Our latest interviewee for 20 Questions is Ray Crowe. Ray is the president of the Western (International) Bigfoot Society and lives in the Portland Oregon area where he publishes the WBS newsletter. I have subscribed to this newsletter for close to ten years and always enjoy reading the latest issue. Ray is very open towards the bigfoot mystery and allows everyone share their thoughts. His relaxed, non-judgmental attitude always makes everyone feel comfortable.

I was able to attend the April 2003 WBS convention at the Portland fairgrounds. This was my first time meeting other people in the bigfoot field. Ray had such bigfoot luminaries as Thomas Steenburg, Rob Alley and Christopher Murphy as presenters. Ray was the master of ceremonies and always kept things running smoothly and in a relaxed manner.

When I first started getting interested in matters pertaining to bigfoot, Ray was my first contact. Whenever I would call him to ask questions or try to find others to network with, he always had the time to talk to me and never acted as though I might be a bother. I can really point to Ray, his newsletter and the Portland WBS convention as important touchstones in my bigfoot experience. It would be nice if we had a few more kind, nurturing mentors like Ray in this field. Ray, as usual, was kind enough to grant this interview and made me, and hopefully you, feel welcome and right at home. Pull up a chair, turn off your cell phone and let one of the bigfoot world’s true nice guys share what he thinks. As Ray always says, “Keep your skepticals on!”

[Editor’s Note: Since this interview was conducted by email, responses have been edited for readability.]

Dave: How did you first become interested in bigfoot?

Ray: [I] used to have a used bookshop, and one of my customers, a Native American, came by one day and told me about the mythical creature…was interested at the time in writing a short story and as he told of a group in Washington that had meetings, interesting selection of people, including pretty ladies, an old mentor, and a dynamic leader…I was interested. Good material perhaps for a story line.… I was asked if I wanted to go on a field trip to the area south of Mt. St Helens, and said sure. Here [we] found tracks, hair, broken trees and such.

Dave: What in your opinion is the most interesting bigfoot story you have ever read or heard?

Ray: Gee, there are so many. I’m most interested in those that tell something of the life story of the creature, like what it eats, mating, hunting and such. The ones that fascinate me most are those that tell of humans being harmed. My favorite then, tells of a Forest Ranger and a Dog Rescue Unit member meeting in a bar in a town facing the Puget Sound. When asked for stories, the ranger (remember this is in a bar) told of a fellow stumbling out of the woods covered in blood. When the story came out on his return to the site with fellow rangers, state and local police, it seems that as he and his girlfriend were hiking up a trail, a Bigfoot came down the same trail. The girl freaked out, screaming to high heaven, and the Bigfoot grabbed her and started pulling her arms and legs off. Ugly story. [The story] goes on to say that officials found no bite marks, or any other signs of human-caused foul play. Nothing more was heard of the incident. The dog handler said he thought that it had gone down as a bear killing.

Dave: Are there any well-known stories that you sense may be fakes? If so, why?

Ray: Of course, the Ray Wallace tales, but we always did think his stories were fakes as he was a well known trickster. He once told Peter Byrne that he had captured a child Bigfoot, and had him in this giant solid cage. [The] photo looked like one of the tanks you put in the ground for gas storage. He wanted money, and Peter in conjunction with Slick offered the cash, there and then. Wallace went on to say that the creature had appeared ill in captivity and he had released it.

Dave: Why did you start the WBS/IBS and how did you end up being the president?

Ray: The Native American friend from the bookshop, Roy Caddy, didn’t like the way the group in Washington operated; that is, camo gear, bow and arrow carried, lots of beer taken on field trips. They did investigations by riding in Jeeps up and down the road, and one of the officers pooped on the trail as a joke and he didn’t like it.

Anyway, he wanted me to start a Portland group. At the time, he had a huge unused basement in the bookshop, and he and his friends would fix it up. They sheetrocked the walls; my dad put in lighting. The guys covered the walls with maps, photos, and memorabilia, and finally one of our group bought a huge number of folding chairs from a church sale. We were a group. I hired the old mentor from the Vancouver group for $30 to be our first speaker. I don’t know how I became director, I guess because the ball was mine. So, we had our first meeting, I started a newsletter, we did some field trips, we were a group. This was June, 1991.

Dave: Looking back at your years spent in this field, would you say you and the WBS/IBS are more of a clearinghouse for info or more so a field research organization?

Ray: Started out by doing a lot of field work, but it soon became necessary to stay closer to home, as I was flooded with information coming in and the newsletter became very popular, it was all I could do to keep up with it. Fresh sightings kept coming in, so I just called one of the rapidly growing crew of investigators to go out and check it out and I would write the results in the Track Record.

Dave: The story of the bigfoot dismembering the woman is chilling. Was there ever any paperwork surrounding this incident or was it just a second hand story?

Ray: No…no paperwork. I’d invited the dog handler to one of our Bigfoot meetings, and after his talk—a good one about a lost boy being helped by Bigfoot—I asked him if he had heard any other tales concerning the creature, and he told us of this horror story. If I didn’t have a whole list of similar incidents, starting with Teddy Roosevelt’s telling of the Bauman incident, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Dave: What do you think bigfoot is?

