Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race

The paper added (Shackley 1983, p. 36): “Mr. Thos. White and Mr. Gouin, C.E., as well as Mr. Major, who kept a small store about half a mile west of the tunnel during the past two years, have mentioned seeing a curious creature at different points between Camps 13 and 17, but no attention was paid to their remarks as people came to the conclusion that they had seen either a bear or a stray Indian dog. Who can unravel the mystery that surrounds Jacko? Does he belong to a species hitherto unknown in this part of the continent?”

That the creature was not a gorilla seems clear—its weight was too small. Some might suppose that Jacko was a chimpanzee. But this idea was apparently considered and rejected by persons who were familiar with Jacko. Sanderson (1961, p. 27) mentioned “a comment made in another paper shortly after the original story was published, and which asked . . . how anybody could suggest that this ‘Jacko’ could have been a chimpanzee that had escaped from a circus.” Was the whole story perhaps a hoax? Myra Shackley thought not. She

noted: “The newspaper account of Jacko was subsequently confirmed by an old man, August Castle, who was a child in the town at the time. The fate of the captive is not known, although some said that he (accompanied by Mr. Tilbury) was shipped east by rail in a cage on the way to be exhibited in a sideshow, but died in transit” (Shackley 1983, p. 36).

Furthermore, there were additional reports of creatures like Jacko from the same region. Zoologist Ivan Sanderson (1961, p. 29) said about Jacko in one of his collections of wildman evidence: “one of his species had been reported from the same area by Mr. Alexander Caulfield Anderson, a well-known explorer and an executive of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who was doing a ‘survey’ of the newly opened territory and seeking a feasible trade route through it for his company. He reported just such hairy humanoids as having hurled rocks down upon him and his surveying party from more than one slope. That was in 1864.”

In 1901, Mike King, a well-known lumberman, was working in an isolated region in northern Vancouver Island. He had to work alone. His native American employees refused to accompany him, fearing that the dreaded wildman of the woods lived there. Once, as King came over a ridge, he spotted a large humanlike creature covered with reddish brown fur. On the bank of a creek, the creature was washing some roots and placing them in two orderly piles beside him. The creature then left, running like a human being. King said: “His arms were peculiarly long and used freely in climbing and bush-running.” Footprints observed by King were distinctly human, except for the “phenomenally long and spreading toes” (Sanderson 1961, pp. 34–35).

In 1941, several members of the Chapman family encountered a wildman at Ruby Creek, British Columbia. In 1959, Ivan Sanderson interviewed the Chapmans, who were native Americans, about what happened. On a sunny summer afternoon, Mrs. Chapman’s oldest son alerted her to the presence of a large animal coming down out of the woods near their home. At first, she thought it was a large bear. But then, much to her horror, she saw that it was a gigantic man covered all over with yellow-brown hair. The hair was about 4 inches long. The creature moved directly towards the house, and Mrs. Chapman rounded up her three children and fled downstream to the village.

She estimated that the creature was about 7.5 feet tall. It had a relatively small head and a short, thick neck—practically no neck at all. Its body was completely human in shape, except the chest was immensely thick and the arms unusually long. Its shoulders were extremely wide. The naked regions of its face and its hands were much darker than the hair and appeared to be nearly black.

When Mr. Chapman returned home, a couple of hours after his wife had fled, he saw huge humanlike footprints all around the house. He was greatly alarmed, because, like almost all the native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, he had heard from childhood about the “big wild men of the mountains” (Sanderson 1961, p. 68). For the next week, giant humanlike footprints were found every day.

Moreover, said Sanderson, the Chapmans described the “strange gurgling whistle” emitted by the creature. According to Sanderson, this cry seemed identical to that heard by other persons in connection with similar creatures elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest.