Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Legend of Bigfoot (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. Long before Europeans arrived in North America, Native people told stories of large, hairy men who lived in the woods. For the last several centuries, periodic reports of such creatures have appeared all over the United States and Canada. In the late 60s and early 70s, photos and movies started to appear, which seemed to provide evidence of these creatures. Seemed. Learn more about the legend of Sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:01:01 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. Long before landing a lead role in Harry and the Hendersons, becoming a leading spokesperson for beef jerky, and having a supporting role in the $6 million man, stories of Bigfoot or Sasquatch were circulating amongst the peoples of North America. The legend of what we know today as Bigfoot existed in many different indigenous North American cultures.

Starting point is 00:01:33 The word Sasquatch is actually an anglicization of the word Saskets, which comes from the Haklomaylem language of British Columbia. According to the Shahelish people, Saskets was a shapeshifting creature who protected the forest. And the name, Saskets, translates to, hairy man. The shahelish were far from the only native people who had a similar legend. There are petroglyphs in the Toole River Reservation of California, which depict what appear to be a

Starting point is 00:01:59 family of large hairy creatures. In parts of the southeastern United States, there are tales of a creature which is known as Skunk Man. The Loomy people of the Pacific Northwest talked of a creature known as Semequess. The Iroquois people of the Northeast United States and southern Ontario and Quebec, had a legend known as Ganeshqua, the stone giant. These aren't the only legends told by native peoples. There were many different stories that had similarities. A large humanoid creature with lots of hair, and often smelled really bad. When Europeans began arriving in North America, they shared some of the same stories. Spanish missionaries in the 16th century told tales of Los Vigilantes Oscuros, or the Dark Watchers. French explorers spoke

Starting point is 00:02:43 of hairy forest creatures which would shout loudly and steal livestock. These legends, however, were always just that. Legends. There were things people spoke of in the same way that people spoke of fairies and dragons back in Europe and Asia. As Europeans spread across the continent through the 19th century, they would often adopt these stories to explain strange noises and events. Going into the 20th century, tales about this creature were on a par with telling your children about the boogeyman. There weren't cryptozoologists trying to prove the existence of the creature at this time. In the 1920s, these stories were popularized by one J.W. Burns, who was an Indian agent and teacher in British Columbia. He retold the stories he heard and

Starting point is 00:03:25 popularized the term Sasquatch. What changed everything was an event which occurred in 1958 in Humboldt County, California. A logger by the name of Jerry Crewe discovered a large set of footprints in the Six Rivers National Forest. He mentioned the footprints to his co-workers, who also recalled seeing similar footprints as well as other unexplained events, such as large objects being moved. The loggers began calling this unknown creature that left the footprints, Bigfoot, and more on this story in a bit. They eventually contacted a reporter for the Humboldtimes newspaper by the name of Andrew Gensoli, who wrote a story about the footprints and was the first to use the word Bigfoot in print. The story made it out onto newswires, and it was

Starting point is 00:04:09 republished in papers all around the United States, including the New York and Los Angeles Times. Bigfoot had now become a thing. Other articles began appearing about Bigfoot in the years after the Humble Times article. With this article, there began to be Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot enthusiasts. One in particular was a man by the name of Roger Patterson. Patterson became a Bigfoot believer after he read an article in True magazine in 1959. In 1966, he published his own book titled Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? The book was described as, quote, little more than a collection of newspaper clippings laced together with Patterson's circus poster style prose, end quote.

Starting point is 00:04:52 In 1967, he began working on a docudrama about cowboys looking for Bigfoot. One of the men he worked with on the film was named Bob Gimlin. In 1967, the two men claimed to have taken video footage of a Bigfoot. And if you've ever seen a video clip of a bigfoot walking sort of hunched over through a river bottom with trees all around, this is that video. It was supposedly shot on horseback at Bluff Creek, which is a tributary of the Klamath River, in the Six Rivers National Forest, very close to where the 1958 event took place. The video was 59 seconds long, and the image of the creature was rather grainy and it was out of focus. This short clip is the most popular piece of evidence that people point to in support of the existence of Sasquatch. It just so happened to be filmed by two men who were filming a fictional movie about Bigfoot.

Starting point is 00:05:46 The release of the Patterson-Gimlin film dramatically increased interest in Bigfoot, and not surprisingly, led to a massive increase in reported Bigfoot sightings in the 1970s. As the number of sightings skyrocketed, so too did the number of locations of the sightings. The original 1958 Humbold Times article and the 1967 film both occurred in pretty much the same place in Northern California. But now, reports started coming in from Florida, New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado, and many other states. Bigfoot suddenly became a cultural icon. There was an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man about Bigfoot. The TV show, In Search of, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, did an episode about Bigfoot. The interest in Bigfoot also increased interest in other

