Geographical Index > United States > Utah > Tooele County > Report # 24500
(Class A)
Submitted by witness on Sunday, August 17, 2008.
Young man and his mother experience daylight sighting of a monkey-like creature, possibly a juvenile sasquatch, through a window of their home near the Oquirrh Mountains
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YEAR: 2004 or 05
SEASON: Summer STATE: Utah COUNTY: Tooele County NEAREST TOWN: Tooele County OBSERVED: I looked out the window and saw some monkey looking thing. It was about 100 yards away. It was jogging toward the mountains east of where I was. It was black and looked like it had short fur. It wasn't very tall. Maybe four feet. It kind of ran like a monkey. You know how monkeys run on their hands sort of crouched over. I watched for about a minute until it went down into a ditch. OTHER WITNESSES: Just me and my mom. We were looking out the kitchen window. TIME AND CONDITIONS: 4:00 pm ENVIRONMENT: Empty field behind my house
Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Chad Hamblin:
The witness' father submitted a report, report 23917, previous to the son submitting this report. That report took place near the location of this report and involved the father and a co-worker hearing the loud snap of a breaking limb – which scared the two men sufficiently that they left the area. In that report, under the heading “Other Stories”, the witness' father made the following statement:
“There is another event that I also would have never dreamed was remotely related to bigfoot until I got on the BFRO website. I don't know if this qualifies as a sighting either. This event happened to my wife and oldest son about the same time (within a few years or so) as the first event I described. My wife and son swear they saw a black chimpanzee running through the field behind our house in the middle of the day. They watched from the kitchen window for a minute or two as it ran. They were about 20 feet above the field and a distance of about a hundred yards away. I've teased them about the incident over the years but they are both very sure of what they saw. My home is about four or five miles SW of the first incident I described.
The black monkey was running west to east and disappeared into a ditch which sometimes carries water out of the nearby Middle Canyon. There are many homes in this area now which did not exist at the time, although some of them were there.”
The witness' father talked about the ditch the “monkey” ran to and said he didn’t know if it would’ve had water in it at the time of the incident or not. He said, as he had in the report he submitted, that it sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t have water. He also said the animal possibly had to have passed quite close to the yards of one or two homes to get to the location. He reminded me that there are a lot of new homes in the area now.
When I talked to the witness' father he asked if I’d like to talk to his wife about it, but then said he didn’t think she’d want to talk to me. He said she still insists it was a chimpanzee. He pointed out that there were no reports of a missing chimpanzee in the area. I agreed that I thought it was very unlikely for a chimpanzee to be in the area, and that even if there was it would be unlikely for them to not to have heard about it.
I don't think the witness and his mother saw a bear cub. The witness' father told me there are no bears in the Oquirrh Mountains, and this is verified by a look at the maps found on the
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources' Utah Conservation Data Center website.
The witness' father said his son would probably be willing to talk to me. The witness agreed and came to the phone. The witness is fifteen now, and I asked him how old he was at the time of the incident and he said he was probably about eleven or twelve years old.
I asked the witness to tell me the story, and he did. It was a pretty simple story – basically just looking out the window at what he thought was a chimp running behind the house. I asked how far away it was and he said about a hundred yards (like his dad said in the report). A little later when I asked what he thought it was he said he thought it was a monkey. As I talked to the witness he sometimes referred to the animal as a chimp and sometimes as a monkey.
I asked the witness what color the animal was and he said black. I asked how tall he thought it was and he guessed it was about four feet tall. I asked about the length of the fur and he said it had short fur. I asked if the animal was moving upright on two legs or down on all four, and the witness told me it alternated between being up on two and then putting its hands down and going on four legs. I asked how fast the animal was moving and the witness described its pace as a jog. I asked which direction the animal was going and he said it was going east toward the mountains.
I asked the witness about the time of day and he said it took place at about three o’clock in the afternoon. He said it was a warm sunny day.
I asked the witness if he would be willing to submit a report on our website about this incident and he said he would. I told him his dad could help him if he needed, since his dad had already posted a report. The witness followed-through and submitted this report.
After talking to the witness and his father, and reading this report, I'm convinced that the witness and his mother did see a primate near their home - as described in this report. I think the most probable explanation for what they saw is that it was a juvenile sasquatch.
About BFRO Investigator Chad Hamblin:
Chad Hamblin is a life sciences/biology teacher with an interest and background in wildlife and the outdoors. He lives in a rural community in northeastern Utah. He participated in the first Utah BFRO expedition in 2007, as well as the 2009 and 2010 Utah expeditions. He attended the Wyoming expedition in 2008, the Bluff Creek California expedition in 2011, and the Idaho expedition in 2013. A few months ago Chad experienced a bigfoot encounter while hiking alone in Utah's Uinta Mountains.
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