Bigfoot: Ancient Mysteries Footage transcribed...Bigfoot 1994...

Ancient Mysteries: Bigfoot
New Investigations of the unsolved. . .

Prologue: The following is the narration from the home video of A & E’s ANCIENT MYSTERIES documentary on BIGFOOT. This feature film documentary was taped in 1994 and runs about 50 minutes uninterrupted here without commercials. In my view, this film on Bigfoot offers more for the novice Bigfoot enthusiast than the documentary done by The Learning Channel, THE QUEST: Bigfoot , which ran some 30 minutes with commercials, actual substance was less than 20 minutes. Both narration’s are on this website. While I found much repetition on the ANCIENT MYSTERIES documentary, it offers, in my opinion, more information on the subject, more points of view, great graphics and actual locations in many of the beautifully photographed scenes. Peter Byrne’s style and Dr. Grover Krantz’s forthrightness add charm to this documentary, making it well worth viewing and certainly worth buying by the Bigfoot video collector. It is thought provoking.

With high-tech evidence, scientific analysis and the most recent sightings, ANCIENT MYSTERIES pushes the frontier of investigation to the cutting edge. Since 1884, Bigfoot has continuously provoked controversy within the scientific community. Is he real, or is he merely legend? Our search for Bigfoot cuts through the dense forest of dubious sightings, commercialization, and outright fraud to uncover the truth about the great ape-like creature. Tracing reports back thousands of years, the program examines the mystery of Bigfoot, also called: Yeti or Sasquatch. Anthropologists offer a fresh perspective on hard evidence presented through archived footage, computer analysis, and modern video techniques. This high-tech approach results in the most comprehensive investigation ever produced on the mythical beast.

<..the film begins with attention grabbing statements and roll-by re-enactment’s>
"It look like something big had gone though this perfect mud puddle, just like that…"
"This is what we found, we found these gouge marks in the hill…"
"This is the head, a shoulder, this is the arm and the legs are here…"
"I think that these individuals who see Bigfoot or who see the Lock Ness Monster or who see these things are using their imaginations"
"This is what the Gigantopithecus skull would have looked like…"
"..we have a theory and it’s speculative only, we have this theory that they hide their tracks…"
<then caption: "BIGFOOT" emblazoned over a color sketch of a grayish-white Bigfoot looms on the screen>

Narrator:
It is said to move silent and swiftly through the undergrowth, towering over everything it passes. It strides in the woods as little more than a shadow. It has exceptionally large shoulders and walks like a heavily muscled beast, leaving giant footprints.

Over the last two centuries, there have been thousands of people that have claimed to see a giant hairy beast lurking in the forest of North America. All 50 U.S. States and the 10 Canadian provinces have reported sightings or found tracks of this mysterious animal.. Over the decades these claims have been the root of many legends. In the dense timber of the Pacific Northwest where the animal is most commonly reported these legends have been immortalized and brought to life.

This phantom creature has been known by man names, "hairy ghost," "Injun devil," "Sasquatch," and more recently, "Bigfoot." The lure of the unknown has led many scholars and adventurers to the trail of Bigfoot. Over the years the creature has been examined and exploited in many ways….from in-depth magazine essays to can’t be television appearances to serious scientific inquiries. Through it all one question still remains. Does such an animal exist? Remaining undiscovered by modern science or is Bigfoot a hoax of gargantuan proportions that has continued for hundreds of years?

Byrne:
"The things that people are seeing and that are being reported for centuries are purported to be some kind of hominid primate, unknown, unclassified…living in the Pacific Northwest. Now if they’re not this, then we’re looking at something else! Which is, I mean if it gives the skeptics something to talk about, what we are looking at then is a man in a fur suit, okay?…and he’s been doing it for 200 years, perhaps part of some secret society and they jump out on the road and go "boo" to people in the dark….It’s just not very plausible, it doesn’t add up."

