Courtesy the author

by
Linda Coil-Suchy

The story you are about to read is very personal and special to me. It is a story I grew up with which brought me much wonderment and awe throughout my life. With my early retirement came the time and the need to tell of my Grandmother's experiences with a Sasquatch. This fulfilled a long time desire to document in written word her story, for my grandchildren as well as for those across the great divide that care to hear, and know.

While writing of her experience, something big happened and I couldn't seem to stop with just her story. I have been interviewing and documenting eyewitness accounts for many years now and found myself continuing on, asking for more and more. Opening up a door through which many came through to tell of their own very personal experiences as well. The collection grew, and here we are. I now present my Grandmother's story, followed by a rotating collection of others most magnificent and personal accounts, for your enlightenment, enjoyment, excitement, contemplation and skepticism as well. I hope that you enjoy.

With best regards,

Linda Coil

Gram's Sasquatch Story

Grandma moved to Bellingham, Washington in 1959. Gram, as I called her, and her little dog Timmy, took up housekeeping in a cozy little house in the country. She was surrounded by woods and close to a river. It was that very first summer, "That's about the time things came up missing," she said. The first thing she noticed was the missing blanket, "Stolen right off my clothesline!" The next week it was two blankets. She stopped leaving them out at night after that. "They never took my clothes, not even one pair of undies thank goodness, it was just the blankets they were after."

Gram had a huge vegetable garden and grew perfect and colorful foods. Tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, green beans, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries, and other vegetables as well. There was even a grape harbor under which she had a picnic table and chairs. Shortly after the blankets came up missing she began to notice fruits and vegetables missing from the garden. Of course there were problems with the occasional deer, raccoons, and a rabbit or two, but this was different. The vegetables such as the tomatoes appeared to have been neatly plucked from their vines and whole squashes and zucchinis came up missing. Now if a deer or a rabbit were to eat from a squash they would nibble at it, or eat a hole out of it. Whoever or whatever this was picked and took the whole squash, and Gram's squashes grew huge and heavy.

One day while working in the garden she noticed tracks in the soft dirt around the potato patch. As she took a closer look she saw they were not deer tracks; they were not raccoon prints, nor were they claw prints like a bear would leave. In fact, these were not any kind of paw, claw, or hoof prints. They had five toes! These were foot prints, huge foot prints! She thought to herself, "If this is one of the locals, they sure have some big feet!" She estimated the prints to be about 18 inches long.

That evening when darkness fell, she pulled her favorite chair up to the window, and with Timmy on her lap she sat in the dark and waited.

Around midnight she heard a howl, a loud howl like nothing she had ever heard before. Timmy shook and whined. It was not a coyote, she knew that. And it was not a cougar. She heard it repeat several times, then the howling was followed by several hoots. She use to perform these hoots for me, "Whoop! Whoop!" she would go. The howling she was never able to imitate. She never saw anything that night, just the sounds of something very strange.

The next night she was too tired to stay up, so she slept with one ear alert and never heard a thing. The third night she left a giant squash, two tomatoes and a basket of string beans outside on the picnic table, and she stayed up again watching out her window, this time with the rifle standing next to her. And this night she wasn't disappointed.

As Gram sat with Timmy in the dark, she found herself engrossed with thoughts of times past. Suddenly Timmy's head jerked and his little ears stood alert as he began to tremble. Off her lap he jumped, running straight for under the bed. Gram never heard a thing even though her window was open a crack. She stood, looked out toward her garden and there standing in front of her raspberry bush was a huge creature. "A dark brown hairy beast" is how she described it. "At least 8 feet tall. He would have to duck just to come inside the house." She watched as it ate the berries, grabbing handfuls and shoving them into its mouth. "I thought it was a big gorilla escaped from the zoo or the circus, but I knew it wasn't. This was no gorilla!"

When finished with the berries, he wondered over to the tomatoes and she watched him very gently pluck one, hold it up to inspect it, then shove the whole thing into his mouth. He then took the squash from the picnic table, and with giant strides and one arm swinging he walked away into the woods.

She used to imitate his walk for me and I would laugh. She would say, "I'm not being funny, that's how he walks!" I asked her once what she felt that first night and mentioned that she must of been terrified. Her answer was, "I just thought, why did he pluck a tomato off the vine when there was two perfectly good ones on the table and all he took was the squash!"

Gram wasn't one to be afraid of much of anything. She's the one you could depend on to save you from the big spider or the one to take her shoe (if not her hand) and smash the cockroach. I remember once as a young child living in California, we had a man try to break into our house through a narrow bathroom window. Gram was so mad she grabbed a huge butcher knife on her way outside. The man was halfway through the window, she pulled him back out by his ankles and chased him all the way up the alley. We never saw him again!

She never waited up for the creature again, from that day forward she would leave something on the picnic table for him. "He is some unfortunate creature who is just hungry, that's all. And I share and share alike." She said he only came in the summer and fall months, and he came year after year. She found that he preferred the Squash and Pumpkins, so that very next summer she began to make cakes out of his favorite vegetables to leave on the table for him. About once a week she would bake him one in a bundt cake pan. She said he was such a big guy and his hands were so huge that he could pick the cake up by the hole in the center and eat it like a donut.

He must of loved those cakes, because soon after he began to leave her little tokens of appreciation on the picnic table. There would be an apple, a pine cone, a flower, or a pretty rock. She kept those gifts on a windowsill in her kitchen.

I remember an apple he once left for her, which had a huge wormhole in it. She showed it to me and said, "Look, there's a fat worm living in this apple. I don't think he cares and eats the worm and all." It seems to me that apple sat up on the windowsill for a very long time. I've never seen an apple last so long.

