by Dom Joly
But Stacey was not here and I was a monster-hunter and my pride had been dented. We careered on down the Avenue of Giants, nose to tail. Suddenly they screeched to a stop, forcing me to steer madly to the left before halting just behind them. I pulled myself together and thought about remonstrating with them but feared that they would laugh at my English accent.
I can do quite a good ‘Southern’ accent – a hybrid Mississippi/ Louisiana thing I use when I’m online playing Call of Duty. I like to assume the role of a moronic redneck and tease Brit gamers by feeding them every American stereotype in the book.
The girl in the passenger seat got out of the car and I wound down my window and, in my finest hick, shouted, ‘What the heyyl do yooo asshooles think you’re all doing getting all uppity and sheeeet . . . ?’
The girl ignored me and went straight to the boot of the car. She leant in and pulled out a crowbar. I didn’t hang about. This cowboy got out of Dodge as fast as his steed would take him. I hit the gas and shot off past them. In the mirror I saw her jump back in and they started chasing me.
I really panicked now. I was being chased by a truckload of homicidal killer ladies. We roared down the Avenue of Giants aping a scene from Need for Speed. I thanked the Lord that California has tougher gun laws than say, Nevada, where the woman would have probably pulled a bazooka out of the back. I looked in the mirror again. They were now right behind me and I could see their faces, twisted in anger. I was genuinely scared. This was like a cross between Deliverance and Duel (with women). It would actually have been quite a strong movie synopsis had I not actually been living it out for real. We burst out of the redwoods and into a town called Myers Flat. I saw a sign advertising a tree that you could drive through and, right in front of the sign, a huge wooden statue of Bigfoot waving at me. It was my very first sighting and he was taking the piss. I shot through town with the murder gang still on my tail. I sped up and rounded a corner, almost on two wheels.
I was slightly ahead now and, for a moment, they couldn’t see me. I spotted a little track to my right and I acted instinctively. I pulled hard right on the wheel and skidded off the tarmac. I prayed that they hadn’t seen me turn. I kept driving for about five minutes but there was nobody in the rear-view mirror. I turned off the track into a little grove and parked the car behind a big tree so that it couldn’t be seen. I sat in silence for five minutes. I was sweating and my heart was beating fast. Nothing happened and I started to relax a little. I opened the car door and listened for the sound of murderous banshees. There was nothing, just an eerie silence. I got out and closed the door gently. I locked it with my key fob. It beeped to let me know that it, unlike me, was now safe. The beep reverberated like an explosion in the silence of the redwoods. I tensed up and waited but everything stayed silent. I didn’t want to go back on the road for a while so I decided to go for a bit of a walk into the forest. Maybe I’d get lucky and find Bigfoot first go? I wandered off, away from my car, along what seemed to be a vague path. The trees surrounding me were even bigger than the ones on the Avenue. I felt tiny and very alone. I was utterly dwarfed by nature.
I kept walking, the only sound being the muffled clump, clump of my Reeboks on the spongy forest floor. As before, occasionally the sun burst through and lit up a little clearing, but predominantly it was dark and primeval.
My mind started to play tricks on me and I could easily see how people might believe that monsters lived here.
I started to hum to myself as the silence had become quite oppressive. I hummed A Forest’ by the Cure: ‘Suddenly I stop/ But I know it’s too late/ I’m lost in a forest/ All alone . . .’
I kept on walking deeper and deeper into the magical forest. It was like being on the set of The Hobbit. Every tree seemed to be bigger, thicker, taller than the last . . .
Suddenly I stopped . . . I spotted the unmistakable outline of a bear about fifty yards ahead. Fortunately for me it was looking the other way, down into a leafy crevice. I froze to the spot and then started to lower myself to the floor in tiny little movements. This was totally crazy: I’d been chased by killer lady rednecks and now I was about to be eaten in a forest by a bear. The bear did not move and nor did I. I lay perfectly still on the soggy mushy ground for what seemed like an hour but was probably no more than a couple of minutes. The bear was totally immobile; it seemed to be focused on some unseen prey. My broken foot started to ache and I crawled forwards a little until I was behind a bush. I waited there for another couple of minutes or so thinking about my options. I could get up and run away. Then I remembered the sign in the Okanagan: ‘Under no circumstance should you run away from a bear unless you have somewhere to go . . .’