Narrator:
The oldest written account of Bigfoot on record occurred in 986 A.D. by Leif Erikson and his men. During their first landing in the new world, the Norsemen wrote about monsters that were horribly ugly, hairy and swarthy - - and with great black eyes. But the legend of Bigfoot existed in North America long before the white man arrived. The Salish Indian tribe of British Columbia call the creature "Sasquatch" meaning ‘wild man of the woods.’ Among the legends are the stories of the "giant men" of the Mount Shasta <California> and the "stick men" of the Washington Mountains. Here in the Hoopa Valley located in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California, Bigfoot sightings are common. For hundred’s of years the Hoopa Indians have told stories about what the call "Oh Mah." <Sasquatch> Jimmy Jackson has lived in the Hoopa Valley for 85 years and knows the legend of Bigfoot well. Jackson is a Hoopa Elder.

Jimmy Jackson:
"My mother lived to be 105 years old, and she’s told me a lot of things about Bigfoot you know? It’s a person who takes care of the mountains, nothing around in the valleys, it’s out in the mountains and he’s the "boss of the mountains, " ..you never see him."

Byron Nelson Jr. <Tribal Historian>
"I think it’s real possible that something like that does exist. All the Hoopa legends seem to me to be based on some incidents and happenings. The Hoopa word for Bigfoot means "Boss of the Woods" so it would have to be something pretty domineering…"

Narrator:
This is the Columbia River in Oregon. Native American’s lived along this river and relied on it for their survival. Along it’s banks, archeologists have uncovered mysterious carvings <visual: dramatic photos of authentic rock carvings> of what could be of Sasquatch. The heads are just under human size and are carved to represent what is clearly a monkey or ape-like face. The pre-historic natives who carved the heads had a knowledge of what an ape’s face looked like, how they gained that knowledge remains a mystery to modern science.

<Anthropologist> Dr. Roderick Sprague:
"Why would people be interested in making a carving of something they’ve never seen? I mean we have imaginative things, but they’re obviously imagined. They don’t seem to have a series of trails that seem to fit other descriptions. Why are all the descriptions of Sasquatch the same?"

<Hoopa Indian Story Teller> Ed Elmo:
"Probably because they’ve seen Sasquatch. We believe that it’s the spiritual leaders…people that have certain, that are called on to do that type of art work, that type of drawing or to make that kind of statement….some 50 thousand years ago."

Narrator:
Along with the stone carvings, the Native Americans in this area produced other unexplained mysteries.

<Native American Historian> Mary Schlick:
"this one <displaying a hand-woven Indian Basket> basket interested me a lot because of all the Native American baskets I’ve seen, this has a creature on it that you cannot explain. There are women woven into the basket, uh, there are horses, but uh still there is this figure <demonstration shows a Sasquatch descriptive figure woven into the basket> & it’s repeated around the basket. You know, maybe it’s a Sasquatch.

Narrator:
As pioneers headed West, more and more sightings of Bigfoot were recorded by white men. In 1840, Elkanah Walker, a missionary to the Spokane Indians in Washington State wrote a fascinating letter. Walker describes a race of giants that live in the mountains. "They Hunt and do all their work at night, they frequently come in the night and steal their Salmon from the nets and eat them raw. If the people awaken, they always know when they are coming very near by the strong smell which is most intolerable."

In 1884, near the town of Yale, British Columbia, a strange creature was captured that some called a young Bigfoot. Named "Jacko" by his captors, it was said to be of a gorilla type, standing about 4 foot 7 inches tall and weighing 127 pounds. Mysteriously, Jacko disappeared from a transport train and was never seen again.

Even a U.S. President was captivated by the Bigfoot mystic. President Teddy Roosevelt, an avid big game hunter wrote in his book, THE WILDERNESS HUNTER about a very strange animal. He described the beast as walking on two feet and uttering harsh sinister sounds. Some believe the President went to his grave convinced that the mythical creature truly existed.

