Sasquatch in Ocean Park

Looks pretty good, where's the right foot?

I had asked Thom Powell at the Summit last fall if he was interested in visiting the Ocean Park area since there are some very unusual Sasquatch stories from the area and he emailed back to confirm.

He drove up from Clackamas, Oregon, east of Portland, took him about 3 hours, the same time it takes me to drive from Auburn. Note: This blog post will be longer than usual, so...get yer coffee topped off.

Not Moser, but not far off

I brought my friend Moser to fix some plumbing and had invited my friend Bob as he owns property 

nearby, and also Bob had sasquatch stories to relate.

                                                                                         Here's Moser

We were to meet in town and guide Powell into my neighborhood. Moser turned on the heat and water and I put away groceries while waiting for Thom's call.

Not Thom...Thom has a better beard.

Powell is a tall guy, rangey with a five day growth of beard. Thats all I knew about him other than he has written three books about Sasquatch, two of which i have read. Once at the cabin, he handed me a copy of another book he wrote, 'Shady Neighbors' that he had explained covers additional aspects of Sasquatch behavior that I was interested in as well. Moser was there to fix plumbing and to diagnose my gas fireplace failure, but he is also an interesting guy to hash over weird topics with as he has a good mind for getting to root questions quickly.

Not Bob, but that could be him in the back.

Bob, who is a friend of my wife's sister, and lives near my place in Auburn, was delayed until the following day. Bob is a veteran hiker and former Eagle Scout and is also a smart guy, well read and able to discuss nearly anything with an open mind and a solid sense of humor. 

This is Bob, with Thom's guitar

The plan was simple. I wanted to take Thom to a beach area that had been the location find of some Sasquatch prints years ago, as reported by a man named Paul Freeman, who Thom knows.

Also, there is a large, mound formation that is located a couple of miles away, quite coincidentally right next to property that my friend Bob had recently purchased. The serendipity of these events, ie., my recent purchase of the beach cabin, Bobs very unusual recent purchase of nearby beach lots (at auction, without inspection) the also recent, highly unusual Sasquatch reports from this exact location coupled with my own abiding interest in the overall subject feels like more than a coincidence to me.


                             Moser inspects the mound
It was bound to be a good weekend. I no sooner had the beer in the fridge than my phone rang and Thom informed me that he was 10 minutes from Ocean Park. Moser and I piled into the van and headed down to meet him. On the way, I hatched a plan.We would meet Thom and pick up additional groceries, then have Thom follow us NOT back to the cabin, but instead we would detour to Bob's lot, where Bob owns a dilapidated mobile and rusting car body. Having just purchased the lot, he hasn't had time to clean it up, and I wanted to prank Thom making him think the sagging trailer with no doors and broken windows was where he would be sleeping. 

Here's Thom, holding...a BIG foot.

We met up at the IGA and shook hands, picked up veggies to go with the New York steaks Moser had packed and we were off. The lot is only a couple of miles away, so in five minutes, I whipped the van into the tight driveway and Thom followed. Moser, laughing, said, "I'll grab some grocery bags so he really thinks this is the place."

We got out and Thom climbed out and I watched his face closely while I said, "Well, this is it, you're room is in the back, we'll stay in the front.."

Thom slept in the back, almost.

He shifted his eyes along the sloping, moss-covered mobile, took in the broken windows and door and stairs and turned to me, not smiling. Then Moser rounded the corner and broke out laughing again. "I KNEW something wasnt right about this..!", Thom grinned and the gag was complete. 

We put the grocery bags back in the van and walked to property boundary. This is the location where, about four months ago Bob found a large, beer can-sized turd, right next to his Camper Van after a long night of howling noises he'd never heard before. Bob is not a person prone to wild speculation, but as a longtime outdoorsman and pragmatic guy he knows what an owl sounds like. Just as we reached the property edge, where a swollen creek runs, Moser whispered loudly, "What the hell is THAT!"

