Bigfoot Sightings: True Encounters

by Jim Willis, Michael A. Kozlowski

Overview

For enthusiasts and doubters alike, co-authors Jim Willis and Michael A. Kozlowski—one a skeptic and the other a believer—explore the evidence of the man-beast and pull you into the mystery of Bigfoot. They give you plenty of information to help you form your own opinion!

Numerous sightings, mythic folklore, and sensational hoaxes. What are we to believe? Does a hulking, hairy, 800-pound, nine-foot-tall, elusive primate roam the woods and forests throughout North America—and the world? What should we make of the grainy videos and photos, the thousands of eyewitness reports, the giant footprints, inexplicable noises, and reports of a primal sense of being watched? Bigfoot Sightings: True Tales from Across America is a thorough look at the evidence and stories about the cryptid primate.

You’ll explore the physical evidence (footprints, hair samples, photos, and videos); the circumstantial evidence (nests, shelters, and tree structures); the anecdotal evidence (numerous witness stories); the potential explanations for the creature (the giants mentioned in ancient texts, the evolution from Neanderthals, extraterrestrial origins, and shapeshifters); and the history, mythology, and folklore behind the legend in this fascinating book. The authors tell stories of encounters, sightings, and reports across cultures and continents, from Native American legends to modern-day sightings, including …

The origins of the names, Bigfoot, Yeti, and Yowie, Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, China’s Yeren, Australia’s Joogabinna, the Almas, and others;

The hoaxes and the creation of various modern myths;

DNA analysis and genetic tests;

The initial discovery of Sasquatch footprints in 1811 by explorer David Thompson;

Ape Canyon near Mount St. Helens in Washington state named after a 1924 report of Bigfoot sightings;

The Bigfoot image in the 1967 film shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in Northern California;

The history of Sasquatch encounters told by Indigenous peoples;

The thousands of reported Bigfoot sightings in 49 of 50 states (Hawaii being the sole exception) and Canada;

And many more stories and evidence examined of the cryptid beast!

Documenting the enticing clues and hearing witnesses out, Bigfoot Sightings contemplates the mysterious beast and its enigmatic existence. This richly researched reference is overflowing with fascinating information to make you think—and possibly reconsider your next camping trip!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781578598816
Publisher:	Visible Ink Press
Publication date:	08/12/2025
Series:	The Real Unexplained! Collection
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jim Willis earned his master’s degree in theology from Andover Newton Theological School, and he was an ordained minister. He also taught college courses in comparative religion and cross-cultural studies. His background in theology and education led to his writing more than 20 books on history, the apocalypse, and the mysteries of the unknown. His books include Visible Ink Press’ Lost Loot, Hidden History, and Lost Civilizations. He passed away in 2024.

Michael A. Kozlowski has written a range of books, including Visible Ink Press' American Ghost Stories, as well as the short horror and suspense story collection Some Days Suck, Some Days Suck Worse; the psychological suspense novella Above the Clouds; the second novel in his John Angel series, Fallen Angel: A Post-Apocalypse Horror Novel; and a travel memoir about his family’s adventure moving to and living in Australia. Mike lives in Detroit, Michigan, with his fiancé and a herd of spoiled animals. He is an active member of the local art and music community and tries to be as cool as his friends. Mike is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association.

Read an Excerpt

While the idea of what Bigfoot looks like do not vary so widely as the blind men’s individual conclusions on the appearance of the elephant, the thoughts about what our furry friend actually IS, often do. Assuming, of course, that it exists at all.

Some people believe that Bigfoot (Bigfeet? Dammit…) are extraterrestrials. It’s a theory that’s gained traction in the last decade or so, especially as reports of encounters with floating orange orbs have come in from Bigfoot hunters, in areas associated with the creature. As floating lights are often associated with UFOs, it’s not an enormous leap to make. Some people believe the orbs serve as some of portal or interdimensional transportation beam. This would very conveniently explain away the conspicuous absence of physical evidence that most skeptics point out.

Others believe that Bigfoot are entirely supernatural beings, and/or shape shifters, with psychic and magical abilities. Or they claim that the creatures are similar to demons. In 2022, an Oklahoma man claimed that he killed his friend because he believed the friend had summoned Bigfoot and that he was going to be sacrificed to the creature.

Even among the often-colorful community of Bigfoot researchers, these theories remain on the fringe. Two less exotic, and more scientifically plausible, ideas dominate the narrative. Most people believe that Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, are either an as-yet “officially” undiscovered species of ape or a distinct species of human; a long-lost “cousin” of Home sapiens.

