Finding Bigfoot (2011) s01e05 Episode Script
Frozen Bigfoot
Narrator: On this episode of "Finding Bigfoot" the rugged wilderness of southwestern Washington is the home of more bigfoot sightings than anywhere else in the country.
Recently, a hiker's tranquil day trip leads to what may be a photo of a mysterious lone creature on a mountaintop.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Eager to investigate these shocking photos and prove bigfoot's existence in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and founder Matt Moneymaker take to the skies to reach the treacherous site of the infamous encounter.
Whoa! And when locals come forward with an outpouring of bigfoot stories, the team deploys a new search technique that leads to a possible encounter with a bigfoot.
Oh, boy.
James: It was impossibly large.
Man: It definitely wasn't human.
Matt: I've been tracking Sasquatches for 25 years.
Cliff: These animals, in fact, are real.
Bobo: I've seen them.
They're here.
Ranae: I'm having a really difficult time finding an explanation for this.
Matt: There's something on the hill! [Roars.]
I do think there's a 'squatch in these woods.
I'm Matt Moneymaker.
I've been pursuing bigfoots for 25 years, and in 1995, I founded the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization to document and help prove the existence of bigfoots.
Today, my team and I are headed to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on the slopes of the Cascade Mountains in southwest Washington.
This is one of the oldest national forests in the country.
It's a million and a half acres of protected land.
It is prime Sasquatch habitat.
There have been scores of documented bigfoot sightings in this area, but we're here to investigate one of the most compelling encounters in years.
Recently, a hiker climbed to the top of one of the park's most treacherous peaks and took a series of photographs of what appears to be a bigfoot standing atop a nearby ridge.
We've come to this mountainside community to try to determine if these photos are of an actual bigfoot and prove, once and for all, that these creatures are real and living in the Cascade Mountains of Washington.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Well, guys, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be back in my home state of Washington.
We've come to Washington State to follow up on a photograph that was taken by a hiker on Silver Star Mountain.
Cliff: Silver Star Mountain is right on the border of Clark and Skamania counties.
I mean, I think everybody in the car here knows about Skamania County, the only county in the United States that actually has a law on the books against shooting a Sasquatch.
Matt: Washington, I think, above all other states, has a culture that's open to this subject.
There are more sightings from Washington State than any other state in the U.
S.
Ranae: So, tell me more about Randee, Cliff.
This is the guy that has the photos up on Silver Star.
Randee Chase managed to accidentally basically photograph a Sasquatch three times facing Randee, then it stands up and looks, then it turns 3/4 view in the third photograph and goes down the hill that direction.
Cliff: Randee did not realize what he was photographing at the time.
In fact, it was only several weeks later that a family member suggested to him that, "Hey, that kind of looks like a bigfoot.
" That adds a lot to his credibility.
Matt: It makes sense to me that, probably, the best photos would come out of Washington, and these are probably the best still photos that exist.
It doesn't look like what you would expect a person on a mountain peak to look like.
It just looks like a Sasquatch.
Bobo: Of all the photos I've seen over the last several years, the Silver Star photos have struck me as being the most likely to be a Sasquatch.
Till you visit the location of a bigfoot sighting, especially if there's photographic evidence, you don't really know what's going on or what you got.
Ranae: Well, I know you guys have your Sasquatch calls, but do you, by any chance, have, like, a sun dance that you could do? - This is a G-rated show.
- Sorry.
[chuckles.]
Matt: The figure in the Silver Star photos could only be a human or a Sasquatch.
Going up to that location with the witness may help us figure out which one it is.
And I can't believe I'm meeting the famous photographer of the Silver Star photos in person.
[Chuckling.]
Well, that's good.
Bobo: It was neat to finally meet the man who took the Silver Star photos.
I've spent so much time poring over those photos.
He's not making any bold claims.
He says, "I took these photos.
I don't know what they are.
" Let's go see if we can figure out what it is.
Matt: We needed to get up to the top of Silver Star.
Fortunately, Ranae has done a lot of field work in the backcountry in Washington State.
She knew enough people that she struck gold.
We found a pilot who was willing to do it.
Oh, yeah.
Cliff: The helicopter was cool.
I've never ridden in such a cool vehicle ever.
I felt like I was in "Apocalypse Now" or something like that.
Matt: Yeah, that's the peak.
Ranae: That's the peak? - That is it.
That's the peak there.
That's where the thing was standing.
Here we go.
Ranae: So, we set down mere yards from the location where Randee actually stood when he saw this figure and took his photographs.
Matt: I have been looking at the Silver Star photos for a long time, but when we got up there, it didn't look like what I had imagined.
Mainly, this is an unusual place for somebody to go in the winter, and at the approach this figure would've had to take to get to that south peak without leaving footprints or any kind of tracks meant that it would've taken a long, circuitous route to get there.
So, whatever that figure was, it either lived up there, or it took a heck of a long trek that it didn't need to to get to that south peak.
So, this is the peak that you took the photo from? Yes, it is right here.
And I can tell, obviously, that's the other peak that it was on.
Yes.
Over there.
It was a beautiful blue sky.
I was coming up through the saddle of the mountain, heading north to the top.
I felt this weird, eerie feeling on the back of my neck like someone was watching me.
Then I saw this black looked like a rock out there.
I go, "What's that?" I said, "Well, I got to take a picture of that," so I took my camera out.
As soon as I took a picture of it, it stood up, and it went down the hill away from me.
There are black bears here, but I-I've never seen anything, like, stand up like that.
And I hiked all the way up from that way, and I didn't see any tracks.
It's pretty clear from the photographs that it is not a bear.
Yeah.
No, it's not a bear.
It's a person or a 'squatch.
Yeah, that's really the only two possibilities.
Bobo: The only two options.
Well, when I saw the blowup, I could immediately see the gap in between the arm and the body, and I was just thinking, "That's not somebody in a big, heavy winter jacket and a hat.
" Mm-hmm.
That's, like, a big, tall, like, almost basketball-player-shaped thing with no hat on and no jacket, and almost like it's covered with fur.
I mean, it was really striking, but you got to see the blowup to really appreciate that.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
Cliff: Yeah, when you look closely at the photographs, you can see a, like, a sloping forehead and, like, a straight face, much like the Sasquatches that have been photographed before.
You can actually see a chest-muscle definition.
I'm thinking it's probably a bigfoot at this point, but I'd like to do the re-creation, though.
Yeah.
I'm leaning towards it being a 'squatch, but I want to see how much bigger it is than me or smaller.
Well, I'm really glad we actually are here for the re-creation, but just looking at your photograph, I thought it was a ridge much further away.
What you see is what I saw.
I just took the pictures, and that's what you see.
Probably the best thing to do is have Bobo go stand over there, and then Randee can see how big Bobo looks, compared to how big that thing looked when it was over there.
- All right.
- Cool.
Ranae: Bobo and I are gonna go to that opposite ridge, and Bobo's gonna stand in for the possible Sasquatch.
Randee, Cliff, and Matt will stay where Randee stood and took the photograph of the figure, and we're gonna see if our photograph matches up to Randee's original.
Matt: Okay, Bobo, you're in the right place.
Can you try to hunker down a bit, like you're a rock? Randee, what do you think? - Yeah, I'd say he's pretty close right there.
- Cool.
Whoa! Matt: The team and I have flown to the top of an isolated peak in southwestern Washington in search of evidence of bigfoots.
The witness testimony and some compelling photographic evidence leads us to believe we're in the right area where some bigfoots may live.
Now we're attempting to re-create a photograph that may prove the existence of Sasquatches in this remote area.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Okay, Bobo, you're in the right place.
Randee, what do you think? - Yeah, I'd say he's pretty close right there.
- Cool.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
Whoa! That's the first picture for sure, right there.
- Yep, that's it.
- That's what I saw.
Then I put my backpack down like this, turned around, and took a picture like this.
- Uh-huh.
- And then it stood up.
Okay, Bobo, go ahead and stand up now.
It looks pretty close.