Thom leaned in and I walked over and Thom said, "Yeah...I see it too, a whitish, tan thing...its moving!"

The scrub brush here is thick and hard to see through and as the shape moved out of view, we determined that it must have been a deer, which are plentiful there. Later, on a return visit I would photograph two of them here, one with a mottled tan and white, winter coat it was shedding.

We walked back to the vans, and I told Thom that this was the place where the mound photograph I had sent him was taken. In addition to the weird, 15 foot tall green mound, there were 'No Trespassing' signs posted that featured an odd silhouette of a Sasquatch. Why? Just for fun? Maybe...

We left Bob's driveway and pulled around the corner and there it was.

                                                    The mound, when the sign was still there.

The mound. last week. Sign gone.

                                                                  Not a photo, just cool art.

A pull out on the roads edge was big enough for two vehicles, so we got out and looked at the mound. The signs have been torn down, perhaps by souvenir seekers, but a heavy iron Trespassing sign remained. 

Thom tilted his head, impressed with the big green mound and said, "I've got a shovel."

He's diggin it

Powell's last two books covered the Sasquatch mystery from rumor to deep theory and one of those theories includes the idea that Sasquatch MIGHT possibly go underground. Also, Thom, as a three decades long teacher of Earth Sciences, is following the work of other authors researching the mounds, rock structures and stone walls that riddle the landscape of this country without proper explanation. 

 Moser and Thom: 'It's sandy.'

Time to dig into one mystery. Here is where things got a bit weird. 

No sooner had Thom and Moser slammed that shovel into the base of the mound, then a rumbling pickup truck drove up, stopped and backed up slowly. I was snapping photos a few paces from Thom and Moser and I shouted to them, but knowing we were technically still trespassing, Thom had smartly stowed the shovel in a bush and we all began walking out as a scruffy, bearded man appeared from behind his beat up truck. " You guys KNOW you're trespassing, right!?"

We all apologized while walking, in near unison, but Thom added, "We just wondered what this mound is made of...".

The scruffy man shouted over his rumbling truck engine, "EARTH...what ELSE!" and he got back in his truck and idled down the road slowly. I was fairly amazed at the timing of this event. In the four minutes it took us to park and walk to the mound, thirty feet off the road and stick a shovel into it, than man shows up to angrily intercept our intrusion. Wow..

As the truck became more distant, Thom walked back and retrieved his shovel, and we got in the rigs and headed toward my place. A quarter mile of land exists here from the corner where the mound is to the driveway where the man had backed in to watch us drive past. On GOOGLE Earth maps, it looks to be at least 50 acres of wet, swamp and thick scrub lands.

As we passed the man in his truck, I looked in my rear view mirror to notice two of the original green placard signs with the Sasquatch on them, still intact on an adjacent fence. This is where Scruffy lives, and maybe, also where Sasquatch does too.

Back at the cabin we went over the strange encounter, Thom suggesting that, "its not too unusual to have a truck drive by...just people running errands on a Sunday afternoon." But the timing of the mans arrival felt weird to me, almost as if he was called or that he saw us from a distance parking and trespassing on his land. The noticable paths around the mound and the mans response when Thom wondered what the mound was, of 'It's EARTH...what else!'  indicated that this guy had dealt with interlopers many times.

He still has a couple of the silhouette placards on his driveway fence, too. Why continue to use the image of a Sasquatch on a 'No Trespass' sign and expect curious people to not stop to take a look see? 

The fence between the road and the mound is too deteriorated to slow any egress, and also, why would this landowner care that people might want to walk around a pile of grassy dirt?

There is nothing else there except for a swollen stream and mushy grass and scrub trees.

Vehicle egress would be foolish unless it was a backhoe or tractor. Whats so special about this swampy acreage that would prompt a man to shout curious types away.

