William shatner: It hides in the shadows.
A giant, hairy creature that walks on two feet
and watches us with glowing eyes.
Does bigfoot really exist?
Part ape, part man?
As crazy as it seems,
there are many who believe that not only
is such a creature real but they've seen it,
tracked it, even photographed it.
But then, if bigfoot does exist, what is it?
Where does it come from? How many are there?
And perhaps more importantly...
(creature snarling)
...Should we be afraid of it?
Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
Bigfoot researcher matt moneymaker and a colleague
are investigating reported bigfoot sightings
in a wooded area near the town of kent.
After spending years pursuing bigfoot
in hopes of seeing one himself,
matt is eager to find out whether there really is
a giant creature in these woods.
Matt moneymaker: We were staked out
along a road, the guy I was with was about 60 feet away.
And at about 2:30 a.M.,
something comes walking down the road.
I see something.
He sees it first through night vision.
Shatner: Matt rushes over to investigate,
and is stopped dead in his tracks by the sound of...
-(growling) -...Inhuman growling.
Moneymaker: This thing steps out.
A very big, tall, hair-covered thing...
...Standing out there growling at me.
When you've got something that big
that close to you, you could see it well enough to know
that must be a bigfoot.
So I just kind of backed up
and walked away.
I was pretty happy at that point,
because I'm thinking, "if this one's gonna do that,
"reliably, then this is a place
"that we're gonna get some video footage of them
if we're coming here with the right kind of gear."
shatner: But when matt returned
with camera equipment to document the encounter,
the creature had vanished.
Although matt was not able to photograph
the large, hairy beast that he witnessed,
he remains convinced that what he saw was, in fact, bigfoot.
It's one of those things that sounds so over-the-top,
but after I had a face-to-face encounter,
I knew it was exactly the same thing
that all the witnesses around there had described.
Shatner: The encounter inspired matt
to found the bigfoot field researchers organization,
or bfro.
Moneymaker: The roots of it are people who were sharing information.
We were sharing sighting reports, mainly,
from different parts of the country.
And I came up with the idea that,
"why don't we put all these into a website?"
you know, sort it by county and state
so people can look up reports.
And when we did that, it worked really well.
Lots of people started submitting reports.
Shatner: According to the bfro,
there have been more than 3,500 credible bigfoot sightings
since 1960.
Although science has yet to prove the existence
of the legendary man-beast, that hasn't stopped bigfoot
from becoming a full-fledged phenomenon.
Christopher bader: Bigfoot is literally everywhere.
There are bigfoot stories in nevada.
There are bigfoot stories in nebraska,
florida, texas.
Literally every part of the country
has its own stories and legends of bigfoot.
It's likely, wherever you live in this country,
you are within a hundred miles of a place
that purportedly has a bigfoot.
Shatner: If these sightings are of a real creature,
then what exactly is bigfoot?
And how did this phenomenon begin?
Tok thompson: Bigfoot is generally reported to be
a very large, very furry, uh, hominid creature.
Something like a person, uh, but not a person,
seen very often remotely in the forest.
And with various stories about sightings
or about footprints that really are pretty widespread
in many, many communities in the united states and in canada.
Before 1958, people didn't use the word "bigfoot."
but it was in 1958 in northern california,
guys building a road
found footprints around their gear
when they would come back in the morning.
And a guy named jerry crew made plaster footprints
of these tracks and showed them to a reporter in eureka,
and they dubbed it "bigfoot."
that was where the name first originated
and got into american vocabulary.
Shatner: Photos of jerry crew's cast
of giant footprints made headlines across the country.
Many americans came to believe that a tall,
bipedal, apelike creature roamed the forests
of the pacific northwest.
I grew up in washington state, where it's hard
to underestimate bigfoot's power.
Bigfoot is the mascot of different companies.
Bigfoot is all over billboards.
As a young boy in washington state,
I fully believed in bigfoot's existence.
