Urban legend or San Bernardino local: Bigfoot sightings a common occurrence in SBC

It was a cool Wednesday morning, the Southern California daybreak dew laid heavy underfoot. A marine layer of stubborn fog disgruntled the view and restricted eyesight to only five feet ahead. For reasons unbeknownst to Carlos, Silverwood Lake was eerily quiet. Other fishermen were usually here by now, he thought.

He dismissed the oddity as mere informality and focused on the day's potential catch, remembering the meaty 4-pound channel catfish he prized last fishing trip. Reaching into his tacklebox, Carlos uncovered a neon green and yellow faux fishhook and readied his line for cast-off.

Shoulder thrust back, fishing pole rising high as the Shanghai Tower, Carlos was on the verge of throwing his line into Lake Silverwood when a crash of twigs sounded from behind. There were no cars in the parking lot so he was sure the sound was a resident mule deer, or maybe even an early-rising coyote.

Shaking the distraction from his head, he resumed his position and was just about to re-cast his line when an imaginary swoop of air brushed against his left arm that lay at his side. Already alerted from the encounter just before, Carlos pivoted on his heels and was just as quickly unbalanced by the sight of a creature twice his size frantically fleeing the scene. He entered a state of shock from his rear on the Silverwood sand, fishing line in a knot on the ground.

His wife and daughter were off at a distance wading in the lake waters with inner tubes when they heard Carlos's cry. Beatrice, 4, turned her head sharp as flint at the sound of her dad in danger. There, in the air where her father's upright presence now dawned empty space was a monkey-like man taller than anyone she'd ever seen and hairier than any animal she'd ever visited at the zoo.

All in a moment's flash, she witnessed Carlos on his feet and chasing the beast. He outstretched the sore left arm he'd fallen on, gained hold of the Bigfoot's fur, and fell once again. This time, however, it wasn't in vain. From the sanded shore, he held in his hand fibrous gold − a piece of an actual Bigfoot's hair and proof that the beast actually does exist.

The detailed narrative of Carlos's encounter with Bigfoot was fabricated for entertainment purposes, but the report he made on Aug. 20, 2014, was real.

According to The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), the "only scientific research organization exploring the Bigfoot/ Sasquatch mystery" founded in 1995, Carlos reported seeing an ape-like hairy-looking creature with light brown hair and long arms that swung while it ran. "What amazed me," he said in the report, "was the speed it was running."

Carlos and his 4-year-old daughter saw the creature, as confirmed by BFRO Investigator Matthew Moneymaker. Moneymaker vouched for Carlos's credibility and noted that there are other unpublished reports of Sasquatch sightings around Silverwood Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains as well.

Carlos's encounter was the most recent Bigfoot sighting in San Bernardino County as listed on the Bigfoot catchers' website. Other sightings stem from 1950 onward.

1950

The first Sasquatch sighting in San Bernardino County dates back 75 years. A witness under the initials alias "F.B." reported the Lytle Creek encounter on March 4, 2000, decades years after it happened.

It was a sunny day in Lytle Creek near Mt. Vernon and Realto streets off State Highway 10 when the witness "Heard whistling and wood-chomping noises and saw a hairy man-like creature (very muscular)." The report noted that the creature caught sight of F.B. and watched them with a careful eye for a few minutes before disappearing into the tree line by the edge of Lytle Creek.

F.B. went back later and found footprints the size of a large beast by the creek.

1963

Witness "R.L," 18, gave a very detailed account of his hairy contact with Bigfoot in San Bernardino. While camping with his family during a summer getaway in Big Bear Lake, R.L. found himself walking along the dark forest roads after hours.

Almost as if in a horror movie, the leaves near him rustled and he felt an intense feeling of not only being watched but also being followed. He stopped walking and so did the sound of crunching leaves underfoot in the tree canopy. When he resumed his pace, so did the boot crunch.

He was then chased at a speed he didn't think any woodland animal could muster. Chased into the street, he flagged down the first car he saw and hitchhiked to safety. BFRO Investigator Richard Hucklebridge followed up with R.L. and said that although the subject did not see or smell anything out of the ordinary, "his encounter does have some of the same characteristics that Sasquatch has shown in the past."

1975

In 1975, a Boy Scout troops' scary campfire stories took a realistic spin for the worst. Another summer encounter, the Scout troop was camping at Camp Taquitz near Barton Flats, San Bernardino National Forest when loud screams were heard at approximately 11 p.m. in total darkness.

The group immediately ceased their campfire stories for the remainder of the spooked night. Around 1 a.m., several Boy Scouts reported hearing something rustle in the bushes by the campground. The light of their flashlight captured the 6- to 7-foot-tall beast just in time before he fled.