However it wasn’t until 1958 that Bigfoot gained world wide recognition. That summer, a road crew working in North Western repeatedly found very large human like footprints. The creature that reportedly made the footprints tossed around 300 pound fuel drums. The work crew nicknamed the night prowler "Bigfoot." Forman Jerry Crew made a cast of one of the tracks. The resulting HUMBOLDT NEWS story was picked up by the Associated Press News wire and "Bigfoot" was famous.

In 1967, Bigfoot hunter Roger Patterson went on an expedition in Northern California to search for the creature. He returned with evidence that shocked the world. In 1967 in a clearing, similar to this, the most controversial sighting and documentation of a Bigfoot occurred. On October 20th of that year, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were in the area searching for Bigfoot evidence. Patterson had a history of intense interest in this creature and had recently published a book on the subject. Armed with a small movie camera, the two men were on horseback when they rode around a large obstacle in a creek bed and spotted what they thought was a Sasquatch. Upon seeing the creature, Patterson’s horse reared and fell over backwards upon him. He quickly steadied himself, retrieved his 16mm movie camera and recorded these shaky but amazing images. <Patterson film show in it’s entirety> The resulting 952 frames of color film are the most viable evidence of Sasquatches existence ever recorded.

Bob Gimlin:
"It’s appearance was one of a large humanoid creature walking like a human being. When we came upon the creature it was standing still by the creek. It immediately turned around and started to walk away. There is no way this could ever be falsified or any man could be in a fur suit because of the movement of the muscle underneath the hair."

Narrator:
If the creature Roger Patterson claimed to film does in fact inhabit the dark forest of North America. What is it? Is it an elaborate hoax? The missing link? Or a species that has yet to be discovered?

Anthropologist, Dr. Grover Krantz:
"We have an awful lot of evidence that has taken to indicate that there is a large bipedal animal out there."

Narrator:
Grover Krantz is a professor of Anthropology at Washing State University. He has been studying Bigfoot for over 20 years and is a world’s authority on Cryptozoology, the study of hidden animals.

Krantz: "If this thing is real, this is extremely pertinent to my field, so I would be very unscientific to simply ignore something like this. If there is NOT an animal 6 to 8 feet tall, then you have to explain all this evidence with some other method or methods and that becomes absolutely incredible and cumbersome, - just impossible, really."

Narrator:
Krantz believes that Sasquatch are descendants of Gigantopithecus Blackie, a long extinct South East Asian Gorilla that he feels migrated to North America via the Berring Straits land bridges.

Krantz:
"This is what the Gigantopithecus skull would look like <visual demo> now this of course, makes a Gorilla skull look decidedly small and that’s our comparison."

Narrator:
The general description of Bigfoot gives credibility to Krantz’s theory. According to hundreds of sightings, the mysterious creature walks upright in the same manner as homo-sapiens with a slight slouch.. They swing their arms back and forth as humans do. Perhaps the strongest evidence to support Krantz’s theory is the movement of the creature as seen in the Patterson film.

Krantz:
"One of the things it did when it turned around that was rather interesting, is that it turned it’s head and chest at the same time, very much like an Ape does. Now if I hold myself up in a very proper human pose, you find that not only is my mouth higher than my shoulder, but my chin is high than my shoulder and if I turn my head like so, my jaw does not run into my shoulder, it can go right over it. An Ape is not built that way. An Ape is built like this <Krantz lowers his head and raises his shoulders to ear levels> only a much deeper jaw. When the Ape turns to the side, it’s jaw runs into it’s shoulder. If the Ape is going to look father than running into it’s shoulder, he’s going to have to tip his head way back and look over his shoulder. If you look at it in the zoo’s, you see them doing that or it turns the head and it’s shoulders <together> at the same time. Well that’s what the creature in that Patterson film was doing."

