National Park After Dark - The Woman, The Myth, The Legend: Six Rivers National Forest

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

This week we travel to northern California and into Six Rivers National Forest to learn how the iconic Bigfoot image was captured, what happened in the aftermath, and how it changed the world of cryptozoology. We'll give you information from both sides of the Bigfoot fence, but it’s up to you to decide … do you believe?For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!Uncommon Goods: Out of the ordinary and truly original gifts. Code NPAD for 15% off.Prose:  Get a free in-depth hair regimen and 15% off your first custom hair care order at prose.com/NPADAMC Shudder: Celebrate the 61 Days of Halloween on the "Netflix of Horror". Try Shudder free for 30 days with code NPADFor a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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As of February 2020, every single minute of every single day, an average of 500 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube. That's 30,000 hours of content every single. 60 minutes. Most of these hours are never remembered, never retained by our memories, and blend in with the mountains of imagery we see daily, never to be thought of again. Of course, there are exceptions. These exceptions are rare, and usually in the form of a single photo, or a few fleeting seconds. Tiny drops in an endless sea, yet they cause ripples. Neil Armstrong, as he took those first tentative steps onto the moon. John F. Kennedy, smiling and waving to onlookers in Dallas, moments before an

assassin's bullet cut his life short. And the image of a Navy sailor, romantically embraced with a woman in white uniform, smack dab in the middle of Times Square, celebrating the end of the war. But these moments are remembered for a reason. And more often than not, it is because they evoke feeling, milestones, fear, celebration, debate. Did Neil Armstrong really step foot on the moon that day? Or was it staged? Who pulled the trigger that killed the 35th president of the United States? And when George Mendoza took Edith Shane in his arms on August 15th, 1945,

was it consensual? Seconds. And in this case, 59 of them. That's all it took to keep people talking. for years. In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin rode into six rivers national forest in search of a legend. A legend that lingered on the lips of people from all over the world for centuries. Samakas, Yawi, Yeran, Saskatel, Bigfoot. They are everywhere. And yet, they are nowhere. So many stories. But no proof.

That is, until two men rode into the forest and came back with film, that changed everything. Welcome to National Park After Dark. I'm sorry, I just saw like your face light up the second you said Bigfoot. He's here. I have prepared my whole life. My whole life has come to this moment, and I didn't even know it. When I'm saying Danielle has wanted to do a Bigfoot episode on this show, I mean from before it even existed, she wanted to do it and it's spooky season, it's

Bigfoot season, I guess. It is, it is time. Okay, welcome back everyone to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle. And my name is Gassie. So like we kind of said in last week's episode for October, we are sticking with the spooky theme, cryptids, lore, hauntings. Last week, we went to a bunch of different national parks and we went on some haunted hiking trails. And this week, I know we are heading into the forest, but for a totally separate reason, we're finally doing a Bigfoot episode. I couldn't be more excited. Like, my cheeks hurt a little bit from smiling in anticipation of telling you my research

and my story. I'm telling you the amount of times Danielle texted me and was like, I'm so excited for this episode. I'm so excited. And I mean, she's excited for other episodes, but she usually keeps it on the down low of exactly what she's doing. And this time, I knew it was about Beck, but I'm really excited to hear what this is. I think I did a pretty good job about not disclosing exactly the direction I was going in, which was very difficult because I just wanted to tell someone. I mean, poor Ian, like, because we share an office.

So every, yeah, I don't know, five to eight minutes, turn around. I'm like, hey, you want to know something cool? It's like, what? I'm trying to work. It's important. It's about Bigfoot. I'm like, you are getting exclusive first sneak peak access and you're just going to be annoyed about it. You know, just giving him shit. But yeah, so anyways, we don't have too, too much to talk about in the intro, but we do have one very special announcement. And that is the giveaway winner for the giveaway with the small businesses that we announced last week.

Drum roll. Okay, that was a little obnoxious. The winner is Toby K-T-O-B-I-K-A-Y. Congratulations, Toby, and thank you to everyone who participated. I couldn't enter my name that would have been looked down upon. If you won, and it was the people would riot. They'd be like, okay. Yeah. What the fuck is this? This is rigged. So, yeah, I mean, the Freddie Krueger mirror, that wallet with the spider webs, the spooky nails and the coffin ring. Everyone always asked me, where did you get your coffin ring? And I go through silver ashes. She's the best. And she donated and made one of her very spooky coffin rings for a very lucky winner. And so I'm very jealous that the winner was not me. Maybe next time. Also, I guess

while we're on the topic of giveaways, actually, for future reference when we do giveaways, we will never be making a second account that says, so we had for this giveaway, we had a person, we have no idea who made a fake account, claiming to be our second account and asking people for their credit card information, claiming that they're the winners

and having them subscribe to something. For everyone to know, we are never going to ask for your credit card information for a giveaway, and we're never going to have a second account. And if we do have any, other accounts that we're working with, they will always be tagged in our giveaway. So if it is anything separate from that, please do not talk to them, don't respond to them, please report them, especially

if they're pretending to be an account that is associated with us because they're not. Yeah, it was very disheartening to see, but it happens and we just kind of wanted to nip it in the bud the best we could. There's not much we can do other than ask that everyone blocks and reports them. So just keep it up. We just don't want people taking your money. Like, people were telling us that you're, they're trying to take your credit card information. And we just don't want one of you guys messaging us and being like, hey, I just had my entire life savings stolen from me because of your giveaway. That would be so sad. I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

Yeah. So please, please, please, don't. So anyway, that's a really good point. Okay. Giveaway is done. Sad. We'll have another one coming up. Maybe.

Oh, my God. Shouldn't have said that. Whoopsy. Anyways, moving on. I'm ready to tell everyone about Bigfoot, one of my biggest passions. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want.

Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L. Every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. The main sources I used for this episode were outside online National Geographic, the BBC, the Bigfoot research organization and Wikipedia.

