Bigfoot the Hairy Beast and Other Legendary Creatures of North America
CURIOUS CREATURES All over the world there are stories about curious and amazing creatures These animals often appear in myths and legends In Puerto Rico one story tells of a bloodsucking monster In South Africa there are rumors about a mysterious serpent that lives in a deep cave In Russian folklore there is a tale about a witch who traps children in her forest hut Do these incredible creatures really exist Or are they just stories Many people think such creatures do exist and say they have seen them Some even claim they have photos and videos The search for these creatures and other animals thought to be extinct is called cryptozoology Crypto means hidden and zoology is the study of animals IN THIS BOOK In North America there are many stories about legendary creatures In this book we look at the stories about Bigfoot Caddy the sea serpent Champ the monster of Lake Champlain and huge birds called Thunderbirds Now read on 4
Champ Vancouver Bluff Creek Lake Champlain St Louis Caddy Bigfoot Thunderbirds 5
BIGFOOT Mount St Helens a volcano in Washington State erupted on May 18 1980 It is famous for being the biggest volcanic explosion in the history of the United States But in the 1800s Mount St Helens was famous for another reason Indigenous peoples living nearby believed that a group of huge wild humanlike creatures lived on the mountain They told stories of how the beasts stole salmon from fishing nets and even carried people off to eat them By the early 1900s Europeans who heard these stories wrote them down One of the accounts used the name Sasquatch which came from the Halkomelem word for hairy giant to describe the creatures Another story said a Sasquatch had been captured in British Columbia Canada in the 1880s and sold to the circus Later in October 1955 trapper William Roe was working in a crew on a highway in British Columbia He said he had seen a strange creature near a deserted gold mine in Jasper Alberta At first he thought it was a bear Then he realized it was a huge man about 6 feet 1 8 m tall and probably weighing near 300 pounds 136 kg It was covered from head to foot with dark brown silver-tipped hair 6
This is an artist’s impression of what Bigfoot might look like 7