First, let’s touch on the undiscovered ape theory. Some speculate that Bigfoot is a descendant, or even a remaining population, of the largest ape known to have ever existed on earth, Gigantopithecus blacki. This cousin of the modern orangutan was twice the size of the largest modern apes. G. blacki lived in southern China, appearing about 2 million years ago. Until recently, it was believed that the species went extinct around 100,000 years ago, due to changes in habitat. Recent research by paleoanthropologists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, push that date to 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. As fossil records of G. blacki are very limited, estimates of its size vary, ranging from 9 to 12 feet in height and weighing as much as 660 lbs.

Originally, it was hypothesized that there was a direct line from Gigantopithecus to the Javan ape Meganthropus (then believed to be a human ancestor), and eventually to Aboriginal Australians. As science learned more about human origins, it was concluded that any shared ancestor between modern humans and G. blacki was very distant (12 to 15 million years ago) and that, while humans fall into the subfamily of Homininae (along with gorillas), Gigantopithecus is a member of the Ponginae subfamily (whose only nonextinct member is the orangutans).

In 1960, zoologist Wladimir Tschemezky, describing a photograph of alleged Yeti tracks in the journal Nature, concluded that the creature making the footprints walked like a human and was like Gigantopithecus. This was around the same time that Andrew Genzoli was coining the name, Bigfoot. Subsequently, there was a burst in scientific attention given to both the Yeti, in Nepal, and Bigfoot, the U.S. Several authors published in Nature and Science, but the interest was short-lived in the broader scientific community. This was, however, the impetus for the popular monster hunting community that developed around the creatures.

The idea that populations of G. blacki survived to present day was quickly dismissed by most, but anthropologist Grover Krantz continued pushing for a connection between the extinct, giant ape and Bigfoot until his death in 2002. Could a small group of G. blacki somehow survived to present day? Or could the Sasquatch be a descendant of this greatest of apes, a cousin of the orangutan? Afterall, the first scientific description of orangutans was less than 300 years ago.

It might seem ridiculous to think, given human expansion and exploration of the world, that there would be a large primate wandering the wilds without us being aware of it. Yet the bonobo, historically known as the pygmy chimpanzee, wasn’t discovered until 1929. And as recently as 2017, a distinct species of orangutan was identified in Sumatra. Would it be so farfetched to believe that a large, fairly intelligent species of great ape may exist in small pockets of largely undisturbed wilderness?

Okay, okay… I can hear it already. It’s one thing to discover a species that is just a variation of a species we’re already aware of; something that a casual observer might not be able to differentiate from a known species. It’s another thing, altogether, for something as unique as a Sasquatch to avoid detection. But it’s not unheard of.

The Norse “kraken,” and the giant squid featured in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, were thought to be mythical beasts, known only by rumor and scant evidence, until 2012. In 2023, a mammal called the long-beaked echidna, thought to be extinct, was rediscovered in the mountains of Indonesia. It has the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater, and the feet of a mole, but the weird creature managed to escape observation for hundreds of years.

There are many more examples, but the point is that we are still discovering (or re-discovering) species we thought either never existed or that we “knew” to be extinct for, in some cases, thousands of years.

The discovery of a new species of bear or ape might be exciting but, as we’ve just discussed, that kind of thing happens with surprising regularity. It’s currently estimated that there are anywhere from 10 million to 100 million undiscovered species on earth. A study conducted by Boris Worm, of Dalhousie Universityin Canada, estimates that 85-90% of species on Earth remain undiscovered.

Now, granted, many those are microbes and insects (and probably, ironically, worms). And a significant portion are presumed to exist in the deep biosphere, beneath the earth’s crust. It’s further suspected that, given the very minimal amount of ocean exploration we’ve managed, some 91% of ocean dwelling species remain unknown to us.

Still, there are places like the Amazon rainforest that provides a vast, unexplored area where thousands, perhaps millions, of undiscovered animals are suspected to live. According to National Geographic, there are so many undiscovered species in the Brazilian rainforest that scientists in 2017 were discovering a new Amazonian species every other day. Let’s not forget the vast, frozen landscapes at the poles and high elevations that have, thus far, proved too inhospitable for intense exploration. Prime location for a Yeti population.

And since we’ve circled back to our hairy hominid, let’s be honest with each other. It seems safe to say that most Bigfoot hunters and Sasquatch researchers believe these creatures are more than just another animal that is exceptionally elusive. Most people believe Bigfoot is more human than ape.