And this episode is very long, and I got a lot of information from a lot of different sites, so the full list can be found in the show notes. Bigfoot crossings, air fresheners, mugs, statues, keychains are everywhere. Hell, there are even motels and coffee shops, very Bigfoot's name, especially here in the Pacific Northwest. You can't visit a gift shop in the upper left of the United States without stumbling upon an I believe, or Bigfoot doesn't believe in you either shirt. And while it may seem like Bigfoot is a new-aged craze, that couldn't be farther from reality. In the Sierra Nevada's of California, on the Toll River Indian Reservation,

are a set of large pictographs. Dated anywhere between 3,000 and 1,800 years old, the U.S. people drew the gatekeeper to their spiritual world, the hairy man, alongside other animals like eagles, bears, beavers, and coyotes. They believed that the hairy man was a forest dweller, just like these other animals, and was to be treated cautiously if you were to ever encounter one. They believed if you were to see him, it was a very bad sign, as he was coming to take someone who was about to pass over to the other side. Other tribes, such as the Miwok, viewed him as a child snatcher. And in British Columbia, the indigenous peoples tell stories of Duswanka, the wild woman of the woods. Most of the stories and legends we have from

indigenous and first nation peoples come from oral history, passed down from generation to generation. But as European influence cropped up in the historic record, so too did the accounts of strange creatures. Rachel Plummer was living in modern-day Texas in 1836 when her family's homestead was overtaken by a Comanchee rating party. She was held by the Comanches for two years, and once she was released, she described her time with the tribe. Among her various accounts, she describes the man tiger, an eight to nine foot being, which resembles a man, but is not, whom the Comanchee said they have seen on several occasions in the mountains. In the 1840s, Reverend Alcano Walker was on a mission trip in Washington, roughly 25 miles northwest of where

present-day Spokane is. He was visiting the Spokane tribe and kept a lengthy journal. In it, he writes, quote, They believe in a race of giants which inhabit a certain mountain off to the west of us. This mountain is covered with perpetual snow. They, the creatures, inhabit the snow peaks. They hunt and do all of their work at night and are man-stealers. They come to people's lodges at night when the people are asleep and take them and put them under their skins and to their place of abode without even waking the others. Their track is a foot and a half long. They steal salmon from Indian nets and eat them raw as bears do. If the people are awake, they always know when they are coming very near by their strong smell that is most intolerable. It is uncommon for them to come home in the night and give three whistles and then the stones will begin to hit their houses, end quote. In more recent times, sightings have definitely persisted. And if I was just going to sit here and list the sightings and reports and accounts, we would be here literally for days. So I took a couple of them that happened in national parks.

And I'm going to highlight a few for you. Oh, are they all in the Pacific Northwest? No. Oh, okay. But we're going to start there, of course. Of course. In 1924, a group of gold prospectors told a tale of an encounter with a group of bipedal hairy apes who threw rocks and boulders at their camp in a narrow gorge on the east side of Mount St. Helens. This area is now known as Ape Canyon within Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

So right where you just were? Yes. Did you know the story when you were there? No. Of course not. No, you're like, I have to go back. In 1981, an ex-soldier witnessed a black, red-haired, hominid animal walking upright and striding quickly away from him on a mountain slope in China's Shenanjia National Park. The infamous Ohio Howl was first recorded in 1994 in Southern Ohio, a series of vocalizations alleged to be Bigfoot.

Nearly 20 years later, 50 miles away, in Cuyahuga Valley National Park, a visitor captured an eerily similar vocalization near hemlock point. In 2016, a man camping in Royal National Park in New South Wales, Australia, locked eyes with a tall, hairy creature standing on a rock, overlooking a ledge, before turning and walking back into the bush. In June of 2019, a man camping in Mammoth Cave National Park fired at a creature he identified as Bigfoot after he claims it destroyed his campsite, and we talked about that in our second episode ever. remember that. He was on the hunt for Bigfoot that day though. Remember him and his son? Yeah, they were specifically out there for that reason. Wasn't it nighttime too? It was. Yeah. And then they woke up

the other couple and said that a Bigfoot was coming and he was going to go after it. Yeah, and that couple was like, uh, okay, sure. Yeah, like, um, I'm nervous and I want to leave now. Not because of Bigfoot, but because of you. And then in 2000, a fowl-smelling creature was spotted lurking through the sawgrass of the Florida Everglades. Reports pour in from all over the globe every single year. In the United States alone, over 10,000 people have described personal encounters with Sasquatch over the last 50 years. Of those, about one-third of them occur in the Pacific Northwest. Hey, hey. And today, that is where our story is going to take place.

I'm so excited for this and for you. I know how excited you've been for this episode, and I'm really excited to learn about Bigfoot. Yes. And just to preface this, if you have not seen the Patterson Gimlin film, pause, and go watch it. It's 59 seconds. It's on YouTube. You need to see it to understand the episode. Well, you don't need to see it, but it will definitely help.

So great, you watched it. Let's go. Six Rivers National Forest was established in June of 1947 and is located in the northwestern corner of California. Less than two hours to the east of Redwood National Park, this national forest comprises over one million acres and has over 360 miles of rivers, with old-growth forests and endless opportunities for camping, hiking, and fishing. In the 1950s, Six Rivers National Forest was bustling with loggers. Lumber production in Humboldt County, California was on the rise, and the demand for timber was met with an increase in logging. A man named Jerry Crew worked for the Granite Logging Company and the Wallace Brother logging company at the time,

and was on a work assignment deep in the forest by Bluff Creek. He'd been on that assignment for going on two years and was very familiar with the area, and the local legends. stories of 700-pound logging equipment being moved or going missing altogether, only to be found suspiciously far away from the work site. And the tracks. Giant footprints seen sporadically throughout the area. A man named J.W. Burns, dispatched by the government to work with the Sitzalist people in British Columbia in the 1930s learned the word Saskatch, meaning wild man or hairy man,

the word from which Sasquatch is believed to have come from. Lumberjacks have been telling tales of Sasquatch, mysterious forest dwellers for years. And a few months earlier, in a local newspaper, it had run a story about a 1947 incident that spoke to the mystery of large footprints found sunk deep into the sand. Jerry had heard all of these stories,

but saw evidence for himself on August 27th of 1958. large human-like footprints in the freshly leveled earth at his work site. The work crew nicknamed the maker of these prints, Bigfoot. Two words. Word made its way back to civilization, and the story was picked up by Andrew Ginzoli of the Humboldt times. The journalist wrote an article about the story, and then after seeing its popularity sore, he continued with a column dedicated to Bigfoot. Bigfoot was born, and words spread like wildfire as the Bigfoot sensation caught the attention

of people near and far and one of those people was roger patterson roger patterson was a through-and-through bigfoot fanatic being from yakima washington it can be presumed that he had heard of saskatch growing up what we do know for sure is that in the early 1960s his interest was peaked he wrote a book called do abominable snowmen of america really exist and that came out in october of 1966 so he was into Yeties and all of the cryptid kind of things. He's not just a Bigfoot person. Like he believes in other stuff too. So he definitely focused his attention on Bigfoot, whether that was, you know, in the United States, in the Himalayas, and elsewhere, he was a fanatic and would tell like everyone that would listen about it and his thoughts and opinions on the matter. So he followed these stories and

