Oregon L.O.W.F.I

Archive for February 22nd, 2009

I recently wrote a piece about the multi-colored entities described as “walking tree stumps” witnessed by young Kathy Reeves in Newport, Oregon in 1966. (Newport, Oregon: A “New” Port(al)?

A Bigfoot sighting in 1999, in McMinnville, Oregon (home of the famous Trent UFO photos; the town hosts an annual UFO Festival every May, this May will be the 10th one) reminded me of the Reeves case thirty years earlier. While not the same kind of event, and not on the coast (McMinnville is approximately a hundred miles from Newport on the coast) the following story does describe the Bigfoot type creature as a “walking tree.”

Date: February 2 1999
Time: night
Several campers at an isolated ranch were sitting around a campfire when they heard some noises in the brush. They went to look and found some weird footprints and followed them. They went through the woods and into a meadow and saw a huge bizarre creature resembling a walking tree, except for the head. The creature was walking through the meadow at a very fast pace. It scurried away as they shone a flashlight at it. Later that night the campers saw a bright light shoot over the area at high speed.

HC addition # 3380
Source: Filer’s Files # 6
Type: D?
High Strangeness Index: 6
Reliability of Source: 7
Comments: The location is indeed the scene of the famous 1950 photographs of farmer Paul Trent.

Source:

1999 HUMANOID REPORTS
Compiled by Albert Rosales
http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1999.shtml

McMinnville, Oregon is known for those two famous photos of a UFO taken by Paul Trent in 1950. That case is a classic in UFOlogy. After all these decades, the photos still hold up as being good evidence; no signs of hoaxing have been found.

The Hotel Oregon in McMinnville hosts the annual UFO Festival every spring; this year is the 10th anniversary of the festival (Friday, May 15 and Saturday, May 16) with Linda Moultan Howe, Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden presenting. Promises to be a very good gathering, and I’ll be sharing more about it at the time.

It seems that McMinnville has a generally weird history outside of UFOs. According to the Ghosts of America site, there are all kinds of ghostly apparitions that appear in various spots in the McMinnville area.

The Shadowlands Haunted Places has a brief entry about the Mack theater in McMinnville having an eerie presence by the women’s restroom, including cold spots. The Mack theater is across from the Hotel Oregon. And it’s said the Hotel Oregon itself is haunted. So it looks like I’ll have ghost hunting to add to my itinerary this May!

photo credit: Mack Theater, Oregon Historical County Records Guide
http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/county/images/scenic/ohrp/scenicyamhill4.htm