The three of us decided that cocktail hour had arrived and just as Thom began preparing martinis, my phone buzzed. Bob was texting that he was close by and his arrival was imminent. It wasn't quite enough of an announcement to stop cocktail prep, but a good reason to have one more and by the time he pulled in to the driveway Bob was able to share a toast with his choice of libation, a cold beer.

Bob's inclusion to this cadre of like-minded esoterics was a good thing. He has hiked the Washington Cascades for many years and has collected at least a couple of good Sasquatch stories, and he has read fairly extensively on topics as diverse as Zecharia Sitchin's 'Twelfth Planet' and 'Worlds in Collision' and alternative thinker, Stuart Wilde's 'The Quickening' and 'Silent Power.'

After beer three, Bob sat at the dining table and expounded on life in a humorous, knowing way.

“Think about this body we occupy...this bag of meat filled with bones and chemicals...it's preposterous...PREPOSTEROUS!”

What he means is...once you get to the basic question of existence the amazing conditions required to make these combinations of physical substances and objects become a highly useful, reasoning human defy scientific explantation. But for the spark of some divine influence, humans should be just that bag of mush and bone without any real use.

Thom Talks

Though I have met Thom only a couple of times, and have never discussed anything very deeply, he begins to allude to a thick knowledge of all the topics we broach. He knows Sitchin, he knows the Annunaki Gold theory, he knows stuff like the Higgs-Bosen Partical and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge theory of wormholes and he expounds at length on this last topic in his latest book, 'Edges of Science.'

That's Saski hair he's got, not.

Moser's take is similar to Bob's and different at the same time. He believes that the world does not owe us existence and that you have to ask for and work for what you want. He has lived a hard-scrabble life at the enslavement of alcohol, but along the way has learned how to repair ANY item he comes across and to somehow ingratiate himself with everyone he meets. It's a little weird given his off-putting, bum-like exterior. He believes Sasquatch must be an off-planet creation because of it's continuing appearances without solid physical leavings and, he believes he'll have another drink.

The Glenlivit; Founders Reserve - smooth.

We ate and drank the night away and didn't solve any real problems of the world, but not for lack of trying. In the morning, Bob was gone. The last I saw of him, he was outside by the fire ring, beer in hand, ingnoring the light rain by himself. Donny says, “I got up at 4:30 to take a leak and Bob was still out there by the fire.” Outside, his car was gone, but he'd left his Nikon camera and some CDs.

I texted, no response.

Thom made coffee (a strong, excellent Oregon brand, with a tobacco-ey undertone) and turkey bacon and eggs, Moser moped and I played Thom's amazing guitar. Later that night we would jam, and Thom plays a good harmonica, with Moser nodding in approval, we did The Sasquatch Blues quite effectively.

                                                                     Thom and his really nice guitar

Thom's harmonica set

After breakfast, we piled in the van for the Leadbetter Wildlife Park, at the very end of the 26 mile Long Beach Peninsula.

The rain let up mercifully and with Thom riding shotgun and Moser in the jump seat behind we tooled over and up to the Leadbetter National Wildlife Refuge, a day use only State Park with several miles of bayside beach. On the way we drove past the mound again and saw the Sasquatch silhouette signs and the shouting man's black pickup still in the same place. That swampy acreage includes a slough named for the Espy family who homesteaded here in the 1800s and it adjoins the back side of the acreage that surrounds Leadbetter Refuge. In the middle of Refuge is an enormous mansion and estate owned by a millionare who restricts access far more diligently than Mr. Sasquatch Silhouette here.

On the long straight road toward the Point, we pass a left turn with a huge ornate gate with near life-sized, roaring stone Lions on either side and twin Gargoyle knockers on the rusting iron gates, proper.

