Most everyone has heard of Bigfoot, even if you know him as Yeti, Skunk Ape, Sasquatch, Abominable Snowman, or a dozen others. Many cultures worldwide have legends of a large, man-like beast that lives in the wild and is remarkably cagey.
Bigfoot, in the North American sense where his name is literally Bigfoot, only dates back to 1958. A letter, referenced in a column published on September 21, 1958, in the Humboldt Times, brought attention to tales from loggers about a large, mysterious creature in the forest. In a follow-up story, they published the name these loggers had given the thing they claimed to have seen – Bigfoot.
From then on, the idea of Bigfoot fascinated people, and the legend grew and spread across the US and Canada. Over 10,000 people have reported seeing Bigfoot since 1958. While the creature’s existence has generally been debunked by science, it does lead to one more important question. If Bigfoot isn’t real, what did 10,000 people see? Let’s try to find out.
Hoaxes
In the age of YouTube and TikTok, it’s much easier to see how Bigfoot works as a hoax. Back in the day, there was still great fear of a hoax, but not quite as much. Real, credentialed scientists and investigators were willing to give Bigfoot the benefit of the doubt after his footprints were allegedly discovered in 1958 near Bluff Creek, California.
In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin set out near Bluff Creek for the express purpose of finding Bigfoot. In an amazing coincidence, they did find him and recorded a piece of grainy footage of the creature walking in the woods. It remains the most famous piece of evidence of the creature’s existence to this day.
Patterson maintained for his entire life that the film was real, but he has also been accused of being a lifelong conman. Gimlin ended up suing his widow at one point because Patterson made money off the film and never shared it.
It has never been confirmed one way or the other if the film is a hoax as people can make arguments to support either. But it’s not the only potential hoax out there.
In 2008, two men sold a block of ice found in a mountain containing Bigfoot’s body to some researchers, potentially proving the creature’s existence. Except, when they thawed the ice out, the body turned out to just be a rubber gorilla suit.
The hoaxers behind it, Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer have become infamous in the Bigfoot-hunting world for perpetrating numerous other hoaxes that get them media attention. In 2014, Dyer even claimed to have shot and killed the creature. Whitton, who was a police officer, was fired for the hoax.
Remember those footprints we mentioned earlier that got everyone excited in 1958? In 2003, just after the man who found them died, his children told the world their dad had done it as a hoax.
Pranks
A prank and a hoax are very similar in nature but we need to draw a distinction. In a hoax, we as the greater audience are the ones being duped. Someone set up those fake videos, pictures, and footprints with the intent of pulling one over on many people. A prank, on the other hand, is a joke usually played on a specific person or small group. The scale is the distinction. The pranksters are less interested in telling a lie to fool the world and more interested in making a single person or group of people fall for the joke.
With that in mind, it’s worth noting there have been Bigfoot pranks that are smaller scale than the hoaxes we saw earlier. YouTube channel Nelk has pranked so-called Bigfoot experts with fake Bigfoot content more than once. You can find dozens of other videos on YouTube and TikTok featuring quick, simple jokes that usually involve fake footprints or someone in a costume.
The most grand scale Bigfoot prank was played by a man named Eugene Hendrick from Brantley, Alabama who pranked his town of about 800 people for a solid 50 years.
People in Brantley first saw Bigfoot tracks back in the mid-1970s. Remarkably, it just stayed a sort of town secret. People knew about it but didn’t say anything, really. In reality, Eugene Hendrick cut out some fake feet, stuck them to the bottom of his shoes, and wandered around the riverbank.
When people looked into it, including the police, Hendrick stopped making the tracks. But the story in town never really died. In fact, decades later, the local diner decided to make a giant sasquatch burger to go on the menu. That was when Hendrick came clean. Since then the town has gone Bigfoot crazy in much the same way that Rachel, Nevada cashes in on alien enthusiasts because it’s near Area 51.
Other Animals (Mostly Bears)
One of the likeliest explanations for Bigfoot sightings, as well as evidence left behind by the creature, is just other animals. The FBI actually investigated Bigfoot and conducted DNA analysis on hair samples that they were given. The results indicated it was deer hair. There’s more than just deer in the woods, though!
Black bears have been linked to Sasquatch sightings all over North America. The higher the black bear population, the more likely a person is to claim that they have seen bigfoot. For every 5,000 black bears in an area, there’s one Bigfoot siding reported. Fewer bears mean fewer Bigfoots, and that seems to indicate a reasonable correlation.
Black bears can be found all across Canada and in 32 US states. They’re also known to stand on their hind legs, making them as tall or taller than humans, and they even walk on their hind legs sometimes. You can’t definitively say this proves every Bigfoot sighting in those places is a bear – people see him in Florida and there are no black bears there – but it should be cause for some raised eyebrows at the very least.
