Cryptozoolgy—the study of legendary or folkloric creatures whose existence is highly debated—has a certain appeal to it. After all, scientists discover tens of thousands of species each year, and sometimes those species have ties to legend and folklore. The okapi, for example, was once thought to be a local legend of an “African unicorn,” but in 1901, scientists discovered that this mythological creature was actually real (though more closely related to a giraffe than any sort of equine species).
Almost every human culture speaks of similar mythical creatures, whether the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman, or the Chupacabra. Of course, the U.S. has its own fair share of legendary beings, such as the Jersey devil or the Mothman, but none are as well-known as Bigfoot. The legends of Bigfoot—or Sasquatch as derived from the native Halkomelem language—stretch back to the millennia-old pictographs drawn by the Yokuts, an indigenous tribe from present-day California. The myth entered the mainstream after the release of the famous Patterson–Gimlin film featuring the fuzzy, out-of-focus behemoth we know and love today.
The grainy, shaky film inspired countless Bigfoot-hunters and cryptid scholars since it surfaced in 1967. Almost 60 years later, we have more drama surrounding the hunt for North America’s most famous hairy humanoid. Charles Stuart, who goes by “Snake the Bigfoot Hunter,” purports that he found a Sasquatch corpse in the Adirondack Mountains in 2024, and he’s since verified its DNA with Cornell University. But despite Stuart’s assertions that we finally have answers, his discovery only inspired more questions.
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