Klamath River Campground Bigfoot Attack – Year Unknown

A young woman camped alone next to the Klamath River. She doesn’t tell what campground she was at but locals may know which one it was, by her descriptions of it. I am guessing this probably happened in the 1970’s or 1980’s.

Klamath River Campground Bigfoot Attack Story

Thanks to the PacWest Bigfoot YouTube Channel for this video about a Bigfoot sighting encounter at the Klamath River, mid-way between Yreka, California, and Happy Camp, California.

[Note: I’ve been informed (see comment section) that this story may have a fabricated backstory. I know this incident happened (it was confirmed by local residents who were aware of it when it happened) but I don’t know how much of the backstory is true or if the woman this happened to actually wrote the story. If you are that woman, please leave a comment to tell us the facts of the matter.]

I am struck by her description of hearing “whoops and whistles” on the other side of the river. I’ve had that experience, and wrote about it here on this blog back when it happened.

Whoops and Whistles – What Did I Hear? – published September 6, 2009

Whistles and Whoops – Follow-up with the Forest Service Wildlife Biologist – published September 8, 2009

My experience of hearing these whoops and whistles happened further downriver. She was between Horse Creek and Hamburg, according to her description, and I was a few miles downriver from Happy Camp.

Here’s a map to show our locations. Hers: at the Klamath River near the Scott Bar turnoff. Mine: a few miles south of Happy Camp at a turnout next to the river – a place I used to like going to, to play my buffalo drum and write in my journal. I lived in Happy Camp from 2000 to 2013, which is why I started writing this blog in 2005.

 
By the way – Scott Bar is the place where gold was first discovered in Siskiyou County, California, and it was a vacation location for President Hoover.

The woman who wrote the story about her Bigfoot encounter for that video didn’t say she went all the way to Scott Bar for her camping expedition. She said she was near there, but at a Klamath River campground. Here’s a page on the Klamath National Forest website listing all the possible sites available at this time: Klamath National Wild and Scenic River. I do not know if the campground she was at is still open. They sometimes close.

Klamath River south of Happy Camp, California
Klamath River south of Happy Camp

Although it is unusual to hear of a Bigfoot attack on a human, it is not unheard of, and her story is reminiscent of the Albert Ostman Bigfoot story as related to John Willison Green, included as a chapter in Green’s book, Sasquatch, the Apes Among Us.


Albert Ostman’s experience started as a prospecting trip in 1924. He wanted to look for a lost mine near Toba Inlet on the Brem River north of Lund, British Columbia – not far east of Vancouver Island.

An “old Indian” guided him from Lund to Toba Inlet. He said the original miner always came to town with plenty of gold, but eventually stopped coming. The local rumor was that the man had been killed by a Sasquatch. At the time Ostman had never heard of Sasquatch and didn’t believe the story, or a description of the creature.

Ostman hiked inland with an 80 pound backpack full of food and supplies, looking for that lost mine. After a few days camping in a beautiful, remote location, he woke up one morning to find that his pack had been emptied out, and some of the food was missing. The next night, however, was even worse. He intended to stay awake to find the thief, but he accidentally fell asleep until suddenly he felt himself being picked up, sleeping bag and all, and slung onto some kind of walking creature which he could neither see nor fight against.

He was carried up a mountain, then downhill, then up again, until finally he was dropped where he heard chattering in a language he didn’t know. He couldn’t see these people until dawn, when he discovered he was the captive of four Bigfoots – a man and woman, and a boy and girl. Eventually he found a way to leave the situation and was rescued by loggers he found in the area.

Here’s the location of the Albert Ostman Bigfoot attack incident – Toba Inlet.

 
There are stories of Karuk and Hoopa Native American women and girls being being kidnapped by Klamath River Valley Sasquatches. Some of these are mentioned in these books written by David Paulides:


5 Replies to “Klamath River Campground Bigfoot Attack – Year Unknown”

  1. Sometimes it may be worth retelling these fictionalized stories, especially if the nuggets of truth in them can refresh the memories of people with similar REAL experiences. I had friends in Yreka Tribal Housing (Campbell tracks) who used to love making up stories about Bigfoot and telling half-gullible white men (like me)… but even their wildest tales were usually based on actual experiences or spoken history.

  2. “Eventually, as I created the back stories to their real encounters and experiences with Bigfoot, my friends and my mother told me it really did help them to process what they had actually experienced too.”

    He CREATED the back stories.
    That’s fictionalizing.

    BASED ON true accounts. With literary license taken. And how do we know if these “true” accounts ever even happened, as well?

    “Here are some true accounts and some Bigfoot stories from the PacWest! All of these stories are based on true accounts by the way. Many are real accounts shared by people for the first time on the PacWest Bigfoot blog, and here only. If you have a real account and would like to share your story please get hold of me here and let’s get your story out there..”

  3. Nothing from PacNW Bigfoot should be taken as factual. He has admitted to fictionalizing his telling of these stories. He’s an internet marketer looking for hits. He says they are “based on real stories,” whatever that might mean. It could be that they are 1% based on something that someone said to him, and we’ll never know, nor will he tell us. He doesn’t try to verify these tales in any way, either. This one, for example, is based upon a very brief report that a Bigfoot supposedly looked through a window near Orick. PacNW somehow gets a long story out of it. How is that done? By writing FICTION.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKsPnJtVcCw&t=1s

    1. Thanks for letting me know that, Steven… I will probably ignore his “stories” in the future. I posted this one on the Happy Camp Facebook group and people said they knew the woman involved, and remembered when it happened. That said, we have no proof she’s the person who actually wrote the story as presented in the video. I will leave this here… maybe she’ll come upon it and tell us how much is truth and what, if any, is fiction.

  4. I was deer hunting on opening day up around Scappoose Oregon up Vernonia Rd. about 10 miles up. I drove up a side road to go to my favorite hunting site!! I was pretty pissed when I got up there and saw that they had clear cut my hunting spot. I was walking across the clear cut and found a logging road right in the middle of the clearcut. I was about to walk across the baby powder type rd when I saw a foot print in the dirt. It was perfect shape of a foot except it was way two big to be human. This was before I ever heard of bigfoot. I had a tape measure in my backpack, so I measured it. It was 16 inches long and about 6 inches wide. For some reason it made me feel very uncomfortable so I turned around and walked back to the truck and left. I got my dad to go with me and look at the tracks. He looked at the tracks and told me to forget what I saw and don’t tell anyone what I have found.

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