The William Roe Encounter: The Sasquatch Sighting That Defies Explanation
A Close Look at One of North America’s Most Detailed Sasquatch Accounts
By the time most people hear their first Bigfoot story, they’ve already made up their minds about what the creature is supposed to look like. Tall, broad, covered in dark hair, moving with a strange mixture of weight and silence. The creature described in the mountains of Washington or Northern California often follows that template. But the world of Sasquatch encounters is wide, and every now and then a report breaks convention so sharply that it has to be taken seriously, if only because the witness seems unwilling to bend the story to fit popular expectation.
The encounter experienced by William Roe in 1955 is one of those rare cases. It took place high in the Mica Mountain region of British Columbia, well before “Bigfoot” had become a cultural icon. Roe didn’t go into the mountains looking for a monster. He was a seasoned outdoorsman and highway worker, accustomed to black bears, grizzlies, and the strange noises that echo in forested valleys. But what he claimed to see that autumn morning did not act like a bear, did not move like a man, and did not resemble any animal documented in the region.
Unlike most sightings, Roe later submitted a sworn affidavit in 1957 describing the creature in extraordinary detail. That document has become one of the most frequently cited pieces of testimony in the Bigfoot field, not because it proves anything definitively, but because it captures a moment in time before folklore had a chance to shape witness expectations. Roe’s creature isn’t the pop-culture Sasquatch. It is something stranger.
A Morning in the Canadian Wilderness
The Mica Mountain region is the sort of wilderness that belongs to itself. Dense timber, steep slopes, cold streams running through narrow cuts of granite. Roe had spent weeks working in the area, sleeping out beneath tarps and canvas. On the morning in question, he climbed a narrow game trail to reach a vantage point overlooking a small valley. He expected to see deer or elk. Instead, he noticed movement across the slope—a bulky, upright figure stepping out from the tree line. 
At first glance he assumed it was a grizzly bear, one of the large interior populations known to roam the region. But as the animal walked into full view, Roe’s assumption evaporated. The creature wasn’t loping, wasn’t dropping onto four limbs for balance. It moved upright, with long strides, and with a fluidity that suggested it was entirely comfortable on two legs. He crouched low, concealed behind brush, and watched as the creature descended the slope.
Roe was close enough to see the animal clearly. In his own words, he strained to make sense of what he was looking at. The creature’s body was covered in hair—not shaggy like a bear, but smooth and thick, reddish-brown in color. The head sat squarely on the shoulders without the pronounced neck slope seen in bears. Its legs were long, muscular, and distinctly human in shape. The arms reached almost to its knees. And the face, when it turned toward him, was unmistakably that of a primate. Not a gorilla, not a man, but something blending the anatomical features of both.
He remained still, hidden, while the creature moved closer.
An Encounter Face-to-Face
What stands out about Roe’s report—what separates it from the countless fleeting glimpses that make up most Sasquatch accounts—is the duration of the sighting. The creature did not hurry. It did not appear nervous. It walked with purpose, scanning the ground as though searching for food. At one point, it crouched and pulled at stalks of vegetation. At another, it scratched itself with a casual, almost human motion.
Roe studied every detail. He estimated the creature’s height at roughly six feet, perhaps slightly taller, but built in a way that suggested enormous strength. The chest was broad. The calves were thick. The hands—yes, hands—ended in blunt, strong fingers rather than claws. The feet were bare, wide, and deeply padded.
The face made the greatest impression. Roe described a heavy brow, a broad nose, thin lips, and eyes that were dark and alert. He later wrote that the face resembled an elderly woman’s more than that of an ape. It was expressive. It blinked. It made subtle movements as the creature chewed leaves.
Near the end of the encounter, the animal walked within thirty feet of Roe. That distance is uncomfortably close for any large wildlife. Roe had a rifle with him but felt no desire to fire. He simply watched, stunned by the impossibility of what he was seeing. The creature paused briefly, lifting its head as if catching a faint scent or sound. For a moment it seemed to study the brush where Roe was hiding. Then, without any sign of alarm, it turned and continued down the slope until the forest swallowed it again.
The sighting lasted several minutes—long enough that Roe had time to question his assumptions, study the creature’s anatomy, and rule out every animal he knew.
A Witness Who Tried Not to Believe
One of the strange qualities of Roe’s testimony is how reluctant he was to label the creature. He did not call it a monster or a missing link. He did not claim mystical significance or supernatural traits. He simply described an animal that he could not classify. For decades he stayed quiet, worried people would dismiss the story or mock him. When he finally submitted his sworn affidavit, it was not for attention but because he wanted the account preserved in his own words rather than distorted into myth.
Roe had credibility to lose. He was known in the region as a competent woodsman, not the type to mistake a bear for anything else. His description included anatomical details that matched later witness reports—long before such traits became standardized in Bigfoot lore.
