Lumberman Albert Ostman insisted and legally swore that he was once the unwilling guest of a family of Sasquatches in the Pacific Northwest.
The vast majority of reported encounters involving the elusive Sasquatch — those huge, hairy, humanlike creatures reportedly sighted all across the U.S. — are mostly cases of passive observation. Those who insist they’ve been within sight of the creatures are usually watching them go by from a blurry distance. Stories of direct physical contact with a sasquatch are less frequent, and the experience claimed by Albert Ostman — in which he was physically kidnapped and held by a family of Sasquatches for up to a week — was truly unique.
The Swedish-born Ostman was a 30-year-old lumberman in 1924 when he ventured into Toba Inlet on the British Columbia coast opposite Vancouver Island and into an area that was popular with gold prospectors. Ostman recalled in a late-life interview that an “old Indian” he hired as a guide to take him to the head of Toba Inlet highlighted something else that was special to the region.
According to Ostman, the guide said, “They have hair all over their bodies, but they are not animals. They are people. Big people living in the mountains. My uncle saw the tracks of one that were two feet long. One old Indian saw one over eight feet tall.”
The iconic image captured in Northern California by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin in 1967 was promoted as the first filmed evidence of the Sasquatch's existence.
Ostman brushed off the guide’s story after venturing deeper into the woods and he enjoyed the solitude of his camping trip until he experienced three consecutive mornings when he awoke to find his campsite had been disturbed. Believing he was being visited by a pesky animal, Ostman conspired to catch the unwelcome guest, and on the fourth night he climbed into his sleeping bag fully dressed with his rifle. He also stored several of his canned provisions in the sleeping bag to avoid having them pilfered by the campsite intruder.
Ostman’s plan failed when he drifted off to sleep and was awakened only when he realized something had picked him up and was carrying him off in his sleeping bag. Unable to free himself from the sleeping bag, he was carried up and down hills through the woods for what he later estimated to be roughly three hours. Finally he was deposited on the ground just as the morning light was breaking. It was then that he first viewed his captors — a family of Sasquatches.
“They look[ed] like a family — old man, old lady, and two young ones, a boy and a girl,” Ostman later stated. “The boy and the girl seem[ed] to be scared of me. The old lady did not seem too pleased about what the old man dragged home. But the old man was waving his arms and telling them all what he had in mind. They all left me then.”
Albert Ostman spoke about his alleged Sasquatch encounter in the 1972 film Bigfoot: Man or Beast?, released by American National Enterprises.
Ostman said the matriarch of this Sasquatch clan gathered the food for their meals. She went into the woods and returned with “arms full of grass and twigs and of all kinds of spruce and hemlock as well as some kind of nuts that grow in the ground.” He found the boy curious and friendly and the girl mild and potentially helpless.
“I am sure if I could get the old man out of the way I could easily have brought this girl out with me to civilization,” he said. “But what good would that have been? I would have to keep her in a cage for public display. I don’t think we have any right to force our way of life on other people, and I don’t think they would like it. The noise and racket in a modern city they would not like any more than I do.”
Ostman used the food supplies he brought with him for sustenance and admitted the Sasquatches made no attempt to harm him. Communication was accomplished through gesturing. After six days with the Sasquatches, Ostman said, he beat a hasty retreat when the older male became violently sick after he ingested the contents of Ostman’s snuff box. Quickly gathering his belongings to escape, Ostman fled, firing an airborne rifle shot to frighten the older woman when she tried to chase after him. He wandered and camped through the woods before he was able to find his way to a logging site.
The Canadian postal service released the Sasquatch postage stamp on October 1, 1990, as part of a Folklore and Legendary Creatures stamp series which also featured the Kraken, the Ogopogo, and a werewolf.
Ostman never shared his story publicly until 1957, when tales of Sasquatch sightings began to percolate in the newspapers of the Pacific Northwest. His story was first printed in a newspaper called The Agassiz-Harrison Advance, and he was cross-examined by the police and signed a solemn declaration that affirmed the story was true under oath and by virtue of the Canadian Evidence Act.
Ostman repeated his story on multiple occasions to Sasquatch researchers up until his death in 1975.
Of course, there is no photographic or physical evidence to back up his story, and although many experts in Sasquatch studies credited Ostman for providing the most in-depth information on the mysterious creatures, others have questioned the veracity of his account. There were never any additional sightings of the Sasquatch family from that region, but Ostman said he was not eager to find them again.
“That was my last prospecting trip — and my only experience with what is known as Sasquatches,” he declared.
Read more stories about the spooky West.
HEADER IMAGE: A carving of the Sasquatch was erected in Mill City, Oregon, to commemorate the Sasquatch sightings reported in the area.