sightings and things from around the area very closely. And he was like totally taken and enthralled by it. And he was not a Bigfoot researcher at all. He was an enthusiast because by day he was a rodeo rider. And he just, this was like his spare time thing. So he's a cowboy and Bigfoot believer, author, searcher. He's got like a hat of many colors here. Yes, exactly. So he wasn't shy about these beliefs at all. Like I said, he talked to anybody that was willing to listen about it. And one of those people was Bob Gimlin. So Bob was born in Missouri but was raised in Washington. He left the state to serve in the military. And after two tours in the Korean War, he got into a serious car accident and recovered in California for a couple years before he came home to Yakima, Washington. He was a rodeo

man as well, and he was quite the daredevil. By the age of 35, he had children with his first wife before divorcing and remarrying his eventual long-term wife named Judy. He lived a very simple life on the ranch. He raised and trained horses. That was his passion, his work, like he was a horse guy. But what he wasn't was really close friends with Roger. Like they knew each other from years before. They were both in the rodeo circuit, they knew who each other were, and they were both veterans, but they weren't besties or anything like that. Okay. But when Bob ran into Roger in town one day, Roger opened the floodgates about Bigfoot.

He was like, let me tell you all about this. He even went into his truck and pulled out a plaster cast of a Bigfoot footprint that he was just carrying around. I can just imagine just running around. running into this guy and he's like, so-and-so, Bigfoot, he exists. Hold on one moment. I'm just going to grab something real quick. And he grabs this huge footprint. And he's like, look. People are like, oh, right, I'm just grabbing groceries. Thank you. Literally, they were at a gas station. They were at like the union service station. And he was like, okay, like, great. So he kind of, he didn't play into it, but he didn't totally dismiss his,

you know, acquaintance either. He didn't want to be rude. but Roger kept going on and on and he was asking Bob if he wanted to go on to an expedition to Mount St. Helens in search of this elusive creature because he had heard the stories and he knew there was activity there. Roger was at the time recovering from a fight with cancer and now that he was on the mend he was really determined to get out into Squatch Country. And Bob initially turned him down. He's like, dude, I'm really busy. I don't have a lot of time to break away and go on like an expedition. with you. I mean, they're both ranchers running a ranch is a lot of work. He can't just clock out and leave. So he turned him down at first, but they did go on shorter treks out into

the backcountry via horseback and just kind of spent time that way, spent days doing that and a couple little overnights. And that is when Roger really started to wear Bob down about going out on a larger expedition. So at this point, was he believing in Bigfoot or had Roger just talked about it so much? He was finally like, okay, I'll come with you. We'll go. Whatever. Yes, the latter of that.

Okay. So obviously, Roger was hardcore Bigfoot guy. And I think at this point in time, Bob was just like, I'm going to listen to you and I will accept what you're saying. But that doesn't mean that I'm now a believer and I'm dropping everything to go with you. to hunt down this famous cryptid. So during their shorter little trips, Roger would talk about him incessantly about the history, the lore, the legends, the different various evidence that's been popping up about Bigfoot. And he would even bring along a little cassette recorder that he had

copies of recorded testimonials from people who claimed to have seen Bigfoot themselves. So he's like, here, listen to this person and they're going to tell you their story. He's just carrying around a bunch of stuff about Bigfoot all the time. On hand, ready to whip it out of his back pocket. He's like, oh, you don't believe me? Well, listen to this person. I have five hours of witness testimony right here. So even right here, I wrote, Roger's eyes grew wider while Bob rolled his.

He was not entirely convinced. And then in August of 1967, Roger caught wind of a story from Ray Wallace. one of the Wallace brothers of the Wallace Brother logging company that Jerry crew worked for in Six Rivers National Forest. There had been tracks found around Bluff Creek, coupled with strange activity at the work site. Roger knew he had to get there, and he knew exactly who he was going to bring with him. So in early October, the two men loaded up Bob's truck and horse trailer with all of their equipment for an expedition into the forest of Northern California. They brought their riding horses and a pack pony to carry all of their gear. Roger rented a 16mm

Kodak for their trip and filmed their travels. There are various accounts of exactly how long they were in the woods and in the forest during this expedition. Some accounts say a couple days. I've watched interviews with Bob where he says it was two weeks, so anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks they were out there. They rode all day every day. They covered miles upon miles of terrain with no dice. Lots of pretty colors, fall colors, beautiful, but nothing of note, no big foot. But on the last day of their trip, the two decided to explore Bluff Creek one last time. The area was at the very least half a day's ride from the nearest sign of civilization.

It was early afternoon just before they were going to turn back to head home when it happened. The two men were riding through the forest as the sun filtered through the trees, illuminating the fall leaves with bursts of yellow and orange. Roger was in the lead, with Bob taking up the rear, leading along their little pack pony. As they rounded the bend around the upturned root system of a large fallen tree, which had gathered debris from the creek, their horses reared. Both men's horses, along with the pack pony, started backing away, trampling their feet and fussing, clearly startled and upset.

Bob worked to study his horse and looked up to see Roger scrambling in front of him, reaching into a saddlebag to retrieve his camera, dismounting his frightened horse, and yelling, Bob, cover me, as he began to maneuver around the uneven creek bed. He had begun rolling the film moments after grabbing it, and the beginning of the film is blurry in his shaky hands as he maneuvered close, less than 100 feet away from his subject. What is now known today as the Patterson-Gimlin film actually has five minutes,

of content, but it is mostly footage of the forest, panning scenes of large trees, dense forests, and creek beds, as the two men rode their horses throughout the wilderness. What counts is the final 59 seconds. As the picture studies, clear as day, you see it. A large, gorilla-like figure covered head-to-to-toe in dark brownish-black hair walking upright on two legs. Legs, which look strikingly human except for the way in which they moved. The gate is like ours, just not quite. Its long arms were swinging with every long stride as it moved from the men covering ground quickly, and then it turned, just a glance over its shoulder mid-stride, half a second, a minuscule moment in time that has since been immortalized, frozen forever, in a signature turn. And I say it, but maybe I should

