01

Europe and Asia have tales of dragons. Mexico and Puerto Rico have chupacabra, Ireland has the Sidhe, a race of fairy folk, and Scandinavia has elves and trolls. Giants are said to have built Stonehenge in England and the appropriately named Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. Mesopotamia has Anunnaki. India has bird people, the Garuda and Kinnara. And, not to be outdone, America has our legendary furry friend, Sasquatch. Scientists, be damned. All these beings are real.

If we live in a simulation, as Elon Musk says we do, what would the real world look like when it poked its head in? It would look alien, bizarre, unbelievable—even though ours is the world that is made up. And the masters of the simulation would quickly discredit these occurrences: “There is nothing to see here. Get back to work.”

Harvard studies folklore, but it does not treat cryptids with any degree of serious ness. Like epidemiology, archaeology, and electrical engineering, folklore studies in volve exploring many subjects, reviewing literature, interviewing people, visiting modern and historical sites, and conducting experiments. However, the science division at the National Science Foundation has decided there is nothing worth exploring.

Sometimes this changes.

From about 1885 to 1985, there were many well-funded and highly credible parapsychology institutes and departments in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere. The first American department was at Stanford, with UCLA and Duke following suit. Journals were published. Conferences were held. Tenures were granted. The CIA got involved. The results—scientifically showing and measuring the existence and many properties of psi, the soul, spirits, and reincarnation—were hungrily absorbed by the public. Some people had no problem believing the results based on their religious background, though some objected for precisely this reason.

In a hilarious schism within the conspiracy community, Sasquatch believers tend to discredit UFO aficionados, and vice versa.

In the late 1980s, the departments were abruptly defunded and closed. Revisionist histories were written, claiming that in this century of intense research, nothing of value had ever been found, immense fraud and elaborate hoaxes had been perpetrated, and the subject always has been and always will remain in the realm of pseudoscience. Some researchers continued independently, but, without the blessing of an approved institution, they were ignored by mainstream science and the press and mainly written out of our modern catechism, Wikipedia.

Cryptozoology has never graced the academic world, making it officially even less credible than parapsychology. However, exotic physical beings, including angels and de mons, giants, dragons, and the “leviathan,” appear in the Bible, clearly in the context of historical, not merely allegorical, records.

However, our modern universities do have “paleontology” departments. The reality and nature of dinosaurs, down to their diets, dates, social structures, and skin colors, are treated as beyond question. Despite being nearly identical to dragons, dinosaurs, it is said, have nothing to do with them.

Sasquatch is an exercise in epistemology. It takes a creative and critical mind to even approach the subject. The educated class has had this ability excised from their mind. They only believe what the official information sources tell them, even though this constantly changes. We must never let our education interfere with the truth.

Where does a worldview come from? The most important questions are the ones we think about the least. Where did the universe come from? Where did our planet come from? Where did life come from? Where did we come from? Why are we here? The fables of Big Bangs and evolution are not scientific because you can't run a controlled experiment on them. They are simply forms of modern folklore told to children, who run them in the background their whole lives, never questioning them. Nobody alive today was there for the creation of man, and the people who supposedly were wrote a very different story about it than we believe today.

These subjects and questions stretch the mind and, for some people, can trigger emotions of anger, fear, and disgust. An interest in aliens and Sasquatch is unsuitable for your resume or dinner party conversation, and could get you passed over for pro motion. It is a modern heresy. You may not get burned literally, but your other efforts and ideas will likely be discredited. You may not be arrested, but you will likely sacrifice your dignity.

As many of our most serious institutions—the medical establishment, Harvard, mainstream news, even the federal government—face crises of seriousness and credibility, more and more subjects that were once unserious will be reconsidered. I call this the “serious inversion.” A perfect example is David Grusch, a highly credible and serious person performing controlled dis closure of UFO and alien knowledge. What was recently regarded as being completely unserious has traveled quickly toward credibility, though mystery remains.