Shatner: In 1967, interest in bigfoot surged
when an investigator named roger patterson
captured incredible footage of a creature
that matched the description of bigfoot
near bluff creek in northern california.
Patterson's film became an instant sensation,
but skeptics claimed that it had to be a man
in a monkey suit.
One of the issues when it comes to people believing
in bigfoot existing
is, let's face it, mainstream sciences
shun away from this topic.
However, amateur researchers are trying to pick up the slack,
bridge that gap
between amateur and mainstream science.
Shatner: Bigfoot researchers claim that the vast majority
of bigfoot sightings are sincere,
and that hoaxes represent only a small fraction of reports.
They also point out that stories of bigfoot-like animals
are not merely a recent fad.
Believe it or not, more than 3,000 years ago,
the ancient babylonians told stories of a creature
that sounds an awful lot like bigfoot.
Except they called it enkidu.
Sara burdorff: Enkidu is a...
Hairy, wild man creature with super strength,
and he's fearsome, he's ready and willing
to defend this wild territory that he inhabits.
The king, gilgamesh, becomes his soulmate, basically.
Best friends.
So, this king becomes this amazing hero
through his relationship with this wild man
that has shown him
how to negotiate the boundaries between humanity and wildness.
Shatner: Since that time, descriptions of so-called "wild men,"
half-human, half-ape beasts,
have popped up throughout history, all over the world.
Jonathan young: In the caucasus,
there was something called the alma
that was a big monster, a nature creature.
In australia, there's the aboriginal version
which is called a yowie.
There is the yeti in the himalayas.
So there are local variations,
but the story is more or less the same.
Very big, seemingly animallike,
or is it human or is it some hybrid?
There's the point.
Shatner: In north america,
there are native american legends that go back centuries,
long before the discoveries made by jerry crew
or roger patterson.
Lynne mcneill: We know that sasquatch,
the preeminent bigfoot creature that we have
in the united states, located in the pacific northwest,
that very word, "sasquatch," comes from a salish tribal word
that means "wild man" or "hairy man."
young: The natives of the northwest say that there are creatures
that walk upright and only at night.
And can speak in their language.
Neiss: I found, in speaking with indigenous peoples,
that they don't describe them as an animal at all.
They call them the first ones, or the old ones.
"these were the tribe that was here before we got here."
shatner: An ancient tribe that predates humanity?
It's a fascinating notion,
one that bigfoot researchers are eager to investigate.
And there are some who will risk going into the deepest
and darkest forests to try and capture the huge creature,
even though it may not want to be found.
(low growl)
shatner: Future u.S. President teddy roosevelt
publishes the wilderness hunter,
a book about his youthful adventures
in the dakota territory.
His memoir contains a story that was told to him
by an old mountain man, who, years before,
had encountered an apelike creature deep in the woods.
There were some trappers and they kept having
encounters kind of in the dark
with what they thought were these huge creatures
that were leaving huge manlike footprints.
One of the guys decided to go off and check traps,
and the other one would hide back at camp
and see what was coming in every time
that they would leave camp.
When the guy came back from checking traps,
he found his friend dead,
his body broken over a log,
and it looked like it had just been pummeled.
And they attributed it to
an eight-foot-tall, 600-pound ape.
Shatner: The disturbing encounter recorded by roosevelt
is one of the earliest accounts of american pioneers
coming face-to-face
with what many native americans called...
Sasquatch.
If the story is true,
it seems like sasquatch wasn't very friendly
towards humans who encroached on its territory.
(low growling)
there are vastly different ideas within the bigfoot subculture
about bigfoot's disposition.
Some believe that bigfoot is an angry, homicidal predator.
And if you come into its domain,
it will try to kill you if it can.
Others believe that bigfoot is merely an animal.
And just like a grizzly bear might become aggressive
under the right circumstances, it could.
Shatner: Over the past century, more
of the american wilderness has been settled,
with the construction of new housing, industry,
and infrastructure.
But if we have been encroaching on bigfoot's habitat
for so long, then how come no one has ever
recovered the body of one?
