My Research

This Spring I have posted about possible sightings of sasquatch riding on trains:

Railroading Sasquatches and Railroading Saasquatches, Pt. 2.

Until my experience on the 28th of March, 2012 I had never heard of or even considered the possibility of a sasquatch hitching a ride on a railroad.  As soon as my encounter was known I was contacted by a Facebook friend that stated he also had a possible sighting.

This week I was again contacted by a Facebook friend to say that he had a sighting.

From Curt Everson

I lived in eagan, minnesota 2001-2005. It is a suburb of Minneapolis, just south of the Minnesota river, Mississippi river confluence. There is a huge swamp/forrested game preserve along the Minnesota river with one train track running through it that I walked on quite frequently. One day I was walking, and a train was passing, so I got off to the side and watched it pass. Near the end of the train, I saw what I thought was an orangutang(sp?) riding between the last two cars. Weird?? Why would someone let their pet monkey ride un attended, untied there?

This was long before I had an interest in BF, and it didn’t even cross my mind until this story came out. Google earth the area, hwy77 and cr#13 in eagan, mn. If you’re interested.

Google Earth photo showing the railroad tracks mentioned by the witness that run SW – NE through the area of Eagan, Minnesota.

Is has been known for a long time that sasquatches are sighted around railroad lines. It has often been thought that they use the right-of-way as an easy access point when traveling from area to area, similar to clear cuts for power lines. There have also been sightings along abandoned rail-lines that have been converted to bicycle and hiking paths.

Last fall I was contacted by a researcher from Southern Illinois about the many sightings he had experienced. Mike related that most of his sightings were early spring just before the leaves were on the trees while he was out mushrooming. So we planned to meet up in the spring. On the 28th of March 2012 I met up with Mike at his home and headed for the woods. We stopped at one of the many railroad crossings because he had had several sightings along the tracks just south of the crossing. The latest being just four weeks ago.

We arrived around 09:30 and walked several hundred yards south along the tracks. Mike showed and explained to me the details of his sighting.

While there Mike was adamant that the sasquatch were hopping rides on the trains. I was somewhat taken aback by the idea. I had never read of a report or knew of anyone who actually had seen a sasquatch riding on a rail-car. The whole idea seemed a little bit unbelievable to me. I asked Mike why he believed that, had he witnessed that happening? He said no, but the way he had seen the sasquatch kind of standing around on this one section of track just gave him the idea, it was just “a theory he had.”

Yellow highlight showing the location of Jackson County, Illinois

As we were walking back to the car a northbound train started approaching.

One of my first loves (perhaps next to birds) has always been trains. And yes I am fortunately old enough to remember the last of the steam engines of the ’50’s. In fact the movie Heartbreak Pass was filmed in the small town in Idaho where I grew up. But I digress.

As the train was approaching I positioned myself so that I could get as close as possible but still be out of danger. I wanted to take in all the sounds and feel of this wonderful machine as it passed by. As it passed, Mike yelled for me to look north at each coupling area and he would look south so if anything or anyone was riding there we could see them from two different angles.

[The woods directly behind the railroad tracks where the train was passing.]

It was one of those trains carrying large cargo carriers, double-decker style. It was travelling at perhaps 30 mph. In between each car is a good size area. About half way through the train I saw a very large hair covered animal sitting down with its back towards the container. I only could see it for a couple of seconds and then it was gone.

I was in shock and awe. It was almost surreal. It did not look at all like Patty from the Patterson-Gimlin Film. This had five inch long dark brown hair covering it down to where I could see, it’s waist. I couldn’t make out any facial details and it was looking down and not directly towards me.

As I always audio record when I am in the woods I did record our conversation as the train passed and my reactions.

Click here to listen to this sound clip:  Railroading Sasquatch

I will be traveling back to the location this next week to take a few measurements and to film another passing train. Hopefully I can do a reenactment and at least give readers an idea of what the train looked like as it passed. I won’t hold my breath on catching on film any extra riders.

This sighting has left me with more questions than answers. In my mind sasquatch (or at least one) do ride on trains. Why? Is this just some daredevil stunt by a teenage sasquatch or is this a pattern of something much larger? Is this just a local 1/2 mile hitch or are they traveling greater distances? It does show one thing for sure. Their intelligence and abilities are far higher than many having been willing to admit.

I have a friend on Facebook by the username of  Rolo Tumasi. He prefers to use this username vs his real name for business reasons. I have spoken with him over the years about his encounters in Southern Illinois.  An avid hunter and outdoorsman he is very alert and has both excellent hearing and night vision. Although he has had previous encounters and several sightings the intensity of what he has been experiencing in his local hunting area has intensified over the past year.

I spent most of the day and night of the 19th and morning of the 20th of March 2012 at his research site in Southern Illinois. We arrived at his hunting camp at about 10:30 in the morning and spent the rest of the day hiking in the woods. We walked down a long ridge and left one of my long term audio recording systems and essentially wanted to make our presence known to the local residents.

Rolo Tumasi,  kneeling next to the 26 1/2 inch left footprint.

