hello fellow travelers today i'm in historic Yale and while here i wanted to dig into an incident
ran a story about a gorilla that was supposedly caught near yale british columbia
and it would have been one of these rail tunnels just north of yale where jacko was
first discovered the event was said to have taken place on june 30th 1884 when railwaymen working
20 miles north of yale saw a wild man injured and laying close to the tracks it said that they blew
a whistle and applied the train brakes and the creature jumped up and climbed a steep bluff
conductor cj craig and a few others gave chase and after about five minutes were able to trap
the creature on a ledge craig is said to have thrown a rock which knocked it out allowing
him to haul it back down to the train on a rope the creature was taken back to the town of yale
tied up in a baggage car and was kept in yale for the next several days where it adopted the name
jacko the creature was described as of the gorilla type standing about four feet seven inches tall
and weighing approximately 127 pounds its body was covered in glossy hair about an inch long
although its hands and feet were hairless and its forearms extended much longer than typical humans
the newspaper described jacko as perhaps the last remnant of a prehistoric race or the missing link
just days after the original article was published a counter article in the
mainland guardian newspaper stated that no such animal was caught
and a further follow-up article on july 11th stated that some 200 people had gone
to the jail to view jacko however when they arrived they found that the only wild man
there was a self-proclaimed governor of the jail who wasn't guerrilla-like in the least
from that point on the fate of jacko becomes unclear reports that jacko was sent to a jail in
new westminster turned out to be false and jacko if he ever existed had vanished without a trace
one theory suggested that jacko was acquired by pt barnum and exhibited as
jojo the dogface boy in his circus however this appears to be incorrect
because jojo was known as a russian man named federer jefftachu who was born in
1868 and afflicted with hypertrochosis which gave him long silky facial hair
the more probable explanation is that jacko was a hoax
used by the newspaper to drum up readership as was common in the day
several investigations have happened throughout the years including one
in the 1950s where newspaper reporter brian mckelvey interviewed a man who
was alive and living in yale during the incident while he remembered all
of the excitement he said that his parents didn't take him to the jail to see the beast
other senior citizens told similar stories but none of them could
produce any truly good evidence or eyewitness accounts of the creature
however even if that was the case the story of jacko continues to live on
resurfacing in the 1900s and early 2000s as possible proof for the existence of sasquatch
with the story featured in tv shows and other programs like the 1976 documentary the mysterious
monsters referred to in an episode about bigfoot on the television show ancient mysteries that
aired on a e and again in the tv series in search of despite a lack of any real compelling evidence
the legend of jacko has become a well-known part of british columbian folklore so what do you think
was this an early sasquatch encounter or just a fantastic story cooked up to sell newspapers
remember to keep exploring and until next time it's time to exit through the gift shop