It's been estimated perhaps 2,000 of these things exist
throughout the pacific northwest.
Sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.
Considering two of the major ranges,
the cascade range and the coast range,
make up 68,000 square miles, mostly uninhabited.
When you distribute 2,000 of anything
in 68,000 square miles...
You'd be lucky to run across one in your life.
Bader: People who believe that bigfoot is
a biological creature will simply
talk about how stealthy it is,
that it's very good at moving
through the woods without making any noise
and therefore can slip away at will.
Shatner: Is bigfoot simply too elusive to be captured?
Perhaps.
But that hasn't stopped an army
of so-called "bigfoot hunters"
from trying to track it down.
Jeff meldrum: The role of citizen scientists
is potentially a very significant one.
It may well be that major discoveries
will be made not by scientists in this arena,
but by citizen scientists.
Bader: Modern bigfoot hunters
use techniques such as wood knocking...
(whoops)
...Playing purported bigfoot screams while in the woods.
These are things that many modern bigfoot investigators
believe will draw any nearby sasquatch to you.
Moneymaker: I think the future of bigfoot research,
in a lot of ways, rests with new optics with thermal imagers.
And especially with drones,
thermal imagers attached to drones.
I really do see a future where the next
big, profound piece of footage
is gonna be gotten by a drone.
Bader: Many bigfoot hunters
are very much devoted to the idea
that the creature that they're looking for
is an undiscovered animal.
They believe that if they try hard enough,
they could capture sufficient evidence
to prove the issue once and for all.
Shatner: Bigfoot hunters have set their sights
on catching the beast itself.
But the most compelling pieces of evidence
that we have right now are the huge footprints
that have been found for decades.
And according to anthropologist dr. Jeff meldrum,
these impressions in the ground
prove that there really is
an enormous primate roaming the forest.
Meldrum: My research expertise centers around
the adaptations of the human body
for bipedalism-- the habit of walking on two legs.
So that put me in a very apropos position
to address what is probably
the most prolific and, in my opinion,
by far the most compelling body of evidence
for the existence of sasquatch,
namely the footprints.
Shatner: Dr. Meldrum's interest in bigfoot footprints started
in 1996 when he and a colleague came across
a remarkable line of footprints
in southeastern washington.
As we walk out there, here's this unmistakable line
of footprints in the mud,
these 15-inch footprints,
and the hair stood up on the back of my neck
as I realized a sasquatch actually
walked by here last night.
The evidence was really unmistakable to my eye
with my background and training.
Shatner: Dr. Meldrum immediately made
several casts of the intriguing footprints.
The first of many such casts
that he has made throughout his career.
Based off his research,
he has concluded that by analyzing a variety of factors,
such as how the foot imprints irregularities into the ground
or the spacing of the toes in the dirt,
it is possible to determine when footprints have been faked
and when they were really made by a 15-inch foot.
So here we are over 20 years later, and
in addition to the seven footprint
casts that I made on that afternoon,
there are over 300 casts to keep them company here
in the specimen drawers in my laboratory.
It's just been an amazing road
that has yielded, due to this extraordinary sample,
the emergence of a model of a foot
that is not simply an enlarged facsimile
of a human footprint but rather shows
all the distinctions of a foot adapted
to transport a 800-to-1,200-pound
bipedal primate
through the rough, irregular, incline terrain
of the mountainous forests
they are said to inhabit.
Shatner: If bigfoot is making
giant footprints in the forest,
then is it a creature that can be explained
by conventional science?
Bigfoot researchers believe the answer is yes.
And they claim that bigfoot is an animal...
That has already been found.
Shatner: Explorer robert von beringe is leading an expedition
up mount sabyinyo
when he comes upon a troop of gorillas.
Which is extraordinary, because according
to mainstream scientists at the time, gorillas aren't
supposed to live in the mountains.
Bader: For years, when reports came out
about mountain gorillas, people said,
"they're lying, they're hoaxers,"
until we finally had specimens.
