Original subtitles

Tonight on "The Proof is Out There."

In this special episode,

a deep dive into the most provocative evidence of Bigfoot.

I am convinced this evidence demonstrates the existence

of an unrecognized species.

From thermal imagery some consider a slam dunk.

I knew exactly what we had on camera.

To scientific analysis of footprints.

This particular animal's footprints have been found

on a number of occasions.

To photos that light up the internet.

We'll show you why some skeptics are becoming believers.

Every year that passes brings us one year closer

to academic acceptance of the species.

This is no hoax.

If this were a fake suit, we'd be able to tell.

But is it proof?

"The Proof is Out There: The Bigfoot Files."

Good evening and welcome to another season

of "The Proof is Out There."

We are back.

Tonight, we're focusing a whole episode

on one of the most compelling mysteries in history, Bigfoot.

We'll be investigating some of the freshest,

most compelling evidence Bigfoot hunters

say they've ever seen.

The question, is the creature real?

Is it a legend simply stuck in our cultural consciousness

or is it just the world's longest running hoax?

The big problem with Bigfoot is that much

of the alleged proof turns out to be faked

like this video from 2013.

It's one of the complications of undertaking an investigation

of a topic that's this controversial

is that it seems to attract hoaxers like moths to a flame.

It really irritates me because it diminishes those

of us who take this very seriously.

And yet, serious Bigfoot researchers seem

to be growing in number.

A recent article on the cover of the Wall Street Journal

reported that real scientists are devoting real effort

to the study of and search for Bigfoot, AKA Sasquatch,

even if most are doing it secretly

to avoid reputational harm.

I think that this generation of scientists are open-minded

to the prospect of other relic hominoids living

alongside our own species.

How can that be?

Well, many experts are reexamining the evidence

of previous hoaxes and finding flaws

in the arguments of the doubters.

Take the ongoing debate between believers

and skeptics over Ray Wallace,

the man who was involved with the event

that first made Bigfoot famous.

Bluff Creek, California, 1958.

Hundreds of massive footprints are found

in the soil by men constructing a road

into a remote area of northern California.

A headline in a local paper gets national pickup

and the name Bigfoot is born.

The contractor on the project was Ray Wallace

and when he died, his kids told the press

that their dad was Bigfoot all along

and had used these carved wooden stompers

to leave prints all over the Pacific Northwest.

Case closed? Not according to believers.

The carved wooden feet alleged

to be the source of those footprints simply

do not match the footprint record

that has been collected and studied from that region.

In fact, compare the print on the right,

which Meldrum believes is a real Bigfoot print

to the known hoax on the left.

Meldrum points to the identical oval shaped toes of the fake

that are not reflected in the other footprints.

And while the hoaxes' credibility

has been deteriorating,

belief in the earliest reports

of Bigfoot has been gaining strength.

We're talking about the folklore of Native American tribes.

Native Americans have had the longest relationship

with the creature we now call Bigfoot.

Field researcher Cliff Barackman points

to the images like this,

the so-called Hairy Man pictographs thought

to have been created by the Californian Tule River tribe

around the year 500 AD.

They say this is a depiction of a Sasquatch

that they just happen to call Hairy Man

in their particular language.

The male is literally eight and a half feet tall

and his arms are spread six feet wide.

Note this interesting detail.

There are other animals depicted in this cave.

Centipede, deer, beaver, coyote.

You name it. They're all real animals.

So why would this one example show something

that is fanciful and mythological

when everything else there is basically a drawing

of things that are still found there?

Now, I wanna show you something.

Possibly the most confounding artifact we have ever seen.

This is a photo of a ceremonial mask

of the Tsimshian people of British Columbia, Canada.

It was collected around 1914.

Take a close look at the skull, the nose, and the teeth.

This sure looks like a primate of some kind.

Just one problem.

There are no known primates indigenous to North America.

This mask was such an accurate

and naturalistic depiction

of what could only be a great ape.

The very prominent eyebrows with very sunken eye sockets.

The nose with nostrils that are laterally directed,

a broad nose, but really significant

is this distance between the nose and the upper lip.

So what would've been the inspiration

if some form of great ape didn't exist in North America?

If this mask, believed to have been carved

in the middle of the 19th century,

really is a depiction of a real creature,

we still have to explain how

that creature got to North America.

One current theory is that Bigfoot originated

from some common Asian ancestor, possibly gigantopithecus.

