WHERE: Near Strawberry Lake in Becker County, Minnesota

WHEN: Summer of 1976

ACTIVITIES OF WITNESS: In the Summer of 1976, when I was 8 years old I was with my parents and older sister on a Sunday drive in the Strawberry Lake area of Becker County, Minnesota which is wildly forested. As I took in the scenery, I suddenly saw a tall black object standing beside the road pehaps 100 yards ahead of our car. My first thought was that it was a burned and blackened tree trunk, though it seemed strange that nothing else around it was burned. Then, after only a few seconds, it stepped away from the road and walk on two long legs into the nearby trees and disappeared. The figure was solid black from head to foot, totally vertical, not hunched over, and stood approximately six to seven feet tall by my estimate. I did not see any arms swinging so I assumed they were being held close in to the body. The figure never dropped down to all fours so I knew it was not a bear, but its solid black coloration indicated a full covering of hair. Unless it was a large man in a gorilla suit- in an area not known for such sightings, and did not allow our car to get close enough to give anyone a good scare if that was his intention- I could only conclude that I saw a Sasquatch. No one else in the car happened to be looking at that exact spot at the moment, so I had no backup witnesses, but it was this sighting that began my long and strange relationship with this creature, and my investigations that have uncovered as many as 200 Sasquatch reports around the state of Minnesota from 1898 to the present.

NOTE: Mike Quast is a leading Sasquatch investigator in the state of Minneosota and has privately published two books on the subject, met with various Sasquatch authorities (Peter Byrne etc..), and has appeared on TV, radio, as well as in newspapers.