Batsquatch — Cryptid Encyclopedia

In April 1994, eighteen-year-old Brian Canfield was driving near Mount St. Helens when his truck suddenly died. As he sat trying to restart the engine, something enormous landed in the road directly in front of him. Standing roughly nine feet tall, with blue-tinted fur, a face like a cross between an ape and a bat, yellow eyes, sharp teeth, bird-like feet tipped with talons, and leathery wings spanning an estimated fifty feet. It stared at him. Then it spread its wings and launched itself into the sky, vanishing over the tree line.

Canfield's encounter gave the creature its name: Batsquatch — a flying, bat-winged Bigfoot. The location deepened the mystery. Mount St. Helens had erupted catastrophically in 1980, devastatingly reshaping the landscape. Some speculated that the eruption disturbed something ancient living deep inside the mountain. Others wondered if the blast zone's regenerating ecosystem attracted an unknown predator.

Reports of large, winged creatures in the Pacific Northwest predate Canfield's encounter. Mountaineers in the Cascades have occasionally reported enormous flying shapes at high altitude, and the region's indigenous peoples have stories of giant winged beings. But nothing quite matches the description of Batsquatch — a primate with wings, combining the most unsettling features of two different nightmares.

Additional sightings have been sparse but consistent in description. In 2009, hikers near Mount Shasta in northern California reported a large, bat-winged creature circling above a ridge at dusk. Whatever Batsquatch is, the volcanic peaks of the Pacific Northwest seem to be its territory.

"It looked like a Bigfoot with bat wings. It was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen." — Brian Canfield, 1994.