Over the millennia, that species could have branched

into other legendary hominids like the Yeti of Asia

or the Yowie of Australia,

while the subspecies we call Bigfoot might have migrated

to North America via the Bering land bridge.

The most likely scenario is that a population

of giant, terrestrial, bipedal apes

that had dispersed through Southern and Eastern Asia

had expanded its range into North America.

But if that's true,

where are the Sasquatch skeletons?

We find bones of fossils of other things like dinosaurs.

Why not Bigfoot?

Dr. Meldrum says that fact

doesn't discount Bigfoot's existence.

It seems like there's fossils everywhere,

but when you consider the periods of time

and the number of organisms through that period,

it's a remarkably small fraction

that ever are fossilized and discovered by paleontologists.

We continually find fossils of species

that we had no idea existed.

The absence of evidence

doesn't mean the evidence of absence.

As we've said, there are no Bigfoot fossils,

but there are alleged Bigfoot footprints.

So let's take a closer look at a particular collection

of prints that has gained notoriety

amongst the Bigfoot community, which is...

No small feat.

This story begins all the way back in 1991

in the Blue Mountains

of Washington state just north of Mill Creek.

Former U.S. forest patrolman

and Bigfoot investigator Paul Freeman has come here

with a colleague looking for evidence of Bigfoot.

Sure enough, what they found were hundreds

of tracks of a Sasquatch.

Freeman measures the prints

and makes these plaster casts.

He's convinced this area is a Bigfoot hotspot.

And over the years, the evidence just keeps piling up.

1992, in the neighboring Deduct Spring area

of the Blue Mountains,

Freeman shoots this video showing

what he claims is a Bigfoot ambling through the woods.

(bleep).

The creature allegedly left more prints like this.

And four years later,

even more prints found in the moist ground

in the nearby Five Points area.

Look closer. These whoppers are 14 inches long.

If they're real, whatever left them is big.

Really big.

Many of these footprints penetrate

into the ground quite deeply.

And this photograph right here,

you can see right there, the midtarsal pressure ridge.

Check it out. According to Barackman,

this midtarsal pressure ridge is one

of the key differences between human and Sasquatch anatomy.

Behind the metatarsals is a big jumble

of bone right beneath the ankle.

But that jumble of bones in human beings,

it doesn't bend at all because we have an arch

that holds our foot stiff,

but Sasquatch can actually bend their foot

to some degree at that location.

It is called the midtarsal joint.

Of course, some have claimed this

was all one big hoax perpetrated by Freeman,

but Barackman says we know what faked prints look like.

You can see when we compare Freeman's

to a known fake made with a wooden prosthetic.

It sure looks like there's a difference.

Upon push-off, sometimes a mound of dirt

is raised up behind the metatarsals.

This was not possible with a fake wooden prosthetic.

The idea of the midtarsal break was actually developed

by our very own Bigfoot expert, Jeff Meldrum.

Meldrum's hypothesis has been, no pun intended,

a major step

in the investigative research of Sasquatches.

Let's see what our experts have to say

about these particular prints.

Anthropologist Kathy Strain explains

there's always been some skepticism

when it comes to the findings of Paul Freeman.

A lot of people said he found so much evidence.

He was outside all the time

and he found prints here and he found prints there.

And he has that well-known video

that there's just no way that he could be authentic.

We know Professor Meldrum believes in Bigfoot,

but he's also on the lookout for any potential hoaxes.

That's why Meldrum decided to drop in unexpectedly

on Freeman to verify his evidence firsthand.

I was a bit incredulous,

but I thought, what have I got to lose?

Then he saw the latest Five Points tracks up close.

Meldrum quickly concluded they couldn't be prints

from some local animal.

And the most likely candidate out there is the bear.

The bear isn't completely flatfooted.

Its heel does not entirely rest on the ground.

The heel of a bear has a very pointed

in appearance as opposed

to the very rounded, full heel pad of the Sasquatch foot.

But the real a-ha moment was, you guessed it,

evidence of that same midtarsal ridge ruling

out prints made by any human foot.

The heel is elevated.

This, retaining that midfoot flexibility,

the advantage of a very flexible grasping foot

for climbing up in the trees.

Another one that jumped out is this track

from Mill Creek in 1991,

separated by a considerable number of years

and yet showing this exact proportions, the orientation.