Ray: Everybody disagrees with me, probably with reason, but body profiles vary widely, and [I] have suspected that Homo erectus did not go extinct, but migrated across from Asia into Alaska. [I] also believe Neanderthal followed ice across from Europe, hunting seal, etc. Both in North America have met, crossed, and produced some of the varieties, short Skunk Ape of Florida, to giants in British Columbia written about by Steenburg.

Dave: What is your favorite bigfoot book?

Ray: John Green’s The Apes Among Us. Most recently though, Chris Murphy’s Meet The Sasquatch has found a prominent place in my library.

Dave: Where do you think the most active state or area currently is?

Ray: Moot question—has to do with number of researchers in any given area. Bigfoot seem to be fairly well distributed around North America, from desert to mountains, long list of sightings from arid New Mexico, Arizona and southern California also. Lotsa Bigfooters in Ohio, so, lots of reports there, and on and on.

Dave: What do you think is the best way to attract or get close to a bigfoot?

Ray: Baiting over a long period. I have a long list of success tales based on that method. The treks, hunters, etc., etc. seldom have results.

Dave: What in your opinion is the most important piece of evidence that points towards the existence of bigfoot? Why?

Ray: Three things come to mind:

First: The Patterson/Gimlin film. Now that M.K. Davis has analyzed it in depth, finding such things as gun scars and a swelling on the breast, the evidence becomes to me, overwhelming that this is a real, living creature.

Second: The dermal ridges analyzed and compared by Chilicut, see page 147 of Murphy’s Meet The Sasquatch. He has found that there are separate patterns for apes, humans and bigfoot.

Third: In 2002, Mary Green presented to the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, a lengthy paper on the DNA tests done on the creature. These have since been confirmed again, with actual hair plucked from the wrist of an alleged bigfoot, tested by [Henner] Fahrenbach, indicating that the creature was of human derivation.

Dave: Who is the most interesting bigfooter you’ve met? Why?

Ray: Probably Peter Byrne…one of several. He has been involved for numerous years, beginning with the Yeti search with Tom Slick—to funded research in the Pacific Northwest. The colorful Irishman has authored numerous books and is an excellent and humorous speaker, appearing before the Bigfoot Society several times.

In recent years, I’ve become acquainted with Don Monroe of Eastern Idaho. He’s made extensive visits and found a wealth of evidence in lava caves in his area. He seems to be an “Indiana Jones” type of person, exploring far and wide, and always having an interesting story to relate to the Bigfoot Society functions.

Dave: Do you have any other crypto interests?

Ray: Not really. I follow the Loch Ness, Chupacabra, and other reports for the newsletter. Personally, I have had a long interest in the natural sciences, amassing one of the largest collections of butterflies in the PNW—donated to Jackson Bottom Nature Reserve—and a large collection of minerals and fossils—donated to Woodburn Historical Museum. [My] other interests range from astronomy to botany.

Dave: How did the WBS newsletter first get started?

Ray: When I started the WBS it came automatically; every organization has to have a newsletter. I was in a geology and an archeological society group, both with newsletters.

Dave: You seem to have a fairly open policy towards content in your newsletter. What submissions will you publish and what won’t you publish?

Ray: I try to let everybody have their say, even though I don’t necessarily believe what they have to say—never was too comfortable with BF being controlled by underground aliens—but others are. So, I try to start each newsletter with a “Keep Your Skepticals ON.”

Dave: Where do you see the WBS going in the next five years?

Ray: Interest is slowly ebbing for hard copy newsletters, several having gone out of print already, as will mine probably. I cater mostly to people not on-line where there is a much greater wealth of information available than I can squeeze in 20 pages.

Dave: I know the WBS is on the Internet. What is the difference between your Internet site and your newsletter?

Ray: The hard copy is full of photos, jokes, ads, business cards, news clips, art work, and such that doesn’t appear on the site, it’s just the text of the newsletter.

Dave: Do you think we will solve the bigfoot mystery in the next ten years?

Ray: Yes, with the influx of new hi-tech equipment being introduced in the hunt, it seems logical that the creatures will sooner or later be exposed as a rare addition to our fauna.

Dave: Anything else you would like to add?

Ray: Can’t think of anything offhand.

Dave: Any new researchers or writers on the bigfoot scene that really impress you?

Ray: Only a few that come to mind, offhand. Chris Murphy in Vancouver BC, who just finished issuing the book Meet The Sasquatch. He has been in the field a long time and is very dedicated to solving the problem of what the creature is.

The second is Rob Alley of Ketchikan, Alaska. He’s a dedicated writer and accumulator of sasquatch lore, and with the publication of Raincoast Sasquatch, one of the best books in the field, he’s up there with the stars of bigfootery.

Thom Powell of Oregon City, Oregon, one of the first to come to the conclusion that long term baiting would become one of the major ways of studying these elusive creatures.

Dave: If you could go out in the field with five bigfooters, which five would you choose?

Ray: Well, tongue-in-cheek, the five best-looking lady bigfooters—and we’ll let them decide whom they might be. They say bigfoot is attracted to the ladies, well, this would be the best way to “meet the sasquatch” that I could think of…and I might not care if it works or not.