That's it.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
That's looking really good.
Actually it comes to about the same level.
Let's go to the third picture.
Okay, now we need you to turn, like, 3/4 and start walking down.
Perfect.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
How was that, Matt? Matt: That was excellent Eerily re-creates the Silver Star photos.
Let's head back to the helicopter and get on out of here.
I hear you.
We're freezing.
Last one in is a skunk ape.
[Chuckles.]
[Wind howling.]
So, Randee, bigfooting up on Silver Star it was everything we expected it to be.
We got prints of the photos we took up there, along with prints of the photos you took back at the time where you saw the figure.
Cliff: One of the first things that I notice when I compared the two photographs is the position of the head and the shoulders.
In your picture, the head seems to be resting on top of the shoulders like that, whereas, in Bobo's photograph there's a much more of an extension of the neck.
Bobo's got big shoulders, and notice how much more narrow they seem, compared to the shoulders of this thing.
Bobo: I had five layers of clothes on, too.
Wow.
In your photograph, if you look at it, the shape of the head is very, very peculiar.
In fact, it looks like it's coming up to what we call Sagittal crest, which is that ridge on top of an ape's head that kind of gives it a conical impression.
You just simply don't see that in Bobo.
Ranae: To me, this is a person, and this is a person.
They're not zoomed up the same.
We have a different time of day, so the shadows are different.
As far as this hunch on the back, I have no reason to believe that that's not a backpack, but most of all, Randee, what do you think? Randee: I don't know what it is.
From even from the pictures and everything, I really don't know what happened.
I don't know what I saw.
I'm just happy that I had a camera that day.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Matt: After looking at all the photographs with Randee, we felt there was a good chance there were still some bigfoots near Silver Star Mountain.
So, we decided to go back up in the helicopter to look for some potential areas where bigfoots might be and lock in a GPS location where we can come back and do a night investigation.
These investigations have to happen at night because bigfoots are nocturnal.
They do most of their hunting at night.
That's when they are the most active.
Ranae: This area is a hotbed of sightings.
We're right near the Dark Divide 76,000 square miles of a roadless area.
This is where we want to focus our search, 'cause this is where the deer are gonna be moving, and this is where the Sasquatch that are preying upon the deer will be there, too.
Cliff: Yeah.
[Owl hooting.]
Cliff: Yeah, we need to find a clearing so we can make some noise and try to draw one of these things in.
Matt: Cliff and Ranae scouted an opening near the treeline while Bobo and I hiked deeper into the woods.
By spreading out in teams like this, we're definitely increasing our chances of having an encounter.
Bobo: Cliff and Ranae, this is Bobo and Matt.
Over.
We found a good spot to do some calls and then listen.
Whenever you're ready, if you want to do a long, sustained one, that'd be great.
I can do that if you'd like.
Kick it out.
Here we go.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Call echoing.]
He's good.
We should just listen for a little bit.
The more unsure they are, the more likely they are to answer.
Just keep your ears open that direction.
Ranae: Will do.
Listen.
[Sniffles.]
[Whistling.]
Cliff: Did you just whistle? Ranae: No, but I heard that.
Okay, then, what we need to do right now is continue talking like we were talking a minute ago, because they don't understand words, but they understand gestures.
Cliff: Bigfoots are commonly reported to whistle.
It is a quiet noise that can't be heard from far away, so I suspect that these Sasquatches that whistle probably do so for close-distance communications.
It was at about 11:00, 11:30.
But don't face it, if you can help it.
A huge mistake people make is that, like, when there's something around like that, they all stop "Do you hear that?" And it's all quiet.
It changes everything.
I've heard Sasquatches whistle twice.
The two sounds that I've heard them make are [pitch-ascending whistle.]
And the other one was [pitch-descending whistle.]
Ranae: I don't think this is a Sasquatch whistling, but I am not familiar enough with the birds in this area to know what could produce that sound.
Of course.
We just got a whistle up here, and we're just checking it out.
Are you sure what you heard was a whistle, like a human-type whistle, or could it have been chirping? It wasn't a chirp.
It was clearly a whistle.
10-4.
We'll keep listening.
Okay.
I'm gonna make a howl.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Distant howl.]
Shh! What'd you hear? A howl.
[Wind rushing.]
Dude, that last one was a trip.
I'm gonna howl back.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
Matt: Making calls in this area really paid off.
Cliff heard what he thought were some whistles, and we definitely heard some loud howls responding to us from a distance.
That's how bigfoots communicate, especially at night.
They'll make howling sounds and knocking sounds and whistling sounds to figure out who's out there and where they are and how far apart they are from each other.
Shh! Stop! Dude, that sounds 'squatchy.
Matt: We came to Washington State to investigate the photos of a possible bigfoot on Silver Star Mountain.
The photos are pretty compelling evidence to establish that there's probably some bigfoots in the Silver Star Mountain area.
So, we used a helicopter to locate an area where we think some might be at the moment.
We went there, and we heard some howls in that area.
So, we're hot on the trail of a Sasquatch right now.
Our research here may finally pay off.
Dude, that sounds 'squatchy.
Cliff, this is Matt.
Do you copy? We heard some pretty weird howls down here.
It was very possibly a 'squatch, but, also, it might have been coyotes.
Maybe if you could do a long howl from up there, maybe you can get these to respond again, so we can hear them more clearly.
Okay, here it comes, 10 seconds.
- Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
- I am.
I am.
Abort! Tell him to abort! Cliff, hold on.
Copy that.
That's voices, man.
What the [bleep.]
Matt: We've heard these kind of sounds before in other areas where there's a lot of sightings.
It sounds like people talking in the woods and moving through the woods as if there's people in the woods.
It's a very distinct sound, and it's very strange to hear.
Holy crap, man.
Wow.
Matt: Let's go see if we can find where those voices are coming from.
Bobo: Something with a big, soft, padded foot ain't gonna leave much of a trail through here.
No, but I like this terrain.
You see all this mossy stuff, like hemlock? That's exactly what they like to sleep on.
Sleep in, yeah.
Gets them off the cold ground.
They can stir all this all over them, and it's like being in a nice, fluffy feather bed.
Almost.
[Laughs.]
I heard voices, and I can't attribute it to any of us up here, and that's what 'squatches will do.
They'll walk through the woods, and you'll hear, like, a mumbling, talking sound, so there may be 'squatches up here.
It sounded like words.
Let's go meet up.
I'd like to talk about this some more.
Roger that.
We'll see you back at the rig.
We were hearing voices, like deep voices, like a conversation.
It was close.
It was bizarre.
And I've heard that stuff in the redwoods before and in other places.
I just thought I was listening to people.
Then it was, "Wait a minute.
There's nobody here.
" And it's like, but it was, plain as day, talking coming from out in the woods.
Cliff, you weren't kidding about this area.
It's just like any one of these side drainages off the Lewis probably has 'squatches in it, 'cause there's just so many animals.
But if we've got this huge of an area and there's this many options and We need to talk with some locals.
That's the best way to do it.
Call a meeting, see if we can get people in, local witnesses, bring them together, have them tell us where they think the best spots are, and then go there.
So, how about we try and get that going tomorrow? Small towns like this, word travels fast.
Well, let's get out of here for now.
Yeah, for now, let's go warm our feet.
Let's go check out those Hawaiian reports.
[Laughs.]
Matt: Our re-creation of the Silver Star photos and our nightlong investigation in the surrounding forest gave us enough evidence to want to continue searching in this area.
We wanted to gather more leads, so we focused our search on the nearby town of Yacolt, Washington, where we called a town-hall meeting.
This former logging town borders the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and if Sasquatches roam these woods, we're sure that the locals would have had some run-ins with them at some point.
We're hoping to hear about their encounters and where they took place to help us narrow our search for the bigfoots up here.
My name is Matt Moneymaker.
I'm the head of a group called the BFRO, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
You know this subject of the Sasquatch.
People have been talking about it for hundreds of years, especially in this part of the country.