This might lead some to believe that their existence is even more unlikely. Just as it seems less likely that a very distinct species of large animal exists beyond our knowledge than, say, a variation of known animal that had developed in isolation so much as to be distinct at a molecular level but perhaps not so different in appearance, it would seem a further stretch to believe that that “animal” is more human than bear or ape.

Or is it?

The differences in genome (the genetic information of an organism) that make a species unique from another is rather miniscule. The previously mentioned bonobo is only genetically different than a chimpanzee by about 0.3%. And we modern day humans are less than 2% different from either of them. It would be a very minor difference in genetic development that would result in a larger, hairier version of ourselves.

High above the Anuy River in Siberia lies the Denisovan cave. The New York Times, on August 22, 2018, reported the work of Carl Zimmer, who discovered in the cave the remains of a 90,000-year-old female who was unquestionably the daughter of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. The cave has a history of sheltering humans and other species for 120,000 years. It now appears certain to have attracted humans of differing species who apparently had no problem getting to know one another on a personal level. Research conducted by Svante Paabo, a renowned geneticist at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has confirmed the result.

Denisovan DNA has now been found all over the world, including in many Native American Indian tribes. They were a large species of early human ancestors. Anthropologists call them "robust." Individuals of eight and nine feet or more were not uncommon. Given the amount of DNA evidence, they left behind in the genomes of modern human population groups found everywhere from Siberia, to Asia, Australia, and North America, they got around, and were usually made to feel very welcome.

Judging from the beautiful jewelry they made, they were intelligent, and they were very, very old on the land. Neanderthals seem to have disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago, just when the explosion of art in the caves of western Europe burst on the scene. Denisovans were thought to go extinct about that time as well. But their culture had been around for many thousands of years by then. Did they, like the Neanderthals, blend into modern human populations by the simple act of assimilation? In other words, did they become us? DNA evidence indicates this was the case.

We can take this theory even further when we consider evidence from North America. There is a large amount of Denisovan DNA found in modern American Indian tribes such as the Ojibwa, who lived around the Great Lakes. The Ojibwa are also the keepers of many legends involving ancient giants who were familiar to their ancestors.

Do stories about giants, sasquatches, and other big-foot type creatures carry echoes of very real and "robust" Denisovans who once lived on the land? Has a self-sustaining population of Denisovans managed to survive in various, secluded pockets around the globe and now make up what we call Yeti, Sasquatch, and Bigfoot?

Let’s not get carried away, just yet. That would be too broad a claim, given the lack of evidence. But here’s the point. Denisovans existed. They were thought to have gone extinct 40,000 years ago, but their DNA is a fact. The few remaining bones we have discovered are a fact. Their artifacts are a fact. But until a decade ago, no one had any idea they ever existed. There were no identifiable remains or bones to examine.

Or were there?

There has been anecdotal evidence reported for years about the discovery of giant bones being discovered and even photographed. Much of that evidence is now gone because museums such as the Smithsonian have been forced to return boxes and boxes of indigenous people’s remains due to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) enacted on November 16, 1990. This act required all agencies that receive federal funds to return all "cultural items," including, of course, bones, to their descendants. A good thing, to be sure, but possibly a roadblock to certain research.

If the Smithsonian was hoarding away giant bones without realizing what they were, those potentially revealing remains are now, at least officially, reburied in Indian graves. Were they the bones of Bigfoot that no one even thought to examine for DNA? We just don’t know.

When we consider the possibilities of these new and on-going studies, the ramifications are almost staggering. According to current thinking, Neanderthal and Denisovan split off from each other between 400,000 and 500,000 years ago. Modern humans didn't appear on the scene until 200,000 or possibly 300,000 years ago.

Table of Contents

About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Preface A Personal Experience – Jim Willis
Introduction – Michael A. Kozlowski

1. What’s in a name? Yeti, Sasquatch, and Bigfoot
2. How Bigfoot remains hidden on the increasingly crowded planet earth
3. History of giant creatures
4. Physical Evidence
5. To Walk a Mile in Their Footsteps
6. Smile! You’re on Candid Camera
7. Victims of Circumstance
8. Howling at the Moon
9. Don’t Stop Believin’
10. Back to the Beginning
11. How Did We End Up Here?
12. Native American Folklore
13. The Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery
14. O Canada
15. The United States of Bigfoot
16. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
17. I’m Just Sayin’

Appendix
Bibliography
Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

This book covers a lot … If you are curious about Bigfoot and want to go on a Bigfoot hunt, I highly suggest you read this book first! I thought I knew everything about Bigfoot, until I picked up this book!” —Paul Dale Roberts, Halo Paranormal Investigations

From the Publisher