Now to quote Lewis Carroll,

"It gets even curiouser."

Since all of these prints show evidence

of the midtarsal ridge and are the same size,

Meldrum and Cliff Barackman not only believe

that these prints are real,

but that they could be coming

from the same individual specimen of Bigfoot.

This particular animal's footprints have been found

on a number of occasions in 1991, 1992, '96.

There were remarkable similarities

that suggested these could in fact be the same individual.

And get this.

Based on research, Meldrum thinks Sasquatch can live

to be about 30 to 50 years old.

So this specimen could very well be

at least 15 to 25 years of age.

This evidence demonstrates the existence

of an unrecognized species.

Our verdict? Potential primate print.

We're sure these prints don't come from a bear.

They sure look different from known fakes

and that midtarsal ridge appears

to eliminate the human foot too.

If they're real, they could be valuable evidence

in proving Bigfoot's existence.

It's been said that Bigfoot exhibits nocturnal behavior.

Perhaps to hunt or to avoid detection.

But the cloak of darkness couldn't hide the creature

in the stunning footage you're about to see captured

by two campers armed with a night vision camera.

It's May 2012 near the town of Quincy, Florida.

Retired army ranger, Stacy Brown Sr., now deceased,

and his filmmaker son, Stacy Brown Jr.,

are camping into Torreya State Park

on a search for the elusive Bigfoot.

They start hearing some noises,

so they pull out their Flir thermal camera

and head off down a trail.

We would hear something running on our right

and then we would hear something running on our left

and it just stopped real quick.

And then dad looked up at the, you know,

up at the tree and he is like, "Oh, I see something."

The thermal camera is rolling

as Stacy Sr. notices a little black object sticking out

of one side of a tree.

Then it takes off and crosses this gap

and he goes into full blown panic mode.

The camera goes dead.

He's like, "We gotta go. We gotta go."

He's like, "Do you got your gun?"

Back at their truck, Stacy Jr. gets a first peek

at this eye popping footage

and this money shot that looks just like

the iconic lookback frame of Patty

from the famous Patterson-Gimlin film,

which claimed to capture Bigfoot strolling

alongside a northern California creek in 1967.

I knew exactly what we had on camera.

It was proof to me and my dad

because who on a Tuesday night is a mile and a half

into the woods running around with no flashlight?

Noted Bigfoot investigator Steve Cole

says he's not surprised by the area

where this footage was captured.

In Florida, they have something called the skunk ape

and there's been a lot of sightings

over many years of what they describe

as a Bigfoot type of creature.

What they call that is the skunk ape,

partly because it smells skunky,

but for all intents and purposes,

it's the same thing as a Bigfoot.

It's not quite as big or robust

as the ones in say, the Pacific Northwest,

but that is kind of expected due

to the climate being a lot more tropical.

These swamp sightings go back to the native tribes.

The Seminoles and the Muskogee

called the creature Esti Capcaki, or Tall Man,

and claimed he was the protector of the forest.

So could this be what the Browns encountered?

We turned to our experts for answers.

We first asked the most obvious question.

Could this just be a person?

It was shot with a thermal imager

and so it's picking up the heat signature.

Typically, if any clothing is being worn,

it masks the intensity of the heat emanating

from those covered parts of the body.

Honestly, don't see any of that.

It's just a pretty uniform signature

that would suggest a body a la naturale.

But why would a person be walking

around nude in the woods?

Wildlife biologist Stephanie Manka

instead notes the way the figure moves seems more

like a different animal that doesn't wear clothes.

It looks to be like a large primate,

but it doesn't seem to match the body structure

of the living apes, of chimpanzees,

or gorillas being the most prominent ones.

It seems like its legs are too long

and when gorillas walk on their hind legs,

they're not hunched over like that.

They're more upright.

Some have theorized that gorillas

or large chimps could have escaped

from one of the private zoos

that have littered Florida over decades.

But anthropologist Kathy Strain says

neither this creature's morphology

nor its gait support that theory.

The way it comes out of the trees

is what we call a groucho walk.

It's very typical of what witnesses say

Bigfoot walks like.

You can see it on the Patterson-Gimlin film.

You can see it in other examples

where it's this strangely bent knee gait.

It seems to be out of human proportions

in the sense that you can't see a neck.

It has very beefy looking arms.

It has interesting legs that seem shorter

than what you would see in humans.