The thing that drew us to this part of Washington, specifically, were some pretty interesting photographs the Silver Star Mountain photos.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Please give us a show of hands if you've ever seen one or heard one or found tracks.
Ryan: I'm driving down the road next to a cemetery, noticed something that looked out of place in front of me.
It was well after dark.
[Growls.]
It was an upright creature, probably 7 foot tall, and this was not a normal creature to see in the woods.
Man: Just out of the blue, I heard the most intense, voluminous vocalization of anything I've ever heard.
[Imitates bigfoot call.]
It was big.
I'd have to say it was probably about 8 feet tall.
[Thumping footsteps.]
Just walking right across the ridge, maybe about 30 yards from us.
Freaked me out so bad, I didn't sleep the whole night after that.
I can feel a presence behind me.
[Growls.]
We walked down maybe a quarter mile, and we heard a low, rumbling growl.
[Soft growling.]
As we're heading back, something was pacing us in the woods.
Matt: After hearing multiple accounts of bigfoot encounters at the town-hall meeting, we charted those locations on a map.
The witnesses who were most intriguing to us were Casey and Shane, who claim to have been ushered out of the woods by what may have been a bigfoot, and Ryan, who saw what looked like a bigfoot cross a road near a cemetery, and James, who may have had a bigfoot come up behind him while he was fishing.
Bobo: Ryan patrols the property, and while doing that, he sees something that's just out of place.
And it wasn't until it stepped out, just one step in the middle of the road.
Then it was off the next step out of the road.
Ranae: Bobo and I are on our way to meet with Ryan and Matt Harris.
It's Ryan Harris that had an encounter.
He saw something stepping across the road at the cemetery behind his family's property.
Ranae: So, will you run us through and tell us what it is you saw? Sure.
I come down here.
We patrol the edge of our property quite a bit, looking for animals, as well as vandals, thieves that sort of thing in this area.
Come down around the corner, and I noticed right down here, off to the right-hand side of the road, something didn't look quite right.
Just an object out of place, something that I didn't see every other time that I came down.
I stopped the car.
I hit my high beams.
I watched just for a few seconds, and it seemed to move a little bit.
And the next thing I know, it takes a step into the road.
One step, halfway across the road.
Next step, it was off in the brush on the left-hand side of the road.
[Thumping footsteps, low growling.]
It was a bipedal, large animal, had grayish-brown matted fur, probably somewhere in the area of approximately 7 feet.
I've seen every animal there is to see in these woods.
I've seen bear.
I've seen cougar.
Nothing has ever really given me the feeling that this gave me.
The hair on your neck stood up.
You know, the full shaking, heart racing just an overwhelming fear.
And as soon as I got my composure back, I went through in my head many times, "What did I just see?" I know that it stood on two legs and was larger than myself and walked across the road in two steps.
Ryan, I have to ask the question, though.
Is there any possibility could that have been somebody in a suit? I have no explanation for why a man that is taller and larger than myself would be in a suit at 9:30, 10:00 at night, carousing around the edge of your property.
- Let's go to where you were sitting in your car.
- Sure.
- And then we can just give our best guess at a scale.
- Sure.
Bobo: I went to exactly where he saw it, by the third tree down the driveway.
When I was looking down that little, narrow road, I was thinking, "I can step across that in two steps.
" I get down there.
He starts positioning me where it was.
It was back in the treeline.
The thing had stepped out, took one giant step, and in the second step, it cleared the road.
All right, Bobo, give it a shot! Matt: We've come to Washington State to find some bigfoots.
We've narrowed down our search area from some compelling eyewitness stories.
We believe we're getting closer to some bigfoots now.
Ranae and Bobo from the BFRO are in the woods of southwest Washington.
They've traveled to the site of a compelling eyewitness encounter to see if they can re-create his remarkable account.
[Thumping footsteps.]
All right, Bobo, give it a shot! Two.
- No.
- Maybe he's out of shape.
- Not even, not even close to that.
- Maybe he's out of shape Bobo: It took me three lunging steps, like, really trying to hop across.
This thing did it in two.
And I got a pretty long stride.
I would like to get a measurement of how far Bobo could take that step Sure.
and then what "in one step" distance would truly be, just so we have some measurements.
- Sure, sure.
- All right, let's go.
Ranae: At this point, I wanted to measure the distance of what Ryan claimed the original figure took in one step.
Where were you standing? Right here on that stick.
All right.
Ryan: As I recall, the first step would have put it somewhere in this area here.
8'9".
There's no way that was a human.
The next step put it clear off onto the side of the road.
[Growls.]
The only way to describe it is just effortless.
It didn't have to try to cross the road in two steps.
It just did.
What really strikes me, now looking at it from this point, is that a fella this size really had to try.
He had to jump to try to cross this road.
And seeing the measurements, it really impresses upon you how large the gait was of this animal.
There's not, in my mind, any way that a human could possibly do that.
It was it was definitely not, in my mind, a human.
It's got me a little frustrated, guys, because, even if it's somebody in a suit, it's got to be somebody really, really, really tall in a suit to be able to take that step.
- Absolutely.
So, you kind of stumped me a little there.
She doesn't have an answer for you, but I do.
You saw a 'squatch out here.
I believe so.
I don't have another explanation for it.
Matt: Other compelling eyewitness testimony came from Casey and Shane.
They were the bow hunters who claimed they were stalked in the woods by what they believe was a Sasquatch.
Cliff and I are on our way to meet them in a densely forested area just outside of Yacolt and only 5 miles from where Bobo and Ranae were investigating the other sighting at the cemetery.
Shane: On the way in, we kept hearing random noises.
[Insects chirping.]
It started off like sticks breaking every once in a while.
[Branches snapping.]
And as we got down the road further, it became more like I could hear something actually physically walking.
[Footsteps.]
You could hear it, like, brushing through the bushes, but you could hear the footsteps, too.
Hey, Cliff, would you mind? I think it'd be good to go back in there and see if we can approximate the sound.
Cliff: It was my job to be the bigfoot.
I went off into the woods, and I kept pace with the group on the road to see how easy it was to navigate through the woods.
[Branches snapping.]
Shane: You can hear him actually walking.
Stuff's brushing against him.
You can hear steps.
That's that's what we heard.
Matt: Okay, so, you were walking about this pace? I was walking backwards like this.
I had my gun drawn at the woods.
[Insects chirping.]
And I even hollered at it a couple times.
"If you're a person, you better identify yourself.
Otherwise, you're gonna get shot!" Matt: There's a few different types of predators that will stalk their prey.
Mountain lions will do it, bears will sometimes do it, and so will coyotes.
But when they stalk animals, they're very, very quiet.
Moreover, they don't parallel you from the side.
They follow from behind.
And usually, they follow from enough distance so that you have no idea they're there.
I think this thing wasn't preparing to attack.
I think this thing was just trying to make them nervous, make them want to leave, and it succeeded.
Frankly, it was very difficult for me to keep pace with you during the day, so at nights, there aren't a lot of options left about what it could have been.
But I highly suspect that you were escorted out of this area by a Sasquatch.
Yeah, well, thank you for coming out here and kind of confirming what I already thought in, you know, the beginning.
Casey: And that's what I appreciate is some legitimacy to our experience.
You know, we can prove that something couldn't keep pace with us naturally in these woods, 30 feet out.
It's entirely possible that we were being menaced the whole way, and there was no way we could see it.
Matt: The team and I regroup for the final eyewitness investigation.
James is a local fisherman who claims to have seen a Sasquatch standing over him on a nearby ridge above the Lewis River, which flows right through the areas of the other two encounters we've investigated.
There's a pattern here, and I know we're closing in on a bigfoot.
See, guys, right down here is where it happened.
This is the spot.
It was about 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, when I heard what I thought was the sound of two fishermen coming down the trail.
As the sound of the footsteps approached closer, it was like my whole body went numb.
And I knew whatever it was, was standing behind me right there at the top of the trail.
Matt: We traveled to southwest Washington in search of some bigfoots.