clarify. What I really mean to say is she. Because as the creature turned, its head swiveled back on its short, muscular neck, to cast a backwards glance at Roger and Bob, its chest turned slightly towards the camera to reveal breasts. It was a she, and they named her Patty. Just as fast and unexpectedly as it had happened, it was over. She disappeared forever into the trees and the two men were left stunned. After gathering themselves and probably coming down from one of the biggest highs of their lives, they made their way home. Now Roger and Bob were no film buffs at the time. They were rodeo men from Washington. They had no connections with the film world at all. But Roger wanted his film to be shown to the world. Just imagine they're on this trip and I'm just

thinking about Bob. Pop's like, God, we're out here. There's nothing here. I'm sure this last track. He was like, come on, Roger. Like, there's nothing out here. Let's turn around. And he's like, no, no, no, just one more time. So they go out. And then that video that they catch, and I've seen it. I've seen it. And I know exactly what you're talking about when you say she looks back over her shoulder and it's just like a slight glimpse. She like looks back at them like, I see you. And then she just heads off back into the forest. I get goosebumps even thinking about it now because obviously Bob is like is here or there about it like whatever I think he was in it originally just to more so to indulge his friend and to provide companionship but then to like see it like I just thought you were

my crazy friend like what what's going on did you do this like what's right is that yeah and then you know it's kind of like with how I'm picturing Rogers like he kept asking you know one more day Just one more day, you know, a couple more hours, like just one more location. In a lot of interviews that Bob has given over the years, he said that he was the one who had to reel Roger in. Like, I have a life that I need to get back to. We need to end this at some point. And I'm going to be the one to do it. So he was the one that was saying, okay, on this day, we are going to leave.

Because for Roger, like, he was just so desperate to find Bigfoot that he was just willing to do. It's kind of like when you're, you know, gambling. It's like, come on, just one more deal or like one more scratch ticket. I know it's right around the corner. And in this case, it was. So when they arrived home to Yakima, they had the film developed and it was brought to the University of British Columbia for examination and was immediately shot down by the professors. They deemed it as a fake right away. So Roger was discouraged, but certainly not defeated.

And he pressed on. Soon, the Associated Press caught wind of the film. and ran a story that the two med had film evidence of Bigfoot, but funny enough, they never published any pictures from it or anything like that. They were just like, okay, they have this evidence at the end. So that didn't really go anywhere at all. They probably thought it was fake, too. And they're like, this will make a good story, but we don't want to post the video because it's clearly fake, but we want people to read the article. Yeah, so that was kind of a flop. Nothing really happened from there.

And then in early 1968, Life magazine caught win of the story as well. But prior to the Prior to running a story on it, they wanted to see it. They wanted to see it for themselves. So they flew Roger and Bob to New York to meet with them, along with representatives from the American Museum of Natural History, as well as zoologists from the Bronx Zoo. So this whole team was going to review and examine the film before it was ever run in the magazine. Unanimously, the entire team deemed it fake. And Life said, no thank you. And never pursued it as a story.

Wow. Rejection after rejection. So they caught a break with a man named Ivan Sanderson. He was a British biologist who is recognized as one of the founding fathers of cryptozoology. And for those who are not familiar with the actual definition, I got the fancy definition from the Miriam Webster Dictionary. So it is the study and search for animals and especially legendary animals such as Sasquatch, usually in order to evaluate the person. possibility of their existence. He had heard of this film and was a fan pretty much right away. He believed in it, but more so he believed in its potential. And he connected the men with Argosy Magazine who ran the story in April of 1968. All of this anticipation for not much turnout.

There was not much of a response either way about the story. And it wasn't the outcome that Roger was hoping for. So he was a little let down, a lot of buildup for not really much of anything, at least have an uproar of like, it's a fake versus it's real. And then it was just kind of like, well, he's such a believer too. And he's so passionate about it. He's like, finally, someone's listening to me. And then no one's paying any attention to it. They're like, oh, just another crazy story, whatever, don't care. So finally, he got his break. The BBC contacted Roger and expressed their desire to show the film. But back in the 60s, they weren't the BBC that we know now. They weren't that well funded and they needed money for licensing.

So they were going to, they were asking him, a rodeo man from Yakima, Washington for money to help fund the licensing to show his film. So Roger made a deal with them. They could have the footage if he could have the film that they created with the footage. Roger took what they provided after they put it all together and he filmed an additional couple of scenes about him speaking about the trip and his thoughts and theories on Bigfoot in general. And the final product is dubbed Bigfoot, America's Abominable Snowman. So it was like an actual film. It's not just the 59 seconds of footage that he caught. Is it like a documentary? That's a great question. Because from what I can tell and all the research I got, you can't just access this film anywhere. There are a few copies left. One

copy resides at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Maine, but it's only shown for research purposes. Like, you can't just go and rent it somewhere. Weird. Why? Very weird. I'm not really sure. Like, there's a lot of weird, I think it has to do with, like, licensing and rights and things like that. So at this point, Roger is thrilled, but there was a problem. Bob was being pushed out of the picture almost entirely. Their friendship was torn apart as Roger partnered with his brother-in-law to bring the film on a national tour. The film would show in small theaters around the Pacific Northwest. Roger presented talks and spread the word to the world about his film, his experiences, and his

theories. It was his hope that a national tour would raise money to help fund a bigger expedition back to Bluff Creek. The three men, so Roger, Bob, and Roger's brother-in-law took equal shares to the rights for the film. But after a lot of back and forth, legality-wise, and feeling really pushed out of the picture, Bob ended up selling his portion of the rights for less than $10. How much was it worth? I don't know. A lot more now, I'm assuming.

Yeah, I'm like $10 for this. For something that has gone down in history as the most famous supposed Bigfoot footage of all time. Yeah, I mean, I can remember watching this in high school. So five years pass, and they don't speak to each other. at all. And then in 1972, Bob was summoned to Roger's bedside. His cancer had returned, and he was very,

very sick. Roger apologized to Bob for the way that he treated him, and they made grand plans to return back to California to search for Patty or another of her kind. They never had the opportunity to do so, as Roger passed away the very next day

at the age of 38. So young. So, so young. That's really sad. So at this point, Roger is gone, and that left Bob as the brunt of every scrutiny there was. People would call him crazy, taunt him by driving by his home and yelling smart-ass remarks. And they even taunted his wife, Judy, who worked at a local bank. The couple was starting to feel really, really isolated and ridiculed in a town that they had made their home. And Bob wasn't even the Bigfoot fanatic in the first place. I was going to say he didn't even believe in it. He just happened to be there when this

whole incident happened and he sounded like he just wanted to go on some expeditions and some adventures and he's like sure i'll just you look for whatever i'm here out in the wilderness for fun and we'll learn over time that you know he he did change his mind that experience changed everything for him but he was not expecting this type of backlash and was not prepared to be harassed in the way that he was especially now that his partner is you know partner in crime is gone it's just him. People are so rude. Like, why would that be your reaction to go to someone's house? I mean, there are tons of stories and he says a lot of the occurrences and interviews and stuff, but, you know, they would be at home having dinner and then someone would like screech past their

house and like burn out near their driveway and like yell at him like, hey, let's go find Bigfoot, like just being so rude. Hate that. He was facing a lot of ridicule, basically the firing squad. But sightings of Bigfoot were cropping up every way. Oregon, Washington, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Ohio, on and on and on. But for years, Bob wanted no part of the Bigfoot world. Through his experience, he had been a skeptic turned believer, but he didn't expect others to accept Bigfoot's existence just by seeing the film and taking his word for it.

