Eastern Ohio, 1994.
Bigfoot researcher Matt Moneymaker
and a colleague
are investigating reported
Bigfoot sightings
in a wooded area
near the town of Kent.
After spending years
pursuing Bigfoot in hopes
of seeing one himself,
Matt is eager to find out
whether there really
is a giant creature
in these woods.
We were staked
out along a road.
The guy who I was with
was about 60ft away,
and at about 2:30 a.m.,
something comes
walking down the road.
I see something.
He sees it first
through night vision.
Matt rushes over
to investigate
and is stopped dead in
his tracks by the sound of.
Inhuman growling.
This thing steps out.
A very big, tall, fair,
covered thing.
Standing out there
growling at me.
When you've got something
that big, that close to you,
you could see it well enough
to know
that must be a Bigfoot.
So I just kind of backed up
and walked away.
I was pretty happy at that
point because I'm thinking
if this one's going
to do that reliably,
then this is a place
that we're going to get
some video footage of them
if we're coming here
with the right kind of gear.
But when Matt returned
with camera equipment
to document the encounter,
the creature had vanished.
Although Matt was not able
to photograph
the large hairy beast
that he witnessed,
he remains convinced
that what he saw was,
in fact, Bigfoot.
It's one of those things
that sounds so over the top.
But after I had a face
to face encounter,
I knew it was exactly
the same thing
that all the witnesses
around there had described.
If these sightings
are of a real creature,
then what exactly is Bigfoot
and how did
this phenomenon begin?
Bigfoot is generally
reported to be a very large,
very furry hominid creature.
Something like a person,
but not a person.
Seen very often remotely in the forest
and with various stories
about sightings
or about footprints
that really are pretty widespread
in many, many communities
in the United States
and in Canada.
Before 1958, people didn't
use the word Bigfoot.
But it was in 1958,
Northern California,
guys building a road,
found footprints around
their gear when they would
come back in the morning
and a guy named Jerry Crew
made plaster footprints
of these tracks
and showed them
to a reporter in Eureka,
and they dubbed it Bigfoot.
That was where the name
first originated and got
into American vocabulary.
I grew up in Washington state
where it's hard
to underestimate
Bigfoot's power.
Bigfoot is the mascot
of different companies.
Bigfoot is all
over billboards.
As a young boy
in Washington state,
I fully believed
in Bigfoot's existence.
In 1967, interest
in Bigfoot surged
when an investigator
named Roger Patterson
captured incredible footage
of a creature
that matched the description
of Bigfoot near Bluff Creek
in Northern California.
One of the issues when it
comes to people believing
in Bigfoot existing is,
let's face it,
mainstream science has shun
away from this topic.
However, amateur researchers
are trying to pick up the slack
bridge that gap between amateur
and mainstream science.
Bigfoot researchers claim
that the vast majority
of Bigfoot sightings
are sincere and that hoaxes
represent only
a small fraction of reports.
They also point out
that stories of Bigfoot
like animals
are not merely a recent fad.
Believe it or not,
more than 3000 years ago,
the ancient Babylonians
told stories of a creature
that sounds an awful lot
like Bigfoot.
Except they called it
Enkidu.
Enkidu is a hairy,
wild man creature
with super strength.
And he's fearsome.
He's ready and willing to
defend this wild territory
that he inhabits.
The King Gilgamesh,
who becomes his soul mate,
basically best friends.
So this king becomes
this amazing hero
through his relationship
with this wild man
that has shown him
how to negotiate
the boundaries between
humanity and wildness.
Since that time,
descriptions
of so-called wild men,
half human, half ape beasts
have popped up throughout
history, all over the world.
In the caucuses, there was
something called the Alma
that was a big monster,
a nature creature.
In Australia there is
the Aboriginal version
which is called a Yowie.
There is the Yeti
in the Himalayas.
So there are
local variations,
but the story is more
or less the same,
very big, seemingly animal
like or is it human
or is it some hybrid?
There's the point.
In North America, there are
Native American legends
that go back centuries,
long before the discoveries
made by Jerry Crew
or Roger Patterson.
We know that Sasquatch,
the preeminent
bigfoot creature
that we have
in the United States,
located in the Pacific Northwest.
That very word sasquatch
comes from a Salish
tribal word
that means wild man
or hairy man?
The natives of
the Northwest say
that there are creatures
that walk upright
and only at night.
And can speak
in their language.
I found in speaking
with indigenous peoples
that they don't describe
them as an animal at all.
They call them the first
ones or the old ones.
These were the tribe
that was here before we got here.