According to the report, the beast "had brown hair all over except the face. It had a very short neck and long arms going down to the knees. Its eyes reflected the flashlight's beam like a rabbit's would, shining red. It turned and with long steps, walked northeast from the area then up a steep wooded hill and out of sight."

1976

It appears that Bigfoot has taken preference to Big Bear since the beginning of its San Bernardino County sightings. This time, Sasquatch scarred a 12-year-old boy for life after stalking the camper during an after-hours outdoor bathroom break.

"It was between two large trees and standing behind a bush parting the top of it with its hands looking right at me," the boy reported. All he could see was the upper chest, head, arms, and hands. Bigfoot watched the boy for a few seconds before he ran terrified for the cabin door, not bothering to unlock or open it as he bolted inside.

1993

This is one of the only instances that reports the infamous stench of Bigfoot, a telltale that confirms wild unknown beasts to be Sasquatch. The encounter took place also near Barton Flats in the San Bernardino Mountains southwest of Big Bear Lake.

A van camper first reported being violently shaken around in his campervan before smelling a most foul stench when investigating the shaker culprit outside. The camper reported seeing an upright shape fleeing the scene, with hair from head to toe.

The beast left "a stench like a cesspool." Bigfoot shook the camper both physically and emotionally, and they were packed up and zooming down the interstate back home within a matter of minutes.

1997

In 1997, Claudia Ackley heard a growl outside her tent while camping at Yosemite National Park. When she looked outside she saw a bipedal, hairy creature walking away.

From that moment on, she devoted much of her free time to tracking down the not-so-urban legend.

Bigfoot community loses 'a soldier': Claudia Ackley claimed she saw Bigfoot in Lake Arrowhead

She chanced another encounter in 2014 in Washington when she locked eyes with what appeared to be a small, 5-foot-tall Bigfoot in the trees, and a third in 2017 when her daughter spotted the Sasquatch in Lake Arrowhead perched about 30 feet up between two branches of a tree. The creature had "a huge head and ears, and black almond-shaped eyes. He was like a Neanderthal man with lots of messy hair."

2003

In 2003, rains flooded the Mojave Riverbed, leaving an assortment of vegetation behind as the near-summer temperatures rose. A Hesperia resident dubbed "Stacy G." visited her mother, whose phone call indicated that something was wrong at home.

When Stacy G. arrived, she found one of her mother's geese killed in an unusual way. The neck was broken in half with multiple visual punctures, and it was laid out with its feet carefully arranged.

The most mysterious part, however, was the disemboweled intestines in the middle of their lawn. The last time Stacy G. saw something this weird was during her 1997 encounter with Sasquatch on the Mojave Riverbed.

Additionally, a footprint with four toes was discovered on their property, near smashed vegetation where Stacy G. and her mom believe the Bigfoot took a rest. BFRO Investigator Richard Hucklebridge visited the scene and noted the incident culprit as a possible fox, but Stacy G. and her parents remain certain that the damage was done at the hand of something far bigger.

2008

During the early morning hours of Aug. 14, a Native American resident near Yucaipa heard a "god-awful sound" coming from their backyard. The mysterious noise sounded three times and the resident emulated a cat fighting cry to scare the creature off.

According to the report, the cat cry did the trick, and human-sounding footprints were heard scattering off. In the morning, the Indigenous resident did some Bigfoot research and "freaked out" when they found videos and voice recordings online of East Coast Bigfoot making the same noise.

2009

Mother and daughter duo, who use aliases "K.L.P." and "S.K.P." for protection against Bigfoot naysayers, reported what they believed to be Sasquatch screams near their home in Big Bear on Aug. 3. The "blood-curdling scream" persisted for half an hour at the witching hour (3 a.m.) and aroused all neighborhood pets.

Several coyotes ran toward their house, the duo reported, like they were scared or running from something, and raccoons ran in circles during the timespan of the mysterious scream. Something strange and unexplainable happened that night in Big Bear.

2009

The High Desert's beloved Deep Creek area is remote enough for apparently even Sasquatch to call home. In the summer of 2009 closer to the Lake Arrowhead side of Deep Creek, a handful of people reported seeing a mysterious creature on a rock about a mile away around noon.

The anonymous person who made the Bigfoot report to the BFRO, noted that the other witnesses dismissed the subject as a person. The reporter, however, who snagged a blurry photo of the mysterious individual on a rock, wasn't convinced.

McKenna Mobley is a Daily Press reporter and can be reached at mmobley@gannett.com .

This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Sasquatch sightings: A timeline of San Bernardino County encounters