STAN JOHNSON ENCOUNTERS A SASQUATCH

Near Oakland, Oregon

I was deer hunting in the mountains when I had my first experience with them. It was about 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon on October 27, 1983. The day was dark and it was pouring down rain. I was sitting on a stand behind some brush watching out across an opening where the deer usually come across, when I had a funny feeling that something was looking at me. Whatever it was I knew it wasn't a deer because I know how deer feel. I'm a good tracker and I figure that I'm a pretty good hunter after all these years.

Finally, I turned and looked at the direction I felt it coming from and I spied a big stump. It looked like there was something on top of the stump.

I got my binoculars and looked at the stump again. There was something on top of the stump. It was leaning over the top of the stump looking right at me. It had its arms crossed over the stump with its chin resting on them. In this position all I could see was the arms, head and shoulders.

I sat there and watched it for a few minutes while it watched me. Finally it turned around and started to walk towards some big cedar trees. Suddenly, the creature walked back, leaned over the stump and picked up something besides it. This stump was a bucked-off log, a windfall. The loggers had cut the stump about seven feet high.

Since the creature was just walking back and forth, not paying any attention to me, I decided to get closer. He was about eighty-five yards from me when I got up. I pulled my gun out from under the poncho I was wearing so he could see it. When the creature saw my rifle he threw both arms straight up over his head, palms inward. I remembered then what I had read in the paper years ago about a guy that was walking down a road with a walking stick when he saw one of the Big Foot creatures. He became scared and threw his hands and stick up over his head. The creature immediately reached down and picked up a stick. The man thought the creature wanted to fight so he threw his stick away - the creature immediately threw his stick away too. Remembering this I raised my gun in the air where Big Foot could see it and then laid it down on the stump I had been sitting by and showed him I had nothing in my hands.

I then walked down, over a bank about twelve feet high on to a road-bed. I walked down the road-bed to within about thirty-five feet of the creature and squatted down. I didn't go any closer because I figured if he wanted to come closer he would.

While I sat there he made more trips to that stump. I couldn't see, due to some brush screening the area, what he was picking up, and walking over and putting under the bark of the big cedar tree.

I kept thinking of this creature as a man because I think he is as much a man as any of us. He looks very intelligent and has no hair on his face, except around his lower jaw line, the corner of his chin and long sideburns that went down to the whiskers on his chin. His nose, upper and lower lips were all human looking with no hair on them.

He had nice-looking features. They resembled human teeth and were not fangs. The creature was about nine-feet tall and weighed approximately four-hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds. It had normal length arms and legs in proportion to its body. The hands were above the knee. The body was covered in long dark brown hair. Since it was approaching winter, I imagined he was beginning to grow a winter coat or maybe the creatures don't shed at all. His hands and fingernails were as normal looking as mine.

He turned around and walked in long springy steps. He didn't really run but he walked kind of fast down over the hill into a canyon and out of sight.

The next day my daughter and I went up there and we found what he had been putting in behind the bark of the tree. He was pulling moss up around the bed of that stump and walking over there and putting it in under the bark of that tree. He took his fingernails or fingers and just hacked across on the bark leaving a mark. He didn't appear to have long fingernails.

We walked over to the stump that I had thought to be about seven and a half feet high as I am six feet tall, but I had to reach up and could barely lay my fingers on the top of the stump. If the stump was eight feet tall and he was standing on the ground right where I was standing, he must have been at least nine feet tall - at least.

On the Cedar tree where he made the mark, I reached with my 243 long barrel deer rifle as high as I could and could just touch the top marks so I would say they were at least ten feet up on the tree. The marks were crosswise on the tree so he didn't just reach up and claw down. He was clawing sideways.

My daughter and I went home and I didn't say anything about it to anyone because I thought people would think I was crazy. I wasn't so sure whether I was or not, but I knew that I had seen something.
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To be continued. Stan Johnson has since died but since he wrote up his story in a little booklet we have more of it to share. The name of the book is: The True Story of Big Foot (Stan Johnson's Close Encounters)

I too went to where Stan Johnson met the creature. While we were there we heard a scream like I have never heard before. I think Stan's friend was not too happy with us being there and wanted us to leave his territory. Stan showed us where the Sasquatch had beaten on logs to communicate with others. They were hollowed down like a cradle and in shreds.