This is a story that has been told by my father.
The trip from Prince George B.C. to Vancouver B.C. is a long one, about 500 miles. Sixty-five years ago it probably seemed even longer. That was when it was still a gravel road and had few tunnels and few bridges. Even now it is an empty part of the Province.
During the summer of 1941 my father, a school teacher, wanted to go to Vancouver from Prince George. No money and no car meant the best way to travel was by bicycle. He found a friend who was willing to make the ride with him and off they went. The combination of different riding skills, stamina and quality of bike meant that much of the time they were many miles apart, so sometimes dad was riding alone.
Because of the heat during the day, they often rode at night. Early summer nights are short so far north so it was never very dark. The northern sky was always light.
The adventures and incidents that he experienced are interesting and funny, except one. This took place not far from 100 Mile House. Now most of the Cariboo is covered with trees but in those days much of it was open rolling grasslands . What trees there were appeared mainly around lake edges and in the folds of the hills.
Dad had been riding alone for most of the evening. A flat tire had slowed dad some and his friend was well ahead of him. By the time the sky was as dark as it was going to get, everything was silent. The only sound was from his bicycle tires on the loose gravel.
Suddenly the night exploded in sound. It was a shrieking screeching undulating howl like nothing he had ever heard before. He'd heard the expression of "blood turning to ice". Now he knew just what that meant. Dad was not unfamiliar with the outdoors. He'd heard the sound of owls catching prey, cougars, moose, elk and bears. This was different. His reaction was to get out of there! But which way? The sound was coming from all around him. When he saw faint movement in a nearby clump of trees he'd just passed, he took a guess that he should go the opposite direction, which was also the way he was heading. And he did, as fast as he could pedal. As suddenly as it started the sound stopped. Again there was no sound but the tires on the gravel going much faster this time!
A few valleys later he caught up to his friend, who had heard nothing.
Eventually dad decided he must have heard a moose bouncing several times off a fence wire, or something. However he was never comfortable with that explanation.
At the time he was not very aware of a creature called a Sasquatch although he had seen the newspaper photo of a live one captured near Yale in the Fraser Canyon (never have managed to find out what happened with it). He can't remember if that was before or after his bike ride.
About thirty years later I was living and working in the 100 Mile House area. A co-worker who was an avid outdoors man asked if I would work his shift for him one weekend. He and his buddies wanted to go on a fishing and camping weekend at an isolated back woods lake a couple of hours out of town. They left Friday and surprisingly were back just after sunrise Saturday. Apparently they had reached the lake, set up camp and sat around a campfire for a while before turning in.
They did not stay up late as they wanted to be up early for the fishing. Sometime after they had settled for the night an incredible howl had them all out of bed and looking at each other in astonishment. Although they were all hunters and fishermen none of them had ever heard a sound like that before. It seemed to becoming from the far side of the lake. Suddenly it stopped. Half an hour later they heard it again but this time it was much closer to the end of the lake and therefore closer to their campsite. A few minute later it screeched again, this time even closer.
So these four men not only packed up and left, they were not ashamed to admit it!
He described the sound to me, undulating, screeching, howling, blood chilling. It sounded so much like what my father had described, I told him about it.
Dad just got a funny look on his face and said" I never really did think that what I heard was a moose running into a fence!" .
Hope you get more reports. Central B.C. is still so empty there could be lots of interesting things out there!
Thank you to the family member for relating the Dad's experiences.
Also The Vike Factor has started to add Sasquatch/Bigfoot sighting reports to a new blog, (http://bigfoot-sasquatch.blogspot.com/) also of course they can be found on the main Vike Factor Blog as well.
Email Brian Vike: v_factor_paranormal@live.com
Brian Vike, The Vike Factor (Into The Paranormal) http://the-v-factor-paranormal.blogspot.com/
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