Media Article # 244

Friday, October 2, 1998

Associated Press

HAYFORK -- A 9-foot-tall, yellow-eyed beast making bloodcurdling screams turned a group of campers as shaky as the marshmallows they were roasting when they decided the creature must be the legendary Bigfoot. Tim Ford, 22, told California Department of Fish and Game officials Thursday that he’s convinced he saw the elusive man-beast, who he claims left tracks 6 inches wide and 20 inches long in remote Hayfork, about 200 miles north of San Francisco. “You could see his arms hanging way past his knees,” Harmon told the Redding Record Searchlight. “It was scary.” The Redding man said he was on a camping and hunting trip near Mud Springs, south of Hayfork on Saturday when his friend, 28-year-old James Harmon of Reno, Nev., heard a loud rustling in the bushes as they roasted marshmallows. When he got his flashlight to investigate the noise, Ford said he spotted an enormous, furry creature standing about 50 yards away on the other side of a creek. Ford and Harmon, who were traveling with five others, said none of them had been drinking or taking drugs. They’re convinced the creature was not a bear. They said the creature stayed a distance from the campsite most of the night, but was near enough that they could hear its screams. Eerie screams are often reported along with sightings of Bigfoot. Reports of the creature, also known as Yeti, Yayoo, Skunk Ape or Sasquatch, trickle in from the forests of the Northwest, the foothills of Ohio and the swamplands of Florida. Paul Wertz, a Fish and Game spokesman in Redding, said that Bigfoot sightings are not unheard of in Trinity County but that the agency probably wouldn’t investigate Saturday’s sighting. “We don’t have a management plan for Bigfoot,” Wertz said.

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