Narrator:
On average, the size of a Bigfoot is 7 feet 8 inches, weighing about 800 pounds, much larger than a human, a California Brown Bear or a Lowland Gorilla. The features of the animal fall somewhere between that of a human and a gorilla, the face is quite Ape like but does not protrude out at the mouth like the Apes’. If Bigfoot is an descendant of Gigantopithecus Blackie, then it may be related to yet another legendary creature in Asia, - the Abominable Snowman or Yeti as it is called by the natives. For centuries, there have been reports of wild men and snow men in Asia. However, the most overwhelming evidence of Bigfoot’s existence are the hundreds of footprints casts that have been made. The most remarkable footprint was found in 1982. A U.S. Forest Service patrolman claims he encountered a 8 foot tall Sasquatch bounding down a logging spur road. Casts made of the footprint produced a startling discovery. They contain highly detailed dermal ridges…..the footprint’s equivalence to finger prints that withstood the scrutiny of forensic experts.

Krantz:
"Now we consider this and several other tracks with dermal ridges to be some of the most definitive evidence that’s ever been found. It’s on power with the Patterson film for solid evidence."

Narrator:
Unusual hair is another type of evidence that is sometimes found after a Bigfoot sighting. These Sasquatch hunters found strands <September 27, 1992> while on an expedition. The hair was analyzed by Dr. Sterling Bunell, a biologist from Berkeley, California. He determined the hair to be of an unknown species. Dr. Bunell wrote: "It is clearly related to the human-Chimpanzee-Gorilla group but is distinguishable from each of these."

<Bigfoot howling is heard, - or a calling> Narration continues.

The sound you heard is what some experts claim to be a Bigfoot scream. Recorded in the State of Washington by a group of campers in 1971, it is regarded as the highest quality audio of the creature ever captured. This rare tape recording was analyzed at the International Center for Gibbon Studies in Southern California.

Primate expert Allen Mootnick:
The Gibbon has a territorial call announcing to his neighboring Gibbons where they reside and this is the area that their good is in and the area they live in." <listening again to the Bigfoot How, the primate expert continues> That one sounds more realistic of a hominid’s territorial call to me. It’s a possibility that it could be made by a human or could be a hominid of an ancestor of a human. So it’s a possibility that it is realistic."

Narrator:
According to Allen Mootnick’s findings, these Gibbons may be related to a hidden creature that stalks the forest of North America. Photographs are another form of evidence that is used to document a Bigfoot sighting. The following pictures were taken by various amateur photographs, each claim to have captured an image of Sasquatch.
<Various photos are shown, visual presentations, hoaxes, undetermined to Bears standing upright.>
<Then, on the phone a re-enactment at BFRP headquarters>
"Uh Chris, give me a call at 352-7000 or 1-800-Bigfoot."

Narrator:
This is the headquarters of the BFRP, working under the auspices of the Academy of Applied Science of Concord, New Hampshire. The project is currently undertaking a five year study of the Bigfoot phenomenon in the Pacific Northwest. The primary objective of the research project is detection, contact and communication. The project is gathering all existing information on Bigfoot, from historical reports dating back into the 1700’s to recent claims of sightings and footprints. What makes this research so exciting is that is the first project to use sophisticated computers and high-grade sensor equipment in an effort to locate the mysterious creature.

Peter Byrne: "Our project is what we call a benign project, like some of the projects with Whales and Dolphins."

Narrator:
Peter Byrne is no stranger to Bigfoot. Once a big game hunter, he has spent the last 30 years trying to prove the existence of Sasquatch. One of his expeditions lasted 10 years in the icy Himalayan Mountains of Nepal searching for the Yeti.

