Page 73 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - September 2021

Could Bigfoot Really Be Out There? 73

Could Bigfoot Really Be

Out There?

For centuries, people have

reportedly seen this mythical
primate-like animal in the woods
of North America. This is the

long, strange story of our search
for the creature.

by Matt Blitz

The film is mostly three-and-a-half minutes of
grainy fall foliage, men riding horses, and jerky
pans. The famous footage—used for decades
afterward in every documentary about whether
Bigfoot is real or fake—comes across as just
someone having fun with their new camera.
But, about two minutes in, the lens of a rented
16mm Cine Kodak camera catches something
strange.

“We were just riding out alongside the creek, According to the legend, she spends most of her He had taken potshots at the creatures earlier in
riding along enjoying the warm sunshine day,” time protecting her children and sleeping, hence the day.
says Bob Gimlin. “Then, across the creek, there why she’s rarely seen. In fact, the name
was one standing. Everything happened so “Sasquatch” comes from Halkomelem, a Even then, as noted in Chad Arment’s 2006
fast.” language spoken by several First Nation peoples book Historical Bigfoot, these accounts like the
that occupied the upper Northwest into British ones from the prospectors in 1924 were often

What Gimlin's camera sees is a strange, large Columbia. regarded with a general sense of skepticism
often due to the unreliable nature of the
ape-like figure limbering on its hind legs across
a clearing. For a brief moment, the animal In California, there are century-old pictographs witnesses.
appears to look directly at the camera, and, then, drawn by the Yokuts that appear to show a
it’s gone. This is the famed Patterson-Gimlin family of giant creatures with long, shaggy hair. “It’s hard to know what came out of the bottom
film reportedly shot in October 1967 in the Called “Mayak datat” by the tribe, the image of a whiskey bottle and what’s real,” says former
heavily wooded forests of Northern California, bears a resemblance to the commonly held NPR producer Laura Krantz, who’s a host of the
and it is one of the most heavily analyzed pieces vision of Bigfoot. new podcast Wild Thing, which digs deep into
the search for Bigfoot.
of film in American history.
“Some tribes really love Bigfoot, they have a

To some, this is definitive proof that Bigfoot is great relationship with him,” says Kathy There were also times when one animal was
as real as mountain gorillas or narwhals. For Moskowitz Strain, author of the book Giants, confused for another, possibly explaining the
others, it’s a hoax alongside videos claiming to Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native origin of the name “Bigfoot.” Newspaper
show ghosts, aliens, and lizard people. But Culture and archaeologist with the U.S. Forest accounts show that “Bigfoot” was a common
Gimlin knows exactly what he saw that day. “It Service. “To other tribes though, like the nickname for particularly large, aggressive
walked upright and for quite a long ways. It Miwoks, he’s an absolute ogre, a monster, and grizzly bears who ate cattle, sheep, and attacked
didn’t look like a bear. I’ve been in the woods something best left alone.” humans. It wasn’t until 1958 when a California
tractor operator named Jerry Crew “found” a
my whole life,” 86-year-old Gimlin tells
Popular Mechanics. “There’s no doubt in my To this day, Strain says, many of the tribesmen series of huge muddy footprints that the term
mind at all what it was.” she does field research with believe that Bigfoot was popularized in reference to the primate-like
walks among us. “I’ve been in the field with animals.
This elusive, possibly fictitious animal goes by tribal members where something strange
a number of different names—Bigfoot, happens and they always blame it on a Bigfoot,” That same year, another man named Ray
Sasquatch, Yowie, Skunk Ape, Yayali—and for says Strain. Wallace also said he had discovered large prints
belonging to Bigfoot. Upon his death in 2002, it
centuries, people across North America have
had sightings. There’s Bear Men in Them Hills was revealed that this was a hoax.

Many Native American cultures have written Native Americans weren’t the only ones seeing It was in the mid 20th century when Bigfoot
oral legends that tell of a primate-type creature this hairy, primate creature roaming the wilds of stepped from local lore to national phenomenon.
roaming the continent's forests. In these tales, America. Nineteenth- and early 20th-century
the animals are sometimes more human-like newspapers had whole sections devoted to the In 1961, naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson published
and, other times, more ape-like. In the miners, trappers, gold prospectors, and his book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come
mythology of the Kwakiutl tribe that once woodsmen claiming to have seen “wild men,” to Life. In the book, Sanderson uses footprints,
heavily populated the western coast of British “bear men,” and “monkey men.” eye witnesses, and bone samples as potential
evidence of “sub-humans” living on five
Columbia, Dzunukwa is a big, hairy female that
lives deep in the mountainous forests. Most famously, in 1924, a group of prospectors continents across the world, including North
hunkering down in a cabin along the shoulder of America’s Sasquatch and the Himalayas’ Yeti
“Some tribes really love Bigfoot…To other Mount St. Helen in Washington State claimed (though others believe that the Yeti is a totally
tribes though…he’s an absolute ogre, a they were attacked late one night by a group of different species).
monster, and something best left alone." “ape-men.” Later, one of the prospectors
admitted that they weren’t unprovoked attacks. (Continued on Page 74)