Our research team is in the process of gathering eyewitness testimony and narrowing down our target area.
Hopefully, this will help us prove the existence of these elusive creatures in this remote corner of the Pacific Northwest.
Cliff: Today, we're meeting James at the sighting location, where he had his encounter.
We want to see, is it a place where Sasquatches actually would come periodically? As the sound of the footsteps approached closer, I knew whatever it was, was standing behind me right there at the top of the trail.
[Growling.]
It was impossibly large, appro ximately 81/2 to 9 feet tall, with shoulder spread approximately 4 feet wide.
Ranae: Another point that James claims from his encounter is that he could hear the creature walking from a good distance away.
So, we had Bobo back up the trail and stomping with all of his weight.
Stomp it out, man.
Kick it up a notch.
I'm gonna stomp the yard.
Here he goes.
[Soft thumping.]
James: From farther back, it was double the sound you made.
It's so soft up here, I can't even hear my feet.
Bobo: If that 'squatch approaching was trying to, you know, get a free fish meal out of him, it was trying to scare him, it was intimidating him before it even showed itself that would make perfect sense.
I saw one, actually, that was bigger than the one he saw, and when it walked around, at over 100 yards away, I could hear its footfalls boom, boom, boom.
It sounds like an elephant.
When they are trying to intimidate you and they're stomping their feet as they walk, it's loud.
Bobo: I think you, for sure, saw and heard a Sasquatch that night.
Wow.
Just makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck all over again.
Cliff: The fact that James saw his Sasquatch on the Lewis River is important because there's a long history of seeing Sasquatches on the Lewis River.
There's a lot of food there.
All the water from the surrounding Cascades empties into the Lewis River and dumps into the Columbia.
It is a great place to look for Sasquatches.
[Duck quacking.]
Okay, here we are on the Lewis River.
This is where James' sighting happened, and I think if we're gonna do a night investigation here, we should move further upstream to this area in near Lake Merwin.
Lake Merwin would have excellent listening conditions.
Our broadcasts would be able to be heard for miles Oh, yeah, 'cause they'd bounce right off the lake.
Yeah, and this ridge between Lake Merwin and Amboy, to the south, actually has a number of sightings on it.
We'll have the place to ourselves, basically.
And you know, this is a lot closer to where we heard where, the other night, when we heard the vocalizations.
Also, water investigations are a neat opportunity to do some creative bigfooting.
I've got a few tricks up my sleeve I'd like to give a shot here.
All right.
Perfect weather for canoeing, don't you think? - [Chuckles.]
- Yeah.
Matt: We decided we should do this, but in a little bit more stealthy way.
It gave us an opportunity to bring out a technique that we wanted to use for a long time, which was a canoe with a structure over it, on which we would put some ghillie cloths to make it look like just a tree that had blown down into the water and was just moving along with the wind.
The idea was to get close to the shoreline and potentially fool a Sasquatch long enough to get close to it and get some video.
Cliff: You know, the advantage of this thing is that we can approach whatever's making noise on the shoreline silently.
Because there's no motor on it.
We just have paddles.
Bobo: Cliff and Ranae are gonna be in this camouflage canoe.
And we got an actual camera inside of a floating goose that we're gonna remote-control right up and down the river and see if we can't spot anything with that.
It's working better than I thought it would.
[Insects chirping.]
I mean, you guys seriously blend right into the beach.
I could walk right by you and not even notice you.
Cliff: Yeah, that's right.
One shove from Bobes, and we'll be on the other side of the lake.
You guys ready? Ranae: As ready as we'll be.
- All right.
- Do it.
Bon voyage.
Bon voyage! Matt: There she goes! See you.
Good luck.
All right, Matt, I'm gonna send out the goose.
All right.
Work your magic.
There she goes.
Come home with some 'squatch footage, or don't come home at all.
Okay, great, I got a picture, Bobe.
Yeah, Matt, I'm fully getting the hang of this thing now.
Ranae: I'm kind of starting to like our little craft here.
Yeah, it's all right.
This is a nice little pleasure cruise.
I mean, I know this if I'm trying to get a glimpse of a bear or a cougar or something and I'm in a motorized boat and I'm on a bank, they're not gonna come by if I'm there.
But if I were sitting in something that looked like it was just a clump of logs and stuff and I were floating by, maybe they would be much more likely to, you know, to come near the edge.
Matt, Bobo, it's Cliff.
Do you read? We're gonna let loose with the call here.
I want to give you a heads-up.
Sounds good, bud.
We're ready.
Here we go.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Call echoing.]
What great echoes.
Awesome.
All right, Cliff, Matt's gonna answer you with one.
[Breathing deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Chuckles.]
Basset 'squatch.
Hey, Cliff, are you out of the boat on the shore right now? No, no, we're about 200 feet from shore in the lake.
Look to your left down the shoreline.
There was just two hot spots on the shoreline.
I don't see anything, but hold on.
It could be elk.
It could be deer.
It could be a bigfoot.
I don't know.
They were on the beach.
It's just too far away for this thing to get any detail.
Let's get over there and find out.
All right, Bobe, you said it was ahead of us to the left.
We're gonna push into shore and take a GPS coordinate.
I'll get that to you, and you meet us over there, all right? Matt: Let's double-time it over there.
Well, this is about where Bobo said he saw those blips.
And it looks like there's a place to pull in.
Yeah, let's get in here.
We'll mark the GPS so we can call it over to them.
Matt: We're getting pretty close to where that was.
So, Cliff and Ranae are gonna be coming toward us.
Hopefully, we can connect up with them right above the point where those two heat sources were.
Pincer movement.
Yeah.
Well, if it's 'squatch, you know what they'll do.
They're gonna want to get up the hill behind us.
So, they'd have to cross this road to get up above us, if that was 'squatches down by the lake.
Oh, look at this opening right here.
Oh, yeah, this would be a great spot to do a call.
Ranae and Cliff, do you copy? I'm gonna do a howl.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Distant animal call.]
Oh, boy.
Wait.
That's not an echo.
Matt: Our pursuit of bigfoots has zeroed in on the banks of an isolated lake in southwest Washington.
The high mountains around the lake create the ideal conditions for bigfoot calls, and now it's possible we've encountered one of the elusive creatures.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Crickets chirping.]
[Distant animal call.]
Oh, boy.
Wait.
That's not an echo.
That wasn't an echo.
[Distant animal calls.]
What was that? It was Ranae, Cliff, we just heard a howl back.
It was between you and us.
We're gonna head toward it, you guys head toward us, but we got to go now and do it.
All right, we're on our way.
Okay, let's go over here.
Get up here.
There's a vantage point from here.
If that's a 'squatch, they're getting closer.
So, what are you thinking, Cliff? I heard the echo.
He says it's not the echo.
I got to believe him.
Well, I'm with you.
What I heard from our location to me, it was, no doubt, an echo, but they could be in a different position.
They could be hearing something else.
Absolutely.
Matt: Bobo, come over here.
What'd you find? Check it out.
That sound we heard it sounded like it was coming from down in there.
I thought maybe there was some trailer down in there, maybe some people, but there's nothing in between here and the lake except trees and a steep hillside.
To me, it was definitely came from that direction.
It came from that direction, absolutely.
You can't walk through this.
This might be about all we go.
There's no way through there.
It's all deadfall.
Matt: When I got to the edge and I looked down and I realized, if there was a Sasquatch there, it was hunkering down and giving us the silent treatment, so there wasn't much more we could do.
We had to call it a night, knowing, at least, we got a recording of whatever screamed back at us.
[Distant animal call.]
The Pacific Northwest has been a hotbed of bigfoot activity ever since the word "bigfoot" has been in our vocabulary.
We were able to come up to Washington State and investigate some of the best photographic evidence ever obtained.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
We were also able to get a recording of what may be a couple of Sasquatches.
[Whistling.]
Cliff: Did you just whistle? Based on those things and all the expeditions the BFRO has done in the Pacific Northwest in the past, the evidence is clear there are bigfoots here in Washington.