Byrne:
"We’re against the idea of shooting one of these things. We think that would be criminal and quite wasteful to shoot it to prove it exists. But we’re dealing with an upright walking form, something that walks on two legs. We’re the only creatures on the face of the earth that walk on two legs - - -all the Apes are quadrupeds and knuckle walkers. Then these people who have seen these things, who’ve looked at them with telescopic sights, with binoculars have always said the same thing….it was a human face, ….a strangely human face. The sighting we had on the 10th of this month, the young couple involved and all, they both said the same thing, the face was strangely human, it wasn’t an ape face, it wasn’t a Gorilla, We might be dealing with an extremely primitive form of human being and to shoot one of these things or to attempt to shoot one, I think is very wrong."

Narrator:
Today Peter Byrne is concentrating his efforts solely on trying to locate Bigfoot. In the past year he has received information on over 400 sightings. Using the data he has collected, Byrne has charted the encounters during the past 100 years.

Byrne:
"We’re gathering all the evidence we’re putting it into a computer. What we’re looking for is patterns. One day, perhaps 6 months from now, perhaps a years from now, when we have those patterns, we’ll start to work on them with our technology, technology that’s available to us."

Narrator:
By examining all of the data Byrne’s hopes to discover some type of pattern in the sightings - - For example, some people believe that the creature migrates…

Ed Elmo:
"..they say it comes from California and walks up into Canada and that’s why they are seen in so many different places and that’s what I heard from my Father."

Byrne:
"We’ve heard of the possibility of migration, yes, and we support that possibility, but we look upon it as umm a nomadic form of migration. We don’t know how it relates, we don’t know if it relates to seasons, we don’t know how it relates to food supplies. This is what we hope our computers will tell us."

Narrator:
While migrating the Sasquatch could live off the abundant foods that the Pacific Northwest offers. Wild berries are considered by many Bigfoot researchers to be the staple of the creature’s diet and during the spawning season, many of the rivers overflow with Salmon, which the Bigfoot is reported to eat. This photo captures an image of what some scientist claim to be a nest used by a migrating Bigfoot. Traveling in small groups, the animal is believed to have a complex social order.

Krantz:
"we have an awful lot of bits of information about the social relationship among the Sasquatches. The best view now is that they live in small groups of one male and 4 sometimes 5 females and that this is the breeding community. Then as they have offspring, the young females grow up and replace the adult females as they are dying. The young males are grown up and they are driven out of the group by the adult male which tolerates no competition. So then these young males, I call them rogue males, will just wander the countryside in suitable environments, growing up, getting stronger, looking for another social group where they can perhaps have a conflict or challenge the dominant male there, and hopefully take over. Now, as to the total population, I’ve worried about this a good many times and I’m making a flying guess that there is in the Pacific Northwest part of the U.S. and adjacent Canada, somewhere in the ball park of 200 of them."

Dr. John Crane, Zoologist:
"How does he <Krantz> know this? <laughing> I mean how does he know they have a social grouping? How does he know that they have anymore intelligence than a Grizzly Bear or any more intelligence than a coyote or any of the bears?"

Narrator:
While skeptics do exist, Peter Byrne and other believe there is enough viable evidence to support Bigfoot’s existence. In 1961 Byrne, responding to a Bigfoot sighting took a photo of a large footprint on a road in Bluff Creek, California. <just outside Willow Creek and Hoopa> Six years later, at the same location, Roger Patterson shot his famous film.

Peter Byrne:
"We have this picture of a footprint from Bluff Creek in 1960 and it’s a 14 and a half inch footprint. About 6 months ago I was looking at it and I was looking at some pictures of footprints in Dr. Grover Krantz’s book, BIGFOOT PRINTS and this looked very similar to one of them. So I sent it to him and I said "do you think that this is actually the same as one of the footprints in your book?" Now the footprints in his book were photographs of plaster casts of the 1967 filmed creature. He called me and said he was 99% certain that they were identical…and the interesting thing about this is what we have is a footprint made by the creature in that film, - seven years before it was photographed. <Patterson film.>

Narrator:
On the day that our cameras were photographing Peter Byrne and his staff, a phone call came in from a person claiming to have had a sighting. Without missing a beat, Byrne and his Assistant investigate.

