Without actually naming names and apologies to several ex-wives and girlfriends, I’ve always had a thing for big, hairy creatures. Wince. Duck. I love 1933’s original “King Kong.” Some intern/maroon over at Internet Movie Data Base (IMBd) gave Kong a 7.9 rating. What? C-plus for one of the greatest, groundbreaking films ever made? Sonny boy or madam. If I find out you live in Newhall? Best you just leave now.
I suspect it pains management at Mighty Signal World Corporate that I oh-so-rarely mention, in this community newspaper on a diet, that I wrote a novel about Bigfoot, along with the sequel. I’m currently finishing the three-quel, “Naked Came the Dogman.” Yes. Critics are correct. The Basin Valley Murder Mystery series is better than Shakespeare, Isaac Asimov, James Lee Burke and Harper Lee all squished into a commercial blender. I’ve also written other books, local history tomes, which include Sasquatch sightings here in our now-yuppie rich, HOA-imprisoned Santa Clarita Valley. I can now dreamily ascend to Heaven (or, tumble, bouncing down, crying, “ouch-ooow-ouch-yowch!!!” into that bottomless, fiery pit where all Democrats end up). Why? Because, just last Sunday, I was on the international podcast, Sasquatchchronicles.com.
SasqChron is the Mecca of All Things High & Holy Abominable Snowman. After having his own, Scare The Bee-Hee-Bee-Bees encounter in Washington state in 2012 with this mysterious and aggressive Creature/Being/Banished Large Member of Rotary, host Wes Germer created the show. Almost entirely it consists of interviewing people, from all backgrounds, redneck hunters to tourists, scientists, lawmen and the military. While I’ve written novels, I’ve been studying the phenomenon for 50-plus years now. I do believe our woodsy neighbor exists. And yet? After decades of research, I’ve more questions than ever before. Are there hoaxes? Sure. Just like there’s people in government pretending to be public servants. Just because you find a few hundred thousand useless buffoons doesn’t mean that the rare, honest, food truck-chasing bureaucrat, excessively hairy or not, doesn’t exist. There’s been tens of thousands of sightings, encounters, video, audio footprints cast, with detailed dermal ridges impossible to fake. The odds of some epic conspiracy, random or organized, featuring tens of thousands of practical jokers renting gorilla suits and throwing boulders in the middle of Absolute Nowhere, Montana (or Saugus, CA) is much more of a phantasmagorical happenstance than the existence of a 10-foot-tall, half-ton — something — wandering the wilds. Then, there’s the Sasquatch Chronicles show itself. To hear the guests’ recalled panic, the worst-than-death anguish of their encounters is profound and unsettling. Again? Is the claim that there’s some massive, secret society of the Screen Actors’ Guild, faking these elaborate run-ins. Lifelong hunters and outdoorsmen suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, confessing as much as they love the woods, they’ll never, ever, go back again.
As a local historian, I came across a written account, from the 1950s, where a deer hunter and his son were run out of Mentryville. The man was a local sheriff’s deputy. He saw the tracks. He described the patented odor and unidentifiable, inhuman, enraged screams. Mountain lions? It’s a question of lung capacity. A 150-pound cougar can’t roar like a half-ton lion. A half-ton lion CAN’T ROAR with that much volume and power. In the 1940s, Signal Editor Fred Trueblood recorded giant, human-like bare footprints, nearly 2 feet long, in the same Pico Canyon. In the 1970s, we had weeks of sightings and encounters here in the SCV and in the mountains from Castaic to neighboring Antelope Valley. We were even treated to visiting clown car safaris of corpulent Bigfoot hunters, carrying .50-caliber machine guns and bringing along L.A. media and fortune tellers to check, ahem, “… the vibes.”
I’ve been agnostic. But, I’ve allowed for the possibilities. I wince in typing this, but most of the blowback that there Just Simply Ain’t a giant hominid wandering every state except Hawaii and Delaware (out of respect to Joe Biden?) is rather comic. You get the same, insufferable, ignorant chuckle, no facts and lame attempt at humor. It’s one of the reasons why many have waited decades to share their horrific hauntings. Some witnesses, I’d wager, will go to their graves, telling no one for fear of ridicule.
And yet.
Newspaper accounts go back to the 1700s. Canada to Mexico, Maine to SoCal, nearly every Native American culture has their own, different name for this giant. Stories, totems and drawings going back centuries. Even today, fresh sightings are a common experience on reservations. The Indians sometimes don’t like to talk to white people. I know the feeling. I don’t get all huffy. It’s like someone arguing with you that there’s no such thing as sliced bread. I even enjoy a good Sasquatch spoof or special effects (there’s a great AI video featuring a wise-cracking Bigfoot with a surfer-dude’s brogue, offering in-forest cooking instructions, with a captured forest ranger hogtied in the background).
Speaking of AI, the famous Patterson film from 1967, the best footage still today of the creature, has been deemed accurate by numerous and exhaustive AI tests.
Anywho. If you’re so moved, tune into my segment, logged “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” for May 3, 2026, on Sasquatchchronicles.com. It covers a lot of our own local sightings and Signal stories.
But, be warned.
My own, personal, absolutely most horrific encounter involving the Bigfoot? It was listening to myself on the podcast.
I’m a former college speech major, TV news director and radio talk show host. You’d think I’d know better. I must have muttered, “… ya-know,” a million-six times during the interview.
Gotta work on that because, if I don’t, some old-time outdoors karma might track me down.
You see, if you say, “Ya-know …” too many times in the wilderness, besides sounding like a big, ignorant doofy-doof, you’re just inviting a Bigfoot to come and eat you …
“Naked Came the Novelist,” Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” is on sale at JohnBoston-Books.com. So are other fine books, including his two-part “SCV Monsters” series. Lifelong SCV resident John Boston, with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