[Roars.]
Recently, a hiker's tranquil day trip leads to what may be a photo of a mysterious lone creature on a mountaintop.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Eager to investigate these shocking photos and prove bigfoot's existence in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and founder Matt Moneymaker take to the skies to reach the treacherous site of the infamous encounter.
Whoa! And when locals come forward with an outpouring of bigfoot stories, the team deploys a new search technique that leads to a possible encounter with a bigfoot.
Oh, boy.
James: It was impossibly large.
Man: It definitely wasn't human.
Matt: I've been tracking Sasquatches for 25 years.
Cliff: These animals, in fact, are real.
Bobo: I've seen them.
They're here.
Ranae: I'm having a really difficult time finding an explanation for this.
Matt: There's something on the hill! [Roars.]
I do think there's a 'squatch in these woods.
I'm Matt Moneymaker.
I've been pursuing bigfoots for 25 years, and in 1995, I founded the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization to document and help prove the existence of bigfoots.
Today, my team and I are headed to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest on the slopes of the Cascade Mountains in southwest Washington.
This is one of the oldest national forests in the country.
It's a million and a half acres of protected land.
It is prime Sasquatch habitat.
There have been scores of documented bigfoot sightings in this area, but we're here to investigate one of the most compelling encounters in years.
Recently, a hiker climbed to the top of one of the park's most treacherous peaks and took a series of photographs of what appears to be a bigfoot standing atop a nearby ridge.
We've come to this mountainside community to try to determine if these photos are of an actual bigfoot and prove, once and for all, that these creatures are real and living in the Cascade Mountains of Washington.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Well, guys, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be back in my home state of Washington.
We've come to Washington State to follow up on a photograph that was taken by a hiker on Silver Star Mountain.
Cliff: Silver Star Mountain is right on the border of Clark and Skamania counties.
I mean, I think everybody in the car here knows about Skamania County, the only county in the United States that actually has a law on the books against shooting a Sasquatch.
Matt: Washington, I think, above all other states, has a culture that's open to this subject.
There are more sightings from Washington State than any other state in the U.
S.
Ranae: So, tell me more about Randee, Cliff.
This is the guy that has the photos up on Silver Star.
Randee Chase managed to accidentally basically photograph a Sasquatch three times facing Randee, then it stands up and looks, then it turns 3/4 view in the third photograph and goes down the hill that direction.
Cliff: Randee did not realize what he was photographing at the time.
In fact, it was only several weeks later that a family member suggested to him that, "Hey, that kind of looks like a bigfoot.
" That adds a lot to his credibility.
Matt: It makes sense to me that, probably, the best photos would come out of Washington, and these are probably the best still photos that exist.
It doesn't look like what you would expect a person on a mountain peak to look like.
It just looks like a Sasquatch.
Bobo: Of all the photos I've seen over the last several years, the Silver Star photos have struck me as being the most likely to be a Sasquatch.
Till you visit the location of a bigfoot sighting, especially if there's photographic evidence, you don't really know what's going on or what you got.
Ranae: Well, I know you guys have your Sasquatch calls, but do you, by any chance, have, like, a sun dance that you could do? - This is a G-rated show.
- Sorry.
[chuckles.]
Matt: The figure in the Silver Star photos could only be a human or a Sasquatch.
Going up to that location with the witness may help us figure out which one it is.
And I can't believe I'm meeting the famous photographer of the Silver Star photos in person.
[Chuckling.]
Well, that's good.
Bobo: It was neat to finally meet the man who took the Silver Star photos.
I've spent so much time poring over those photos.
He's not making any bold claims.
He says, "I took these photos.
I don't know what they are.
" Let's go see if we can figure out what it is.
Matt: We needed to get up to the top of Silver Star.
Fortunately, Ranae has done a lot of field work in the backcountry in Washington State.
She knew enough people that she struck gold.
We found a pilot who was willing to do it.
Oh, yeah.
Cliff: The helicopter was cool.
I've never ridden in such a cool vehicle ever.
I felt like I was in "Apocalypse Now" or something like that.
Matt: Yeah, that's the peak.
Ranae: That's the peak? - That is it.
That's the peak there.
That's where the thing was standing.
Here we go.
Ranae: So, we set down mere yards from the location where Randee actually stood when he saw this figure and took his photographs.
Matt: I have been looking at the Silver Star photos for a long time, but when we got up there, it didn't look like what I had imagined.
Mainly, this is an unusual place for somebody to go in the winter, and at the approach this figure would've had to take to get to that south peak without leaving footprints or any kind of tracks meant that it would've taken a long, circuitous route to get there.
So, whatever that figure was, it either lived up there, or it took a heck of a long trek that it didn't need to to get to that south peak.
So, this is the peak that you took the photo from? Yes, it is right here.
And I can tell, obviously, that's the other peak that it was on.
Yes.
Over there.
It was a beautiful blue sky.
I was coming up through the saddle of the mountain, heading north to the top.
I felt this weird, eerie feeling on the back of my neck like someone was watching me.
Then I saw this black looked like a rock out there.
I go, "What's that?" I said, "Well, I got to take a picture of that," so I took my camera out.
As soon as I took a picture of it, it stood up, and it went down the hill away from me.
There are black bears here, but I-I've never seen anything, like, stand up like that.
And I hiked all the way up from that way, and I didn't see any tracks.
It's pretty clear from the photographs that it is not a bear.
Yeah.
No, it's not a bear.
It's a person or a 'squatch.
Yeah, that's really the only two possibilities.
Bobo: The only two options.
Well, when I saw the blowup, I could immediately see the gap in between the arm and the body, and I was just thinking, "That's not somebody in a big, heavy winter jacket and a hat.
" Mm-hmm.
That's, like, a big, tall, like, almost basketball-player-shaped thing with no hat on and no jacket, and almost like it's covered with fur.
I mean, it was really striking, but you got to see the blowup to really appreciate that.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
Cliff: Yeah, when you look closely at the photographs, you can see a, like, a sloping forehead and, like, a straight face, much like the Sasquatches that have been photographed before.
You can actually see a chest-muscle definition.
I'm thinking it's probably a bigfoot at this point, but I'd like to do the re-creation, though.
Yeah.
I'm leaning towards it being a 'squatch, but I want to see how much bigger it is than me or smaller.
Well, I'm really glad we actually are here for the re-creation, but just looking at your photograph, I thought it was a ridge much further away.
What you see is what I saw.
I just took the pictures, and that's what you see.
Probably the best thing to do is have Bobo go stand over there, and then Randee can see how big Bobo looks, compared to how big that thing looked when it was over there.
- All right.
- Cool.
Ranae: Bobo and I are gonna go to that opposite ridge, and Bobo's gonna stand in for the possible Sasquatch.
Randee, Cliff, and Matt will stay where Randee stood and took the photograph of the figure, and we're gonna see if our photograph matches up to Randee's original.
Matt: Okay, Bobo, you're in the right place.
Can you try to hunker down a bit, like you're a rock? Randee, what do you think? - Yeah, I'd say he's pretty close right there.
- Cool.
Whoa! Matt: The team and I have flown to the top of an isolated peak in southwestern Washington in search of evidence of bigfoots.
The witness testimony and some compelling photographic evidence leads us to believe we're in the right area where some bigfoots may live.
Now we're attempting to re-create a photograph that may prove the existence of Sasquatches in this remote area.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Okay, Bobo, you're in the right place.
Randee, what do you think? - Yeah, I'd say he's pretty close right there.
- Cool.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
Whoa! That's the first picture for sure, right there.
- Yep, that's it.
- That's what I saw.
Then I put my backpack down like this, turned around, and took a picture like this.
- Uh-huh.
- And then it stood up.
Okay, Bobo, go ahead and stand up now.
It looks pretty close.
That's it.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
That's looking really good.
Actually it comes to about the same level.
Let's go to the third picture.
Okay, now we need you to turn, like, 3/4 and start walking down.
Perfect.
[Camera shutter clicks.]