The Gated Entrance

A squawk box intercom sits to the left, but there is no sign, no indication that the owner of this gate and the 600 acre property behind it is a multi-level marketing genius named Craig Tillotson. Tillotson is the founder of Nuskin, a dietary supplement and personal care products. Since it's inception in the early 1990's, the 2-plus billion dollar company has suffered losses of upwards of $50 million due to questionable business practices, even being sued by the Chinese Government as a 'suspected illegal pyramid scheme.' Further lurid scandals for Tillotson involve his ex-wife Sandie, but those details only serve to illustrate further the problems that come with big money.

On the huge tract of land is a main house oak-timber mansion said to be the largest in the country.

Next to it is a man-made lake with a sailboat in it, stocked with live sturgeon and including a life-sized Loch Ness Monster lurking in the middle. Gargoyles and Dragon sculptures adorn building interiors and exterior walls. At the property edge, right at the dune line is a 140 water tower made to look like a lighthouse. Quad trails surround the acreage and access to the retreat is restricted to two entrances, both of with feature the oversized, European style gates.

In addition to Leadbetter Farms, Tillotson owns a 4 acre estate in Boulder City, Nevada he dubbed 'Pirate's Cove' that features an 18 room mansion, man-made 50,000 gallon lake with a replica pirate ship in the middle.

Invitation to these playgrounds for the wealthy is hard to come by, and though there is a webpage suggesting the estate may be rented, word around town is that it only open to employees and family of Tillotson.

My interest in this whole strange area is buffeted by a couple of things. One is the recent reports on the BFRO of Sasquatch encounters that are so over-the-top in terms of possible advances in research as to be hard to swallow. The first is this one:

Not a photo, people. Just cool art.

http://www.bfro.net/gdb/show_report.asp?id=29609

Year 2011
Season: Spring
Month: March
Date: 15

Location details: Edited to preserve the location
Observed: I have been having encounters with what I believe is a family group for almost 2 years
now. Prints, wood knocks, smells, dog panic, sightings, and verbal interactions. Our house as lifted.
The newest is snow angel marks in grass and clearings with trails blocked by X formations made
with trees. Visit 2 or 3 times weekly. Less in winter, I'm not out as much, keeping it quiet. No other
people notice. I'm on 2.5 acres. Lake in back yard center of long beach peninsula, rural. Square mile of forest 300 yards away. Clams on beach, oysters in bay. 

Go to the link above for the rest of this amazing report investigated by BFRO's Scott Taylor.

I met both Scott Taylor and the property owner at the last Sasquatch Summit in Ocean Shores and was stunned by what they told me that wasn't in the report. I detail all of this on a previous post on this blogsite, but to summarize, the property owner (who lives somewhere within about a mile of Leadbetter Point claims this:

1) A sasquatch family visits his mobile home and eats peanut butter sandwiches
2) A large male has appeared to offer to shake hands
3) The same large male has made an attempt to speak, saying what sounded like it's name.

This is all vetted by Scott Taylor, an aerospace engineer, as well as another investigator Peter Smith and including local radio personality Johnny Manson.


And now get ready for the really weird stuff:
Scott Taylor told me to my face that these Giant Hairy Humanoids are not simple flesh and blood, ape hybrids, but creatures capable of becoming invisible, of communicating telepathically and of transforming into 'orbs'. After I picked up my jaw, the property owner walked up.
“Did he tell you about the orbs?...Good, yeah, that's what they do.” I have met the owner a three times now and he knows me to be a resident of his area, so he doesn't hold back with the details.
“Ya ever see that white foamy stuff that's on the beach?...well, that's SEAWEED that the Bigfoots eat and throw up...they only want the iodine!”

I just shook my head. It's a lot of information to process, and though I could easily just blow it off as bullshit, the number of people who have credibility is growing. Thom Powell, Scott Taylor and Peter Smith, all BFRO investigators at one point, but also Matthew Johnson, Kewaunee Lapseritis, Mike Paterson, Andrew Robson, Christopher Munch and Munch's collection of Sasquatch 'sensitives' agree               across the board that what we are witnessing is the thinning of the veil between the physical world of the human species and the other dimension(s) that the Sasquatch seems to spend the bulk of it's time in..

