On this date in 1990, an episode of Northern Exposure first aired, in which Bigfoot was discovered. Here are 10 things you might not know about the mythical monster, Bigfoot.
What does Bigfoot look like? Bigfoot is said to be 7 to 9 feet (about 2 to 2.75 meters) tall and covered in Brown, Black, Red, or sometimes even White fur or Hair. Its feet are about 13 inches long (0.3 meters). Hence the name Bigfoot. Evidence for the existence of the creature often takes the form of footprints in mud. People who claim to have seen Bigfoot at night report that it has red, Green or Yellow glowing Eyes.
What does Bigfoot sound like? Some people have claimed to have recorded the sounds Bigfoot makes, which include howls, screams, moans, grunts and whistles. Native American legends mention a creature they call Midnight Whistler, which makes a sound like the whistle of a steam train. Some people have claimed to have heard Bigfoot communicating using a rudimentary form of language, or by knocking wood with their fists or sticks, or by hurling rocks. It has also been suggested that Bigfoot may produce infrasound, because some people who say they’ve seen one report that they felt disorientated or anxious, and lost time, similar to the reports from people who claim to have been abducted by aliens.
There is even a report detailing what Bigfoot smells like. According to Michael Rugg, the owner of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum: "Imagine a Skunk that had rolled around in dead animals and had hung around the garbage pits."
This kind of creature is known as Bigfoot in parts of North America, but there are other names for similar creatures in other parts of the world, including Sasquatch, Witiko, Wendigo, Yeti, Abominable Snowman, Skunk ape, Grassman, Fouke Monster and Wood Booger.
So how did these legends start? Native American legends about such creatures have long existed. The Tsul ‘Kalu, for example, which is said to have been able to read minds; one even married a Cherokee girl and it was believed this marriage was to blame for everything that went wrong for the tribe thereafter. In modern times, an early report was from Jerry Crew was a bulldozer operator for a logging company in 1958. He found a set of large, 16-inch (41 cm) human-like footprints in the mud in Humboldt County, California. At the same time, other strange things happened around the camp, like huge oil drums being moved with no explanation. The logging workers started calling the unknown culprit "Bigfoot." Humboldt County now brands itself as the Bigfoot capital of the world.
The most famous evidence is a short video film known as the "Patterson-Gimlin movie" after the men who shot the film. The film shows a large, ape-like creature walking through a wood. Some say it was simply a bloke in a gorilla suit (I watched it, and admit it did look to me just like that!) That said, others have tried to disprove that theory by getting people to put on gorilla suits and walk around. They claim none of those people move exactly like the creature in the film.
A poll in 2020 suggested that about 1 in 10 American adults believe Bigfoot to be "a real, living creature". Some of that 10% make it their mission in life to prove it to the rest of us. The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (or AIMS) is one such organisation. There’s even a name for the activity of looking for evidence of the creature’s existence: "Squatching", "Squatchin'" or "Squatch'n". Whether it exists or not, there’s actually a law in Washington which states that killing a Bigfoot is illegal, punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 or five years in prison.
Why, then, has nobody found one? Even a dead one? Perhaps, say the believers, they bury their dead. Some have even claimed to have found Bigfoot burial grounds. Uprooted and bent trees in some forests could be, according to them, be Bigfoot marking his territory.
Assuming Bigfoot doesn’t exist, how can the mysterious sightings be explained? Hoaxes involving blokes in gorilla suits is one explanation, of course. Others include incidences of mistaken identity – what people actually saw was a Bear standing on its hind legs, or a primate that had escaped from a circus, a zoo, or from being someone’s exotic pet. Others have said that a large, extinct ape species, Gigantopithecus blacki, isn’t actually extinct at all, but migrated across the Bering land bridge with other animals many years ago. No fossils of this ape have been found in the Americas, though, which tends to discount that theory. Shamans wearing furs or forest hermits have also been offered as explanations, and of course, pareidolia, the tendency to observe human-like faces and figures within the natural environment.
It has been suggested that Bigfoot has a pet of sorts. There is another legendary creature called a Chupacabra (which literally means “goat sucker”) which is said to be a kind of vampire which preys on livestock and forest animals. The legend is that Bigfoot uses Chupacabras rather as we use hunting dogs to help them catch prey. Needless to say, no evidence has been found that this might be the case.
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