I had nowhere to go. Other signs I’d read in bear country suggested having a bell with you and ringing it if you saw a bear. I’m not sure if this is to scare the bear or to alert the search party to where your remains could be found. Whatever, I didn’t have a bell on me now so I was stumped. The bear was still not moving. I crawled a little bit nearer . . . It was a weirdly shaped log. Actually it was a scary bear-shaped log. Your mind plays extraordinary tricks on you out there.
The balance between human and nature is completely inverted among these natural giants. The place gives you a constant slightly freaked-out feeling, an age-old instinct telling you to be on the qui vive. It had been the same in the misty mountains of Japan, the steamy forests of the Congo and the dark, impenetrable waters of the Okanagan. When nature decides to turn on the creepy mood music it’s incredibly effective.
I was by now exhausted from this adrenaline roller coaster. I retraced my footsteps and found the car. I got in and locked the door. I needed some normality. My phone had no network so I plugged it into the car and played a Kermode/Mayo podcast. Never had the Good Doctor’s ranting (this one about some arsey new film by Gus Van Sant) been so reassuring. I drove back up the track and on to the Avenue of Giants. I turned left and headed back the way I’d come. Very soon I was back in Myra Flats and spotted the statue of Bigfoot. I wanted to park and get a good photo of it but as I was about to pull up outside a bar I spotted the three women. They were sitting outside drinking beer with three men who looked like they enjoyed a spot of butchery at the weekends. Somehow, in a country in a county full of hippies, it looked like I’d angered the Manson family. I drove by trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Fortunately my Chevy blended in and couldn’t have been that memorable as they didn’t seem to recognize me. One of the women looked up and stared at me as I drove past but I just looked straight ahead and headed out of town. The moment I was through I hit the gas and didn’t stop until I got to Garberville, where I ducked into a bar and had several glasses of chilled Sauvignon Blanc to soothe my frayed nerves.
In the space of about two hours I had gone through every American-backwoods cliché that I’d ever seen in a movie except bumping into the Ku Klux Klan and some incredibly racist fat police chief. I looked out of the window to check for burning crosses or a roaming cop car but there was nothing but a dread-locked hippy strumming a guitar under a tree. I needed some medicinal marijuana to calm me down – the only problem being that it always makes me paranoid and I didn’t need that right now. I got up and left. Outside I had to step over two parody hippies complete with headbands, guitars and John Lennon glasses. They were seated on the pavement just staring vacantly at the traffic. I had a huge desire to tell them that Vietnam was over and that whatever they were running away from could all be sorted out with a haircut and a good bath. I realized that I’d become ‘the Man’: I was a ‘suit’ and a ‘total square’. I walked on without saying anything but slightly depressed. I passed two hemp shops, got into my car and drove a couple of miles to where I was staying, the Benbow Inn, a mock-Tudor building that felt rather incongruous slap-bang in the middle of Hippy Country. In its heyday this place had served as a bolt-hole for Hollywood luminaries looking for some privacy and a spot of fishing. Guests had included Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and, more recently, the
King of Jordan and Cher (though sadly not at the same time).
My room was a joy, with a four-poster bed and a stone balcony overlooking an old bridge over the Eel River. Sometimes even monster-hunters need a bit of downtime.
I posted some video footage of me lost in the woods on Facebook. People asked whether this was for a TV programme. I told them that it was for a book called Scary Monsters and Super Creeps. Inevitably, a cyber-twat started accusing me of ‘ripping off’ David Bowie. He seemed to think that he was the only person who had spotted that the title of this book was lifted from a Bowie album. I told him that this was not exactly a secret and, as a huge Bowie fan myself, it was a nod to one of my heroes.
He wasn’t having it: ‘You’re a relentless asshole riding on his coat-tails.’
