It’s Power Q & A time, and we are delighted to welcome author Jeff Dupuis to our series to talk about his thrilling Creature X series (published by Dundurn Press). This trilogy follows Laura Reagan and her team as they travel the world in search of mysterious creatures unknown to science and find murder and intrigue. After reading the first book in the series, we wanted to know more about how Jeff created this cryptozoological adventure, which (let’s face it), must have involved a fair number of weird discoveries.
Welcome, Jeff!
Roanake Ridge, the first book in the Creature X series.
Q: What is the strangest thing you uncovered while researching your Creature X series?
A: In the world of tall, ape-like creatures, giant eels, and bioluminescent pterosaurs that feed on the unburied dead, it’s a real challenge to say what is the “strangest” thing I uncovered while researching the Creature X series. A stand-out is an incident known in cryptozoological circles as “The Battle of Ape Canyon.”
In the summer of 1924, Fred Beck and four other gold prospectors had been working their claim just east of Mount St. Helens. This was decades before any large footprints were found and the name “Bigfoot” was coined. While collecting water from a nearby spring, Beck and one of the other prospectors came across a 7-foot-tall ape-like creature and shot at it. They returned to their cabin, telling the other prospectors their story. They decided to pack up and leave the next morning.
That night, a group of these creatures attacked the cabin, pelting it with large rocks, banging on the door and climbing on the roof. The prospectors fired their rifles through gaps in the walls, through the door and the roof to drive the creatures away. Once the sun came up, the men took only what they could carry and fled the site, leaving their equipment. Beck claims to have shot one of these creatures as they were fleeing, watching its body drop into a nearby canyon. That area has since been known as “Ape Canyon,” which you can find on Google Maps.
Beck later claimed that these creatures were entities from another dimension, which is not an uncommon school of thought in the Bigfooter community. Some people believe that the creature is “extradimensional,” able to move between our world and another. There’s a substantial amount of overlap between those who think Bigfoot can travel across dimensions and those who think it can read minds and communicate telepathically. There really are as many variations of Bigfoot encounters as there have been encounters. No two are alike, but some are definitely stranger than others.
More about Jeff:
J.J. Dupuis is the author of the Creature X Mystery series. When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works.