Starting point is 00:06:31 creatures such as the Loch Ness Monster. It ushered in a new craze for these creatures which was dubbed Cryptozoology. It's been estimated that there have been over 10,000 reported sightings of a Bigfoot creature. Since the 1970s, the height of Bigfoot mania, sightings have decreased dramatically. So, is there a species of large hominid or ape that exists in North America? Is there a kernel of truth to the centuries of stories that have been passed down? Here's the problem. You can't prove a negative. The absence of evidence does not imply the evidence of absence. Someone could bring forward a Bigfoot corpse tomorrow and put the matter to rest. However, as of today, despite centuries of stories and legends, there hasn't been a single bit physical evidence

Starting point is 00:07:19 in support of a Bigfoot creature. There haven't been any bones, hair, bodies, or fecal matter found from which we could take a DNA sample. Absolutely nothing. If you've ever gone hiking in the woods, you can usually find evidence of animals even if you don't see them walking around. But there's no such evidence that has ever been found for Bigfoot. Just given the amount of time and odds, you'd think that there might have been one accidentally hit by a car or shot by a hunter. But that has never happened. Ecologists note that if there were a hidden species of ape, there would need to be enough for a breeding population. They couldn't remain that hidden for long, yet still remain a viable species.

Starting point is 00:07:59 So, what could explain the thousands of sightings? One common problem is that people misidentify bears at a distance. Bears can walk on their hind legs for short distances, or to reach something. Many of them also have black fur, just like Bigfoot is claimed to have. Another possibility is that humans have a tendency to find patterns and shapes. It's how you can see a face in a cloud. This is known as paradolia. In the woods, you might see something of ambiguous shape, but your mom

Starting point is 00:08:29 might see something vaguely like a person with arms, legs, and a head. Another problem is that many of the sightings tended to peak precisely when Bigfoot was ascending in popularity. People began seeing Bigfoot at the same time that everyone began talking about Bigfoot. Consider that as everyone began carrying around high-quality digital cameras on their smartphones, there hasn't been an explosion of high-quality digital images of Bigfoot. The most damning evidence against the existence of Bigfoot is a very common evidence. the fact that so much of the evidence has been proven to be hoaxes. Take, for example, the original 1958 footprints found by loggers. In 2002, one of the logging crew members

Starting point is 00:09:10 Ray Wallace passed away. After his death, his family came forward to announce that their father had created the footprints with carved wooden feet. They produced the wooden feet, which matched the original plaster casts of the footprints taken in 1958. In 1998, a man by the name of Bob Heronemus step forward and claimed to have been the man in the suit from the 1967 film. He said he originally didn't come forward because he was supposed to get a third of the money from the film, and then later because he was concerned about being accused of fraud. However, his story has been corroborated by several people, one who he told privately in 1969 and others who actually saw the guerrilla suit.

Starting point is 00:09:49 National Geographic did an interview with him, and his gate is very similar to that of the Bigfoot in the photo. In the National Geographic video, it seems that everyone in his small town knew about his role in the Bigfoot film for years. He said he was paid $1,000 for just a few minutes of work when he was 26 years old. The man who claims to have sold the suit, Philip Morris, ran a costume shop in 1967 in North Carolina. He claims that it was a gorilla suit that he sold a Patterson via mail. He talked about selling the costume since the early 1980s, but only to other people in the profession and never publicly. Both he and Bob Hiranimus claim that football

Starting point is 00:10:25 shoulder pads were worn inside the costume and that the arms were longer than the actual arms. But these aren't the only hoaxes that have been exposed. In 2005, a Bigfoot researcher by the name of Tom Biscardi announced that he had captured a Bigfoot and was going to sell access as a pay-per-view TV event. He never had a Bigfoot. In 2008, another Bigfoot enthusiast by the name of Rick Dyer claimed that he had found a Bigfoot corpse. The story was covered by major news outlets, and when he delivered the frozen body, it was made out of rubber and fake. care. In 2014, the same guy, Rick Dyer, claimed that he had shot a Bigfoot and had gotten DNA test done on the body. No samples or test results were ever produced, and he later admitted that this

Starting point is 00:11:07 too was a hoax. In 2012, one man in Montana was hit by a car and killed while he was dressed in a Bigfoot suit trying to perpetuate a hoax. So, I think he can see the problem with Bigfoot. There's no physical evidence and lots of evidence of hoaxes. Bigfoot, you know, you can see the problem. sightings tend to correlate with mentions in popular media, and since more people have cameras with them all the time, there has been no corresponding increase in images. But I think the best way to understand the Bigfoot phenomenon comes from the famed primatologist Jane Goodall. She spent most of her life observing primates in the wild, and she was asked what she thought about Bigfoot. She said, quote, well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. You know, why isn't there

Starting point is 00:11:53 a body. I can't answer that. And maybe they don't exist, but I want them to. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners show and members of the completionist club you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server links to everything are in the show notes I think

Starting point is 00:12:37 Bigfoot is blurry that's the problem it's not the photographer's fault Bigfoot is blurry and that's extra scary to me because it's a large out of focus monster roaming the countryside run he's fuzzy get out of here got to go Ah yeah

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Legend of Bigfoot (Encore)

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