Photographs never do justice to what a foot print actually looks like unless the print was in mud. This print being in soil along the road was a lot better than if it had been in leaf litter but still left a lot to desire.

After dark we walked the mile down the road and through the woods to an overlook along the ridge. Our goal was entice the local sasquatch, if they were in the area this particular night, to make their presence known by hopefully vocalizing.

You can click on the following link to listen to Rolo’s narrative as to our experience that evening and the track find the following morning. The first 4 minutes are from the evening and then last 15 minutes are from the next morning.

Click here to listen to this sound clip:  Southern Illinois Giant

Basically we did a series of wood knocks, waited ten minutes and did some more wood knocks. We could hear not responses but while returning along the narrow ridge we got that uneasy feeling of being followed, heard movement besides us and Rolo saw eyeshine to our side as we were coming out of the woods.

Yellow highlight showing the location of Alexander County, Illinois

While walking down a gravel road half-way back to camp Rolo turned quickly around and saw a large upright figure dash across the road.

About 5 minutes later we heard a few unusual frog-like sounds off to our left side that I thought was a preliminary vocal from Southern Leopard Frog. We stopped and listened but the vocal stopped immediately. It was odd because although we had lots of Spring Peepers there were no other frogs in the area and where this particular vocal was on a very steep hillside. Not evidence of anything but certainly an odd sound that was out of place.

We spent the night in the campsite with nothing unusual happening and while leaving the next morning we stopped at the location where Rolo had seen the figure dashing across the road. Rolo found what appeared to be a 26 and 1/2 inch long left footprint pressed into soil along the approach to the road.  The size of the footprint was shocking and something I would not have accepted if I had not been present when the creature both ran across the road the previous evening and seen the print when it was found and measured.

The measurement of the total length of 26 1/2 inches.

Although in the photo it appears the tape measure is not laying properly we checked the print multiple times to make sure everything was accurate.

End of the tape showing the 26 1/2 length measurement.

End of the tape showing the 10 inch width of the ball of the foot measurement.

End of the tape showing the 7  inch width of the heel of the foot measurement.

So just how big was this ‘big boy”. I really don’t want to guess. But if 18 inch prints belong to a  7  or 8 foot tall sasquatch how tall would one with a foot measurement of
26 1/2 inches be?  Perhaps 11 or 12 foot tall? No one knows.

A final thank you to Rolo Tumasi and his wife for opening up their home to myself and showing me their special camping area.  And as to why the increase in activity? I think that is because Rolo has been spending 2 or 3 days a week hiking the woods and getting to know the wildlife and terrain. The sasquatch perhaps have come to realize that he means them no harm.

The breeding season for Red Fox is January in Central Illinois. And that is when they are the most vocal.

Photo courtesy nancyjwagner

The following sound clip is an amalgamation of  four clips recorded during January of 2012. It was recorded using a Sound Devices 722 Field Recorder and Telinga Parabolic Microphone. The recorder was left running continuously from the patio of our home here in Central Illinois. The foxes run up and down the little valley  that our house overlooks.

Click here to listen to this sound clip:  Red Fox Vocalizations – January 2012

Waveform view and spectral view of  Red Fox Vocalizations.

The wolf was a common animal in most European Countries in the pre-modern era and made it’s way into much of the folklore. We have stories about the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood and of course the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Illustration by Francis Barlow (1687)  -  Wikimedia Commons

In the United States the Gray Wolf was a problem with ranchers and farmers until it was almost exterminated in the last century. Today it has made somewhat of a comeback and is mainly found in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Although there have been occasional reports in Illinois I am unaware of any proven unlike Mountain Lions which bodies have been recovered.

My main endeavor is nature recording and as such I am always interested in what people are hearing in the woods or rural areas of Illinois.

The 4th of April, 2005 I recorded some unusual howls near Pawnee, Illinois. I labelled them the Illinois Howl.  I was convinced that they were not coyotes and took them to a neighbor of mine who has raised coon hounds for 30 years and spends more time in the woods at night than any one I know.  His statement was “That sound is not a coyote, I don’t know what it is, perhaps it is a wolf.”

I submitted the sound on a lot of hunting forums.  I had several readers who contacted me privately and stated that they had heard the sound while coyote hunting and always explained it as being a different sounding coyote or perhaps a wolf.

Recently I spoke with an individual from Eastern Illinois who has been hearing what he termed a “very low mournful howl, perhaps from a wolf.” He listened to the Illinois Howl Illinois Howl on my website and exclaimed “that is the sound exactly.” Hopefully with the landowners help we can get a good quality recording.

So what we are left with is several people who say they are hearing sounds that match the Illinois Howl Illinois Howl. Those reports include Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Illinois.

And each time the listeners say that the sound does not appear to be a coyote but deeper, more like a wolf. Are these sounds actually not from a coyote or wolf but perhaps instead from a sasquatch? We can never be for sure without a video verifying the sounds. In each of the areas where this sound has been reported there has also been suspected sasquatch activity.

I am always amazed at how “close in” sasquatch appear to come to people, whether it is in campgrounds, vehicles or homes.