Because if the shoe was on the other foot, he wouldn't either. Seeing is what made him believe. So he kept in the shadows for years. until 2003. After the urging of Swiss researcher René Diadin and Russian author Dimitri Bionov, he appeared at the Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium in California. It's there that for the first time in 35 years he spoke publicly about his encounter. You could have heard a pin drop in that auditorium as people sat silently,

staring at the Bigfoot believer's equivalent of being in the presence of the Pope. He was and still is a god among men to those who believe in Sasquatch. After concluding his talk, the entire room erupted in applause and every single attendee rose to their feet. Bob finally felt a sense of acceptance and he ran with it. He has since traveled to conventions across the country and has given many interviews about his experience with Patty in Six Rivers National Forest in October of 1967. He may be a celebrity in some circles, but not in his world. world. He lives in a 1,500 square foot home in central Washington, nearing 90 years old. He tends to his horses and to his garden and lives a relatively quiet and simple life. The Patterson Gimlin film

changed his life, tore it to pieces, and then put it back together again. He went on record with interviewer John Green, a well-known Canadian Bigfoot researcher saying, quote, I can understand why they don't believe in it, because I didn't believe it either. But I saw one, and I know what I saw, and I know it wasn't a man in a suit. It couldn't have been. But not everyone is convinced. The legitimacy of this film has been up for debate since practically day one. It's been picked apart hundreds of times by thousands of people.

Forensic analysts, scientists, primatologists, filmmakers, and regular Joe Schmo's on the Internet. Books have even been written deconstructing the authenticity of this film. cynics from around the world have picked apart the film digitizing and enhancing the video to study it slowing it down zooming in speeding it up but they don't just harp on the film itself they go after the people who filmed it in his 2004 book the making of bigfoot author gregg long makes his skepticism very well known he points out two men philip morris and bob harmonious in the early 2000s Morris claims to have sold Roger an ape suit, while Harmonious said he is the one who wore it. The problem with this? There is no evidence of their claims. They never produced anything,

no receipt of sale, no photos of the costume, or evidence that it ever existed in the first place. I would think that if you're going to make a claim as big as this, you would have some sort of proof to back it up. And why are you waiting until the 2000s to do it? It sounds like someone trying to get attention to me. Like, were they even in the area? Yes. But they have no proof. It's kind of just, you know, one man's word.

Like they don't have a big foot costume, ape costume in their garage somewhere. There's no receipt. Why were they? And you said it was half a day horseback ride to get to this location. They were just hanging out in the woods waiting for big foot hunters to see them and then did a little look back before they headed into the woods. Like, it just, that seems really far-fetched. Unless they're saying they conspired with these.

two men, which really doesn't seem likely because they're very much, they're, I mean, Bob's life has been ruined. You'd think he'd be like, okay, okay, I made it up. Like, please leave me alone at some point if he had hired someone. And that's such a valid point. Because for Patterson, he passed away, you know, within a year or two of this whole thing really starting to blow up. And he was a Bigfoot fanatic through and through. Like, I'm not sure if he would have ever admitted that he was to blame or he did it himself and made the whole thing up and it was a big hoax but you have such a valid point bob is here and under all of the scrutiny for years of his life and why would he never just come clean and kind of just wipe the slate clean it's just

yeah that's a really good point so as far as the ape suit goes people who believe are really quick to point out how it just couldn't be one. First, for 1967 standards, if this was a suit, it was the best ape suit on planet Earth. Most apesuits of the time were not nearly as detailed, well-fitting, and realistic. Like, if you look back, if you type in, like, you know, ape suit or ape costume of, you know, the 60s and that time frame, they do not look anything like what is on this film. So people are like, all right, well, why? there's such a big difference in the quality of the suit if just regular Joe Schmoe sold him a suit. And there's another very interesting thing. If you were to buy an ape suit at the time,

you'd receive one all right. They existed. But none of them ever had breasts like Patty. So, yeah, they didn't think of apes as women. Like if you were going to get a suit and dress up as an ape, it was going to be a male ape. It wasn't going to have big breasts on it. Yeah, I mean, as a Halloween costume or whatever, It wouldn't be like, you want to be a girl? We're just going to put some open breasts out here for this eight, this hairy eighth costume. Like, you know, that just doesn't seem, especially for the times, super appropriate for someone to be walking around with. But on the other side of the fence, there are those that think it's a hoax, and they point to Roger that he was the one who's obsessed with Bigfoot before his venture into the woods and that he could have easily made one himself. How would he make one?

Does one just know how to make an ape suit? I don't know. He's a rodeo guy. He's not a sower or a Hollywood costume maker. Designer. Yeah. I have this garage full of ape suits that I hand sewed out of sheep wool. Yeah, I don't know.

It's just, it seems far-fetched, but I guess we don't know. I guess it's also coming from two people who. actually believe that Bigfoot might be out there. So we're like, none of this makes sense. Of course it's real, where other people might be picking it apart a little bit more than we would. It's just funny because like you just said, it's coming from two people, one,

which would have laid down his life to say he knew that Bigfoot was real, and the other one who considered the possibility. So it's just odd because that one fact, believers are gonna say they're on their side. as far as seeing it and believing it and whatever. But skeptics are like, well, it's because you believe in Bigfoot that this has to be a hoax because you want it to be real. So they can't win really either way. Roger kind of, just from the way you've described him, he kind of comes off to me as someone who believes in Bigfoot so much that he wouldn't taint the name in that way.

