Let’s start our exploration of The Silence with an excellent, close-range sighting of Sasquatch drawn from Linda Godfrey’s book Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen, Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena.
In that book, Godfrey tells the story of a witness that she dubbed Jon Turner (the witness wished to remain anonymous). The events of this case take place in 1967 and I found the case of note since Turner stated that the park where the incident occurred seemed to go strangely silent during the encounter. “There were no sounds from any animals or birds. It was just the creature, the river, and me.”
Turner, like many witnesses, kept his encounter to himself for many years; he did not contact Godfrey until February 2015. As he was a retired state and federal government worker with a degree in biology, we can, perhaps, understand why. Given the time period when the episode happened, reporting a Sasquatch sighting could easily be detrimental to both the witness’s professional and personal life.
Turner set out for a sunrise ride along some forest preserve trails next to the Des Plaines River, just east of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It was a warm August morning and Turner had a new Schwinn Varsity bicycle for the ride. He was using dirt and asphalt trails along the water. The Varsity was a road bike so, when the surfaces got to rough, Turner would dismount and walk his new ride.
He stopped and took a moment to rest on a fallen log that gave him a splendid view of the river. It was during this stop that Turner “began to sense something unusual about the place” – another of those Oz Factor effects we see in the paranormal, the feeling that something is about to happen, that something is not right or that something is about to happen.
Turner experienced another precursor common to Sasquatch sightings during his rest. “A remarkable thing I noticed was that I heard a bird whistle, some type of exotic bird I never heard before,” he said. “It happened four or five times. A couple walked by on the trail as I sat there, and the lady said she had heard it, too.” Those familiar with Sasquatch research will know that whistles and other vocalizations are a common accompaniment to sightings with the Hairy One.
Turner decided to move farther down the path, still walking the Schwinn, and he came to another excellent spot for watching the sunrise. The witness noted that his chosen lookout was next to a patch of ragweed and that he saw an orange glow that he credited to the rising sun. Interestingly, balls of light are a notable factor in many Sasquatch encounters, so I have to wonder if the glow was actually the sunrise.
At that point, Turner says, “I saw what first looked like a shadow of a figure. It was big and tall with a cone-shaped head but man-like, and it was coming out of the woods where I saw the glow. It walked and stood erect, with its head up.” The figure fully emerged from the forest, and Turner immediately recognized that he was seeing a being that was not human.
According to the witness, the creature stood approximately six and a half feet tall (1.98 meters) and weighed around three hundred pounds (136.08 kilograms). “The creature was manlike but covered with jet-black hair about four inches long everywhere except for its dark gray, leathery face,” according to Turner and drank water from its cupped hands before swirling the silt on the river bed. The witness thought it might be looking for “crayfish or other small edibles” and watched it for about two minutes.
The Sasquatch didn’t notice Turner until the ragweed, a notorious allergen, affected him, forcing a throat clearing. The creature immediately straightened and Turner, afraid of being spotted, moved quietly to another spot where he could again see the creature. He had lost sight of the Sasquatch while he moved but, when he re-acquired the being, it had silently crossed the river to his side.
Turner felt fortunate to have moved when the Sasquatch began tossing stones at the spot where he had been standing, seemingly trying to flush him out. Fortune did not favor the witness. The ragweed again caught up to him and he coughed. The Sasquatch turned to spot him.
Godfrey points out that the witness noted the Sasquatch’s physical features until the creature again began throwing stones. The Sasquatch was quite accurate, hitting a bike tire and the subject’s forearm as Turner fled. The Sasquatch gave chase, muttering “mumbo jumbo” in what the witness felt was a language. Turner felt that there were other Sasquatch in the woods around him as he fled and, oddly, the creature only broke off pursuit when Turner called on the name of Jesus for help.
As I stated at the beginning of the post, this case caught my attention because Linda Godfrey took pains to point out the odd silence that accompanied this event and even used this silence as yet another example of the Oz Factor at work.
The first and most obvious explanation for The Silence in this event occurs at the end of the story. Turner states he was certain there were other creatures in the woods, going so far as to say that he felt “the gates of hell” had opened around him. If the witness had not just one but several Sasquatch in the area, then I would expect the local wildlife to lie low and keep silence until the danger of these giant predators had passed.
I can’t say for certain that the apex predator theory is not true in this case. I wasn’t there and did not experience the quality of the silence that Turner experienced. Given Turner’s obvious terror, we also have to consider that the woods may have been silent for him because of his one-pointed effort to escape the situation. Narrowing of the senses in an adrenaline-filled situation is definitely an issue, and Turner may simply not have noticed sounds other than the Sasquatch in his area.
I think, though, that we have to give some consideration to some of the odd elements of Turner’s tale. For one thing, the subject experienced a feeling of oddness before the sighting of the Sasquatch. Then he saw an orange glow on the side of the river where the creature appeared. Anomalous lights are often associated with Sasquatch sightings (see Renner and Cutchin Where The Footprints End for extensive details). Given these two effects and what could well be The Silence, we have a paranormal trifecta that we cannot ignore with two of the three Oz Factor points apparent.
If this were the only case where Sasquatch was associated with The Silence, I would be more willing to follow the apex predator or adrenaline theories outlined above. But, The Silence popped up in fifteen other cases in my notes. Those notes come from my library and do not represent extensive research on the topic. I imagine that, with some digging, I could ferret out dozens (maybe hundreds) more cases like this one.
Sasquatch is not the only phenomenon where I have noted The Silence, however. In the next post, we will turn to the Manwolf and look at its association with The Silence.