On the trail with Bigfoot-hunters
Not since footage emerged of a giant, ape-like figure in the California woods in the late 1960s has there been so much interest in proving the existence of Bigfoot. So how do you go about finding a creature most people believe to be a myth?
It could be a human footprint. Let's not rule that out.
Kentucky Bigfoot investigators pride themselves on their scientific rigour.
They compile detailed reports, take copious notes, and rely on high-tech recording equipment to set their traps and document their work.
Every twisted branch or broken twig is carefully examined for clues. Every distant sound in the trees seized on as a possible sign of "activity".
FootprintWhich is how I came to be standing on the bank of a stream on a warm spring day staring at an indentation in the shingle.
Someone had pointed it out as a potential footprint. It was certainly big enough. Maybe even too big.
But as Charlie, our team leader, got to work with a tape measure, I assured myself that it was probably human.
And that's when I knew they had got me. Probably is not a word I would have used a few hours ago, when we set out.
Back then I would have said it was definitely human. But back then my scepticism was impregnable. Now it was starting to fray at the edges.
Maybe this is how it starts.
Yahoo-huntingPeople have reported seeing strange, ape-like creatures in the forests of North America for centuries.
Frontiersman Daniel Boone is meant to have shot and killed one of them. He dubbed the 2.5-m (8.2-ft) tall beast a Yahoo, after the creatures in Jonathan Swift's classic novel Gulliver's Travels.
The Yahoo's descendants have come to be known as Bigfoot in some circles, Sasquatch in others. Whatever you call it, it is currently big news. YouTube is awash with "sightings". Most of them are obvious fakes.
But what has really given new life to a very old legend is reality TV and its remorseless appetite for eccentric characters.
It seems like every Sasquatch-spotter, from Canada to the Florida Keys, is in talks with a production company or has already been featured in a reality show of his own.
Life-changing encounterWhen a TV crew arrives with a list of pre-planned shots and outlandish things for them to say, the Bigfoot-hunters generally play along.
From Our Own Correspondent
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They know they are being held up to mockery, on some level, but they seem to be in little doubt about Bigfoot's existence.
Joy, a middle-aged healthcare consultant, is the lead investigator with the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization.
She says she saw Bigfoot for the first time last autumn. Or, rather, it saw her.
As she was changing out of some wet clothes on a camping trip, she became aware of a hairy male face peeping at her under the tent flap, she told me.
According to Joy, there was an overpowering odour. And she heard a low, guttural grunt. Whatever the creature staring at her was, it was not human.
Joy's boyfriend, Ben, smiled as she told her tale. He is a Bigfoot sceptic - but it's a good excuse for a hike in the woods.
Bigfoot sightings in the US
- In 1967, two men captured film of what they said was a Bigfoot on film. The footage, taken in the California woods, becomes famous
- The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization lists more than 4,000 Bigfoot sightings in the US and Canada, with the most coming from Washington and California.
- Sometimes dubbed the Southern Sasquatch, sightings of the so-called Fouke Monster were reported in the 1970s in Arkansas, inspiring cult film The Legend of Boggy Creek.
Some native American tribes in the north-west of America believe the Sasquatch is real. Most think of him as a spiritual being, whose appearance before man is meant to convey some kind of message.
One member of the Kentucky group told me he also thinks Bigfoot could be a spiritual manifestation.
Bart Nunnelly has written several books on the mythical creatures that he believes live in the Kentucky forests.
When he was nine, his family told a local newspaper they were being terrorised by giant ape-like creatures.
He has been the subject of ridicule ever since.
After all, there is little conclusive proof that Bigfoot is anything but a myth. Despite their emphasis on scientific fact, the majority of the group's evidence comes in the form of anecdotal bigfoot sightings collected on their website.
The footprint we found, they decided, was most likely human.
But Mr Nunnelly, like all the Bigfoot devotees I met in Kentucky, is not worried about the mockery of sceptics and non-believers.
He seems certain about what he has seen, and that it wasn't human.
Comment number 239.
Aspen1 Hour ago
I find these pseudoscientific wild goose chases to be boring, and they perpetuate unfounded beliefs in non-existent things. The amazing diversity of life and phenomenon we actually find on our planet is far more interesting than a bunch of rednecks chasing invisible apes through the woods.
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Comment number 232.
Rik2 Hours ago
If they do not find it, it may continue to exist, if they do, it might as well have remained a myth, for there cannot be many of them and if found they will surely become fewer. Ask any pure blood Neanderthal, oh you can't.
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Comment number 220.
The Dude abides2 Hours ago
The existence of Sasquatch is privately accepted by all professional scientist who have actually taken the time to investigate the matter seriously. There is a large body of good evidence available for those who want to read about the subject seriously. Hoaxed evidence is easy to spot and discard. The question for most of them is not 'does it exist' but when will a body come in for classification?
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Comment number 188.
Adept4 Hours ago
I hope they do exist but also they are left alone in peace and not become some hunters trophy on the wall..
Humans are too fast to marvel at something before proceeding to destroy it with our self righteous arrogant ways. Theres a plethora of species who will be like bigfoot soon, just tales and legends down the ages of big cats and whales and birds and fish and so on and on.
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Comment number 19.
NiceBull16 Hours ago
I do believe that this image of large ape-like beasts has been carried in tales throughout our history for a reason. Tales are sometimes exaggerations of a truth of some sort, and it is possible at one point in time there were large hairy ape/human-like beings in existence. Neanderthal or a variant is absolutely possible. We as a race did in fact have contact with Neanderthal long ago.
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