Like he was super desperate to find him and was off doing all this stuff. But he doesn't feel like someone that would make it up to make it real. Like he was out doing so much research and he's like, he has these testimonies, he's got footprints, he's out searching all the time. And it feels like if he wanted to make this fake and make it seem real, he could have done it a lot sooner than he did. And it just feels weird because he, it doesn't feel like that he would try and make this fake thing because that would ruin the legitimacy of it being real. when someone else came forward with it. Yeah, I mean, I have very similar feelings when it comes to that. But like I mentioned, this film has been picked apart. There have been numerous scientific studies regarding the Patterson Gimlin film over the years.

And there seems to be kind of three categories of thinking regarding this footage, which is belief, disbelief, and just plain unsure. Like, people could go either way. I'm just going to go through a couple of notable. people who have made comments on the film. So we have Bernard Huzelmans, who's a zoologist and another prominent figure in cryptozoology. And he thinks that the creature in the film was a man in a suit. And he said that the hair flow pattern is just uniform, meaning that it's not as messy as would be expected for a wild non-human primate, and almost looks like too groomed. to be real. And he also says that the behavior of the creature in the film is oddly calm. Next, we have John Napier, who is a primate expert and was once the director of the Smithsonian's

primate biology program. And he has gone on record to say that he does believe in Bigfoot, but that he does not believe that the film is legit. And then, on to the people who are kind of unsure, they can point to qualities within the film that land on either side with a fence in their minds. So Esteban Sarmiento is a physical anthropologist specialist at the American Museum of Natural History. He has over two decades of experience with working with wild apes and he says, quote, I did find some inconsistencies in the appearance and behavior that might suggest a fake, but nothing that conclusively shows that this is the case. And then there's Jessica Rose and James Gamble, who both run the Motion and Gate Analysis Lab at Stanford University.

They conducted a high-tech human replication attempt of the gate of the creature in the film, so Patty, and said that some aspects of the creature's walk had been replicated successfully within the lab, but not all of them. And then we have Dale Sheets, who was the head of the documentary film department at Universal Studios. He and a few technicians from the special effects department were shown the film, and they concluded that, quote, we could try to fake it, but we would have to create a completely new system of artificial muscles and find an actor who could be trained to walk like that. It might be done, but we would have to say that it would be almost impossible. And I do have to note, this is like 1960s, late 60s time frame is when they made this quote. And then there's Bill Munn, who is a retired special effects and makeup artist.

After years of researching the film and analyzing it, it is his opinion that the film depicts a non-human animal and not a man in a suit. There's John Chamber, an Academy Award-winning monster maker, who is very famous for his innovative and flexible masks in the Planet of the Ape series. And at one point, it was actually rumored that he was involved in creating a suit for Patterson to use in this big elaborate hoax. But in a 1997 interview, when he was asked about that, he denied the allegation saying, I'm good, but I'm not that good. If the creature is a man in a suit, then it is no ordinary gorilla suit. It is not something that they bought or rented in a store. It would have to be something tailor made.

So at this point, it's just one man's word against another. Like he said, she said, type of thing. So obviously tons of varying opinions there, but let's just put the film aside for a moment because there are some very notable names that have their own judgments based on other evidence. In a 2002 interview, one of the world's foremost experts on chimpanzees, globally renowned primatologist Jane Goodall gave us a glimpse into her own thoughts on Bigfoot. Jane Goodall herself is a Bigfoot believer? the woman herself the woman herself if you don't believe jane goodall then who are you going to believe

i know so she was giving an interview and the interviewer asked do you believe if there are any undiscovered large ape species and she responded you're talking about bigfoot or yetty or saskwatch and the person says yes and kind of laughs and she says you'll be amazed when i tell you that I'm sure they exist. I've talked to so many Native Americans who've all described the same sounds and two who have seen them. There was even a tiny little snippet

in the newspaper just last week that said British scientists found what they believe to be a Yeti hare and that scientists at the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal. Well, there you have it. Jane Goodall. Case close.

Episodes over. He's real. End a story. End it now. you. Goodbye. Everyone so much for tuning in. Yeah, no, we have more to say. But her opinion, her professional opinion, I mean, she is the go-to person when it comes to anything related to primatology. She's a pioneer expert in the field. So to have her say in, you know, just not her opinion and personal feelings about it, but from a professional standpoint, that's something to be

said. Jeff Muldrum, one of the foremost experts on foot morphology in the world, The keeper of the largest archive of Bigfoot footprints and casts, author and anthology and anatomy professor at Idaho State University, says, quote, No, I don't believe in Bigfoot. Belief usually connotates a position of faith, a conviction held in the absence of evidence. I, for one, am convinced by the evidence I have studied at length. There it is, another scientist saying that it's real.

Plaster casts of Bigfoot prints seem to be a dime a dozen. They are everywhere, flashed in magazines and newspapers, people holding up plastercast next to their face or putting their foot next to the plaster cast. So with so many of them in so many different places, there are bound to be fakes. But there's one feature of a print that is very difficult to impersonate, the mid-tarsal break. And to be thorough and fancy, this was first recognized in 1935 and has been characterized as the dorsal flexion, in the sagittal plane occurring at the calenocuboid joint of non-human primates. Okay, in the English version? In layman's terms.

And it's funny because it's like, okay, dorsal flexion, sageal plane, the calenocuboid joint, like I understand these things in little snippets, but altogether. Same, every word you said, I'm like, okay, here it is. Okay, you're talking about this part. And then you lost me towards the end, though, a little bit. So altogether, it's very confusing. But essentially, Eventually, it is the ability that non-human primates have that allows them to lift their heel independently of the rest of their foot. So there is quite literally a break midway through their foot. Humans have a more rigid foot while non-human primates have a more mobile midfront that is adaptive for tree climbing.

And some of the more... I have that on my toes. You have prehensile toes. I can stand on my toes like their knuckles and they can like hold on to things. It's an adaptation. We'll all get it one day, but I'm just ahead of the time. You may have some weird ass toes, but you don't have a mid-tarsal break. So most of the more believable casts that people hold in high regard, they all show this mid-tarsal break.

So it's right in the middle of the foot instead of it being flat all the way across on the print, there's a clear break within the mid-tarsal break. within the midsection of the foot. Investigator Jimmy Chilchut of Conroe Police Department in Texas is a finger and footprint specialist, and he has visited Jeff Muldrum and examined over 150 of the casts in his collection. He points to one particular print taken back in 1987 in Walla Walla, Washington, which convinced him that Bigfoot was the real deal. In a National Geographic interview, he states, quote,

The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I have ever seen. It certainly was not human and of no known primate that I have ever examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridge was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal had very thick skin. The walla walla-wallop print was the first of many that solidified his opinion. The Skookum cast, which is a 400-pound block of plaster made in the year 2000 from an impression made in the mud found in the Gifford Pinshaw National Forest, is a cast of what appears to be a large animal that laid down on the ground on its side. Meldrum said that the cast contains recognizable impressions of a forearm, a thigh, a buttocks, an Achilles tendon, and a heel. It's 40 to 50% bigger than any normal human being.

