Old Yellow Top: Squatchy or Something Else?

The miners were on their way to work when something stepped into the road.

It was August 1970, near the mining town of Cobalt in northern Ontario. A bus carrying 27 miners was traveling toward the Cobalt Lode when the driver suddenly saw a large dark animal crossing directly ahead. Her first thought was probably the same one most of us would have had in northern Ontario... BEAR.

Then the headlights caught it. The creature appeared to be walking upright, with dark hair covering most of its body and much lighter hair hanging around its head and shoulders. The driver swerved, nearly sending the bus down a rocky embankment. At least one passenger initially thought it was a bear too, but the way it moved bothered him. The animal appeared stooped over, yet it walked on two legs.

The driver had heard stories about something like this before but she hadn't believed them.

That was understandable. For more than sixty years, people around Cobalt had occasionally reported seeing a large, hairy creature wandering through the surrounding mining country. It looked enough like a bear to make witnesses hesitate, but according to them, it moved too much like a man. And there was one feature that kept turning up in the stories.

The thing had yellow hair.

By 1970, locals had an appropriate name for it: Old Yellow Top.

Silver Beneath the Forest

Cobalt sits in northeastern Ontario, roughly 300 miles north of Toronto.

Today it's a small town surrounded by lakes and boreal forest. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was something very different. Silver had been discovered nearby in 1903, triggering one of Canada's great mining booms. Prospectors, miners and entrepreneurs poured into the region, and within a few years mines, headframes, railways and rough settlements had spread across what had previously been sparsely populated wilderness.

Beyond the mines, however, the forest remained. Black spruce, jack pine and birch cover enormous stretches of northern Ontario, broken by rocky outcrops, wetlands and thousands of lakes. Black bears are common, and anyone working isolated mining claims or traveling between settlements would have encountered wildlife regularly.

That becomes particularly important with Old Yellow Top because, unlike many Sasquatch stories, these sightings weren't taking place in an ecosystem without an obvious suspect. They occurred in excellent black bear habitat, often involving witnesses who initially thought they were looking at exactly that.

Then the animal would stand up.

What Is Old Yellow Top?

Old Yellow Top is essentially northern Ontario's regional version of Bigfoot, with one unusually fashionable distinction.

Descriptions generally include:

• A height of roughly seven feet

• A heavily built, humanoid body

• Dark brown or black hair

• Upright movement

• A stooped posture in some accounts

• A distinctive patch or mane of yellow, blond or light-colored hair around the head and shoulders

That last feature gave the creature its name. Dude looks like an aging rock-star!

Unlike the aggressive Fouke Monster, and more like the majority of Bigfoot encounters, Old Yellow Top doesn't have much of a reputation for attacking people. Most encounters involve the animal being observed briefly before it walks back into the forest.

It also doesn't seem particularly interested in hiding from civilization. Sightings occurred around mines, railway tracks and roads.

In some accounts, witnesses initially mistook it for a bear.

That detail will become important.

The History of Old Yellow Top

The first widely cited report dates to September 1906, when workers constructing the headframe at the Violet Mine east of Cobalt reportedly saw a large creature walking upright near the work site. Accounts describe a dark, hairy animal with lighter hair around its head.

Then nothing happened for seventeen years.

In July 1923, prospectors J.A. MacAuley and Lorne Wilson were working claims northeast of Cobalt when they spotted what appeared to be a bear eating blueberries. For reasons we can't entirely explain, Wilson reportedly decided to throw a rock at it. Again with the aggressive behavior TOWARDS cryptids!🤦‍♂️

The animal stood up and Wilson got a better look at it. Wilson later described the creature as black and hairy with a yellowish head. It growled, moved away and disappeared into the woods. He maintained that whatever he saw didn't look like any bear he knew.

Old Yellow Top surfaced again in the 1940s. A woman and her son walking along railway tracks toward Cobalt reportedly watched a large hairy animal cross near Lake Gillies. Once again, the witness described a dark creature with a noticeably lighter head walking much like a person.

By then, the creature had become part of local lore, and the name was beginning to change. What had once been simply Yellow Top increasingly became Old Yellow Top, perhaps because witnesses assumed they were encountering the same animal decades later.

That brings us back to the miners' bus in August 1970.

The vehicle was carrying 27 miners when the creature crossed the road. Contemporary accounts identify the driver as Aimée Latreille, although later retellings sometimes alter the name and details. She reportedly swerved hard enough that the bus nearly went over a rock cut.