Every summer she would also leave a blanket out on the clothesline, but it was never taken. Nor was the garden ever raided again, only the cake and the fruit and vegetables left on the table were ever taken after that. Even the baskets that held the food were left.

She didn't have a real name for her creature; she would sometimes call him The Beast. After a while she began to call him King Kong, and that name stuck. It wasn't until the early 1970's that she found another name for her creature. There were a series of sightings and it was all over the news. "Bigfoot" he was called. Also known as "Sasquatch" by the Indians. She couldn't pronounce "Sasquatch", so she continued to call him King Kong, and only occasionally The Bigfoot.

I myself had an encounter on my Bellingham property back in 1976. I never saw him, but I heard and smelled him and he made a mess of my garage. A half hour after leaving my property, two security guards and two police officers chased him into the woods at the small airport near my home. It was all over the news the following morning, so I knew for sure what was at my place that night. Gram said, "Well, you should've baked him a cake!"

Gram never mentioned a smell. She did occasionally mention hearing the howls and hoots in the summer time. I never heard or saw anything when I stayed at her place. It's almost like he knew she had company? Back in the year 2000, I did hear howls and shrieks myself while living at another country home near Granite Falls, Washington. Eerie to say the least.

My wonderful, loving, caring, and sharing Gram passed away in November of 1989. Before she passed she gave me her "Sasquatch Cake Recipe," the very same one she made especially for HIM. And THEM, as she came to believe he was not always alone and may have had a family.

Now with you I share this special recipe, loved by her family, friends, and Sasquatch himself. And if you should ever happen to have your own Sasquatch pass through, please be sure to share with him.

Gram's granddaughter, Linda Coil

Mix well in your favorite large bowl. Lightly grease and flour a large Bundt cake pan or you can use 2 meat loaf pans, (Sasquatch prefers bundt pan as he eats it like a donut). Bake at 325 till done, maybe 30 to 45 minutes? Depends on pan and oven. Keep checking. (Push on top till cake springs back, use toothpick to check). Serve with coffee, milk or tea; enjoy with family and Sasquatch friends.

A special addition from personal experience
by
Linda Coil-Suchy

I've been meaning to tell you a few of the side stories that are not in Grams story. I left them out because I think they're rather silly, and nothing is positive. Now no one knows these stories other than my grandson, and I once told my best friend Bubs. And I am now telling you.

Gram got me a motor bike and I would sometimes ride it in the woods. (as well as on the streets where I wasn't suppose to) Way back in the woods there was a tree, a big shady tree, different from the other trees, not an evergreen. and under this tree I would find cans (canned food) and food wrappers & boxes, bones, and string. Pieces of string, a roll of string, like kite string, and strange junk items. Lots of litter, and only scattered under this particular tree.

The litter bothered me, so one day, with nothing else to do, I took the string and began to tie the cans and some of the junk on the branches of the tree. I thus decorated the tree, and called it my Junk Tree. some days when I would go back there would be more cans and junk, so I would tie more up in the tree. It became a game with me. and the junk hanging eventually got to be quite a bit. I liked my junk tree very much, and remember it fondly.

As I got older I got to thinking about that junk, and how the cans were not open with a can opener, they were strangely crushed, smashed, bent, and broken open. Thereby easy to hang. And there were those plain white frozen food boxes, that people use to use in the old days to freeze their own foods and vegetables. Do you remember those? And the bones that were scattered about, to me they looked like dog bones, or rather, just steak or pork chop type bones.

The string has always intrigued me, I have thought about this off and on over the years. Of course I cannot be sure that the string or the junk came from a BF, but I cannot think of any other animal that could leave this garbage and junk under the tree. Only other thing it could have been was a Hobo perhaps. But the string, why the string? Like I said, there was a big roll of string, (not a round ball of it, but elongated, kite string). and there were strips of string laid out nicely. And string wrapped around cans, and bone. As if someone had sat there under the tree and played with the string. If this was from the BF, maybe he just liked string, and it intrigued him in some way? I'm trying to remember if there was string in the tree? And there may well have been, but memory serves me poorly and I can't say for sure. Of course I then used the string to hang the junk in the tree. None of the things I hung were ever removed or disturbed.

So now I think, that may have been HIS spot. A place that the BF took his stolen food perhaps to open and eat? I never saw any hobos, or anyone in those woods. so who was doing this? Now what the kite string and other string was about, I have no idea. I vaguely remember foot prints in the dirt, but never paid much attention to those. I do remember that sometimes I would get spooked, feeling like I was being watched, but thought it might be a hobo lurking about so I would leave. I always felt fairly safe on my motorbike and figured no one could catch me if someone was around. This was before I knew about the feeling of being watched. And it never really crossed my mind that it could be The Beast.

There were a few cows and a big old bull in a pasture near by. There was also a great apple tree in that pasture, the apples on this tree were better than any other apple tree around. There was also an old abandoned cable car, that I liked to play in. I would play train engineer. I would sneak into the pasture to climb the apple tree and get as many apples as I could before the bull came around. He would chase you, but this became another game with me to see if I could get over the fence before he caught me. I wasn't a real smart kid in many ways.

One day the bull came right up to the tree, and I taunted him, then I fell out of the tree, directly in front of him. That was a real close call, I never ran so fast in my life. But what I am getting at here is that I use to find big piles of poop here and there throughout the woods, I always thought it was the big old bull, thinking he must have got out again, as he sometimes did. It wasn't until I got older and was researching that I learned about Scat. I now wonder if that poop was from the bull? He didn't get out that often. and when I think about it, it wasn't like a cowpie consistency. It's frustrating that I will never know. I wish I knew then what I know now.