Skeptics argue, as they always do, that misidentification is the most likely explanation. But misidentifying a bear requires either poor visibility or extreme distance. Roe had neither working against him. He was close, the daylight was good, and the animal remained in view long enough for prolonged observation.
Others have floated the idea of a hoax. Yet there was no motive and no audience. Roe didn’t publish a book, didn’t seek publicity, didn’t profit from the story. If anything, the account brought him discomfort. His affidavit reads like a field report rather than a tale crafted to amaze.
There is also the inconvenient fact that Roe’s description aligns with reports collected from Indigenous communities long before the word “Bigfoot” existed in popular speech. The Sts’Ailes, Shuswap, and other First Nations groups in the region have traditions involving upright forest beings described with similar features: humanlike faces, powerful legs, long arms, and a guarded curiosity toward people.
That doesn’t prove anything, but it suggests the template for the creature was present long before Western eyewitnesses entered the conversation.
Anatomy That Doesn’t Fit a Simple Explanation
If Roe truly saw an animal unknown to science, his description raises fascinating biological questions. The creature he described was neither fully human nor fully ape, but an intermediate form with traits from both. Its ability to move comfortably on two legs hinted at deep anatomical specialization. Its muscular build implied adaptability to steep slopes and dense timber. Its hair, coloration, and overall proportions suggested an animal evolved for cold-weather forests.
Nothing about the description aligns with a bear. And nothing aligns with a human in a costume—especially not in 1955, in a remote region of British Columbia, with no conceivable reason for such a deception.
Foot dimensions in Roe’s affidavit mirror those seen later in the Patterson-Gimlin film: wide midfoot, flexible arch, toes capable of gripping terrain. The creature’s lack of fear is another point of interest. Most wildlife either flees or confronts when surprised. Roe’s animal behaved like something used to solitude, confident but cautious, and uninterested in unnecessary conflict.
Some researchers propose that Roe saw a relict population of Gigantopithecus, the extinct giant ape believed to have lived in Asia. But that species was thought to be an obligate quadruped. Roe’s creature was unmistakably bipedal. Others suggest an unknown branch of hominin that migrated into North America before the last ice age, surviving in low populations across remote mountain ranges. It is speculative, yes, but not impossible.
The strange part is how consistent Roe’s anatomical description has proven to be. Witnesses today, separated by nearly seventy years, still describe creatures that look and move like the one Roe reported.
Aftermath and Enduring Influence
Roe eventually shared his story more openly, and his daughter Myrtle—not journalist Betty Allen—helped produce an accompanying sketch based on his description. The story later reached a wider audience through journalists and Bigfoot researchers who circulated Roe’s affidavit. Yet it never reached the cultural saturation of other sightings. Perhaps that’s because Roe’s account, detailed as it is, lacks sensationalism. It isn’t dramatic. It’s observational. It reads like a man quietly wrestling with something that shouldn’t exist.
For researchers, that restraint makes the story more compelling.
If Roe had claimed aggressive behavior, telepathy, glowing eyes, or supernatural elements, the encounter would feel like folklore. Instead, he described a foraging animal with primate intelligence, cautious but not hostile. It is the calm realism of the report that keeps it alive.
In the decades since, many field investigators have visited the Mica Mountain region hoping to replicate the sighting or identify environmental clues that might support Roe’s report. The terrain hasn’t changed much. The forests remain dense, the ridges steep, the valleys quiet. It is the kind of place where an unclassified primate could conceivably survive with minimal human contact.
But no one has produced definitive proof. No bones, no hair samples, no clear photographs. Roe’s encounter remains suspended between two worlds: too detailed to dismiss outright, yet lacking the physical evidence that science demands.
A Case That Refuses to Fade
There are Bigfoot encounters that feel like campfire stories, and there are encounters that feel like someone accidentally glimpsed a chapter of natural history that hasn’t been written yet. Roe’s sighting belongs firmly in the latter category. It is grounded, calm, and frustratingly specific.
Skeptics say the human memory is unreliable. They say the brain can reshape a bear into something unfamiliar under the right conditions. But when you read Roe’s affidavit, there is a stubborn clarity to the narrative. He was not describing something from imagination. He was describing something he saw with his own eyes and could not rationalize.
It is that sense of reluctant honesty that gives the story its weight. You can believe Roe or not, but his words don’t feel like fiction.
What makes this encounter so persistent in the Bigfoot world is not the hope that it proves anything. It’s the way it captures the experience many witnesses describe privately but rarely articulate well: the shock of seeing something that shouldn’t exist, the disbelief that follows, and the uncomfortable realization that the world might be bigger, stranger, and far less understood than we comfortably assume.
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