Whatever this was, it was pretty big.

In excess of six, six and a half,

seven feet in height perhaps.

And quite bulky.

It appears very substantial.

That is the arms and the legs are not spindly.

They appear to be thick and muscular.

Or could this all just be a hoax?

In order to have this video be credible,

I would expect to see a lot

more thermal imagery through the trees.

I wouldn't expect it to just completely disappear.

Stacy Brown Jr. claims the reason the clip ends

is because the camera stopped working.

So what does Meldrum think?

I know Stacy actually, personally,

and have visited with him.

I have no reason to suspect that he contrived this.

And so the only other question would be

is anyone foolish enough

to traipse around buck naked in the dark?

Our verdict? Unknown creature.

Given that this footage was filmed at night

with an early generation thermal imaging camera,

we don't quite have enough information

to reach a definitive answer,

but whether this was indeed the Florida skunk ape

or merely a subspecies of Florida Man

with a proclivity for nocturnal nudism, we can say this.

The situation definitely warrants further investigation.

There have only been a handful of instances

where someone reported seeing a juvenile Sasquatch.

You're about to see one of them.

A rare glimpse at what some are calling a baby Bigfoot.

Take a look.

May 23rd, 1997, the Catskill Mountains of New York,

and Doug Pridgen is filming his friends around a fire.

It's a Friday night and they're camped out

for a nearby music festival, but they are not alone.

- Are we filming now? - We're filming.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

In the background of the footage,

a shape emerges between the trees.

It appears to be a small, bipedal creature

that proceeds to climb and swing from the branches.

Look again, especially at that swinging motion.

This is not a dude in a suit.

There's no way a person could imitate

that kind of motion up in a tree.

Most of those branches probably

couldn't even support an adult human male's weight.

It has to be an ape of some sort.

I think that is a Sasquatch

doing baby Sasquatch stuff up in a tree.

While reported sightings

of young Sasquatch-like primates are rare, they do exist,

including one story from British Columbia

that dates all the way back to the 1800s.

The story goes that on the Trans-Canadian railroad,

the railroad workers saw a juvenile Sasquatch,

even though they didn't call it that,

'cause the word didn't exist yet.

They hit it with a rock,

knocked it out, and basically captured it.

People came and looked at it.

A couple newspaper accounts depict

how big it was, how tall it was.

It wouldn't eat this. It would eat that.

And then it disappears.

Some people think that they are gonna ship it back to the UK

and it died in transit and they threw it overboard.

Dr. Grover Krantz suggested

that perhaps P.T. Barnum bought it

because it was around that time

that Jojo the Dogface Boy became part

of the traveling circus for P.T. Barnum.

Barackman also believes that if you look closely,

you can actually see a potential mama Sasquatch

in this footage.

Right there. Look at that.

It's moving. It just moved back that direction.

One of the most common misconceptions

about Bigfoot is that it is an individual.

But it's not true.

They clearly reproduce as any normal animal would

and right here, this is the proof of that.

We have a larger one down below and a juvenile up in a tree.

Many Sasquatch researchers

believe the reason juvenile Bigfoot sightings

are so rarely documented, may be the same reason

you've probably never seen a baby pigeon

or a baby squirrel.

The mothers of these animals

secretly protect their young offspring

in secluded nests or shelters

until the moment they are big and strong enough

to reveal themselves to the outside world.

Let's see if this potential baby Bigfoot is ready

to reveal himself to our experts.

Some question if this could possibly

be a human child swinging on these branches.

The problem is humans, for all their agility,

don't have the capability

to cavort around amongst the branches of a tree

as the individual that I witness in this film.

That points to at least the infant

being something other than human.

So if it's not human, what about a small bear?

Infant bears are known to climb trees.

But Meldrum says this creature's anatomy

is much closer to an ape's.

Its limb proportions aren't

that different from a small chimpanzee.

Either what we're looking at

is something like a chimpanzee infant

or it is a young Sasquatch.

Private investigator Steve Coles was one of

the first people to investigate this mysterious video.

We had to confirm, and we did with the property owner,

that they did not allow any animals

whatsoever on the property because of insurance purposes.

I did make calls around to see if there was any escapes

from zoos or medical laboratories and there weren't.

We checked with wildlife biologist,

Stephanie Manka, to see if she could shed any light

on this potential primate.

