It was early June 1993 when Desmond “Joe” Warren and his girlfriend found themselves parked along a quiet gravel road in Renfrew County, Ontario. They had been visiting friends at a party and eventually pulled their vehicle into the entrance of an old logging trail along McLeod Road, between the communities of Springtown and Burnstown. Nearby, the Madawaska River wound through a landscape of thick forest, creeks, wetlands and old logging roads.
They had been parked there for roughly two hours when they began noticing something strange.
There was a smell. It was powerful and unpleasant, something Warren would later compare to backed-up sewage or rotting meat. Neither of them could determine where it was coming from, and at the time there was no reason to connect the odour with anything unusual.
As dawn approached, sometime around 5:30 or 6:00am, Warren got out of the vehicle to urinate. He left the driver’s door open and walked around behind the car.
Then he heard something. It wasn’t a roar or a scream. According to the account Warren later provided to investigators, it was simply a small noise somewhere off to his left. He turned toward it.
Standing approximately thirty feet away was something Warren couldn’t explain. The figure was enormous. It was covered in dark hair and standing upright on two legs. It wasn’t running toward him or attempting to hide. According to Warren, it was simply standing there. Watching him.
Startled, Warren quickly moved back toward the vehicle and told his girlfriend to look. She remained inside the car, but according to Warren, both of them could see the figure from where they were positioned. And it didn’t immediately leave.
That detail makes the McLeod Road story somewhat different from many alleged Sasquatch sightings. There was no fleeting glimpse of something disappearing across a highway or a shadow briefly visible between trees. Warren claimed the figure remained in view for several minutes, giving him time to study what was standing in front of him.
Warren was approximately 5’11” tall and initially believed the creature stood about two feet taller than he did. When the location was examined years later, the estimate was reportedly revised somewhat, with the figure believed to have been closer to seven feet tall.
Whatever its exact height, Warren remembered it as extraordinarily large.
He described a heavily built, muscular body approximately three feet across, covered almost completely in long blackish-brown hair. The chest appeared somewhat less hairy than the rest of the body, giving Warren an impression he compared to the chest of a gorilla. Hair covered the arms and legs, while areas around the eyes and portions of the hands appeared relatively bare.
Its face particularly stayed with him.
Warren described deeply set eyes surrounded by dark, leathery-looking skin. Above them was a pronounced ridge where eyebrows would normally be. The nose appeared broad, with large nostrils, and Warren thought portions of the face looked somewhat gorilla-like. Hair grew around parts of the face, although the nose itself remained clearly visible.
Then there were the feet.
Because the figure was supposedly only about thirty feet away, Warren claimed he was able to see them quite well. He remembered them as enormous but surprisingly humanlike – perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches long and approximately six inches wide. They appeared broad and flat rather than shaped like paws.
For several minutes, neither side apparently did very much.
Warren and his girlfriend watched the creature.
And the creature appeared to watch them.
Eventually, the figure turned away.
Warren said it began walking toward the forest on two legs. Its arms swung naturally beside its body as it moved, and although it didn’t appear to be running, he remembered being surprised by how quickly it covered the distance between itself and the trees.
As it walked away, Warren said he could briefly see the bottoms of its feet. He remembered them as dark in color.
The figure entered the vegetation, but even then the encounter apparently wasn’t quite over.
According to Warren, it stopped somewhere among the trees. Through gaps in the leaves and branches, he could still make out portions of its body.
Then it turned around. Once again, it appeared to be looking toward the couple. Finally, the figure moved deeper into the forest and disappeared.
Warren and his girlfriend left the area shaken. They reportedly didn’t immediately begin telling people they had seen Sasquatch. According to Warren’s later account, they waited until later that day before discussing what had happened.
There was no photograph, no video was taken. There are no documented hair samples or biological evidence from the creature. No footprint cast appears to have been recovered from the location either.
For several years, the encounter remained essentially a story known to Warren and the people with whom he had shared it.
Then, on July 1, 1998 – approximately five years after the alleged sighting – Warren’s experience was formally recorded by Timothy Yearington of Timiskawa Sasquatch Research. It eventually became Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization Report #1291.
Warren remained adamant about what he believed he had seen. He reportedly expressed a willingness to undergo a lie-detector examination because he wanted friends and family to understand that he wasn’t inventing the experience. He also said he returned to the location afterward, although the area continued to make him uncomfortable.
The BFRO classified the encounter as a Class A report, a designation the organization uses for alleged sightings in which a witness reports a relatively clear visual observation under circumstances considered unlikely to involve simple misinterpretation. That classification, however, is an assessment made by a Bigfoot research organization. It is not independent scientific confirmation that Warren encountered an unknown animal.
There are legitimate reasons to approach the story cautiously.
Perhaps the biggest is the passage of time. The detailed account wasn’t formally documented until five years after the encounter supposedly occurred. Human memory can change considerably over that length of time, particularly when someone has repeatedly thought about or discussed an unusual experience.
There is also no known physical evidence supporting Warren’s description.
And in Ontario, there is another very obvious possibility.
A black bear. Black bears can stand upright and occasionally move for short distances on their hind legs. In poor light, at an unexpected angle or during a frightening encounter, a bear could potentially be interpreted as something far stranger. But Warren didn’t believe he had seen a bear.
According to his description, the creature remained upright when it walked away. He remembered its arms swinging as it moved and described its feet as unusually large but humanlike. He also had several minutes to observe it rather than seeing it for only a second or two.
Whether those details eliminate an ordinary animal is another question entirely.
There was also one curious inconsistency that the investigator documenting Warren’s story didn’t ignore. Despite describing such a large creature moving through forest vegetation, Warren couldn’t remember hearing branches snapping or twigs breaking as it walked away. The investigator suggested damp ground might partly explain the lack of noise, but acknowledged that it was an unusual detail.
The setting itself certainly provided plenty of places for a large animal to disappear.
McLeod Road wasn’t surrounded by dense suburban development. The area around the Madawaska River contained mature forests of pine, spruce, cedar, maple, oak, fir and birch, along with wetlands, creeks, isolated lakes and old logging trails. Beyond the river stretched increasingly forested country toward the Madawaska Highlands.
Whatever Warren encountered that morning, it apparently disappeared into that landscape without leaving behind anything that could prove what it was.
There is also an important difference between saying that Warren lied and saying that Warren may have been mistaken. Nothing in the surviving account proves either one. A person can sincerely believe they witnessed something extraordinary while having actually encountered an ordinary animal under unusual circumstances. Conversely, without physical evidence, there is no way to conclusively reconstruct what Warren and his girlfriend saw.
That leaves the McLeod Road encounter exactly where so many cryptid stories ultimately end: somewhere between testimony and mystery.
Was it a large black bear standing upright in the early morning light? Could it have been a person? Did five years of memory gradually alter the details of an initially confusing encounter? Was the entire story fabricated?
Or did two people parked beside an old logging trail in Renfrew County really encounter something that hasn’t been satisfactorily explained?
More than thirty years later, there is no evidence capable of settling the question.
All that remains is Warren’s account of stepping from his car as dawn approached, hearing a small noise and turning toward the forest.
Thirty feet away stood an enormous, dark, hair-covered figure on two legs.
For several minutes, Warren said, he watched it.
And it watched him.
Then it turned toward the forest and disappeared into the trees.
Sources: Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), Report #1291; Timiskawa Sasquatch Research.
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