How was that, Matt? Matt: That was excellent Eerily re-creates the Silver Star photos.
Let's head back to the helicopter and get on out of here.
I hear you.
We're freezing.
Last one in is a skunk ape.
[Chuckles.]
[Wind howling.]
So, Randee, bigfooting up on Silver Star it was everything we expected it to be.
We got prints of the photos we took up there, along with prints of the photos you took back at the time where you saw the figure.
Cliff: One of the first things that I notice when I compared the two photographs is the position of the head and the shoulders.
In your picture, the head seems to be resting on top of the shoulders like that, whereas, in Bobo's photograph there's a much more of an extension of the neck.
Bobo's got big shoulders, and notice how much more narrow they seem, compared to the shoulders of this thing.
Bobo: I had five layers of clothes on, too.
Wow.
In your photograph, if you look at it, the shape of the head is very, very peculiar.
In fact, it looks like it's coming up to what we call Sagittal crest, which is that ridge on top of an ape's head that kind of gives it a conical impression.
You just simply don't see that in Bobo.
Ranae: To me, this is a person, and this is a person.
They're not zoomed up the same.
We have a different time of day, so the shadows are different.
As far as this hunch on the back, I have no reason to believe that that's not a backpack, but most of all, Randee, what do you think? Randee: I don't know what it is.
From even from the pictures and everything, I really don't know what happened.
I don't know what I saw.
I'm just happy that I had a camera that day.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Matt: After looking at all the photographs with Randee, we felt there was a good chance there were still some bigfoots near Silver Star Mountain.
So, we decided to go back up in the helicopter to look for some potential areas where bigfoots might be and lock in a GPS location where we can come back and do a night investigation.
These investigations have to happen at night because bigfoots are nocturnal.
They do most of their hunting at night.
That's when they are the most active.
Ranae: This area is a hotbed of sightings.
We're right near the Dark Divide 76,000 square miles of a roadless area.
This is where we want to focus our search, 'cause this is where the deer are gonna be moving, and this is where the Sasquatch that are preying upon the deer will be there, too.
Cliff: Yeah.
[Owl hooting.]
Cliff: Yeah, we need to find a clearing so we can make some noise and try to draw one of these things in.
Matt: Cliff and Ranae scouted an opening near the treeline while Bobo and I hiked deeper into the woods.
By spreading out in teams like this, we're definitely increasing our chances of having an encounter.
Bobo: Cliff and Ranae, this is Bobo and Matt.
Over.
We found a good spot to do some calls and then listen.
Whenever you're ready, if you want to do a long, sustained one, that'd be great.
I can do that if you'd like.
Kick it out.
Here we go.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Call echoing.]
He's good.
We should just listen for a little bit.
The more unsure they are, the more likely they are to answer.
Just keep your ears open that direction.
Ranae: Will do.
Listen.
[Sniffles.]
[Whistling.]
Cliff: Did you just whistle? Ranae: No, but I heard that.
Okay, then, what we need to do right now is continue talking like we were talking a minute ago, because they don't understand words, but they understand gestures.
Cliff: Bigfoots are commonly reported to whistle.
It is a quiet noise that can't be heard from far away, so I suspect that these Sasquatches that whistle probably do so for close-distance communications.
It was at about 11:00, 11:30.
But don't face it, if you can help it.
A huge mistake people make is that, like, when there's something around like that, they all stop "Do you hear that?" And it's all quiet.
It changes everything.
I've heard Sasquatches whistle twice.
The two sounds that I've heard them make are [pitch-ascending whistle.]
And the other one was [pitch-descending whistle.]
Ranae: I don't think this is a Sasquatch whistling, but I am not familiar enough with the birds in this area to know what could produce that sound.
Of course.
We just got a whistle up here, and we're just checking it out.
Are you sure what you heard was a whistle, like a human-type whistle, or could it have been chirping? It wasn't a chirp.
It was clearly a whistle.
10-4.
We'll keep listening.
Okay.
I'm gonna make a howl.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Distant howl.]
Shh! What'd you hear? A howl.
[Wind rushing.]
Dude, that last one was a trip.
I'm gonna howl back.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
Matt: Making calls in this area really paid off.
Cliff heard what he thought were some whistles, and we definitely heard some loud howls responding to us from a distance.
That's how bigfoots communicate, especially at night.
They'll make howling sounds and knocking sounds and whistling sounds to figure out who's out there and where they are and how far apart they are from each other.
Shh! Stop! Dude, that sounds 'squatchy.
Matt: We came to Washington State to investigate the photos of a possible bigfoot on Silver Star Mountain.
The photos are pretty compelling evidence to establish that there's probably some bigfoots in the Silver Star Mountain area.
So, we used a helicopter to locate an area where we think some might be at the moment.
We went there, and we heard some howls in that area.
So, we're hot on the trail of a Sasquatch right now.
Our research here may finally pay off.
Dude, that sounds 'squatchy.
Cliff, this is Matt.
Do you copy? We heard some pretty weird howls down here.
It was very possibly a 'squatch, but, also, it might have been coyotes.
Maybe if you could do a long howl from up there, maybe you can get these to respond again, so we can hear them more clearly.
Okay, here it comes, 10 seconds.
- Stop.
Stop.
Stop.
- I am.
I am.
Abort! Tell him to abort! Cliff, hold on.
Copy that.
That's voices, man.
What the [bleep.]
Matt: We've heard these kind of sounds before in other areas where there's a lot of sightings.
It sounds like people talking in the woods and moving through the woods as if there's people in the woods.
It's a very distinct sound, and it's very strange to hear.
Holy crap, man.
Wow.
Matt: Let's go see if we can find where those voices are coming from.
Bobo: Something with a big, soft, padded foot ain't gonna leave much of a trail through here.
No, but I like this terrain.
You see all this mossy stuff, like hemlock? That's exactly what they like to sleep on.
Sleep in, yeah.
Gets them off the cold ground.
They can stir all this all over them, and it's like being in a nice, fluffy feather bed.
Almost.
[Laughs.]
I heard voices, and I can't attribute it to any of us up here, and that's what 'squatches will do.
They'll walk through the woods, and you'll hear, like, a mumbling, talking sound, so there may be 'squatches up here.
It sounded like words.
Let's go meet up.
I'd like to talk about this some more.
Roger that.
We'll see you back at the rig.
We were hearing voices, like deep voices, like a conversation.
It was close.
It was bizarre.
And I've heard that stuff in the redwoods before and in other places.
I just thought I was listening to people.
Then it was, "Wait a minute.
There's nobody here.
" And it's like, but it was, plain as day, talking coming from out in the woods.
Cliff, you weren't kidding about this area.
It's just like any one of these side drainages off the Lewis probably has 'squatches in it, 'cause there's just so many animals.
But if we've got this huge of an area and there's this many options and We need to talk with some locals.
That's the best way to do it.
Call a meeting, see if we can get people in, local witnesses, bring them together, have them tell us where they think the best spots are, and then go there.
So, how about we try and get that going tomorrow? Small towns like this, word travels fast.
Well, let's get out of here for now.
Yeah, for now, let's go warm our feet.
Let's go check out those Hawaiian reports.
[Laughs.]
Matt: Our re-creation of the Silver Star photos and our nightlong investigation in the surrounding forest gave us enough evidence to want to continue searching in this area.
We wanted to gather more leads, so we focused our search on the nearby town of Yacolt, Washington, where we called a town-hall meeting.
This former logging town borders the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and if Sasquatches roam these woods, we're sure that the locals would have had some run-ins with them at some point.
We're hoping to hear about their encounters and where they took place to help us narrow our search for the bigfoots up here.
My name is Matt Moneymaker.
I'm the head of a group called the BFRO, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
You know this subject of the Sasquatch.
People have been talking about it for hundreds of years, especially in this part of the country.
The thing that drew us to this part of Washington, specifically, were some pretty interesting photographs the Silver Star Mountain photos.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
Please give us a show of hands if you've ever seen one or heard one or found tracks.