So based on primate behavior,

I would expect the young to be closer

to the adult because primates,

they tend to have fewer young

and the young tend to stay around the mother

for a long period of time.

I wouldn't expect it to be so far away

from the mother in the trees.

And I highly doubt that a mother

with its young would bring it so close

to people at an event like a music festival

where there is a lot of noise and a lot of people there.

In fact, it is this behavior

that makes Manka disagree with Meldrum

on the potential identity of these creatures.

With bears, they love to scavenge on human foods

and in fact, a festival like this could even attract bears

because they could realize

that there's a lot of free food around

for them to scavenge.

Black bears can easily climb trees

and often moms will encourage their cubs

to go up trees to protect them from predators.

I think it's most likely a bear cub

that's swinging in these branches and not a primate.

Our verdict? Unidentified animal.

Manka thinks the creature's behavior says bear cub,

while Meldrum thinks its limb proportions mean primate.

Seems like the only thing our experts can agree on

is that whatever this thing is, it certainly isn't human.

With the proliferation of trail cams in America's forests,

it's often asked why we haven't recorded the Sasquatch on one.

Well, maybe we have, as you're about to see.

September 16th, 2007, Ridgeway, Pennsylvania.

Rick Jacobs fastens a motion sensing camera

in a remote section of the Allegheny National Forest

about 115 miles northeast of Pittsburgh.

He's hoping to photograph deer that may be using the trail,

but when he reviews the pictures he's captured,

he sees this.

Two furry bear cubs foraging at 20:04:23.

But check out this second image, taken 28 minutes later,

where we see an ape-like animal from a rear side angle

with its head obscured by its shoulders.

In the third image, taken 30 seconds later,

the animal, lean and elongated,

appears to be smelling the ground near

where deer attractant mix had been scattered.

Field researcher Cliff Barackman tells us that

where these photos were taken is definitely Bigfoot country.

I've spoken to several witnesses

who have seen Sasquatches just a few miles away

from where this particular picture was taken.

One gentleman was driving his van down the road

when this thing came out of the forest

and you know what his number one observation was

besides the mass and the size

of the thing was the size of its butt.

That's no coincidence.

It's one of the prominent features.

Bigfoot got back.

Bigfoot got back?

As ridiculous as that may sound,

it's consistent with that famous image

of Patty we keep referencing,

the alleged Sasquatch captured on the Patterson-Gimlin film.

Your butt muscles,

which are the largest muscles in your body,

are used for keeping your torso over your pelvis.

And they're used for bipedal walking.

That's why bears don't have big butt muscles.

They're quadrupeds.

But wait,

this creature doesn't have that same big hindquarters.

So what gives?

All the other pictures that I think are real

of Sasquatches have well-developed butt muscles,

but yet this one does not.

Barackman theorizes that it could be possible

that what we are seeing is an underdeveloped specimen,

a Bigfoot junior if you will.

This clearly would not be a full sized Sasquatch.

It doesn't look like it's that big

and it is generally thought

that Sasquatches lean a little bit more

towards going on all fours when they're young.

The Bigfoot Field Research Organization

agrees with Barackman.

Even though the derriere of this creature

appears to be flat, similar to a bear's bottom,

they claim the limb-to-torso ratio seen

in these photos can only compare to a bipedal primate.

Let's see what our experts think.

We checked in with wildlife biologist Stephanie Manka.

I think it is most likely a bear,

given the body shape and the body size.

A younger bear.

They're smaller, but they can have lengthier limbs

and be a little bit thinner.

The reasons why it doesn't look like a bear

is because you can't clearly make out a snout

and that might be because of the angle of the head

or the blurriness in the photo.

But even if the strange shape

and size can be attributed to this being a young bear,

its patchy exterior still looks a little odd.

I think that its skin is exposed because of mange.

Mange is an insect-like arachnid.

They're very tiny and they burrow into animals' skin

and this causes a lot of pain and itching,

and if left untreated,

the animal can lose a lot of hair

and it can make the skin exposed and looked scaly.

As we've seen, anatomist and Bigfoot expert,

Dr. Jeff Meldrum knows a thing or two about feet

and he agrees with Manka

after spotting a key piece of evidence.

Those are the feet of a bear.

They aren't the plantigrade feet of an ape.

And if you adjust the lighting ever so slightly,

guess what pops up?

A tail. It has a short stubby tail,

which is a dead giveaway that it's a bear.