Summer 2006 – Mason County, Illinois

The summer of 2006 I was contacted by a witness who lived close to the Illinois River in Mason County, Illinois.  Her husband worked evenings and nothing unusual happened at her home until after her husband would arrive at home.

Clipart courtesy clker.com

They liked to watch TV in their bedroom before they retired for the evening. They started to hear movement and unusual sounds coming from outside their bedroom window.  This would happen periodically and went on for several months.

One evening they became aware of something outside their window again. So, the husband slipped out to the kitchen and on cue he flipped on the outside lights as his wife looked out the window. They saw the culprit, a very large seven foot bipedal animal quickly moving away from the house.

Their answer to the problem was to put aluminum foil completely over the window, preventing any light from being seen outside the window and also prevented any peeping Tom’s from looking in.  It was their opinion that the TV, which hung on the wall of the bedroom was an attractant.

October 2011 – Chatham, Illinois

I was contacted early Summer 2011 by a witness who felt that he was having occasional bigfoot activity. Odd smells, odd sounds and a frightened dog were part of the scenario. I started a recording project at his home and advised him that finding a good footprint would be the best evidence.

In October 2011 he contacted me again. He was very excited and related to me how he believed something was outside his living room window. He had Venetian blinds, the vertical type, and believed something was watching his TV. From where the witness was sitting in his living room he could not see out the window. The next morning he found a large (18 inch) footprint in his freshly worked flower bed outside his window. Please see – New Footprints Along Sugar Creek.

November  –  December 2011 – Central Illinois

I have lived in my present home since early 2009. Although I have heard lots of unusual vocals I had never heard anything up close until recently. However, that all began to change mid-November.

Please see the following posts for all the files:

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 1 

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 2 

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 3 

This past year we had a sliding glass door installed on our deck and had three windows replaced with much larger units. It opened up our view but also made our living room very visible to anything that is outside doing the nighttime. My wife now laughingly refers to our home as the “Tree House”.

The sounds that I think are the most remarkable are:

Soundclip # 1:  this sounds like someone laughing. Actually I wonder if something is mimicking me watching sitcoms on TV.

Soundclip # 2: another laughter, this time in the rain.

Soundclip # 3: this sounds like a muffled conversation. Again I am wondering if this is mimicking of what is on TV.

In all these cases we have something that is approaching a house and appears to be interested in what is going on in the living rooms while the families are watching TV. One family had  a sighting, one family found a footprint and the last family recorded sounds.

I assembled a couple of charts to show both sounds that I have recorded and a chart showing comments I have received from others in Illinois thought to have experienced some type of sasquatch activity during 2011.

The first chart, is strictly my recordings of possible sounds or experiences.

2011 – The Year In Review – My Sounds, etc.  

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The second chart is comments of possible activity from Illinois. A lot of them are 2nd hand reports or Class C reports. Sorry if I missed anyone’s comments, you can send them to me at stancourtney@hotmail.com.

2011 – The Year In Review – Illinois submitted comments

Unusual sounds continue to be recorded behind my home.

This sounds like laughter in the rain recorded at at around 6:00 p.m.

Recorded the 20th of December, 2011.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Voice 1 

Waveform view and spectral view of Voice 1

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A moaning vocal recorded also at around 6:00 p.m. the next evening.

Recorded the 21st of December, 2011.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Voice 2 

Waveform view and spectral view of Voice 2

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A sad vocal recorded at 3:15 in the afternoon.

Recorded the 23rd of December, 2011.

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Voice 3 

Waveform view and spectral view of Voice 3

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And at 9:00 in the evening.

Recorded the 23rd of December, 2011

Click here to listen to sound clip:  Voice 4

Waveform view and spectral view of Voice 4

A year and a half ago I recorded a series of very pitched screams here in Central Illinois.

Please see:  Illinois Screamer – Pt. 1

In that post I posted Red Fox screams to illustrate the difference.

Woods behind my home.

This past week I have recorded what I think is similar screams. I also have a friend who lives about 1/2 mile from me. Just as it was getting dark he heard what he described as a very long loud high pitched scream. It was only about 75 yards from his back door and he did not investigate. He heard only one scream not a series. I emailed him my recording and he thinks it matches what I recorded.

Click here to listen to the 22nd December 2011 sound clip:  Scream 1

Waveform view and spectral view of Scream 1.

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Click here to listen to the 24th December 2011 sound clip:  Scream 2

Waveform view and spectral view of Scream 2.

I am not sure what this is, I don’t believe it is a Red Fox but possibly it could be a Bobcat or a Cougar.

This past summer there was a lot of work going on at the earthen dam near my home. Workers had been cutting down small trees and mowing a large area. The morning  of the 30th of July 1011 when I went outside I noticed this small tree (still with green leaves on it) had fallen onto the narrow roadway leading to the dam.

Although the tree looked old there was not a breeze last night, it just makes we wonder if something gave it a push and perhaps intentionally blocked all traffic on that small access road. Nothing dramatic but with the vocalizations I have heard this year and the rock throwing that both my wife and I witnessed I thought I best take a picture and write a short note.