Ryan: I'm driving down the road next to a cemetery, noticed something that looked out of place in front of me.
It was well after dark.
[Growls.]
It was an upright creature, probably 7 foot tall, and this was not a normal creature to see in the woods.
Man: Just out of the blue, I heard the most intense, voluminous vocalization of anything I've ever heard.
[Imitates bigfoot call.]
It was big.
I'd have to say it was probably about 8 feet tall.
[Thumping footsteps.]
Just walking right across the ridge, maybe about 30 yards from us.
Freaked me out so bad, I didn't sleep the whole night after that.
I can feel a presence behind me.
[Growls.]
We walked down maybe a quarter mile, and we heard a low, rumbling growl.
[Soft growling.]
As we're heading back, something was pacing us in the woods.
Matt: After hearing multiple accounts of bigfoot encounters at the town-hall meeting, we charted those locations on a map.
The witnesses who were most intriguing to us were Casey and Shane, who claim to have been ushered out of the woods by what may have been a bigfoot, and Ryan, who saw what looked like a bigfoot cross a road near a cemetery, and James, who may have had a bigfoot come up behind him while he was fishing.
Bobo: Ryan patrols the property, and while doing that, he sees something that's just out of place.
And it wasn't until it stepped out, just one step in the middle of the road.
Then it was off the next step out of the road.
Ranae: Bobo and I are on our way to meet with Ryan and Matt Harris.
It's Ryan Harris that had an encounter.
He saw something stepping across the road at the cemetery behind his family's property.
Ranae: So, will you run us through and tell us what it is you saw? Sure.
I come down here.
We patrol the edge of our property quite a bit, looking for animals, as well as vandals, thieves that sort of thing in this area.
Come down around the corner, and I noticed right down here, off to the right-hand side of the road, something didn't look quite right.
Just an object out of place, something that I didn't see every other time that I came down.
I stopped the car.
I hit my high beams.
I watched just for a few seconds, and it seemed to move a little bit.
And the next thing I know, it takes a step into the road.
One step, halfway across the road.
Next step, it was off in the brush on the left-hand side of the road.
[Thumping footsteps, low growling.]
It was a bipedal, large animal, had grayish-brown matted fur, probably somewhere in the area of approximately 7 feet.
I've seen every animal there is to see in these woods.
I've seen bear.
I've seen cougar.
Nothing has ever really given me the feeling that this gave me.
The hair on your neck stood up.
You know, the full shaking, heart racing just an overwhelming fear.
And as soon as I got my composure back, I went through in my head many times, "What did I just see?" I know that it stood on two legs and was larger than myself and walked across the road in two steps.
Ryan, I have to ask the question, though.
Is there any possibility could that have been somebody in a suit? I have no explanation for why a man that is taller and larger than myself would be in a suit at 9:30, 10:00 at night, carousing around the edge of your property.
- Let's go to where you were sitting in your car.
- Sure.
- And then we can just give our best guess at a scale.
- Sure.
Bobo: I went to exactly where he saw it, by the third tree down the driveway.
When I was looking down that little, narrow road, I was thinking, "I can step across that in two steps.
" I get down there.
He starts positioning me where it was.
It was back in the treeline.
The thing had stepped out, took one giant step, and in the second step, it cleared the road.
All right, Bobo, give it a shot! Matt: We've come to Washington State to find some bigfoots.
We've narrowed down our search area from some compelling eyewitness stories.
We believe we're getting closer to some bigfoots now.
Ranae and Bobo from the BFRO are in the woods of southwest Washington.
They've traveled to the site of a compelling eyewitness encounter to see if they can re-create his remarkable account.
[Thumping footsteps.]
All right, Bobo, give it a shot! Two.
- No.
- Maybe he's out of shape.
- Not even, not even close to that.
- Maybe he's out of shape Bobo: It took me three lunging steps, like, really trying to hop across.
This thing did it in two.
And I got a pretty long stride.
I would like to get a measurement of how far Bobo could take that step Sure.
and then what "in one step" distance would truly be, just so we have some measurements.
- Sure, sure.
- All right, let's go.
Ranae: At this point, I wanted to measure the distance of what Ryan claimed the original figure took in one step.
Where were you standing? Right here on that stick.
All right.
Ryan: As I recall, the first step would have put it somewhere in this area here.
8'9".
There's no way that was a human.
The next step put it clear off onto the side of the road.
[Growls.]
The only way to describe it is just effortless.
It didn't have to try to cross the road in two steps.
It just did.
What really strikes me, now looking at it from this point, is that a fella this size really had to try.
He had to jump to try to cross this road.
And seeing the measurements, it really impresses upon you how large the gait was of this animal.
There's not, in my mind, any way that a human could possibly do that.
It was it was definitely not, in my mind, a human.
It's got me a little frustrated, guys, because, even if it's somebody in a suit, it's got to be somebody really, really, really tall in a suit to be able to take that step.
- Absolutely.
So, you kind of stumped me a little there.
She doesn't have an answer for you, but I do.
You saw a 'squatch out here.
I believe so.
I don't have another explanation for it.
Matt: Other compelling eyewitness testimony came from Casey and Shane.
They were the bow hunters who claimed they were stalked in the woods by what they believe was a Sasquatch.
Cliff and I are on our way to meet them in a densely forested area just outside of Yacolt and only 5 miles from where Bobo and Ranae were investigating the other sighting at the cemetery.
Shane: On the way in, we kept hearing random noises.
[Insects chirping.]
It started off like sticks breaking every once in a while.
[Branches snapping.]
And as we got down the road further, it became more like I could hear something actually physically walking.
[Footsteps.]
You could hear it, like, brushing through the bushes, but you could hear the footsteps, too.
Hey, Cliff, would you mind? I think it'd be good to go back in there and see if we can approximate the sound.
Cliff: It was my job to be the bigfoot.
I went off into the woods, and I kept pace with the group on the road to see how easy it was to navigate through the woods.
[Branches snapping.]
Shane: You can hear him actually walking.
Stuff's brushing against him.
You can hear steps.
That's that's what we heard.
Matt: Okay, so, you were walking about this pace? I was walking backwards like this.
I had my gun drawn at the woods.
[Insects chirping.]
And I even hollered at it a couple times.
"If you're a person, you better identify yourself.
Otherwise, you're gonna get shot!" Matt: There's a few different types of predators that will stalk their prey.
Mountain lions will do it, bears will sometimes do it, and so will coyotes.
But when they stalk animals, they're very, very quiet.
Moreover, they don't parallel you from the side.
They follow from behind.
And usually, they follow from enough distance so that you have no idea they're there.
I think this thing wasn't preparing to attack.
I think this thing was just trying to make them nervous, make them want to leave, and it succeeded.
Frankly, it was very difficult for me to keep pace with you during the day, so at nights, there aren't a lot of options left about what it could have been.
But I highly suspect that you were escorted out of this area by a Sasquatch.
Yeah, well, thank you for coming out here and kind of confirming what I already thought in, you know, the beginning.
Casey: And that's what I appreciate is some legitimacy to our experience.
You know, we can prove that something couldn't keep pace with us naturally in these woods, 30 feet out.
It's entirely possible that we were being menaced the whole way, and there was no way we could see it.
Matt: The team and I regroup for the final eyewitness investigation.
James is a local fisherman who claims to have seen a Sasquatch standing over him on a nearby ridge above the Lewis River, which flows right through the areas of the other two encounters we've investigated.
There's a pattern here, and I know we're closing in on a bigfoot.
See, guys, right down here is where it happened.
This is the spot.
It was about 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, when I heard what I thought was the sound of two fishermen coming down the trail.
As the sound of the footsteps approached closer, it was like my whole body went numb.
And I knew whatever it was, was standing behind me right there at the top of the trail.
Matt: We traveled to southwest Washington in search of some bigfoots.
Our research team is in the process of gathering eyewitness testimony and narrowing down our target area.
Hopefully, this will help us prove the existence of these elusive creatures in this remote corner of the Pacific Northwest.
