A September
to Remember
3 Years Later and the Willow Creek
Bigfoot Symposium is Still a
Landmark Event
By Tom Yamarone
It seems like August never happened – at least,
not in the bigfoot world. It capped off a
sensational family summer, but nary a peep
was heard from our big hairy friends. Some
folks made it out into the woods and many
more stopped by the museum to tell their
bigfoot stories. Mike has now collected notes
and contact information from close to 70
witnesses… 19 of those are eye-witnesses to a
bigfoot sighting right here in the Santa Cruz
Mountains. Over the course of the up-coming
Fall and Winter, weʼll be trying to interview
these folks and flesh out written accounts of
their encounters. In the meantime, September
holds the promise of an outing or two. Itʼs also
the 3rd anniversary of the International Bigfoot
Symposium that was held in Willow Creek,
California in 2003.
This was a monumental event in the history
of the bigfoot phenomenon. For one weekend,
many enthusiasts crowded into the little
Humboldt County town to rub elbows with
John Green, Bob Gimlin, Jeff Meldrum, John
Bindernagel, Rick Noll, Jimmy Chilcutt,
Henner Fahrenbach, Al Hodgson, Matthew
Moneymaker, Bobo Fay, Thomas Steenburg,
John Freitas, Daniel Perez and other folks who
had become household names in the literature
about sasquatch – and the emerging television
documentary world. Others were to catapult
themselves into the bigfoot limelight with their
presentations or mere attendance, including
Doug Hajicek (producer of the documentary
Sasquatch: The Legend Meets Science and the
TV series Mysterious Encounters), Christopher
Murphy, Kathy Moskowitz Strain, Autumn
Williams, Chester Moore, Jr., (our own) Mike
Rugg and Paula Yarr, Craig Woolheater, Lee
Murphy, Scott McClean and a slew of others.
Whatʼs more impressive about this weekend
was that it succeeded to such a degree despite
the fact that many others couldnʼt be there
including Jane Goodall*, Ray Crowe, Larry
Lund, Ron Morehead, Al Berry, Bobbie Short,
MK Davis, Don Keating, Loren Coleman and
other people involved in furthering this cause.
Time does seem to be whittling away at the
giddiness we all had for over a year after this
event. Friendships formed that weekend have
forged into a wonderful circle of contacts in
the bigfoot world. The bigfoot conferences at
Bellingham, Washington in 2005 and
Pocatello, Idaho in 2006 were exciting in their
own right, but not monumental like Willow
Creek was. Itʼs too bad the DVD set from the
event is so exorbitantly priced – that kept it
from reaching a wider audience. And even
then, it barely captures the essence of the
weekend. It is, however, an excellent
document of the presentations as such. There
are a few articles in newspaper archives and
on-line at bigfoot sites, but they too fall short
of capturing the whole event.
It was a Thursday afternoon when we began
congregating in the area for the Friday
morning start to the conference. The press
conference in front of the Willow
Creek-China Flat Museum was the first taste
of the weekend. Many folks had their first
opportunity for some personal time with John
Green and Bob Gimlin. We then had the first
of our common meals – a sack lunch in the
shade of the trees nearby enjoying the
company of those in attendance. Iʼll never
forget the personable father and son from
Texas (the Chester Mooreʼs), listening to a
man named Ken Yielding share his sighting
event from the previous summer in Washington,
or as the first amazing day of talks ended,
watching the majority of the auditorium raise
their hands when Doug Hajicek asked who
here has had a bigfoot encounter… just an
amazing moment.
Well, that trip down memory lane is always a
good one. Willow Creek was the starting
point for my personal search for bigfoot and
Iʼm as lucky as Patterson and Gimlin for all
the folks Iʼve had the pleasure of meeting
and getting to know.
* - right, not necessarily a “bigfooter” but she was slated to
be the keynote speaker until a last-minute change in her
schedule prevented her attendance. She did, however, send
along a statement to be read at the conference and she has
come out publicly in support bigfoot research – or that the
evidence to date merits such an investigation by science.