I was genuinely unsure as to what his beef was. If it was with me personally, then why on earth was he following me on Facebook? If it was with the appropriation of the name, did he think I was trying to con people into buying my book by making them think it was actually a David Bowie album?
I hit the bar and ordered a Grey Goose up with a twist. All was good with the world. After a couple more beige birds I was ushered into a rather fussy dining room where I was constantly asked what I thought of the food by a waitress called Bambi.
The food was very good but, like in the UK in 1972, Bambi started putting chairs on tables at nine p.m. Out of spite I hung around playing with my overly elaborate pudding until nine-thirty. (I’m a bit rock ’n’ roll like that: no sleep till bedtime.) I eventually left the dining room as the lights were about to be turned off. As I walked through the hotel I started to look at it properly through drunken eyes. There were teddy bears everywhere. Back at the bar, a solitary gentleman propping up the corner and nursing a short turned out, on closer inspection, to be a seven-foot teddy bear. It’s a universal truth that a building with more than two teddy bears on display is telling you that its owner was probably sexually abused and is now a predatory serial killer. I hurried to my room and locked it securely.
I left early the next morning. It didn’t take me too long to make it to Eureka. This is a weird city, quite industrial in parts and with an area containing some quite extraordinary Victorian Gothic mansions. The main one, the Carson Mansion, is an unbelievable piece of fantasy architecture reputed to have provided the blueprint for some of Walt Disney’s ideas for Disneyland. I was staying at the Carter House Inns, a hotel owned by Mark Carter, a local bon viveur and wine aficionado. One of the hotel buildings is another example of crazed Victoriana. Painted bright yellow and orange, it’s an exact reproduction of a building that stood in San Francisco until it was destroyed in the Great Quake of 1906. I checked in and was shown to a rather magnificent cottage that turned out to be entirely at my disposal. I had an enormous living room and kitchen, a master bedroom, two bathrooms (because one is never enough) and a terrace. This was going to be hard to leave.
On the table was an envelope with my name on it. I opened it.
Mr Joly
Welcome to Carter House Inns. We hope you enjoy your stay here. Your companions, Corey and Kirsten, left a message saying that they would be arriving at midday.
Reception
I reread it wondering what on earth they were going on about. I had no ‘companions’ and wasn’t expecting any. I wondered if this was hotel code for letting me know that a couple of complimentary hookers were being provided. Corey however, sounded like a man. This was California so maybe they were just hedging their bets? I checked my watch; it was ten-forty a.m. Whoever my companions were, they were arriving in twenty minutes.
I opened my laptop and got online. I searched for the names Corey and Kirsten on my Facebook pages. The name Corey came up and I clicked. Now I remembered. Back in the early days of Facebook, when Trigger Happy TV was out in America, this fifteen-year-old kid called Corey had contacted me and we’d chatted occasionally about stuff like music and comedy. He’d been going through a tough time (his parents were divorcing) and I’d felt bad for him. He’d also given me a lot of cool music recommendations. I now also remembered that his pages had always been littered with photos of a girl called Kirsten. When I’d been in San Francisco a couple of years before Corey had contacted me and tried to meet up; I’d been filming, so we’d been unable to. He’d said he was at Humboldt State University, in a town called Arcata, just ten minutes from Eureka.
Before I left for California this time I’d put out a ‘can anybody help me’ message on Twitter and Facebook and it looked like Corey had answered the call. I checked his Facebook page. He was now married to Kirsten and living in Sacramento, the state capital – about seven hours’ drive from Eureka. I hoped to God that they hadn’t driven up from there. If they had, then they would be expecting to accompany me on some serious monster-hunting – and I normally prefer to do this kind of thing on my own. I’m an inherently selfish traveller and like to do things when and where I want to, without worrying about others.
Fifteen minutes later there was knock on my door and I opened it to find Corey and Kirsten staring at me. He was a tall, thin and slightly Goth-looking guy of about twenty-three and Kirsten was slightly shorter and pretty .
‘Hey,’ I said.
‘Hey,’ they said.
‘You came,’ I said.
‘We came,’ they said.
‘Not from Sacramento?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, it took us seven hours,’ they answered.