Byrne:
We have a theory and it’s speculative only. We have a theory that they hide their tracks. Because there must be quite a few of them up to within reasonable limits but there are so few footprints found, so very few, so we think that …well we think that it’s a possibility that they might know enough to know that the one sign they can leave behind that would lead man to them, a man with a gun perhaps, is footprints and so they don’t make any."

Narrator:
For over 30 years, Peter Byrne had interviewed hundreds of people claiming to have seen the creature, Though many of the reports have been false alarms or have come up short, Byrne has recorded detailed information from a cross section of the population. The following drawing by artist Brad Yates is a compilation of the descriptions gathered by Byrne in his research.

"It’s appearance was just of a large humanoid creature walking like a human being. His eyes were small and black and round."
"This big black object was walking away from me into the timber."
"None of his hair, not even on his neck was longer than an inch."
"I would say at least 6 feet tall and uhh, around 500 to 600 pounds probably…"

"..all right I’m recording right now…"
"you can see that little thing, it looks like maybe and eye…"
"<bleep> he’s looking right at me…"
"yeah?"
"Holy Shit!"
"…that’s a <bleeping> Sasquatch man!!"
"I got it on <bleeping> tape!"
"I can’t <bleeping> believe it!"
"..he’s looking right back at us…"

Narrator:
This home video shot in Northern California by two Bigfoot hunters, was obtained exclusively by ANCIENT MYSTERIES. On October 12, 1992, Daryl Owen and Scott Herriott ventured into the woods, armed only with their video cameras….their goal: to capture an image of Bigfoot.

Daryl Owen:
"I was trying to focus with my camera and due to the fact that the foliage was so thick, I had to turn the auto focus off, then I was looking through the bushes and I seen a beige creature from the waist up, his head, his shoulder…"

Scott Herriott:
"We encountered something. It was about 35 to 40 feet away and two eyes were peering out low down in the brush,. I thought maybe it was a reflection of something else, but after about 30 seconds the head started swaying back and forth."

Owen:
"…..and I’m looking at maybe a 7 or 8 foot beige Gorilla looking man." "But I know after looking at it for 29 seconds I started to cry and I could not hold the camera anymore."

Herriott:
"This guy was seeing something and I didn’t want to see it at that point. I’ve been interested in the Sasquatch phenomena, but I didn’t want to see what he was seeing because it was pretty creepy."

<whispered remarks on video tape and breathing heard>

"he’s right through there…"
"he’s looking right at us…"
"I’m running my tape man…"

Narrator:
After shooting the video, Daryl Owen had his film professionally enhanced. These laser copies are the results.

Owen:
"…and this is her knee cap and her legs and her toes <pointing to enhanced stills>

and then on this picture you can see the eyes right here and then on this photo, her knees are this way, you can see her toes right here…" <pointing>

Narrator:
Even with this new evidence, most scientists are skeptical about Bigfoot’s existence.

Dr. John Crane, Zoologist:
"The idea that they do exist cannot withstand scientific input, I call them unidentified walking objects (UWO’s) or unidentified Swimming objects (USO’s) or UFO’s…..I don’t know what they are uhh <pausing> we all see things that sometimes are really not there. I’ve experienced it myself being an experienced woodsman for many years in the mountains… in very primitive country and I have seen things that startled me and yet I don’t know what they really are…."

Krantz:
"Some people are alittle bit over eager and over interpret what they see - and if they thinking Sasquatch is and they see something that isn’t they may interpret it as a Sasquatch; people tend to see what they want to see…"

Narrator:
To find out what Daryl Owen and Scott Herriott saw on the afternoon of October 12, 1992, ANCIENT MYSTERIES production team took the video tape to Fleet Street Pictures, a commercial post production facility located in Santa Monica, California.