(gorilla hooting)
and now the mountain gorilla are part
of the public and historical record.
Meldrum: The discovery of the gorilla
is actually a very good example
of the manner in which
the existence of an unknown primate species
was eventually recognized by western science.
And science requires a type specimen
in order to justify
the recognition of a novel species.
Shatner: For bigfoot researchers, the discovery
of the mountain gorilla is an example
of how the assumptions of mainstream scientists
are not always correct.
And they argue that if the mountain gorilla survived
in the african mountains, unrecognized by science
until 1902, that it's possible that bigfoot
is alive in the vast forests of north america.
It just hasn't been verified yet.
But is bigfoot really an unknown creature?
Or is it simply another name for a creature
we've known about for decades?
There's various theories as to what this type of primate is.
But it most likely is related to this line of apes
out of southeast asia, the most famous of which was called
gigantopithecus, the largest apes that ever lived.
Meldrum: Gigantopithecus was a species that existed
during the late pleistocene, perhaps until as recently as
200,000 to 300,000 years ago,
according to the fossil record.
It was a giant primate of literally king kong proportions
that could have stood ten feet tall and weighed in excess
of a thousand, 1,200 pounds.
Shatner: The theory that what we call "bigfoot" is actually
gigantopithecus has profound implications.
If true, it would mean that the existence of bigfoot
has already been scientifically verified.
There's just one problem.
According to paleontologists, gigantopithecus became extinct
a long time ago.
Meldrum: Gigantopithecus has often been characterized
as a creature that fed exclusively on bamboo
and, hence, went extinct when those bamboo forests
also expired.
But much more insightful analyses
of the fossilized teeth of gigantopithecus
suggests that it had a diet that was quite diverse.
Which is quite interesting, to have an animal that size
that still had a very diverse, omnivorous diet.
Shatner: But even if gigantopithecus
has somehow survived into the present, questions remain.
Such as, how did such a large creature migrate
from the bamboo forests of southeast asia
all the way to north america?
If bigfoots are descendants of gigantopithecus,
or a line of apes like it,
they probably came over the land bridge
the same way that native americans did,
back when siberia and alaska were connected
and all sorts of animals were able to cross over
the bering strait.
Shatner: Bigfoot researchers are steadfast
in their support of the gigantopithecus theory.
But most experts reject the idea due to lack of evidence.
But what if the evidence does exist,
and scientists simply aren't looking for it
in the right places?
Naturalist john mionczynski is spending the summer
working for the u.S. Forest service.
I was employed by the u.S. Forest service
and the wyoming game and fish department
on a cooperative study.
The project was set up so that I would live in the wild.
-(owl hooting) -shatner: Late one night,
john feels what he thinks is a large bear
pressing against the outside of his tent.
I was approached by something that cast a shadow.
The moon was just coming up, it was almost a full moon.
I clearly saw a hand with four fingers
and an opposed thumb, like a human hand.
And it was large.
It was twice the size of my hand.
It was getting aggressive with its movements
on the side of the tent.
I hit it with the back of my hand.
(growling)
whatever it was had backed off.
It ran back behind some trees.
So I was totally perplexed.
I have to say that, the thought of sasquatch
never occurred to me at that moment.
Shatner: When john reported the encounter to the forest service,
he learned that there had been a rash of similar reports.
His boss, afraid the sightings
might be the work of a prankster,
asked him to investigate and interview the witnesses.
Mionczynski: I eventually interviewed
about 25 people.
The most interesting one was a young man
in a little cabin up against the mountains.
(creature growls)
he had reported
seeing one of these behaving aggressively
in front of his cabin.
And he shot it.
And he'd thought he'd killed it,
but it got up immediately and ran off.
Shatner: John visited the cabin and, incredibly,
found that there were hair samples left near the house.
He collected the hairs and brought them
to walter birkby, a well-known forensic anthropologist
and leading expert on hair analysis.