Speaking of Florida, they can lay claim to their own version of Bigfoot called a Skunk Ape. It’s been seen in Georgia, as well. The Skunk Ape differs from Bigfoot in that it lives in swamps and it stinks, according to most witness reports. But even the Skunk Ape may be just a misidentified animal, as there have been reports of escaped monkeys in the area over the years.
In 2014, a three-year study by Oxford University that involved DNA testing hair samples they received in an open call to museums and private collections for “anomalous primate” hair. They received thirty-six samples from all over the world. Not just the US but Russia, Indonesia, India and more.
The hair samples belonged to a veritable zoo of creatures. Not just bears but wolves, cows, raccoons, deer, porcupines, and even a human amongst others. None were a mythical beast.
Other People
Bigfoot is usually seen at a distance by witnesses. Something is moving through the woods, it walks on two legs; it swings its arms like a man, and it’s very big. There is one thing that everyone in the world has probably seen that walks on two legs like a man, swings its arms, and is very big. A big man.
If you’re a big man in the woods and someone only catches a glimpse of you, and that person is inclined to believe in Bigfoot, they might make the mistake that you are a creature out of legend. We know this because it has happened more than once.
In 2018, a man in Montana reported that he was setting up targets for shooting in the woods on his property. As he was setting them up a bullet whizzed by his head about three feet away. Moments later a second bullet passed on his other side. He realized that someone was definitely shooting at him and he ran as more shots were fired.
Eventually, the man was able to find the shooter and confront him. The shooter’s explanation was simple. He thought the man was a Bigfoot and, according to the quote provided, “If I see something that looks like a Bigfoot, I just shoot at it.”
During the investigation, it came to light that a woman in the area had also been shot at in the woods earlier, and though she didn’t speak to the shooter, she did see his truck which matched the one the identified shooter owned. That means there was a man somewhere in Montana roaming the woods just shooting at anyone he could find in the hopes they were Bigfoot.
A slightly weirder story came from North Carolina in the Appalachian Mountains back in 2017. A Bigfoot was spotted by witnesses roaming the area. However, in this case, a man came forward shortly after to take credit. The man claimed he was a shaman, and he had been wearing a furry suit.
Gawain MacGregor called it a sacrament, and he wears a suit made of animal skins to wander the forest and, ironically, connect with Bigfoot. He claims that after reciting a Bigfoot prayer he has encountered the creature more than once. But, to be clear, he didn’t see Bigfoot that night. He says people saw him in his fur suit.
That said, the witnesses denied MacGregor’s claims. They said the thing they saw was over 8 feet tall and moved faster than any human.
Back in 1982 when George Lucas was filming Return of the Jedi in California’s Redwood National park, Peter Mayhew, the actor who portrayed Chewbacca, was assigned two assistants who wore brightly colored vests to follow him around in the forest. The point was to make sure that any hunters in the area didn’t take a shot at Mayhew thinking he was Bigfoot.
Pareidolia
One of the more unusual explanations for Bigfoot sightings is pareidolia. That is the human trait of finding the familiar in something random. It’s why you can stare at clouds and see dogs or dragons or cars. It’s how you can see a human face by looking at wallpaper or the grain in wood. It’s also why people think their dogs and cats say “I love you” when they make vocalizations. Your brain is very good at taking vague or random stimuli and organizing them into something that looks or sounds familiar.
You can find Bigfoot anywhere if you look for it based on how pareidolia affects perception. Many Bigfoot hunters record audio that they can’t readily identify and ascribe it to the creature when it could just as easily be any number of other animals.
It’s also a reasonable explanation for how a bear or another hunter could be mistaken for Bigfoot, especially if the glimpse is fleeting. Eyewitnesses are notoriously bad at accurately remembering details. The less exposure a person has to what they see, the more likely they are to get details wrong. The mind can easily fill in the rest.
Is Bigfoot Real or Not?
It’s exceptionally hard to prove a negative. A lot of Bigfoot hunters know that. You can’t deny that there are a lot of grifters in the Bigfoot community. There are TV shows that last for years predicated on the idea of hunting Bigfoot even though they never find it or even see it.
We’ve already seen how hoaxers make money off of the idea of Bigfoot, so many people have Financial motivation to keep the idea of Bigfoot alive, even if they can’t show evidence that Bigfoot is a real thing.
What we do know is that no one has ever caught Bigfoot. No one has ever found a dead one. No one has found a hair sample that couldn’t be identified as belonging to another animal. No one has captured a clear image of this creature that can withstand scientific scrutiny. No one has even found scat or an old nest or teeth marks in bones or any indication of where these things live. There is no compelling scientific evidence to suggest a creature like Bigfoot is real.
We do have hoaxes and pranks; we have DNA evidence from an abundance of animals, and we have the human tendency to see what we want to see whether it’s real or not.
There are plenty of things that people are seeing when they think they see Bigfoot, but so far it seems unlikely that Bigfoot is actually one of the things any of those people have seen.