Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth | Season 1 | Episode 3 | The Bigfoot Phenomenon

across america and the world in the depths of forests is an elusive man-like creature bigfoot sasquatch thousands of reports photos and videos pour in each year of bigfoot encounters from all 49 continental states and canada we're talking about a living breathing population there has to be a minimum of 4 000 animals roaming north america and public interest is only increasing it's very mainstream it's cool to be into bigfoot bigfoot fervor is at a fever pitch in this country but what exactly are these mysterious creatures that have caught so much attention what does science have to say about them and why are many so sure they exist we've set out to find the truth in chasing bigfoot the rise of bigfoot began long ago when the creature made its first appearance in native american art and lore and has since escalated into a cultural phenomenon [Music] with possible recorded sightings since 1811 bigfoot has always been a part of north america's history john pickering is an experienced bigfoot investigator and member of the olympic project the sasquatch phenomenon has really happened for centuries if you look at native american lore and stories and actually not just native american but throughout the world there's been a history of these large upright beasts that are man-like that uh as around the world there's these reports and different legends and stories and different names from around the world but as as the white man and europeans moved into the area they uh they didn't they started running into these things themselves but it was kind of a a taboo subject it wasn't until midway through the 20th century that the phenomenon spread to the wider public instigated by news stories and books providing sightings and information about the cryptid but when bigfoot was brought to television the phenomenon took off i think that popular television programs have really played a role in uh in kind of getting the subject out there i mean there was a there was there was a surge in the 1970s but really the 1980s kind of shut that surge down in the 1970s you'd have things like in search of and various documentaries and stuff but in the 1980s what happened is that like the the tabloids would would blast on the front page you know bigfoot ate my baby or whatever i like all those nonsense things and we all saw them while waiting in line at the grocery store and that kind of subtle propaganda if you will played a role on society i think bigfoot has moved from tabloid you know scoffing to something that the majority of the people uh think well there may be something out there they may not ever go out in the woods and look they may not be active in the hunt but uh they're they're open to that idea that oh something may be out there now you know we've with the monster quest television program years ago that really kind of opened that up or you know when science started investigating and uh even finding bigfoot now bigfoot has even starred on the silver screen in movies such as bigfoot and wild boy the legend of boggy creek harry and the hendersons the sasquatch gang fishing naked and willow creek but this has been bothering me these are two the image of bigfoot has become such a recognizable icon that companies use the creatures and advertisements and commercials products and most of all bigfoot merchandise the number of people interested has grown and with that growth you have you have economic things that become involved it starts to become like a franchise name almost people it starts to flock to it um companies you know will name their shoe a bit like a bigfoot or a pizza a bigfoot so it's become a a brand name almost of its own which has brought more people into the mix and with the invention of the internet knowledge is more available than ever anyone can share information an encounter a photo or a video for the world to see join an online bigfoot community or start a website dedicated to sasquatch guy edwards is the creator of bigfoot lunch club a top bigfoot blog so i started off doing bigfootlunchclub.com and that was my my my blogging website for bigfoot news because back then even though the internet was uh going pretty strong you know most people who were posting bigfoot stuff were posting information about you know something that they were doing in their backyard but if a local news station picked up a news uh item or video it wouldn't there was no there was nobody that was aggregating this information it looked more human than ape-like and so this was eight years ago and so now there's tons of bigfoot blogs and tons of people that are aggregating news but it didn't it almost didn't exist before doug hijek is a renowned bigfoot enthusiast and was the creator producer of the groundbreaking tv series monster quest i mean bigfoot has gotten more and more popular um it always has been popular in a subculture way but with you know them using it for food commercials car commercials um and the popularity of some of the new shows you know that are on the air um bigfoot has been kind of kind of an icon and there's more museums you know that are popping up here and there indeed the phenomenon has spawned a niche of its own stores have been built presentations have been given and conferences have been set up all in the name of bigfoot jim myers the owner of the sasquatch outpost and museum located in bailey colorado gave us a tour of one such bigfoot haven so i'm going to take you from the store part into our sasquatch encounter museum and we opened this about a month and a half ago and i think in that time we've had about 450 people go through from all over this section is talking about footprints this is our colorado sasquatch sightings map when they come in the store it's amusing actually they'll come in to a store called the sasquatch outpost and they'll walk around and then they'll wait till everyone is gone who's in the store and they'll say you don't really believe in bigfoot do you and i'll say of course i do and they'll kind of test me a little bit and then they'll look around and they'll say well i have a story i want to tell you but they want to make sure that i'm not going to laugh at them or make fun of them and if it's a great story i'll have them come put a pin on the map so last i counted there were about 190 to 200 pins on this map that we've recorded in the past two and a half years about over here is our main attraction this is boomer the bigfoot he is seven and a half feet tall here's the amazing thing we'll have people come into the museum they'll look at the the displays they'll look at the map they'll walk out and they'll never see boomer the last thing i want to show you is our bigfoot measurement we want kids to be able to come in and and have a participatory experience so i built this bigfoot he's actually nine feet tall and kids love to come and measure