I recently came across a part of an article that was written by a columnist in 1984 in reference to a Mermaid encounter. This event was reported to have taken place on New Year's Eve of 1969. The witness was a very close friend of the news columnist who told the tale after his friend's death. The witness' name was Bill Evans. The columnist's name was Jack Scott.

There was a New Year's Eve party at the house on the shore [somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver, BC], and there had been a beach bonfire, but people had retreated inside. Evans and Scott had remained outside, Scott to attend to the bonfire, while Evans had wandered down the beach. His excuse was picking oysters, but it was a walk of solitude common to him. The blaze was quite robust just then, and it and the Moonlight illuminated quite a patch of the beach.

Evans had been gone oyster-picking for about twenty minutes, when Scott looked up and noticed his friend standing "transfixed". Ultimately noticing Scott staring, Evans slowly waved to him to come over. When Scott arrived, his friend seemed quietly introspective. Neither talked. They walked a bit further down the beach and sat. Evans, still staring out into the ocean bay then said: "I've just met a Mermaid".

Scott, of course, thought that this was a joke, but Evans sensing that waved any comment away. He continued: "She came into the shallow water at the point and then she came out of the water on the beach, where we get the clams. She was very beautiful. She had long golden hair. Well, it was more like ribbons of kelp, but somehow beautiful. She had a long green fishlike tail that was a part of her exquisite body. I just didn't know what to say to her."

Scott, stunned by these comments by a close friend that had never had any tendency to engage in foolishness of anything like this sort, noted the euphoric appearance of his face, and had to take him seriously. He asked him, well, what DID you say?

Evans gave a bemused self-deprecating smile and said: "Aren't you cold?" She gave a laugh and in a non-human-but-still-human low voice "like an offshore breeze", said that no, she wasn't. She asked him why the people had been gathering on the beach, and he talked a bit about New Year's and parties with friends. Evans thought that they talked for about five minutes.

Scott asked if he could describe her. Evans was a bit embarrassed. The Mermaid was topless and he felt that her great beauty and the very non-mundane interaction that they were having made his "looking at her" something that he didn't want to make so obvious that she thought him a crude lout. But he responded to Scott's question this way:

"There was nothing even remotely self-conscious about her, you understand, but since she wore no clothes I felt a little embarrassed about looking at her. Still, I saw enough to know that she was absolutely lovely. You could say breathtakingly beautiful. When I asked her, at one point, where she lived, she pointed out to the water and the path of the Moon. Then we saw someone coming down the beach and she took my hand for a second and slipped into the bay and was gone".

At that Evans unconsciously lifted his hand towards the water. Scott saw that it was still wet.

They sat a while in silence. When Evans died he asked for his ashes to be scattered in this very bay. And this despite that he was never a sailor nor ever owned the smallest boat.

NOTE: There is no reference or link to the article available. Apparently, the column was from a local newsletter or small newspaper. Lon

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