The driver and passengers described a dark, hairy creature with light-colored hair extending around its head or shoulders. It walked away on two legs. Then Old Yellow Top disappeared. If that really was Old Yellow Top, it had been wandering around Cobalt for roughly 64 years.

For a seven-foot unidentified primate living through northern Ontario winters, we have considerably more questions.

So, What Are People Seeing?

Let's talk about bears.

Because this one really, really looks like bears. Black bears aren't always black. Their coats can vary considerably, and individual animals can display brown, cinnamon and occasionally much lighter coloration.

They also love blueberries, which makes the 1923 encounter particularly interesting. The two prospectors saw a large dark hairy animal crouched in a blueberry patch and initially identified it as a bear. That's exactly where you might reasonably expect to find one.

Then they threw a rock at it and the animal stood upright. Black bears do that too.

They frequently rise onto their hind legs when trying to identify something unfamiliar. Contrary to what people sometimes assume, an upright bear isn't necessarily preparing to attack; it may simply be attempting to see or smell whatever caught its attention.

Skeptical investigator Joe Nickell has specifically pointed to Old Yellow Top as an example of regional Bigfoot reports that could plausibly involve misidentified black bears. He notes that bears can have lighter coloration around the head and that their ability to stand upright contributes to their surprisingly human appearance.

The 1970 encounter follows a similar pattern. Both the driver and at least one passenger reportedly thought the creature was a bear before deciding its upright movement looked wrong. That doesn't prove they were mistaken. But when several witnesses independently begin their monster stories with “I thought it was a bear...”, we should probably pay attention to the bear.

There is another problem with treating every report as one creature. Sixty-four years is an awfully long career. If Old Yellow Top were an unknown species rather than a single unusually long-lived animal, there should have been more of them. A breeding population would presumably leave tracks, hair, bodies and additional sightings throughout the forests of Ontario.

None of that has produced compelling physical evidence so the skeptical explanation here isn't particularly exotic.

Our Take

We're giving this round to the bear.

Not with absolute certainty, because cryptids deserve their day in court around here, but the evidence lines up unusually well.

The blueberry encounter is almost suspiciously perfect. A dark hairy animal is eating berries in black bear country. Someone throws a rock at it. The animal stands up, growls and leaves. If that isn't a bear, it deserves some kind of award for commitment to the role.

The later sightings don't make the case much stronger. Large animals crossing railway tracks and roads in northern Ontario aren't surprising, and headlights, distance and a few seconds of observation provide plenty of opportunities for proportions and movement to be misinterpreted.

But there is one thing we genuinely like about Old Yellow Top... consistency.

Over decades, the reports retained the same peculiar identifying feature: a large dark animal with noticeably lighter hair around its head. Maybe that happened because later witnesses already knew the legend or maybe there really was an unusually colored bear, or lineage of bears, living around Cobalt for part of that period, and encounters with it helped build the story.

I'm good with that. Cryptid legends don't always need an undiscovered species hiding in the woods. Sometimes a real animal can be unusual enough to become something more.

A century ago, miners and prospectors were pushing deeper into the forests around Cobalt, blasting holes into the Canadian Shield and building towns where wilderness had stood only years earlier. Every once in a while, something large and hairy appeared at the edge of that new world.

Maybe it was Bigfoot's blond Canadian cousin, but even if it is a family of bears that passes along a rock-star haircut and the proclivity to walk upright, that is pretty cool too.

But if you're ever picking blueberries outside Cobalt and notice a large dark shape crouching on the other side of the patch, there's one piece of the original story we can confidently advise against repeating.

Don't throw a rock at it. Please, people!

Like Old Yellow Top and want more Bigfooty fun? Check out these posts: The Fouke Monster and The Beast of Bray Road

Field Notes: Old Yellow Top Quick Facts

📍 LOCATION: Cobalt, Ontario, Canada

👀 FIRST SIGHTING: September 1906

🦶 CLASSIFICATION: Sasquatch-Type Cryptid

💀 THREAT LEVEL (1–10): 3

📖 STATUS: Unconfirmed / Likely Misidentification

The vast forest of Ontario can be home to unique and undiscovered species.

American Black Bears are comfortable standing or sitting upright to investigate their environment and can walk on two legs for a good distance.

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