Meldrum suggests that if more frames

from the trail camera were made available,

the truth would've been immediately obvious.

There seems to be some cherry picking

in the depiction of selected frames

and it's very misleading.

Our verdict? Black bear.

Our experts agree and we're inclined to agree with them.

There's really nothing big about these feet.

This is most likely just a growing bear cub suffering

from a nasty case of mange.

However, we do know

that trail cams are more prevalent than ever,

so we'll be sure to bring you more relevant images

as they come in.

Several counties in Washington state

have created Sasquatch preservation laws,

making it illegal to hunt such a specimen

if ever discovered.

However, the Texas Parks

and Wildlife Department actually stated

that since Sasquatch is technically not

on the endangered species list,

it is legally open season on any pesky Bigfoots.

And after hearing the sounds in our next story,

I can understand why some Texas residents

may be getting itchy trigger fingers.

It's January, 2022, and Boyd Sims,

a "Proof is Out There" viewer,

is on a month long expedition 50 miles north

of Houston, Texas in the Sam Houston National Forest.

He is there to record wildlife sounds.

And what he discovers is music to his ears.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

I was shocked. I was in shock.

Boyd has made dozens of strange recordings

of what he describes as Bigfoot calls.

I spent years looking for explanations

of the audio recordings I have

and can't find any animal that makes any

of the sounds that I have recorded.

Sasquatch is definitely here in Texas.

This area of the country has a ton

of Bigfoot reports out of it dating back

into the 1800s.

I have personally spoken to a dozen or two people

that have seen Sasquatches in this area.

One fisherman found footprints that were about 13 inches.

In fact, there are more than 40 Sasquatch reports a year

inside the Sam Houston National Forest.

That's a pretty significant number of people

that have seen Sasquatches in this area.

Boyd's recordings are hardly the first time

an alleged Bigfoot sound was captured.

Made in the early 1970s,

the Sierra sound recordings are touted

as the gold standard of evidence for Bigfoot language.

According to one respected linguist,

these sounds captured

in California's Sierra Nevada mountains

reveal an actual intelligent conversation

in an as of yet undocumented language.

Could we be hearing more evidence

of Bigfoot talking in Boyd's recordings?

We'll let our experts sound off.

The whoops

may be the means by which males and females

of this relatively solitary,

widely dispersed, very rare species find a mate.

These loud calls are probably territorial.

By comparison,

large male orangutans broadcast their territory

by a loud raucous call that booms out through the jungle.

They've even developed extensive laryngeal air sacks

that act as almost like amplifiers

and so it stands to reason

that perhaps Sasquatch have these same air sacks.

Meldrum suggests that these air sacks

may also enable Sasquatch to produce infrasound,

a low frequency sound used

by animals such as elephants and whales.

These sounds allow animals to communicate at great distances

and can even affect the physiology of a listener.

It can cause the stimulation of receptors

in the brain that will evoke fear

and trepidation as well as other emotions.

I've talked to witnesses who said, you know,

that their very core vibrated

from the intensity and the pitch of these sounds.

Could Sasquatches possibly be using infrasound

to keep people away as a desperate effort

to keep their dwindling species alive?

We checked in with forensic audio analyst Dr. Robert Maher,

who first compares the recording

to known animals found in the area,

starting with the wild boar.

It's making a kind of a chirpy kind of sound

rather than a long howl like the Sam Houston recording.

If it's not a boar,

could it be another local animal like the fox?

Maher doesn't think so.

Rather than being a howl,

it's much more of a modulating kind of,

kind of thing.

So it didn't seem like the fox would be a likely candidate.

However, when it comes to the coyote.

We can see the sound starts at a lower pitch,

goes up, and then sustains at that level.

And that's similar to what we heard

in the Sam Houston recording.

I can't say that it's absolutely certain,

but it's similar enough that I think that's a possibility.

Okay, so maybe a coyote.

But what about the big man himself?

Maher checks for a Bigfoot match

using the popular Sierra sounds.

We see a continuous sort of tone,

but it's very short in duration

and tends to be more of a yippy quality

where the observation in Sam Houston was more of a howl.

The characteristics are different enough

that they're not the same source.

Our verdict? Unknown animal noises.

While we have ruled out most of the local wildlife,

the coyote was similar, but not a clear match,

and the Sierra sounds had a different tone.