The anatomy doesn't jive with any known animal. Any known animal. It's funny he should say that. It may seem like we have conquered all of planet Earth. And in some ways we have. But despite the sprawling suburbs, cookie cutter neighborhoods, and endless strip malls, there are still corners of our world that remain unexploited and largely unexplored. And within them, species live and thrive.

without acknowledgement from humans. That is, until they're stumbled upon. We are all very well aware of the alarming rate at which we are losing species, but we also add new ones as well. As of June of this year, seven new species of animals have been discovered, and depending on if you count microbes and how you classify those, scientists estimate a huge amount of our planet's biodiversity has yet to be found at an astonishing 86 to 99%. Wow. Is this including the ocean? Because I think the ocean is, I forget what the

percentage is that's been explored, but it's extremely low. Yes. I think there's, I don't know who said it and when, but I remember learning that we know more about our solar system than we do about our own planet's oceans, which says a lot because we don't know shit about space. So yeah. So depending on if you're counting like tiny little microbes, it's not like, you know, 86% of, you know, the world species aren't huge animals, but there's still species that we just don't know about yet. And let's go back to Jane Goodall, our girl.

So when she mentioned it, at the time, the unidentified hair, so that interview was back in 2002. So at the time, they had this unidentified hair and no one knew where it came from and they thought it was a Yeti. So in 2013, further DNA tests on that hair sample, which came from two unidentified animals, one from northern India and one from Bhutan, were performed by Oxford University's genetic professor Brian Sykes. He found that they both matched an ancient polar bear. It is his opinion that Bigfoot is a real biological animal and that it's a polar bear. bear brown bear hybrid, which no one has yet to see alive. The hairs were a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone that was found in Norway that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago, which is when the polar bear and the brown bear were very closely related,

but they started to begin to separate into different species. So the two species today are still genetically closely related and are known to interbreed when their territories overlap. And he goes on to say that he doesn't mean to give the impression that there are ancient polar bear, brown bear hybrids wandering around the Himalayas. He is suggesting that there could be some sort of subspecies of brown bear in the area that are descendants from this ancestor that are wandering around. And if there's some sort of hybrid that we haven't discovered yet, they may act a certain way and display different types of behaviors that people are reporting and are thinking are Bigfoot. So this hair that they found is not related to Bigfoot at all then.

Correct. But he thinks that people are indeed seeing and hearing weird things from an animal they cannot identify. He thinks that's legit in this area in the Himalayas. But he thinks it's the spare. He doesn't think that it's a giant bipedal ape. He thinks that it's the spare. So there is the unknown. And then there is the rediscovered. Species that have seemingly come back from the dead thought to have gone extinct long ago, only to pop back up again.

Take, for example, the celicant. Thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, this fish popped back up in 1938 in the nets of a local fishermen in Africa. And since then, two species of celiacants have since been identified and have been found in populations off of the East Coast of Africa and in the waters off of Indonesia. So they're ocean fish. They are, they're deep, they live in the deep waters of the ocean, but everyone thought they were extinct 65 million years ago. And then all of a sudden, some guy just caught one in his net. And he's like, okay, but what is this? I thought it was extinct. Yeah. Well, there it is. The ocean is just so huge and unexplored that we have no idea what's going on down there because most of the ocean is inaccessible to us. I mean, we haven't seen a majority of it. So you've got some stuff hiding in there. So it's not just in the ocean. The New Guinea Singing Dog, a species that is closely related to the Australian dingo, was thought to have gone extinct until 2016 when a population of them were rediscovered in a remote region of the country.

or the night parrot considered the holy grail for bird watchers. This nocturnal bird lives in very remote areas of Australia and is very difficult to find, thought to be extinct for over 100 years until one was spotted in 1979. And since then, only a handful of confirmed sightings have been documented since. Wow, that's really cool. This is kind of reminding me of, especially because in our area, or my area, because you're in Washington now, where people have said mountain lions aren't in New England, but there's these strange appearances coming up. And if you look it up, it's like mountain lions are extinct, but are they just very elusive? Did I ever tell you about, it wasn't this last summer, it was the summer before, about Ryan's trip to Maine? No.

Okay. So for everybody listening, nothing matters. My previous boyfriend, Ryan went on a canoe trip up in Northern Maine with his friends. He went backpacking. It was a big, like, they were out there in Northern Maine. And if anyone knows where, you know, what means like it's no man's land for most of the state. So they were paddling in the very early morning. They rounded a bend and there was a little area of shore.

And they saw a mountain lion with a duck in its mouth and then wandered back into the woods. And they all like lost their shit because there was multiple. There was like three of them. And they were like, what the hell did we just see? And then they reported it to the Fish and Wildlife Department. And I don't know whatever happened with it, but they know what they saw it. And it's just like, it's so funny because, you know, we can deem things extinct all we want. But it's a known animal that's still prevalent in a lot of our country.

And that's their historic range. And they're in Canada. And Maine's right there. Yeah, it's like they can, they don't have to go through border patrol. Like, they can just come on. over like how do you know where they are all the time and we're not out in the back country all the time either so so you just never know you know what's lurking around so is Sasquatch some sort of ape living in these remote areas of the

world sure as of today there is no evidence of primates in North America but that doesn't mean we won't ever find any some Bigfoot supporters believe that the animal is a distant descendant of gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of ape from southern China. The first remains of this species was identified by an anthropologist in 1935. And since then, only a small amount of remains have ever been found, including teeth and mandibles. This species is thought to be closely related to the modern-day orangutang. And this ancient ape in life would have been huge, anywhere from 440 to 660 pounds.

That's massive. And it's a known animal. Yeah. Lived once. So this is where theories come in. Theories connecting them to Bigfoot postulate that giganticipithecus could have crossed the Bering Land Bridge during the last Ice Age and then came to inhabit much of North America, especially where that land bridge connected to North America, which is the good old Pacific Northwest, you know, into Alaska and into the Pacific Northwest. That's a really interesting theory to have for that. Has there ever been any weird remains found in the Pacific Northwest?

