Media Article # 192
Article submitted by John Moore (John_Moore@BFRO.net)
Article prepared and posted by Matthew Moneymaker

Tuesday, February 12, 1980

By Valerie Schulthies Deseret News staff writer
Deseret News

SOUTH WEBER, Davis County - Two South Weber residents have reported seeing someone or something hat looked like Bigfoot near their homes last week. Paulene Markham, said she saw whatever it was walking along the ridge of a hill behind her house a week ago Sunday. Ron J. Smith, said he saw it in the pasture behind his house the next night when he went to feed his horse.

Smith said he was about 150 feet from the creature when he saw it. Miss Markham said she was about a half mile from it. She was standing at her kitchen sink, getting a drink of water about 4 p.m., when she looked up and saw it on the hill. "I looked at it and I thought, 'Well, I'm going crazy,'" she said. "Then, I walked away from the window and came back, and it was still there." Miss Markham said she was frightened and curious, but she didn't go outside to get a closer look. She said she was home alone, it would have taken a snowmobile to get up the hill, and she was late for church anyway. So she left the house and went to church, telling only one friend about it between Sunday and Thursday, when she heard that Smith had seen something, too.

Miss Markham, a high school student, and Smith, and aircraft inspector and Hill Air Force Base, are cousins. But they said they haven't talked to each other about their respective sightings - they've only heard about them through others. And Smith said he was not aware on Monday, when he saw whatever he saw, that Miss Markham had seen something the night before. He said he learned Wednesday what she'd seen. Neither Smith nor Miss Markham insisted that the thing was Bigfoot. "I really don't know what it was, I just don't have the slightest idea, because I don't know if I believe in Bigfoot," Miss Markham said.

Smith said that when he first heard two feet crunching in the snow behind his house, he immediately assumed it was a high school student or a prowler. When he saw the creature in the moonlight, his first thought was that it was a husky high school kid, wearing a big coat. He said it walked rapidly across the pasture into a clump of trees. Only then, Smith said, did he become alarmed, because from the trees he heard four loud, inhuman screams in rapid succession. The sounds were something like the cries of a cougar, but louder, Smith said. He said the sounds then stopped for a moment, and by this time he was inside his house. From inside, he heard another three screams, then silence. After awhile, he went back to the pasture to check on his horse, and the animal was standing close to the house, looking in the direction of the trees but without apparent alarm.

Smith said he told his wife what had happened, but she hadn't heard the sounds. He checked later with neighbors and they hadn't heard anything either. Smith said he decided against calling the police, because "we couldn't produce any evidence, so I just thought, 'Well, just let it go.'" Smith said he checked the snow the next day for tracks and could find only three prints that were not horse tracks. These, he said, were not distinct, and they did not resemble the human-like prints attributed to Bigfoot in the past. He said they were about a foot an a half long and 8 to 9 feet apart.

Miss Markham and Smith both said the creature walked like a human, but with a longer stride. Miss Markham said it appeared to be black or dark brown, and it was very tall - perhaps 8 to 10 feet, and said it had long arms.

Ken Rosenbaum, who takes care of the apes at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, said the zoo has not lost any of its apes recently, and he doesn't know of any zoos or circuses in the South Weber area that might have lost an animal. And Cling Groll, a forester for Wasatch National Forest, said it's the wrong season for bears to be out. "They're holed up" in this cold weather, he said. But Groll said the fact that Smith's horse was not upset by the incident makes him question whether a strange creature was really in the pasture. Smith said he didn't notice his horse acting strange at all that night, although for two or three days the week before it had refused to come into the trees to get its food and would only eat in a clearing.

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