The analysis came back a few days later
and walter birkby said, and this is a quote,
"this is my first stumper. These hairs are primate."
and he was certain about that.
The result was controversial because a hairy primate
is not of an animal native to wyoming.
That kind of suggested the idea of bigfoot.
Shatner: Solid, physical evidence of a primate in wyoming?
You might think that the scientific community
would be thrilled by such a discovery.
But john quickly realized the perils
of making that assumption.
Mionczynski: The head of the research division
actually chewed us out.
Pointing his finger at us and saying,
"if your names are ever associated
"with this word bigfoot again,
I will personally see to it that you're fired."
(low growl)
if hard evidence of bigfoot really exists,
then why are scientists so eager to dismiss it?
Maybe it's safer to think
that it's all just a delusion or a hoax.
Or perhaps bigfoot doesn't fit into their preconceived notions
of the world.
In any case, some evidence is difficult,
if not downright impossible, to ignore,
as you shall see.
Shatner: Researcher robert collier
is leading a bigfoot expedition
in a remote part of the wilderness.
Collier: It was about dusk, getting a little bit darker.
And all of a sudden we hear these horrendous footsteps.
As we looked in front of us, what we saw had two legs.
And it looked like the conical shaped head,
the broad shoulders.
And it's sitting right there. I'm looking at it.
Shatner: Robert and his companions were astonished
by the two-legged creature moving near them.
But what happened next was even more extraordinary.
Collier: Soon as that happened,
it was like somebody had parked their car down there
and turned on headlights.
Lit up the whole area.
And I remember looking at that
and the lights stayed on, one, two,
three, off.
Then it just went silent.
But we were in such shock and pure amazement
from that, from that sighting.
Shatner: A sudden, brilliant illumination deep in the forest?
Just before the mysterious creature robert saw
seemingly disappeared?
While it may sound like a fantastical story,
this wasn't the last time robert observed
such a strange occurrence.
Collier: This last expedition,
I experienced more lights.
We had some activity one night and I remember,
at one point, bigfoot turned its body
and it looked back at me.
And then this blue light--
it was a blue streak through the forest--
and it shot off to the right.
I still can't wrap my head around it.
But still other people experience that
and they're seeing the same things.
People are starting to see these white orbs.
The blue lights, the streaks.
So, there's the common denominator in there.
Shatner: Robert and others who have seen these inexplicable lights
may not have all the answers.
However, the phenomenon
suggests an intriguing possibility.
You see, most researchers speculate that bigfoot could be
some form of ape and man
or a mix of both.
But what if those theories are missing the target?
If bigfoot is real,
could it be totally different
from any kind of creature that we're familiar with?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining
one of the most notorious bigfoot encounters in history.
Gold prospector fred beck and some miners are working
on a claim not far from mount st. Helens,
when they hear a bizarre noise.
Bader: Fred and one of his friends
heard strange whistling sounds
and all of a sudden saw a hairy creature
peek its head out from behind a tree.
The men instantly pulled out their guns
and started shooting at the creature...
...Which howled and screamed as it ran away.
And this attack on the creature seemed to provoke it,
because that evening
fred and his friends in their cabin were assaulted
by what seemed to be a group of sasquatch, or bigfeet.
They heard pounding on the roof.
Fred described the creatures as tall and hairy,
having apelike faces and being entirely hair-covered,
and between six to eight feet tall,
running around on two legs.
Shatner: The men soon realized that the cabin
would not necessarily protect them from their attackers,
because the creatures bombarded the cabin
with huge rocks from the cliffs above
and then tried to get inside.
Bader: In one especially terrifying part of the story,
a creature reached its hand through the cabin
and tried to grab an ax, but fred grabbed
the head of the ax and turned it
so the creature couldn't pull it through.
The next morning, as it neared daylight,
the attacks finally stopped.
And fred and his friends decided to make their escape.
And this story made its way into the papers.
And ever since then, this area has been known as ape canyon.