themselves against bigfoot and have their picture taken but it gives them a little bit of a feel of how they would measure up if they were standing in the woods and a bigfoot was behind them and it would be intimidating to say the least michael johnson is a co-founder of the sasquatch investigations of the rockies or sur and the bigfoot yowie and yeti store in denver colorado a lot of people come into our store here and they're looking for answers you know some people are looking for answers some people know somebody that's looking for answers and they're you know this is a good place to come for that i mean some people come in here and they're in here for two three hours and they want they want to know about everything and why it's in here snuffy destefano is a professional artist specializing in bigfoot chainsaw carvings so i've now been carving sasquatches for about five of the ten years i've been carving and uh that's i've carved more sasquatches and bears and you know most carvers they make their living up carving bears i make a living off carbon sasquatch now it's pretty amazing distefano sells his carvings at the ohio bigfoot conference an event that has grown to hold over 2 000 attendees at the salt fork state park lodge in the foothills of the appalachian mountains just in terms of the popularity when when when you go to some of these events these conferences and you see the just the sheer mad house crowd of people that are all interested in this subject you can see why if you live long enough you've seen things that you can't explain and i think probably like a lot of people have this phenomenon but until you have tv in the internet everybody can't communicate about it because most of us just put in the back of the minds and it disappears uh from their reality because it isn't something it's almost like this this event that happened maybe twice or three times it doesn't keep happening and there's really no point in talking because most people aren't even going to believe you but then when you have other people that it happened to then you can get together and talk about it and have a group that you know is like it's almost like an alcoholics anonymous so you get more people that it's becoming quite a hobby out looking for any evidence and then they there's a lot more our activities were public expeditions and symposiums and and group gatherings so it's becoming also a social affair more than just a research affair and along with the rise of bigfoot in american culture so too has the number of sightings skyrocketed i think what's happening is you're getting more settings because now bigfoot's mainstream it's a popular subject 25 years ago if you said you saw a bigfoot you wouldn't even tell your own family because they'd laugh at you about it now if you had a bigfoot sighting it's almost celebrity status now i mean nowadays a lot of these witnesses come forth they have sightings they get on a few tv shows and before you know when they're seen in public everyone wants to get their autograph and things like that i also think the number of bigfoot sightings is increasing and i can't explain why one reason is more people are in the woods looking but i think it could be attributed to the fact that bigfoot is are showing themselves more to people than they used to and why i couldn't explain from the many people who have become interested a few have emerged as leaders in bigfoot research people with scientific minds who take the subject seriously you had a taxidermist named body titanis who did a lot of tracking and a lot of cast casted numerous trackways and you had some other early pioneers of the research field that that kind of followed what was going on and started paying attention to other areas in the in the world john green from canada really started compiling information probably one of the biggest databases there is of sightings and track finds in john green rene de hinden and grover krantz's lifetime and probably that of peter byrne as well they're known as the four horsemen of the world of sasquatch uh not one of them saw a sasquatch in their entire lives nor has the discovery been made in their lifetime peter burns the only one that's still alive and he might be lucky who knows it's hard to tell now there's a because of the popularity of the subject there's a huge influence of newer people that are interested and investigating and looking for evidence and there's a lot of them that are what what you would call an armchair researcher the way i look at it there is there's probably five or six thousand fairly serious researchers and that's a guess but five or six thousand fairly serious researches in the world a lot of those researchers are pretty much armchair researchers that do their research from the computer and don't get out a whole lot and then there's probably a smaller number that actually get out in the field and do the research hands-on with the growing number of bigfoot researchers and enthusiasts a kind of competition has emerged i say it's a hominid or something like that and someone else says no no no it's the aliens put them here to watch humans or doing something like that naturally we would you disagree and some people take that to a you know a little more aggressive attitude and especially with the advent of like the internet and so much is done on facebook and other social media it's really easy to say you're you're a liar you're an idiot when you don't you're not face to face with somebody and there's also a certain kind of faction or uh attitude out there of it's like okay we want to prove this is real or find evidence and proof so there's a competition to try to one-up the other group or the other people of look i'm the one that found this or i'm the one that's proved this then you start bringing money into the mix and when money comes into the mix then you have a motivation for people to to try to fake things or get attention but when you start dealing with um commercial things it becomes a big money item and then you so it's it's it drives some people to say look hey if i can prove this it's real i'm on easy street i'll make all kinds of money i'll be on the tonight show i'll you know i'll be famous when it comes to hoaxing i have i have an opinion i think that people get a kick out of it see the bigfoot community at large is it's like this big dysfunctional family unfortunately there's a lot of infighting it's very similar to say organized religion a lot of infighting i'm right no i'm right no i'm right so you have some of these people in the backdrop that just want to poke fun at it and they'll go out and hook stuff then you also have a couple hoaxers that have been around here recently not around here but in the world recently they just do it simply for attention some people that are hoaxing are just complete disbelievers but they just get a kick of making us chase our tails so we try to weed through that really hard the best