Okay. So there are a lot of theories and thoughts and opinions. That's what it is at this point. They're theories and thoughts and opinions on the existence or lack thereof of Bigfoot. And same goes with the Patterson Gimlin film. Arguments against the existence of Bigfoot point to the elephant in the room. If there is such thing as Bigfoot, why do we have nobody? Believers are quick to fire back.

Nature devours the dead. Even remains of known elusive animals like bears or cougars who pass from natural causes are very difficult to locate, even when we know that they are around. So the question remains, is Sasquatch real? Or is it just a character in ancient stories? Passed down over the decades in a real-life game of telephone, becoming more and more elaborate with each passing generation? Was it once real? Witness and encountered by ancient peoples, but maybe just in small numbers, and they have since done. out? Or is it living, breathing, and existing right now as we speak, keeping hidden and tucked

away the best it can in a world rapidly encroaching on what was once their home? Years after he reported Bigfoot activity in Northern California, Ray Wallace, who partially inspired Roger Patterson to venture into the forest that fateful day, was an old man in the early 2000s. And it was then that he admitted to making his portion of the Bigfoot story all up. Ray never went public about his time as a hoaxer, and he has since passed away, but his family finally came clean to reporters after his death. They said that when Ray heard of talk of Bigfoot up where his logging company was working, he milked it. When Jeff Muldrum, the anthropologist with the Bigfoot cast collection, learned about Ray falsifying Bigfoot evidence, like how he created his own homemade 16-indexam.

wooden feet to tramp around the work site to prank his co-workers. That's dedication. That's dedication. And that reminds me of Harry Truman. Yes. Who did that to get guests or visitors. Yeah, to like get them to like hang out. I remember I read about someone who did that down in Alabama.

They made these big feet and they would stomp around the woods down there years ago and people were claiming to see these footprints. And then it turned out that it was some guy who was just putting on these feet. and walking around to mess of people. This has nothing to do with the end of the story, but it reminds me, I have no idea where it was, and it was a few years ago at this point, but I'm pretty sure someone dressed up as Bigfoot in like a gilly suit, and someone killed him, like shot him and killed him because he thought he was shooting Bigfoot. So that's gone wrong.

Yeah, so don't dress up and go out into the Pacific Northwest or anywhere. Or anywhere. Especially on someone's property dressed as Bigfoot. You never know who you're going to. run into. But back to Jeff Muldrum. So when he heard of everything that Ray Wallace did, he had something to say, which can really hold true for almost any report about hoaxers. He says, though it's possible, the whole phenomenon is a series of overlapping independent jokes. It's also likely that behind all of the noise is a real creature. Fifty-four years after the Patterson

Gimlin footage was captured in the forest of California and made its way around the world to millions, the film has never been conclusively debunked, yet it has never been confirmed as authentic either. Roger Patterson maintained his film's authenticity until the day he died, and Bob Gimlin is adamant to this day that what he saw that day was very real. No matter what you call it, Samakas, Yowie, Yaron, Soskatow, Grassman, Skunk ape, orang Pendek, Yeti, Magolan Monster, Skukum, Fok Monster, Bonnouche, Sasquatch or Bigfoot. No definitive proof of these creatures has ever been presented yet. The stories endure and with them places seem deeper, darker, and wilder. And there's just one

question that remains, do you believe? Yes, I believe. I tried my very, very hardest to make that episode as in the middle of the road as I could. Unbiased. Unbiased. Presenting just this is what this side says and this is what the other says without interjecting my personal feelings. But I believe. And I always have. And I think even just, you know, as I learned more and more, I grew up as a kid with my, I watched the Patterson Gimlin film when I was a child. And I watched pretty much every Bigfoot documentary. Most of it not by choice. I mean, my dad was a huge Bigfoot fanatic and actually reminded me a lot. lot of Roger Patterson. And as the years have gone on and hearing testimony from like Jane Goodall and all of these different forensic experts and hearing things come to light that just make it more difficult to discount certain things. Of course, there are a thousand to everyone maybe possibility that this piece of evidence is true. There's a thousand that are totally fake. And but you just can't, if there's even just one, then to me, you can't totally discredit it.

And I just really hope that this episode made people think. I don't expect anyone to hop on board the Bigfoot train, but I just wanted everyone to really ponder and think about the possibility that there is a Bigfoot out there or a creature that we have not yet discovered. I think a good point that you brought to light in this episode, at least for me, is that Bigfoot. might not be what we're all imagining and making it out to be because like you said with the game of telephone things morph into something else and maybe Bigfoot is real just not in this way that we've portrayed them as and it is like Jane Goodall was saying there's some type of ape that we haven't discovered and maybe is in North America and I think that that was a good point that you might think of Bigfoot and be like that's outrageous there's no way but maybe

he's different or she is different than what everyone's saying. Which is so valid. I'm looking up at my desk right now and I have three things right in front of me that are Bigfoot and they all look different. You know, one of them is signature paddy pose. The other is the sign we got when I was in the Badlands and then a little keychain ornament thing. Can you please post the picture of you in the world's largest Bigfoot for her Instagram photos? Definitely.

I think the biggest draw about Bigfoot for a lot of people, whether or not you believe in what the world has kind of portrayed him or her to be, is a little deeper than just like a big ape. It's more of going back to places of the world and beings of the world that have kind of escaped us so far. because we really do think that like we're the end all be all of the planet and we know everything and we have eyes on everything and that's just not the case. And I think for a lot of people, it's very intriguing and comforting almost to know that there are things out there that we don't know about and that just live their lives untouched by us. And it's kind of like romantic in a way for a lot of people who love the natural world. I was going to say I think one of the draws about Bigfoot is how elusive that it is. And it's almost this, it's this mythical, magical creature that might actually exist. I think that it's definitely a big draw because of that.

So that's it. That's all I have. And I told Cassie, while I was researching this, I was putting a limit on myself and pulling in the reins because I could just go on and on and on. There were so many articles and so many avenues that I could. have gone with and covered, and that just means we'll revisit the Bigfoot topic in another episode in the future. But for now, I wanted to focus on just the broad strokes. And that was our introduction to Bigfoot for National Park After Dark, at least. And I hope everyone enjoyed it. Well, I'm really stoked that you visit Bigfoot for spooky season. And thank you for bringing him

to our show because it has been a long time coming. And I know that you've been bursting at the seems to find a reason to bring him up. And I just think October right now is the perfect time for him to make his appearance on our show. All right, everyone. Well, that's it for this week. We will see you next Monday. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Bye. Thank you so much for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale or story suggestion, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at National Park After Dark and Twitter at NPAD Podcast.

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who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.