While you process that, I will continue.
In addition to these paranormal believers, there is Paul Freeman. Freeman was a Sasquatch hunter who first got the attention of Anthropologist Grover Krantz with track casts he had made near the Blue Mountains of Walla Walla, Washington, and who then produced a VHS tape he made of two Sasquatch creatures walking in the woods there, aproximately 80 feet away from his position.
The details of Freeman's amazing footage have been well documented by Thom Powell and with his permission I link it here:

http://www.thomsquatch.com/2011/12/the-mysteries-of-paul-freeman-footage.html

Ray Crowe and Paul Freeman in Long Beach

Lastly, the thing that drives me to bring Thom to Leadbetter Point is Freeman's own words, as told to Sasquatch investigator Ray Crowe:

http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/longbeach.htm


'Paul noted, Bigfoot tracks have been found at low tide in the clam beds near Ledbetter Point, on the North end of the Long Beach Peninsula.Also, he says that on the mainland adjacent to the sound, tracks have been found at low tide in the oyster beds.'

Also, the Property Owner told me that he has found shells on the bay side access trail near his home that he claims are the leftovers from a Sasquatch lunch there.

Leadbetter Point

We drove on past the scary gate and soon reached the parking lot for the Wildlife Refuge. A quick check of the map at the trailhead showed the route out toward where the sandy coastline ringed the Willapa Bay. That was the destination, but I told both Thom and Moser that the trail floods in winter. We set out anyway.

Thom checking the map before leaving

Winter storms and high tides had knocked trees into the surf, forcing us to trek inland at points and to step over the downed trees where we could. At less than 1.5 miles, we hit a left turn that takes you southwest, through a marshy section, but Thom and Moser thought they might be able to cut across to the oasis of sandy beach in the distance.  We slogged on, but soon the water was surrounding our boots. When it got just below ankle deep we retreated, and aimed back toward the trail.  At a new trail sign we saw the path that lead to the ocean beach and while I was fiddling with my cellphone camera, they took off.

Mid trail sign

I tried to keep up for a while but it became soggier and deeper and so I just stopped. Moser and Thom were alerady out of earshot, so I turned back, expecting them to do the same. Back at the sign, I waited and chatted with some birders who showed up to photograph cranes. Ten minutes, 15 minutes, I figured they might catch a connecting trail so I began walking back to the van. I didn't think to text Thom until I was almost back at the parking lot, and he rang me back, "Ah....ah, we are, sort of having some trouble here..." he sounded a little uncertain, " We're gonna turn back, now, water is getting pretty deep..stay in touch."

It was twenty minutes before they came up out of the brush and I could see that Moser was wet up to the knee, 

Thom somewhat less for his height. The upshot of the foray into the refuge was no prints, no sign, no Sasquatch.

On the way back

But on my way back to the van I took some photos, the spindly trees covered with light green lichen moss, a deep mat of moss on the ground soaked with water, it's passable for a man to move between these birch saplings but 

might be tight for an 8 foot, 1000 lb. biped. Still, it feels like suitable terrain for a mythical creature. 

The confluence of these people, at this location, seems like more than a coincidence. There is ANOTHER link in this chain of events too. A year ago in April my wife and I purchased a building lot in Packwood, Washington. I had no real thought about a Sasquatch connection at the time, but was just acting on the opportunity to own some view property at a good price in a place we like to hike.

This is all we found, Jack Squat

Sasquatch enthusiasts know that the White Pass/Gifford Pinchot Forest has produced a number of good eyewitness reports, and the wife and I have had two interesting hikes here that had Sasquatch feel to them.

The search goes on, and maybe it will always go on, but with the new mindset that the Sasquatch may truly be a 

entity that exists not just in our reality, but in another one separated by some invisible force, we are closing in on 

some important truths, nonetheless. 

SAR -March 31 2017