Cliff: Today, we're meeting James at the sighting location, where he had his encounter.
We want to see, is it a place where Sasquatches actually would come periodically? As the sound of the footsteps approached closer, I knew whatever it was, was standing behind me right there at the top of the trail.
[Growling.]
It was impossibly large, appro ximately 81/2 to 9 feet tall, with shoulder spread approximately 4 feet wide.
Ranae: Another point that James claims from his encounter is that he could hear the creature walking from a good distance away.
So, we had Bobo back up the trail and stomping with all of his weight.
Stomp it out, man.
Kick it up a notch.
I'm gonna stomp the yard.
Here he goes.
[Soft thumping.]
James: From farther back, it was double the sound you made.
It's so soft up here, I can't even hear my feet.
Bobo: If that 'squatch approaching was trying to, you know, get a free fish meal out of him, it was trying to scare him, it was intimidating him before it even showed itself that would make perfect sense.
I saw one, actually, that was bigger than the one he saw, and when it walked around, at over 100 yards away, I could hear its footfalls boom, boom, boom.
It sounds like an elephant.
When they are trying to intimidate you and they're stomping their feet as they walk, it's loud.
Bobo: I think you, for sure, saw and heard a Sasquatch that night.
Wow.
Just makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck all over again.
Cliff: The fact that James saw his Sasquatch on the Lewis River is important because there's a long history of seeing Sasquatches on the Lewis River.
There's a lot of food there.
All the water from the surrounding Cascades empties into the Lewis River and dumps into the Columbia.
It is a great place to look for Sasquatches.
[Duck quacking.]
Okay, here we are on the Lewis River.
This is where James' sighting happened, and I think if we're gonna do a night investigation here, we should move further upstream to this area in near Lake Merwin.
Lake Merwin would have excellent listening conditions.
Our broadcasts would be able to be heard for miles Oh, yeah, 'cause they'd bounce right off the lake.
Yeah, and this ridge between Lake Merwin and Amboy, to the south, actually has a number of sightings on it.
We'll have the place to ourselves, basically.
And you know, this is a lot closer to where we heard where, the other night, when we heard the vocalizations.
Also, water investigations are a neat opportunity to do some creative bigfooting.
I've got a few tricks up my sleeve I'd like to give a shot here.
All right.
Perfect weather for canoeing, don't you think? - [Chuckles.]
- Yeah.
Matt: We decided we should do this, but in a little bit more stealthy way.
It gave us an opportunity to bring out a technique that we wanted to use for a long time, which was a canoe with a structure over it, on which we would put some ghillie cloths to make it look like just a tree that had blown down into the water and was just moving along with the wind.
The idea was to get close to the shoreline and potentially fool a Sasquatch long enough to get close to it and get some video.
Cliff: You know, the advantage of this thing is that we can approach whatever's making noise on the shoreline silently.
Because there's no motor on it.
We just have paddles.
Bobo: Cliff and Ranae are gonna be in this camouflage canoe.
And we got an actual camera inside of a floating goose that we're gonna remote-control right up and down the river and see if we can't spot anything with that.
It's working better than I thought it would.
[Insects chirping.]
I mean, you guys seriously blend right into the beach.
I could walk right by you and not even notice you.
Cliff: Yeah, that's right.
One shove from Bobes, and we'll be on the other side of the lake.
You guys ready? Ranae: As ready as we'll be.
- All right.
- Do it.
Bon voyage.
Bon voyage! Matt: There she goes! See you.
Good luck.
All right, Matt, I'm gonna send out the goose.
All right.
Work your magic.
There she goes.
Come home with some 'squatch footage, or don't come home at all.
Okay, great, I got a picture, Bobe.
Yeah, Matt, I'm fully getting the hang of this thing now.
Ranae: I'm kind of starting to like our little craft here.
Yeah, it's all right.
This is a nice little pleasure cruise.
I mean, I know this if I'm trying to get a glimpse of a bear or a cougar or something and I'm in a motorized boat and I'm on a bank, they're not gonna come by if I'm there.
But if I were sitting in something that looked like it was just a clump of logs and stuff and I were floating by, maybe they would be much more likely to, you know, to come near the edge.
Matt, Bobo, it's Cliff.
Do you read? We're gonna let loose with the call here.
I want to give you a heads-up.
Sounds good, bud.
We're ready.
Here we go.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Call echoing.]
What great echoes.
Awesome.
All right, Cliff, Matt's gonna answer you with one.
[Breathing deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Chuckles.]
Basset 'squatch.
Hey, Cliff, are you out of the boat on the shore right now? No, no, we're about 200 feet from shore in the lake.
Look to your left down the shoreline.
There was just two hot spots on the shoreline.
I don't see anything, but hold on.
It could be elk.
It could be deer.
It could be a bigfoot.
I don't know.
They were on the beach.
It's just too far away for this thing to get any detail.
Let's get over there and find out.
All right, Bobe, you said it was ahead of us to the left.
We're gonna push into shore and take a GPS coordinate.
I'll get that to you, and you meet us over there, all right? Matt: Let's double-time it over there.
Well, this is about where Bobo said he saw those blips.
And it looks like there's a place to pull in.
Yeah, let's get in here.
We'll mark the GPS so we can call it over to them.
Matt: We're getting pretty close to where that was.
So, Cliff and Ranae are gonna be coming toward us.
Hopefully, we can connect up with them right above the point where those two heat sources were.
Pincer movement.
Yeah.
Well, if it's 'squatch, you know what they'll do.
They're gonna want to get up the hill behind us.
So, they'd have to cross this road to get up above us, if that was 'squatches down by the lake.
Oh, look at this opening right here.
Oh, yeah, this would be a great spot to do a call.
Ranae and Cliff, do you copy? I'm gonna do a howl.
[Breathes deeply.]
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Distant animal call.]
Oh, boy.
Wait.
That's not an echo.
Matt: Our pursuit of bigfoots has zeroed in on the banks of an isolated lake in southwest Washington.
The high mountains around the lake create the ideal conditions for bigfoot calls, and now it's possible we've encountered one of the elusive creatures.
[Imitating bigfoot call.]
[Crickets chirping.]
[Distant animal call.]
Oh, boy.
Wait.
That's not an echo.
That wasn't an echo.
[Distant animal calls.]
What was that? It was Ranae, Cliff, we just heard a howl back.
It was between you and us.
We're gonna head toward it, you guys head toward us, but we got to go now and do it.
All right, we're on our way.
Okay, let's go over here.
Get up here.
There's a vantage point from here.
If that's a 'squatch, they're getting closer.
So, what are you thinking, Cliff? I heard the echo.
He says it's not the echo.
I got to believe him.
Well, I'm with you.
What I heard from our location to me, it was, no doubt, an echo, but they could be in a different position.
They could be hearing something else.
Absolutely.
Matt: Bobo, come over here.
What'd you find? Check it out.
That sound we heard it sounded like it was coming from down in there.
I thought maybe there was some trailer down in there, maybe some people, but there's nothing in between here and the lake except trees and a steep hillside.
To me, it was definitely came from that direction.
It came from that direction, absolutely.
You can't walk through this.
This might be about all we go.
There's no way through there.
It's all deadfall.
Matt: When I got to the edge and I looked down and I realized, if there was a Sasquatch there, it was hunkering down and giving us the silent treatment, so there wasn't much more we could do.
We had to call it a night, knowing, at least, we got a recording of whatever screamed back at us.
[Distant animal call.]
The Pacific Northwest has been a hotbed of bigfoot activity ever since the word "bigfoot" has been in our vocabulary.
We were able to come up to Washington State and investigate some of the best photographic evidence ever obtained.
[Camera shutter clicking.]
We were also able to get a recording of what may be a couple of Sasquatches.
[Whistling.]
Cliff: Did you just whistle? Based on those things and all the expeditions the BFRO has done in the Pacific Northwest in the past, the evidence is clear there are bigfoots here in Washington.
[Roars.]