Sasquatch or Bigfoot

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a figure in North American folklore said to inhabit remote forests, mainly in the Pacific north-west of the United States and British Columbia, Canada. Bigfoot is sometimes described as a large, hairy bipedal hominoid, and many believe that this animal, or its close relatives, may be found around the world under different regional names, such as the Yeti of Tibet and Nepal and the Yowie of Australia. Bigfoot is one of the more famous examples of cryptozoology, a subject that mainstream researchers tend to dismiss as pseudoscience because of unreliable eyewitness accounts and a lack of solid physical evidence.

Do You Have A Bigfoot , Sasquatch or Swamp Ape Story or Sighting

If so we would love to hear from you. Send us your story and we will post it here on the site for everyone to read. Tell us what name you would like posted with the story. Send it to thomasbyers@gmail.com with " Big Foot " in the subject line. We will respect your privacy and will never reveal anything about you but what you say we can. So lets hear your stories. See your photos etc.

My Own Story of Seeing Swamp Ape

In the early morning hours of May 11th 2000 I and my brother and my aunt were fishing in a remote area of St Johns County Florida in what is known as the Vilano Beach area. At approx 6 am the sun had just started coming up when we heard splashing over behind us to our rear. We were out on a spit of land that was surrounded on three sides by water. About that same time my aunt asked what is that horrible smell. You could distinctly smell something that smelled like a skunk only stronger. I and my brother reeled in our rods and walked back a few yards to where you could look out over the marsh to the right and there about 50 yds away was a large hairy creature that looked for all the world like a real hairy ape man about 5 ft tall. He was moving away from us and headed towards a large area of thicker brush and trees. We stood there and watched and we called my aunt over and she saw him too. It was in no way a man in a suit. If you had saw it you would just know. We observed him for 5-7 min as he moved away and he finally vanished into the brush and was gone. We even heard him over there moving thru the brush after we could no longer see him. We left and drove into St Augestine and bought 2 disposable cameras and returned to the area but never saw him again. Is he real. You better believe it. I saw him as did the other two people with me. Was it a hoax. No way. As we discussed among ourselfs his movement was just so natural. No way someone in a suit could have moved like that. And over the years other people in the surronding area had reported seeing the same thing.

So I guess the photo the lady took his only her imagination.

Myakka photographs of Skunk Ape

The most famous photographs of reported skunk apes, the "Myakka skunk ape photos", were taken anonymously and mailed to the Sarasota Sheriff's Department in Florida late in 2000. They were accompanied by a letter from a woman claiming to have photographed the creature in the palmettos at the edge of her backyard. The elderly photographer and her husband reported that for three nights the creature had entered her yard to take apples from a bushel basket on her porch. She was convinced it was an escaped orangutan.

Below is a copy of one of those photos.

According to most eyewitness accounts, Bigfoot is a powerfully built bipedal apelike creature between 7 and 10 feet (2.10 and 3 meters) tall, and covered in dark brown or dark reddish hair. The head seems to sit directly on the shoulders, with no apparent neck. Witnesses have described large eyes, a pronounced brow ridge, and a large, low-set forehead; the top of the head has been described as rounded and crested, similar to the sagittal crest of the male gorilla.

Evidence

Although a great deal of evidence supporting the Bigfoot's existence has been offered over the years, its validity has always been highly contentious.

Proponents

Although most scientists find current evidence of Bigfoot unpersuasive, a number of prominent experts have offered sympathetic opinions on the subject. In a 2002 interview on National Public Radio, Jane Goodall first publicly expressed her views on Bigfoot, by remarking, "Well now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they (yeti, bigfoot, sasquatch) exist...I've talked to so many Native Americans who all describe the same sounds, two who have seen them. I've probably got about, oh, thirty books that have come from different parts of the world, from China from, from all over the place, and there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last week which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a yeti hair and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal."Several other prominent scientists have also expressed at least a guarded interest in Sasquatch reports including George Schaller, Russell Mittermeier, Daris Swindler and Esteban Sarmiento.

Prominent anthropologist Carleton S. Coon's posthumously published essay Why the Sasquatch Must Exist states, "Even before I read John Green's book Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, first published in 1978, I accepted Sasquatch's existence" (Markotic and Krantz, 46). Coon examines the question from several angles, stating that he is confident only in ruling out a relict Neanderthal population as a viable candidate for Sasquatch reports.

