CRANBROOK, B.C. — A Cranbrook resident says he was just beginning his early-morning shift as a sand truck/snowplow driver for a highways maintenance contractor when he saw what he now calls “the beast.”
Gord Johnson says he was barely out of the Cranbrook city limits, heading west, when his headlights illuminated what he thought was a human figure some 150 metres away.
“It was standing in the ditch on the right side of the road, sort of bent over. It was dark and cold and too early in the morning for anybody to be out picking bottles or something, so I thought whoever it was might be hurt or sick, so I slowed down.”
As Johnson drew nearer, the figure in the ditch straightened, then turned and began to move towards his truck while remaining in the ditch.
As the distance closed the snowplough driver was now better able to see that this individual was oddly shaped; very large with arms that reached nearly to its knees, a conical head and what he had initially thought to be a light golden brown parka was instead hair.
The two-metre-plus figure walking towards him was covered in it, he says.
Johnson’s truck slowly passed the creature, allowing him to see it clearly through the passenger side window.
“It gives me goose-bumps right now just thinking about it. I must have been in shock because I drove on another couple hundred yards before I realized I had to turn the truck around and get another look at this beast, but by then it had disappeared.”
Johnson finished his shift and decided that because he had no proof, it would be in his best interests not to share the details of the encounter, lest he be ridiculed. The one person he did tell was his longtime partner Victoria Carter.
“Gord was very shaken by the incident. Just because of the way it affected him I knew he’d seen something — I knew he was telling the truth,” Carter said.
Nearly three months later, on Jan. 25, Johnson was again maintaining a road in the early morning when his truck ran out of sand. Finding a wide spot in the road he began turning his truck around so he could head back for another load to finish the job.
While backing up, he noticed a set of strange tracks in the newly fallen snow and decided to get out and investigate.
“As soon as I saw them I could tell they were made by something walking on only two legs — kind of offset. Right away my gut told me something wasn’t right. I took a couple shots with the disposable camera that I started carrying since the October incident.”
Johnson finished his shift, then wanting to show Carter what he considered possible proof of his previous encounter with a strange biped, returned to the spot with a better camera.
The pair then re-photographed the tracks, measured the distance between them (about 1.8 metres), and then followed them a short distance until they disappeared into dense brush.
With the light failing and the possibility that whatever had made the tracks might still be in the vicinity, the pair decided not to follow the mystery beast’s trail any further.
British Columbia Sasquatch Sighting