‘Shit,’ I said to myself quietly.
I let them in and we all sat down slightly awkwardly. Actually, I was awkward – they seemed to think that this was the most normal thing in the world. They oohed and aahed about my hotel ‘complex’ and I nodded as though this was my life all the time. I longed to show them the photo I’d taken of the Economy Inn Motel in Ukiah but I thought I’d keep up the pretence of being ‘Dom Joly’ for a while. They told me that they were in town for two days. I nodded and they asked me what the plan was. Obviously the plan was to find Bigfoot, but I’d heard that nearby Arcata was the US’s hippest town and who knew what this could turn up? So I asked them to show me around.
Corey had spent three years at the university and was the ideal guide. The campus was dotted all over the little town. The main square comprised weird little shops around a grassy park in which very stoned students were all playing Frisbee. I counted nine sets of dreadlocks and five didgeridoos in plain sight. Corey told me that he’d shared a room for a year with a guy who did nothing but smoke dope and play the didgeridoo. Personally, I would have thought these were grounds for justifiable homicide.
We popped into a ‘head’ shop that sold innumerable variations of bongs and . . . Frisbees. According to Corey everyone just got stoned and then wandered off to play Frisbee golf in the woods. I didn’t believe him so we headed off into the woods where, sure enough, we found a Frisbee-golf course and a large amount of stoned students aimlessly holding Frisbees.
This seemed a bit weird to me. Surely Frisbee golf isn’t the obvious first thing that comes to mind when you’re stoned? I remember my own light dabblings involving watching a lot of really rubbish TV and eating crap. Apparently whatever they smoked up here gave you Frisbee cravings. Corey told me that, apart from Frisbee golf, sport’s not really that big a thing at Humboldt State. The university football team is called the Lumberjacks and Corey told me about a headline in the local paper that had simply read, ‘THEY WON!’.
Our tour of Arcata complete, Corey and Kirsten looked at me expectantly. The plan was for me to drive (alone) to Willow Creek the following day and start my hunt there. If you look at a map of Bigfoot sightings in the Northern California area then Willow Creek is the geographical epicentre and also the home of the Bigfoot Museum. This was the idea for the following day but right now I needed something to do with Kirsten and Corey.
Then I remembered reading about a place called Tall Trees Grove about an hour north of Eureka. It’s supposed to have some of the largest trees in the world and t
here have been two Bigfoot sightings nearby. I figured we could start there. I asked them if they knew where it was; Corey rang a friend who told us how to get there. The decision was taken and the hunt was on. We were off to Tall Trees Grove for my first Bigfoot hunt.
We drove through Orick, a ‘town’ that seemed to consist solely of four roadside stores selling extremely weird wooden statues. A couple of miles later we turned off the scenic coast road and started to drive up into the mountains. We drove for about twenty minutes and then the tarmac road became a dusty track. We kept climbing higher and higher.
‘I hope you’re not axe murderers?’ I said semi-jokingly This was exactly what you were not supposed to do on an Internet first date: drive miles and miles from anywhere into deep woods. To divert myself I read a warning leaflet that we’d got from a park ranger we’d met at the bottom of the mountain. It was called ‘What to do if you meet a mountain lion’.
1. Do not run!
2. Do not crouch or bend over
3. Remain calm
4. Yell loudly wave arms and throw objects
5. If the animal attacks – fight aggressively
You had to wonder who wrote these things. There was nothing about what to do should we meet a Bigfoot.
We found the trailhead and parked the car. The trail descended very steeply into what looked like the Lost Valley. We walked down and down and down. It took us about half an hour to reach the bottom. When we did, it was like stepping back in time. Towering ferns bordered gargantuan trunks of monster trees that soared high into the sky like vast wooden spires. All the trees had massive burls, growths that resembled gargoyles, their twisted shapes metamorphosing into hideous creations. It was further proof, if needed, of how spooky surroundings could really feed a hungry imagination. We all instinctively started to talk in hushed voices as though in church. At the very centre of the ring of tallest trees, we stood in complete silence for a moment and listened to the earth’s heartbeat . . .