we can so we've seen why people have become fascinated with bigfoot for some an interest sprung from second-hand knowledge a story a book a television show and for others it was a first-hand encounter that forever altered their concept of what was real some are convinced of bigfoot's existence and some remain skeptical but what's going to drive the bigfoot phenomenon forward it's that mystery of something being out there that you think that you know everything that's out there and something happens and maybe it makes you reset what you think that you knew previously my hopes what i'm doing this for is number one i love it i love being in the woods i love the chase i love the challenge and i love it when they're there to think that i can actually go out and participate in such a large mystery holds a lot of intrigue for me you know that's why i've been doing this for over 20 years my personal motivation for this is it's it's a club that you're in that you get to see and experience things that very few people do which is both good and bad because you have hard times to hard it's hard to define them um but uh at the same time it's very rewarding when i first started like every bigfoot person they want to prove bigfoot exists you know partially because they've gotten some flack from a friend or a relative i don't do it for that anymore in fact half the time i don't even have a camera on me i do it for my own personal experiences when you're out and you're having experiences you feel like the man on the moon or the first woman on the moon uh you can't buy it i don't care how much money you have it's just for you for someone that's getting into this field they need to understand that's probably not ever going to get anywhere with it this is a tall order this is probably one of the hardest study subjects on planet earth where it's a study subject that half the population doesn't even think exists so it's a tall order and you have to see it as such you can't take it too serious you can't take yourself too serious and you can't get wrapped up in the politics of it because there are a lot of politics in bigfoot research it would really shock you it's just crazy so what i have learned is to never put bigfoot in front of your family your friends your leisure time or your life you have to prioritize it down you know significantly lower or it can consume you you know the reason we do this is because it's a blast you know we're in the woods we're hunters we're trackers and now we're out there with a little more purpose and the day that it becomes not fun i'm out and in the end you know you get to spend time in the woods you're in nature it's relaxing it's good for your health bigfoot can lead to a lot of other things becoming a botanist becoming a you know an expert into backyard birds or or even a fisherman but it gets you back in the woods and to appreciate our outdoors and to me bigfoot is that tool that you can use to get the youth of today to come out in the woods and see what's happening the kids are just totally enthralled with bigfoot when i do my own personal lectures like at libraries and different types of scout groups the kids are just totally interested in it they ask good questions they're not just believing right from the get-go they're always probing and asking good questions where they should look what my opinion is bigfoot phenomenon is something that you should cherish to be involved with it with it and you should definitely get the youth of today involved with it because i think they're the next key to solving this mystery because i think this mystery is going to be solved very soon one thing remains clear the bigfoot phenomenon is only growing some even pay money to go on expeditions and have experiences of their own it seems to be gaining some momentum in the last few years people are sharing probably more information just because of the internet but i don't think in our lifetime this will get solved and defined i really don't and i think in their in respect to them it's probably not in their best interest the reality is that one day the discovery will have to be made and when that does occur and we've identified sasquatch what do you do next well for me it's not a race to the finish and with such an elusive hominid we might get a dead body but that doesn't tell us what their lifestyle is we don't know what they do on a daily basis what they eat you know how they scavenge where they sleep how they sleep do they go to the bathroom you know all this kind of stuff it's a huge undertaking and that would be the next logical step if it's proven the race isn't over it's up to people to continue this search and this separates the real bigfooters from the chaff but until the mystery is solved bigfoot remains a sort of primitive archetype of our past ancestors we see dracula as as this being with canines and glowing eyes and that's built into us as something that's scary we see the canines and the glowing eyes in cats and dogs and we know those are our enemies those are the ones that are going to come and eat us and this is probably built into our psyche for long years of evolution and i'm starting to believe that that's what bigfoot really is it's something that's built into our psychic i i like the idea that maybe bigfoot is as as maybe us reflecting on ourselves like like you know just just like the union or or joseph campbell type of idea where uh there's something more primitive inside us something that that we still want to connect with and maybe we've convinced ourselves that we're separate from it and so i think there is a piece of bigfoot uh regardless of of that's independent of whatever the reality of bigfoot is that speaks to us and i think that's why he's always been popular in culture whether it's using him to sell beef jerky or whether he's a guest a character on the bionic man there's something about the intelligence and the familiarity with being a a bipedal creature but still being primitive still being an animal so i think it is a little bit of a rorschach test where we're actually seeing ourselves in a reflection of bigfoot you know i think it's kind of fun to think that there might be something out there that is left for us to discover that man doesn't know everything maybe there's something left out there you know people want to have something to believe in and they need to have something to believe in [Music] you

Channel: EncourageTV

Views: 444,358

Keywords: Feature Film, God, Full Movie, Christian Movies, Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth episode, Bridgestone Multimedia, Jesus, BMG, Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth tv show, Films, Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth tv series, Movies, John Kirk, Winona Kirk, Cliff Barackman, Chasing Bigfoot: The Quest for Truth, The Quest for Truth, Chasing Bigfoot, Bigfoot

Id: 8A8Tlb1GDtQ

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020