As previously noted, Napier generally argued against Bigfoot's existence, but added that some "soft evidence" (i.e., eyewitness accounts, footprints, hair and droppings) is compelling enough that he advises against "dismissing its reality out of hand" (Napier, 197).

Krantz and others have argued that a double standard is applied to Sasquatch studies by many academics: whenever there is a claim or evidence of Sasquatch's existence, enormous scrutiny is applied, as well as it should be. Yet when individuals claim to have hoaxed Bigfoot evidence, the claims are frequently accepted without corroborative evidence.

In 2004, Henry Gee, editor of the prestigious Nature, argued that creatures like Bigfoot deserved further study, writing, "The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth ... Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold."

* 1811: On January 7, 1811, David Thompson, a surveyor and trader for the North West Company, spotted large, well-defined footprints in the snow near Athabasca River, Jasper, Alberta, while attempting to cross the Rocky Mountains. The tracks measured 14 inches in length and 8 inches in width.

* 1834: Mormon Missionary David W. Patten recounts : "As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me…. His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro".

* 1840: Protestant missionary Reverend Elkanah Walker recorded myths of hairy giants that were persistent among Native Americans living in Spokane, Washington. The Indians reported that these giants steal salmon and have a strong smell.

* 1870: An account by a California hunter who claimed seeing a sasquatch scattering his campfire remains was printed in the Titusville, Pennsylvania Morning Herald on November 10, 1870 The incident reportedly occurred a year before, in the mountains near Grayson, CA.

* 1893: An account by Theodore Roosevelt was published in The Wilderness Hunter. Roosevelt related a story which was told to him by "a beaten old mountain hunter, named Bauman" living in Idaho. Some have suggested similarities to Bigfoot reports. (Note: Roosevelt's testimony is the only evidence this encounter ever occurred).

* 1924: Albert Ostman claimed to have been kidnapped and held captive for several days by a family of sasquatch. The incident occurred during the summer in Toba Inlet, British Columbia.

* 1924: Fred Beck and four other miners claimed to have been attacked by several sasquatches in Ape Canyon in July, 1924. The creatures reportedly hurled large rocks at the miners’ cabin for several hours during the night. This case was publicized in newspaper reports printed in 1924.

* 1941: Jeannie Chapman and her children claimed to have escaped their home when a large sasquatch, allegedly 7½ feet tall, approached their residence in Ruby Creek, British Columbia

* 1940s onward: People living in Fouke, Arkansas have reported that a Bigfoot-like creature, dubbed the “Fouke Monster”, inhabits the region. A high number of reports have occurred in the Boggy Creek area and are the basis for the 1973 film The Legend of Boggy Creek.

* 1955: William Roe claimed to have seen a close-up view of a female sasquatch from concealment near Mica Mountain, British Columbia.

* 1958: Two construction workers, Leslie Breazale and Ray Kerr, reported seeing a sasquatch about 45 miles northeast of Eureka, California. Sixteen-inch tracks had previously been spotted in the northern California woods.

* 1967: On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured a purported sasquatch on film in Bluff Creek, California in what would come to be known as the Patterson-Gimlin film.

* 1970: A family of bigfoot-like creatures called "zoobies" was observed on multiple occasions by a San Diego psychiatrist named Dr. Baddour and his family near their Alpine, California home, as reported in an interview with San Diego County Deputy Sheriff Sgt. Doug Huse, who investigated the sightings.

* 1995: On August 28, 1995, a TV film crew from Waterland Productions pulled off the road into Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and filmed what they claimed to be a sasquatch in their RV's Headlights.

* 2005: On April 16, 2005, A creature resembling bigfoot was seen on the bank of the Nelson River in Norway House, Manitoba. The forty seconds of footage was captured by ferry operator Bobby Clarke from across the Nelson River.

* 2006: On December 14, 2006, Shaylane Beatty, a woman from the Dechambault Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada, was driving to Prince Albert when, she claimed, saw the creature near the side of the highway at Torch River. Several men from the village drove down to the area and found footprints, which they tracked through the snow. They found a tuft of brown hair and took photographs of the tracks.