Using sophisticated video equipment, the Fleet Street Editors were able to manipulate and expand the images. After tedious hours of pixel enhancement, the editors reached a startling conclusion. **Scott Herriott and Daryl Own did in fact video tape something sort of being ** in the woods of Northern California., Is the face the image of Bigfoot, or is it just a mixture of shadow and leaves playing tricks on the imagination?

Owen:

"I am a firm believer in Bigfoot. I’ve seen one, I’ve experienced it, I’ve smelled it, I’ve live it and it scared me to death. I believe they exist. The way things are coming together, the way the sightings have been happening, sooner or later they’re going to find one."

Narrator:
Whether or not a Bigfoot is found remains to be seen, however there are many other animals that exist today that were once thought to be silly myths. The mountain Gorilla, for example had long been known to the inhabitants of Rwanda of a huge dark man like beast that swung through the tree tops emitting a fearful cry. Other examples include the Pigmy Hippo, the Snow Leopard and the Giant Panda. All these animals from the far corners of the world existed only as a myth until they were discovered by explorers. The question still remains, does a Bigfoot exist in the real world and if it does, why hasn’t one been found? There are possible explanations to this questions. First the geography and vastness of the terrain being searched, much of the Pacific Northwest is highly inaccessible and full of dense timber.

Peter Byrne:
"The Pacific Northwest here, to give you an example of it’s size and it’s ability to hide things hides 73 aircraft lost from Northern California to Alaska since World War 2! That’s an official FAA figure, it’s not just a myth, it’s not just a newspaper story."

Narrator:
Peter Byrne and other Bigfoot experts theorize that the creature is nocturnal and extremely shy, not likely to approach humans. They speculate that the animal is intelligent and has a strong sense of survival, realizing that it’s only danger is man. However only a specimen of a Sasquatch will convince skeptics that a Sasquatch exists. But finding one may prove a tall order because dying animals generally retreat to remote areas.

Krantz:
"Probably the most commonly asked question, if the Sasquatch is real why don’t we find their bones? Well if bears are real, then why don’t we find their bones? I’ve talked to hunters, many game guides, conservation people, ecology students and asked them how many remains of dead bears have you found that died a natural death? Over 20 years of inquiry my grand total of naturally dead bear bones found in zero!! Now the best population estimate guess we can make is there is at least 100 bears out there for every one Bigfoot and we haven’t found the first bear yet. We would very much like to find the remains of a naturally dead Sasquatch, but chance is just simply so remote it’s not even serious to even think about it."

Byrne:
"You mean people have lived here 50 years longer than me and never seen a dead cougar, never seen a bear, when something dies, it’s eaten by other animals, mostly by bears, by coyotes, by ravens and when you get down to horns, teeth and toenails, those are eaten by porcupines. It’s the perfect disposal system, so one of these thing sides, it’s quite possibly eaten immediately by other animals….there is also the possibility they <Bigfoot> might bury their dead and then hide the burial places, that’s a possibility."

Narrator:
<Familiar scenes are flashed from Willow Creek> Welcome to the town that is called the gateway to Bigfoot Country. -Willow Creek, California. More sightings have been reported in this small community than any where in the world. Al Hodgson, is the owner of the local Hardware store and has been studying Bigfoot for over 30 years. Al remembers well the first time he found a footprint.

Hodgson:
"I found a track quite a ways back in the creek, I mean I had to get through brush to get there and here I find alittle bend in the creek like this, and water’s here and over here, and what he’s done is stepped onto this little peninsula out here and there’s one single track there, very old, there’s pine needles and everything in it but it was very clearly a Bigfoot track and that pretty much convinced me that there is something going on here.

Narrator:
In 1976 at this bus stop just outside of Willow Creek, Jason and Jeff Ownby of Burnt Ranch Elementary school found an amazing 18 inch footprint in the mud. A cast of the print was made by Debra Jones, the boys aunt.

Debra Jones:
It looked like something had gone through this perfect mud puddle, just like that and went right onto the pavement. The mud puddle itself was semi dried up but just enough to take an 18 inch cast about three inches deep."

