Minnesota may not be the nation’s hotspot for Bigfoot sightings, but The Land of 10,000 Lakes has logged plenty reports of this gigantic ape-like creature. Most sightings are the standard reports brief glimpses of a hairy man-beast seen fleetingly in the woods or the side of a road.
But one of the most intriguing accounts involves (supposedly) two highly credible people -- two doctors, one a Mayo Clinic surgeon, and the other a doctor who also served as a Senator in the Minnesota Legislature for 12 years. This Bigfoot encounter took place in 1965 or 1966 in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA).
I first heard about this event via an anonymous tip in 2005 from a caller who was a regular reader of my former “Minnesota Mysteries” column, which explored all aspects of the paranormal in Minnesota. (See: Minnesota Paranormala). I have not been able to verify the story.
However, if true, it’s a remarkable tale indeed. To briefly summarize: A no-nonsense, hard-working doctor and his surgeon buddy are on a canoe trip to the Boundary Waters in Northern Minnesota. With one of the doctors brings along his two young sons, ages 12 and 10.
During a long portage of lugging canoes and supplies, the group decides to stop and make camp for lunch. The two men tell the boys to start making a fire while they go back into the woods to retrieve the canoes.
So the boys make a fire and wait what seems like an inordinately long time. Then, suddenly, the two doctors come sprinting back to camp looking wild-eyed and distressed. They quickly kill the camp fire and tell the boys: “We’re getting out of here now!” They don’t tell the boys why, but they can’t understand why the elders are weirdly eager to hustle back to civilization.
The boys also thought it strange that they all stayed in a hotel that night when the plan was to camp out in tents. The adults also mysteriously cut the trip short and returned to the Rochester area the next day.
It wasn’t until many years later, in 1989, that one of the boys finally heard the whole story from his dad, who had refused to talk about it until more than 20 years later – and I will finish this story in my next installment.
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