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Bigfoot

This hairy biped has supposedly inhabited the Pacific Northwest of the United States for some time. Sightings range in the thousands from all sorts of people.

Basic Information
Known by many names- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the Hairy One- this hairy biped is by far the most famous creature to ever walk in the Pacific Northwest. A basis for stories and legends for years, the Bigfoot has spawned more evidence for existence than most unexplained phenomena.

To understand the basis of the thousands of reports, the basic description of the beast must be grasped. Witnesses usually describe the creature as seven and half feet tall with hair covering almost all of their bodies. An extreme stench usually accompanies the creature, along with silence of the surrounding forest. Most Bigfoot are accounted to be unaccompanied; usually traveling during the dead of night. The arms and legs of the creature are described as similar to a human's; unlike the ape and monkey's they may resemble. John Napier, one of the few Primatologists to research the Bigfoot, has been quoted on the creature.

"Sasquatch is covered in reddish-brown or auburn hair . . . black, beige, white and silvery white . . . Footprints range in size from 12 inches to 22 inches. . . . The commonest quoted range is 14 inches to 18 inches, with a mode of 16 inches . . . the most frequently reported width is 7 inches."

With such extreme characteristics, it is no wonder the creature has been feared by the Native Indians of the region. Although stories date back hundred of years, including those of the Witiko (Wendigo), most are explained away as different explanations for other phenomena.

It is safe to assume that if Bigfoot does exist, then it has for hundreds of years. A lone specimen would be impossible for the survival of the species, though reports do claim the creatures stay solitary.

Current Reports
Although the creatures have been reported for years, the most intriguing are usually those which have happened fairly recently. Perhaps the most celebrated case is the one involving several miners in the deep forest area of Mount Saint Helens and Lewis River. As the story goes, several loggers in the area were working on a contract in July 1924, when strange whistling and thumping began to come from the nearby ridges. After a full week of strange sounds, two men of the team saw a seven foot tall creature standing on a ridge. Firing on it, the men claimed to have hit the creature, causing it to fall down the ridge.

Fleeing quickly back to the cabin, the men, joined by two others, hid within the small wooden structure. Throughout the night, the men heard rocks slamming against the walls and ceiling while the creatures tried to break the door down. The attack lasted all night; later, when the Portland Oregonion came to the site, the reporters found strange footprints.

Later, the area was named "Ape Canyon" in memory of the strange events. In 1967, on of the loggers published a booklet of his experiences entitled "I Fought the Apemen of Mount Saint Helens".

In 1982, Rant Mullens, then an eighty two year old man, conducted an interview which he alleged to explain the strange encounters. Mullens claimed that he was returning from a fishing trip when he and his uncle decided to play a trick on the loggers. "[We] rolled some rocks down over the edge. Then we got out of there fast." Mullens claims this is where the hairy ape stories started.

This may seem hard to believe, considering the loggers claimed to have seen the creatures multiple times, sometimes at distances of a few feet. The two men would also have to very brave; as the miners had an assortment of weapons. Unless the men were lying, it would be hard to connect the two claims together. Ronald Beck, one of the witnesses son, talked highly of his then deceased father.

"I was close to my father, and believe me, his account is straight and true. I once had the privilege of hearing him and another man [one of the miners] discuss their mutual 1924 experience."

In the Media's Eye
The term Bigfoot, and the creature itself, didn't fully enter into the mainstream until 1958. When heavy-equipment operators near Willow Creak, in northwestern California, discovered a number of very large tracks surrounding a bulldozer. Apparently, the creature was a biped who had been looking over the large machine. After several instances of tracks, casts were made to record the sightings.

The Patterson & Gimlin Film
Perhaps the most famous evidence of the creature(s) is the short film shot by Patterson & Gimlin. Changing the way the world looked at the hairy biped reports, the movie seems to help the mystery as much as it harms it.

Roger Patterson, an amateur writer and Bigfoot hunter, went searching for one of the beasts on October 20, 1967. Filming various locations in the Pacific Northwest for a documentary he planned to create on the Bigfoot, Patterson came upon a chilling sight.

At about 1:15 pm he and associate Bill Gimlin were riding north on the one hundred yard wide bed of Bluff Creek, in the Six Rivers National Forest, when they saw a female Bigfoot next to the creek. After making the first sighting, the female stood and walked quickly to the treeline. During the sighting, each of the three horses panicked, throwing Patterson to the ground and landing on his leg.

Grabbing his 16 mm camera, Patterson used the remaining twenty eight feet of film to capture the creature on film. To the day he died, Patterson held by his story and claimed it to be entirely true. Gimlin also holds by the story. Bob Titmus, the first investigator on the scene, found tracks which matched those of the creature. Titmus also found that the creature walked up a hillside and even sat down for some time, seemingly to watch the two men as they stopped to help the horses.

It would be thought that the film would once and for all end the controversy of the existence of the Bigfoot. One detail is one which might remain a mystery forever. Depending on the speed of which the film was shot would determine if the creature was really the unknown beast, or a man in a suit. Patterson said he could not recall the speed of the film, be it twenty four feet or sixteen feet per second. If the film was shot in sixteen feet per second speed, than the swing of the arms and walk would be impossible for a man to mimic- so the creature would be what the film claims it to be.

The creature on the film itself is also of controversy. Through reconstruction's, it was found that the creature stood about six feet, six inches tall. (Fairly far off from Pattersons' guess of seven foot four inches.) John Napier would look at those results with skepticism.

"The space between one footprint and the next is given at forty one inches. A creature standing six foot five inches in height should have a step of forty five inches, particularly, as it is seen in the film, when striding out; in fact, in view of the exaggerated nature of the walk, the step might be expected to be somewhat longer than the normal, say fifty inches. The conclusion is inevitable. The footprints must be fakes or the film is."

Later, Napier backed off his harsh view on the subject. Other people hold views that the stride of the creature reveals it to be, in fact, real. A Disney Studios chief technician said, "the only place in the world a simulation of that quality could be created would be here, at Disney Studios, and this footage was not made here." Nearly everyone agrees on one point: if it was a hoax, it was "brilliantly executed".

Conclusions
Since the Patterson film, there have been other witnesses and claims. None have seemed to be as amazing, or captured the minds of so many researchers. The search continues for the unknown creatures in the Pacific Northwest.