Jeanne Cook: <the boy’s Mother>
"Some people accuse the kids of make it <the footprint> themselves, but they couldn’t because it was about 3 to 3 and a half inches into the ground, there is no way they could have made that footprint."

Narrator:
In Willow Creek, California, Bigfoot has taken on celebrity status and has loaned his image to golf courses, motels, and lumber mills. The local residents get so excited about Bigfoot that on Labor Day they hold a Bigfoot Daze in Celebration . The residents of Willow Creek all have their own opinions on the reality of Bigfoot’s existence. Bigfoot mania is not just limited to Willow Creek. The mythical creature has been the star of tabloids for years, Sasquatch also appeared in an episode of the series "The 6 Million Dollar Man." Bigfoot has starred in his own movie, "Harry and The Hendersons" and even been featured in pizza commercials. While the commercialization of Bigfoot is often done in a light hearted manner, for some, it’s serious business. In Skamania County, Washington, hunting Bigfoot is actually a crime. In 1969 following an outbreak of sightings and footprint discoveries, the board passed the world’s first Sasquatch protection ordinance. Killing a Bigfoot in Skamania Country carries a $10,000.00 fine and 5 years in prison. But wounding or killing a Bigfoot may prove difficult according to Craig Carpenter, a Mohawk Indian and mystic.

Craig Carpenter:
He <Bigfoot> is a spirit, he can materialize or de-materialize at will and he does it. There been much testimony to that. People have hot him, he screams and hollers and falls down. They try to follow a blood trail which peters out and after awhile even the tracks peter out….he just de-materializes. There are reports, reliable reports of him walking in the winter time in a snowy field and his tracks just disappear. So he’s a super magic man, there is no one more magic than Bigfoot that I know of, nothing.

Narrator:
With all of the evidence reported, it is hard for many not to believe that there is something out there. Thousands of eye witness accounts, hair samples, footprints and video footage are hard to ignore. Is Bigfoot an elaborate hoax, or the product of over active imaginations or does an unidentified primate exist, yet remain undiscovered by modern Science?

"If we find one, it really is going to turn anthropology upside-down. "
"I wish they were there, if they were I wish we would leave them alone…"
"They exist, they’re going to be here long after we’re gone and to the disbelievers, there is going to be a rather large hairy surprise when someone finds one…"
"I can think in all probability, that there was a Sasquatch 35 to 45 feet away from us."
"It’s either a man in a fur suit, it’s either a mass hallucination of some kind or else I think it’s an unknown primate."
"I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you, if he’s a live man or what he is, I don’t know, but to us <the Hoopa> he’s the "Boss of the Mountain."

~ ~ THE END ~ ~

For A & E:
Executive Producers: Rasha Drachkovitch
Producer: James P. Taylor Sr.
Writer, Editor: Rob Englehardt
Assoc. Producer: Robin Nash
Production Mgr: Lasta Drachkovitch
Narrator: John Swanson
Music: Herry Grant
Graphics Mike Henn
Cameraman, Mark Morris and Jay Alarcon
Camera Assist: Tom Freeman
Researcher: Britt Williams

Special Thanks:
Bigfoot Central, Bothell Washington, Cliff Crook
The Bigfoot Research Center
Patricia Patterson
Maryhill Museum
Vern Korb
Leslie Lolitch
Marge McKinney
Larry Lund
James P. Taylor Jr.
Jamie Weissenborn
Caren Bert
Nora Flodung
Todd Deery
Deb Lock
The Town of Willow Creek, California
Additional Footage provided by KIEM-TV, Eureka, California
Fleet Street Pictures
Pizza Hut
Universal Television
This has been a 44 Blue Production

Narration on this website done by Bobbie Short, 1995

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Ancient Mysteries: Bigfoot New Investigations of the unsolved. . .

Ancient Mysteries: Bigfoot
New Investigations of the unsolved. . .