PORT ANGELES — Striking brown eyes set atop a Roman nose and underscored by a heavy jaw peered back at Judy Carroll, she recalled of the encounter.
The face was not human but admittedly handsome, she said.
Carroll of Port Angeles claims she stood 30 to 35 feet away from a male Sasquatch for 10 minutes in July. She said the being stood about 8 feet tall, weighed approximately 800 to 900 pounds and possessed gray fur no more than a couple of inches long.
As they faced each other, the Sasquatch appeared to be communicating in a click language to others behind him, perhaps warning of Carroll’s presence, she said.
“I was terrified,” she said. “But I trusted him.”
Ten minutes later, Carroll said he vanished without a trace.
Carroll said she had communicated with this particular Sasquatch and others daily before the alleged encounter. By arranging sticks and stones to form glyphs, Carroll said she’s had hundreds of “meaningful conversations” at six different locations — five on the North Olympic Peninsula and one in Darrington.
But this alleged face-to-face brush with a Sasquatch left her body reeling from high blood pressure for several days, Carroll said.
“I think I almost had a heart attack or stroke,” she said. “My body was actually sore for a few days.”
Carroll, along with Pat Neal of Forks, a Hoh River fishing guide and Peninsula Daily News columnist, and Ron Morehead of Sequim, an author and producer, will present the first Sasquatch Symposium on the Olympic Peninsula from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday at Studio Bob, 118½ E. Front St. Tickets will be $10 at the door.
The symposium aims not to prove the existence of Sasquatch but rather to describe “personal interactions” between Sasquatch and humans, according to a news release.
“Anyone who has ever seen a Sasquatch already knows they exist,” the release says.
During the symposium, Carroll will give the “basic, basic, basic” rundown of communicating and forming relationships with the Sasquatch, she said.
“You don’t have to go into the deep wilderness to have an interaction,” she said. “You can go to the nearest logging road.”
She has recorded the apparent click language and photographed the glyphs, which she hopes to publish with research. Until then, Carroll will not disclose the subjects of her conversations with the Sasquatch, she said.
The findings could be “revolutionary,” she said optimistically.
Carroll said her conversations with the Sasquatch reveal them to be shy, sentient beings capable of humor and forgiveness. For example, she said the Sasquatch will “playfully” holler and knock down trees when she does not understand their previous glyph.
“They crack me up a lot,” Carroll said.
Neal, who describes his column as “wilderness gossip,” said the Sasquatch appeared to forgive him after he shot into the air one night, frustrated by the creatures’ incessant “screaming.”
Carroll jests that Neal’s backyard serves as a hotbed for Sasquatch activity.
“They like Pat,” Carroll said.
“Don’t they have anything better to do?” Neal said, laughing.
He calls the Sasquatch “the watchers” for their apparent attentiveness to Neal’s daily activities — chopping wood, for instance. The feeling of being watched causes the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end, he said.
In 40 years, Neal said he’s seen about a dozen Sasquatch roaming his backyard, sometimes mimicking the sound of his steps treading down the stairs or leaving feces near his home.
“I used to mark [sightings] on the calendar,” he said. “I don’t even do that anymore.”
Neal recalled the first time he saw a Sasquatch while fishing Feb. 28, 1970-something, in his Wednesday column.
As a fishing guide, Neal finds humor in observing others’ doubt as to the Sasquatch’s existence. He recalled several alleged sightings along the Hoh River — though not all produced certainty among observers.
“People will say, ‘I saw a monkey sitting on a log,’ ” he said.
Or they’ll deny a strange sighting altogether, Neal said.
“People are just in awe,” he said.
Neal will deliver a history of Sasquatch on the Olympic Peninsula during the symposium in hopes of fostering “cultural understanding,” he said.
Morehead, author of “Voices in the Wilderness” and “The Quantum Bigfoot,” will talk about the Sierra Sounds, audio clips recorded in a remote hunting camp in the High Sierra Mountains.
He attributes the rhythmic rapping-pounding and whooping sounds to Bigfoot.
Symposium attendees will hear some of Morehead and Alan Berry’s clips during the presentation.
Morehead also will explain the “science behind Bigfoot” through the lens of quantum physics to symposium-goers.
Morehead’s latest book, “The Quantum Bigfoot,” chalks up single Sasquatch footprints and reported “vanishings” to quantum physics.
“If all of nature works within the rules of quantum physics, why not Bigfoot?” he writes. “We are all made of the same thing: waves and particles, energy to matter.”
The Patterson-Gimlin “Sasquatch” footage from Bluff Creek, Calif., in 1967 will be shown.
If the symposium goes well, Carroll, Neal and Morehead said they will consider a recurring gathering of Sasquatch enthusiasts on the Olympic Peninsula.
For more information, call Neal at 360-683-9867.
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Reporter Sarah Sharp can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56650, or at ssharp@peninsula dailynews.com.