Shatner: For some, the so-called ape canyon incident
proves that bigfoot possesses intelligence
that exceeds that of any known animal and rivals our own.
But to others, the incident suggests something
much more incredible.
Bader: If you actually look back
to fred beck's own works, he did not think these creatures
were actually undiscovered animals.
He thought they were spiritual entities
from another plane of existence.
He claimed they would find a footprint track
that would suddenly end in the middle of a sandbar,
suggesting that a creature had just simply disappeared
as it was walking.
So, from his perspective, this was not an undiscovered ape.
It was a mystical creature from another dimension.
Shatner: A mystical creature from another dimension?
But how is such a thing possible?
And doesn't that theory contradict
mainstream bigfoot research?
Bader: The idea that bigfoot might be able to disappear
into another dimension, that is very threatening
to that view that it's simply an undiscovered animal.
And, in fact, people oftentimes make fun of bigfoot hunters
and say, "you're just like ghost hunters,
you're just like people who see fairies and demons."
and when you add paranormal elements to a bigfoot story,
you open them up for that very criticism
that bothers them so much.
Thompson: Most of the contemporary traditions
assign bigfoot or sasquatch
to the natural world.
In other words, it's not a supernatural character.
Most of the native traditions
would be more of the spiritual world
or more of the supernatural world.
That this figure is more than simply
a large hominid living out there.
They've ascribed, uh, some powers to them,
spiritual powers.
They can change into different things at times,
which aids in their ability to seem to vanish on location.
Uh, shapeshifters, if you will.
And so they have
a whole different respect for them, spiritually.
Does bigfoot really have mystical powers?
And could this fantastical notion
help to explain things about bigfoot
that have, up till now, stumped researchers?
There are those who believe that the answer is yes--
and that one big reason
why bigfoot has otherworldly abilities
is because he really is from another world.
Shatner: Bigfoot researcher joe fex visits a rural appalachian farm
owned by a woman who claims
that she has encountered bigfoot
not once, not twice, but many times
over a period of years.
Fex: Janice carter coy claimed
bigfoot would come down the mountain,
visit this barn that was about two miles away,
and that they would come visit her grandfather's farm.
Shatner: Eager to find out
whether janice's incredible story could be true,
joe decided to do a nighttime stakeout on her farm.
That night, joe and janice were sitting around a firepit
when joe noticed something... Strange.
Fex: As we're talking,
I see between these barn structures
two very bright, very vivid lime green lights.
And they're floating across this open area
between these structures.
I thought,
"wow, tennessee has got some pretty extremely large
lightning bugs out here."
shatner: But the green lights
started to come closer to him
and joe realized that what he thought were fireflies...
Were actually glowing eyes.
Fex: I could see
the structure of a very large,
long-haired, shaggy--
what looked like a very muscular ape.
And I looked over at janice
and she's just looking at me with this grin.
And she says,
"he wants to know if you're going to go back to colorado
and tell people you saw fireflies."
how janice would even know that
that thought even entered my head,
brief as that thought was,
I really have no idea.
Shatner joe was astonished to see
that janice seemed to be able
to mentally communicate with the creature...
Which was somehow reading his mind, too.
Janice said, "he wants you to come back to the ditch line.
He wants to see you. He wants you to see him."
and I thought, "oh, this is insane."
but she gives me this big flashlight.
So I started walking over there
and back out behind the house,
and I pointed the light forward.
And here, in this open area,
stood this guy that had to be
about eight or nine feet tall.
I've never heard or seen anything like it
in my entire life.
Shatner: You'd think that after standing toe to toe with bigfoot,
joe would remember everything about such an encounter.
But as it turns out, joe's memory is a little fuzzy.
I don't know what happened at the tail end of that.
I just remember standing
back at the camp, talking with janice.
I don't remember walking away.
I don't remember... How did that end?
Which is, to me-- even now, all these years later--
is really bizarre.
Shatner: To many observers,
joe's description of bigfoot sounds less like a primate
and more like something... Paranormal.
