmen as he puts it, are manifestations. He goes on in great detail about what sorts of manifestations Bigfoot are, and honestly, I just don’t have the energy to delve into the rabbit hole, ha ha. Here is something he does write something that is dead on to things that have been mentioned on this blog before. He says “Most theories picture the Snowmen as material beings hiding in caves, and scampering over the mountains. The law of probability would be that eventually one would be found if their bodies were of physical construction only.” Basically, if these things are real, why haven’t we found one yet? Many people would answer that with, if we haven’t found them, they aren’t real. Instead Beck claims that since they have not been found then they must be supernatural in nature. This is a claim that we often see in the modern realm of cryptozoology, people can’t find the creature, so they claim the supernatural,a claim that can’t technically be proven or disproven, is used to maintain the possibility that Bigfoot is real in the face of everything that says no.
In Cryptozoology there are two (or more) camps. Those are the groups that believe that Bigfoot is a flesh and blood creature and the groups that believe he is some sort of supernatural entity. Early names in the bigfoot world like John Green and Grover Krantz roundly dismissed the ideas of Bigfoot as something more supernatural and more spiritual in favor of believing it was a flesh and blood creature. It seems throughout the seventies and eighties fringe ideas were just that, relegated to the fringe. Starting in the 90s internet was becoming more widespread and thus a freer exchange of ideas started to take place. An exchange devoid of gatekeepers, publishers, librarians, whomever. Then ideas of a supernatural Bigfoot started to get widespread shared peer to peer, and people even started to notice that earlier investigators had sometimes cherry-picked reports, receiving weird reports and filing them away and ignoring them. Now fast forward to 2022. It seems the supernatural Bigfoot is becoming mainstream, and the people who are in the “Bigfoot is a flesh and blood creature and nothing else” camp seem to be on the fringe and the supernatural crowd is mainstream. It seems that the only serious and high profile Bigfoot investigator/personality who limits themselves to the flesh and blood is Cliff Barrackman, even his colleague Jame ‘Bobo’ Fay is extraordinarily open to more spiritual and supernatural explanations. It seems like every podcast increasingly leans into and entertains the supernatural explanations. This is likely due to a combination of a continued lack of adequate evidence for Bigfoot and the increasing popularity of conspiracy theories and ‘alternate truths’ in society at large. We live in an age where long held wisdoms are being challenged increasingly in public spaces and people who believe the earth is flat,people who believe the pyramids were built by aliens, believe the moon landing was fake and even more absurd conspiracy theories all have substantial followings. Sometimes distressingly large followings. It should be no surprise that in the last decade, especially the last 4 years since the end of “Finding Bigfoot” which, spoiler alert, did not find Bigfoot, there has been an increasing fringe movement in Bigfoot studies and Cryptozoology at large.
What does this mean? Well it means two things. One, “woo” has always been there, and is not an aberration in cryptozoology/Bigfoot, but a feature. It only appeared fringe for so long because some of the original cryptozoologists seem to have actively suppressed it or ignored it. Second, increasingly it looks like Bigfoot, and Cryptozoology in general are in a transformative stage. ‘Cryptozoologists” are less and less concerned with biological study and rules, and they are instead are double dipping more in the paranormal world. As mentioned previously even the most level headed Bigfoot podcasts are forced by popular demand to entertain the supernatural theories surrounding Bigfoot. Meanwhile, academics focus less on the animals, and instead focus on the people and personalities of cryptozoology. Pages like Sharon Hill’s “Pop Goes the Cryptid” expound on this popular culture aspect of cryptozoology far better than I can. In addition scholars like David Puglia and his “North American Monsters”oexamine more of the folklore aspect while historians like Brian Regal focus on the people of cryptozoology. Besides, at the end of the day, I’ll wager that the sturdy of cryptozoology has always taught us more about ourselves than any Cryptid out there.
Because after all, wasn’t Bigfoot just the friends we made along the way?
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