Nothing lined up well enough to make a clear call,

but if you ever find yourself

in the Sam Houston National Forest like Boyd,

be prepared for something strange to happen.

Be prepared to record it and be prepared to run.

We'll conclude our special Bigfoot episode with a question.

We know how people behave

when they think they've seen Bigfoot,

but how would Bigfoot behave when he sees people?

One intrepid family claims they found out the hard way.

It's April 2009 and Chuck Newton has taken his young son

into the Appalachian mountains of Virginia

to have some fun with the family's ATV.

Chuck barrels over rocks in the ravine,

showing off for his young son

when suddenly something strange appears.

A hairy humanoid crossing their path nonchalantly.

Chuck stops cold in his tracks.

It's a wide shot.

So let's push in and slow down so you can get a better look.

We see that it's a bipedal figure

that appears to be very large from this perspective,

possibly exceeding seven feet in height.

What was that?

Field researcher Cliff Barackman says Bigfoot sightings

in this area go all the way back to Native Americans.

In Virginia, the Cherokee people had stories

of giant, hair covered, people-like things in the woods.

They were doing the same sort of things

as the people the Pacific Northwest described.

The most reasonable explanation

for these different people describing the same animals

is that they were describing the same animals.

Sasquatches have a continent-wide distribution.

During the turn of the 20th century,

local newspapers in the area reported

on strange Sasquatch encounters.

An old newspaper report

from 1892 reports a large upright being

with thick hair covering its head and shoulders.

But the word Sasquatch didn't exist then.

They chose to call it the Woodbooger.

The Woodbooger was rumored to be

a horrifying sight that was known

to carry away small children who wandered off in the night.

And booger, or Woodbooger, actually shares some

of the same word roots as boogeyman

and are used in much of the same way.

A lot of times, people will say,

"Now, you don't go out in the woods at night

because the booger will get you."

Although this video has its fair share of skeptics,

Barackman thinks this could be real.

I find Chuck's reaction to be very natural, unstaged.

When he turns and looks at the camera

and points it, did you see that?

And then he immediately looks back

and watches the animal as it walks away.

I find that many times,

hoaxers focus on the camera itself

instead of at this amazing thing that they just saw

that was unexpected right in front of them.

I've had the opportunity to go to this location

with the witness, Chuck,

and I found him to be very believable.

Interesting fact.

Sasquatch sightings gained momentum

in the American South right after the Civil War.

One theory is that Confederate soldiers

who refuse to surrender

and hid out in the woods were being mistaken

for these hairy creatures.

Of course, that doesn't explain

the older Native American legends.

Let's see what our experts have to say.

The creature that we're seeing

in this video is clearly bipedal.

The only other animal in this area

that would be able to walk bipedally

would be a bear walking on its hind legs.

But when they do, they typically waddle more

and take shorter steps.

This being is clearly taking larger steps

than a black bear would.

So if it's not a bear,

could we be looking at a real life Bigfoot?

Biologist Floyd Hayes isn't so sure.

I'm just a little astonished to see

that it's just casually crossing the stream.

Doesn't seem to be the least bit concerned

about this loud, noisy vehicle that's approaching it.

I think this is either a human being

in an ape-like costume that's crossing the river,

or it is a fabricated video.

Anatomy Professor Dr. Jeff Meldrum disagrees.

He finds that this behavior

could be perfectly acceptable for a Sasquatch.

The two most common circumstances

under which encounters occur are on roads or near water.

And so here we have the latter

and even an ATV trudging up that creek bed

might not have sounded as intrusive

or intimidating as it would otherwise,

given the muffling effect of the white noise of the stream.

The witness interaction

with the videographer is also very spontaneous,

very natural, very convincing.

What was that?

And as for this being a man in a suit,

Meldrum is doubtful,

but is hesitant to make the call without evidence

of the actual scale of this creature.

I would probably put it no more than seven feet.

All these off the shelf costumes are made

for average people, but they're not made

for a seven or eight foot tall person.

So if we could establish larger size,

that would certainly lessen the chances

of it being someone donning a costume.

Our verdict? An unknown mammal.

Our experts are stumped.

And honestly, I am too.

If this is not a hoax, it's nice to know

that some Sasquatch seem pretty content

to mind their own business when humans disturb them.

And that's our show for tonight.

Thank you so much for joining us

and if you ever encounter Bigfoot, remember,

don't panic and keep those cameras rolling.