The Violent Bigfoot Encounter That Saw 400-Pound Beasts Attack
Flickr/Old White TruckOregon has the second-most Bigfoot encounters by population in the U.S.
Despite an undeniable roster of hoaxes that presumably comprise the majority of Bigfoot sightings, reports like this 1924 incident on Mount Saint Helens in Washington State boggle the mind. It was here that a group of prospectors claimed to have encountered a group of seven-foot-tall ape-men which nearly killed them all with boulders.
Prospectors Fred Beck, Gabe Lefever, John Peterson, Marion Smith, and Smith’s son Roy, recounted their potential Bigfoot encounter to The Oregonian. The men said they were about eight miles from Spirit Lake when four of these “gorilla men” attacked them. The bipedal creatures were “covered with long, black hair,” and the men guessed that they weighed around 400 pounds.
“Their ears are about four inches long and stick straight up,” the men told the newspaper. “They have four toes, short and stubby.”
Beck purportedly fired at the creatures with his rifle and managed to shoot one of them off a cliff. Thinking themselves successful in driving the beasts away, the group calmly retired that night. Suddenly, their cabin was shaking in its foundation as the creatures slammed against the walls, with one tearing a hole in the roof.
Wikimedia Commons/The OregonianThe cliffs of Ape Canyon in modern day (left) are named for the Bigfoot encounter that appeared in The Oregonian in (right).
“Many of the rocks fell through a hole in the roof, and two of the rocks struck Beck, one of them rendering him unconscious for nearly two hours,” the article continued.
The group escaped their cabin at the crack of dawn and decided not to alert a single soul. Nonetheless, somebody talked, and word of mouth prompted an investigation into this violent Bigfoot encounter.
Despite the U.S. Forest Service launching an inquest that year, rangers J.H. Huffman and William Welch found nothing to corroborate the story of these men. Not even the cliff where Beck had shot a creature yielded any evidence. In the end, the authorities deemed the incident a prank — despite finding 14-inch footprints nearby.
The gorge where this Bigfoot encounter may or may not have taken place is now called Ape Canyon.