Bader: Joe fex's story actually
sounds a lot like a ufo abduction account to me.
When you claim that there's some period of time
that you simply cannot account for...
In alien abduction lore, this is called "missing time,"
and it's believed that the aliens will erase your memory
for a certain period of the encounter.
There are other stories within the bigfoot realm
where people claim to have had encounters with ufos
or even had an abduction.
Shatner: Could bigfoot actually be an extraterrestrial?
Some bigfoot researchers would argue the answer is yes,
and that the strongest evidence lies not in what happened
during joe's bigfoot encounter
but what happened after.
Fex: Two weeks later, at maybe 10:30, 11:00 in the morning.
I go into the shower
and I come back out of the shower,
uh, dry off real quick,
relax for a minute.
I have a cup of coffee.
I unconsciously reached back here
and I could feel something.
I realized there was a relatively deep hole
that I could fit my pinky into.
It didn't feel like a wound.
It felt perfectly fine.
It didn't hurt at all. There was no sensation.
Shatner: An inexplicable hole in your head
isn't something that's easy to understand.
But after considering every possibility,
joe recognized that what happened to him was bizarre
but not exactly unheard of.
All of these things are extremely familiar
in the field of ufos
and the subfield of ufo abductions.
They have similarities in their patterns of behavior,
similarities in the environment and the circumstances,
similarities in the side effects.
I don't know if these things are related,
but there is a correlation.
Shatner: Joe fex may not have any definitive answers
about bigfoot or about his experience.
But what he does have
are some intriguing possibilities to consider,
thanks to the information that he has exchanged
with other bigfoot researchers.
And there are some who believe that this kind of cooperation
will finally prove that bigfoot is real.
Shatner: The oregon coast mountain range.
Here, not far from the shore of the pacific ocean,
lies a densely wooded area that, once a year,
is the site of an invitation-only conference
attended by international experts in their field.
It's called...
Beachfoot.
Neiss: It was in 2003
that I had this thought,
"you know, what would happen if you could get
"all of these well-known researchers
locked in the same room at the same time?"
the amount of brain trust there would be amazing.
Mionczynski: The beachfoot gatherings,
where scientists get to discuss openly
their research and findings
concerning bigfoot...
I think it's a very important step
which will open up the subject
to other scientists who are interested
in studying this kind of phenomenon.
Meldrum: One of my most enjoyable activities
at such an event is, sometimes
I teach a workshop on "tracking 101."
those are opportunities where non-academics,
non-phds, can strive to emulate the scientific method
in their own search
for the evidence they presume to find.
Shatner: Gatherings like beachfoot
prove that the legend of bigfoot is alive and well.
But how is that possible
when no conclusive evidence of bigfoot has ever been found?
What drives our interest in this enduring mystery?
The reason I believe
that the sasquatch subject has such staying power
is that there's so many witnesses out there.
There's many parts of the country where, if you go
and ask people if they've ever seen one,
so often you'll hear,
"no, I haven't, but I know somebody who has."
so, there's many people out there
who at least know someone they trust
who has told them that they've seen these things.
And that has had the effect of changing
people's opinion about the subject
of what would otherwise be just total skepticism everywhere.
Burdorff: Bigfoot matters because
it would be tangible proof of a solved mystery.
Finding a real bigfoot,
a real creature,
would be like discovering
another piece of the world.
And it's... It's us reaching for another piece
of that unknown
that's always just beyond our reach.
So, now, what do you think? Huh?
Is bigfoot real,
or is it all just part of an elaborate hoax?
I guess that depends on what kind of a person you are.
If you're the open-minded type
who believes that the world is filled with wonder,
then you probably believe it's real.
If you are the hard-nosed, cynical type,
then you're convinced it's all nonsense.
But then there is a third type.
The type who has actually seen bigfoot
in the fur-covered flesh.
For you, bigfoot is real,
and your experience has convinced you
that there is much about this mysterious creature
that, for now, remains unexplained.
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