In October 1955, William Roe set out alone into the mountains of British Columbia. He had no idea that before the afternoon was over, he would find himself sitting only feet away from a creature he could neither comfortably call human nor animal and that the experience would remain with him strongly enough that he would eventually put his account into a sworn affidavit.
Roe was working on a highway crew near Tête Jaune Cache, a small community west of Jasper, Alberta. He was no stranger to wilderness. He had spent years hunting and trapping in northern Alberta and described himself as someone who had been fascinated by wildlife since childhood. He knew the appearance and behaviour of the animals that lived in the Canadian wilderness, including bears. In fact, he said he had shot a grizzly near Mica Mountain the previous year.
One October afternoon, Roe decided to hike approximately five miles up Mica Mountain to visit an abandoned mine. At around three o’clock, after reaching the area near the mine, he emerged from low brush and entered a clearing.
Something was moving in the vegetation on the opposite side.
Roe initially believed he was looking at a grizzly bear. The animal was roughly 75 yards away, and because he had no practical way of transporting a bear down the mountain, he had no intention of shooting it. Instead, he sat on a small rock with his rifle in his hands and watched.
Then the creature stood up.
What emerged from the brush no longer looked like a bear to Roe. It walked upright into the clearing and began moving in his direction.
Roe estimated the figure was approximately six feet tall, nearly three feet across at the shoulders and perhaps 300 pounds. Its body was covered in short, dark brown hair tipped with silver. As it came closer, Roe noticed visible breasts and concluded that the creature was female.
Instead of running away, it continued toward him.
That gave Roe an opportunity few people claiming a Sasquatch encounter have ever described. This wasn’t simply a dark shape glimpsed between distant trees. According to Roe, the creature eventually came within approximately 20 feet of where he was concealed.
He remained still and watched.
Roe described its arms as unusually thick and long, reaching almost to its knees. Its hands were broad, its fingers short and heavy, and its feet appeared wider than those of a human. Its neck seemed exceptionally short and thick. The head rose higher toward the back, while the nose was broad and flat and the lips and chin projected forward.
Its face fascinated him.
Hair covered most of the head, leaving portions around the eyes, mouth, nose and ears exposed. Roe said its ears resembled human ears, while its eyes were small and dark. The hair covering the creature was surprisingly short—even on the back of its head, Roe estimated it was no longer than about an inch.
Then it did something remarkably ordinary.
It ate.
The creature squatted near the bushes, pulled branches toward itself with its hands and stripped leaves from them with its teeth. From his hiding place, Roe watched the movements of its mouth closely enough that he later remembered its lips curling around the leaves as it fed. He could even see its teeth, which he described as white and even.
For a moment, Roe wondered whether the entire thing could somehow be connected to a movie production. Perhaps he was watching an actor wearing an extraordinarily elaborate costume.
But the longer he watched, the less that explanation made sense to him. He later said he learned there had been no film company working in the area, and according to people living around Tête Jaune Cache, nobody was living on Mica Mountain.
For several extraordinary minutes, Roe and the creature occupied the same small patch of wilderness, with only one of them apparently aware of the other.
Then something changed.
Roe believed the creature suddenly caught his scent.
It turned and looked directly toward his hiding place.
Roe remembered an expression of apparent surprise crossing its face. Still crouching, it backed away several steps before rising to its full height. Then it began walking quickly back across the clearing, repeatedly looking over its shoulder toward him.
That was when Roe raised his rifle.
He understood exactly what bringing such a creature out of the mountains could mean. If he shot it, he thought, he might possess a specimen unlike anything known to the wider world. Roe had heard stories of the Sasquatch, and now the possibility entered his mind that one of those mysterious beings might be walking away from him.
His rifle was ready.
But Roe lowered it.
Something about the creature stopped him. Despite its hair-covered body and unusual proportions, he felt there was something distinctly human about it. He later explained that he couldn’t bring himself to shoot something that affected him that way.
The creature continued toward the trees.
Just before reaching another patch of brush, it threw its head backward and made the only vocalization Roe heard during the encounter. He struggled to describe it afterward. To him, it seemed somewhere between a laugh and language, ending in a strange sound resembling a whinny.
Then it disappeared among the lodgepole pines.
Roe wasn’t quite finished.
He stepped into the clearing and looked across a ridge beyond the trees, hoping to catch another glimpse. Several hundred yards away, the creature appeared once more.
Again, it tipped back its head.
Again came that strange, almost indescribable call.
And then it disappeared.
Roe never saw it again.
Rather than immediately leave the mountain, he investigated the area. He searched for signs of what the creature had been doing and believed he found evidence associated with its feeding in several places. He also discovered what he interpreted as a spot beneath a tree where the creature had apparently slept.
There was no fire.
There were no tools.
And Roe found no indication that another creature had been staying with it.
Whatever had crossed that clearing appeared, at least to Roe, to have been alone.
The encounter could easily have remained nothing more than a remarkable story told by one man. But two years later, Roe did something that helped preserve his experience as one of the most famous early Sasquatch accounts in Canadian history.
On August 26, 1957, in Edmonton, Alberta, William Roe swore an affidavit stating that the written account attached to it was true and correct to the best of his observation and recollection. The document preserved an unusually detailed description of the encounter: where he went, what he saw, how close the creature approached, how it moved, what it ate, the sound it made and the moment he considered pulling the trigger.
Roe himself did not pretend to know exactly what had stood before him on Mica Mountain.
His final thought was remarkably simple.
Whether the creature was a Sasquatch, he couldn’t say. Unless another was eventually found, he believed the experience would remain a mystery.
More than seventy years later, that mystery still hangs over Mica Mountain.
There is something particularly haunting about Roe’s account because very little about the creature behaved like the monster of a frightening campfire story. It didn’t charge him. It didn’t roar or threaten him. It apparently wandered into a clearing, quietly gathered leaves and ate while an astonished hunter watched from only a few yards away.
And when it finally realized it wasn’t alone, it seemed just as startled by Roe as Roe was by it.
For a few extraordinary minutes in the British Columbia wilderness, two figures watched one another.
One walked back down the mountain with a story he would eventually swear was true.
The other disappeared into the trees.
And whatever William Roe saw that October afternoon has never stopped walking through the pages of Sasquatch history.
Sources: William Roe’s August 26, 1957 sworn affidavit and accompanying account, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization archive, Sasquatch Canada’s British Columbia sighting records, John Green-associated historical Sasquatch material, and Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life.
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