Sasquatch is not just one being. They are an entire race; in fact, there are several ancient races of them that have kept the old ways. They live in harmony with nature, value family and spirituality, don’t like modern humans, and want to stay as far away from them as possible. Historically, Sasquatch and mankind have clashed because of their vastly different ways of life.

Rather than mount an all-out assault on human beings, the Sasquatch elders decided to leave the young humans to their folly, stay away from them, and even keep their existence secret. However, contact and trade continued with the Native Americans, who had long interacted with and honored the “big men,” treating them with immense reverence and respect.

Why is Sasquatch footage so rare? Because they sense and despise electricity. One of the few videos of them was captured on analog film, and they were fully aware they were being recorded. The Sasquatch in the Patterson-Gimlin film was a female, and her friends and family were not far away. Us walking into the woods with an iPhone for Sasquatch is like firing a machine gun into the air for most human beings. Just because we cannot sense the ultrasonic and electromagnetic waves barfed from our many devices does not mean nobody else can.

While institutional research is forbidden, many independent investigators have taken an interest in Sasquatch. North Georgia boasts the largest Bigfoot museum in the country, Expedition Bigfoot. Expedition Bigfoot has collected eyewitness and writ ten accounts, hair samples, bones, and casts of Sasquatch’s famous footprint, one of the most compelling pieces of “hard” evidence defenders point to.

Most of these footprints were collected in remote locations, meaning a hoaxer would unlikely place them there if they wanted them to be found. The casts even contain dermal ridges, a precise detail that would be incredibly difficult to fabricate convincingly. The museum also presents recordings of Sasquatch’s well-known long-distance calls and compelling and credible personal accounts, both contemporary and classic, including one from Theodore Roosevelt.

What is the motivation for claiming you saw Sasquatch? Nothing is to be gained from it except a lot of negative attention. Much personal credibility and dignity are lost. Most people keep to themselves about what happened to avoid ridicule. Many stories only come out in the safe space of the campfire, and I have heard enough stories from people I trust to convince me.

One North Georgia family leaves presents for their local Sasquatch population, and they noted that Sasquatch has a particular affinity for peanut butter. They use suspended bear bags, which effectively prevent bears from accessing food, meaning the food is not eaten by bears but by an intelligent creature. Most notably, the jars of peanut butter are eaten, and the lids are put back on. No animal would or could do this.

A “Sasquatch Trap” in the Pacific Northwest, where thousands of sightings have occurred, has failed to capture a Sasquatch because they are not dumb brutes. No human would fall for this ridiculous ruse, and neither have any Sasquatch.

Expedition Bigfoot pays special attention to indigenous stories of Bigfoot from all over the world. Wikipedia presents the long history and consistency of folklore about Sasquatch worldwide as evidence that it is only “wishful thinking,” but that makes no sense. If a phenomenon has been observed and recorded by many disconnected peoples over a long period of time, that is evidence of its reality.

I found further evidence on my own quest for Sasquatch. The Alaskan Inuit I visited all knew of Sasquatch and his light er-haired relative, the Yeti. The Inuit meet with the Sasquatch and trade with them to this day, giving presents of fragrant garlic and shiny silver. However, they are very strict about being left alone. One young Inuit caused trouble for his village when he found Sasquatch fur in the forest and held on to it. The shaman was contacted by the local Sasquatch tribe, who demanded its return, lest it fall into the wrong hands. They complied.

Sasquatch encounters are much higher in villages lacking electricity, and sightings increase when the villages lose power, as they often do because of the fragile Alaskan electric grid. The electric grid and cell towers are as much to keep us in as other beings out.

Many Sasquatch sightings happen in connection with UFO sightings. However, in a hilarious schism within the conspiracy community, Sasquatch believers tend to discredit UFO aficionados, and vice versa. To get to the root of this, I contacted David Bakara, the founder of Expedition Bigfoot.

02

Excerpt of interview with David Bakara, founder of Expedition Bigfoot.

Rob: Hi David, we both know Sasquatch is real, so let’s skip that part. What got you into Sasquatch?

David: I come from a military family. We moved around a lot, and, as a kid, I was in Miami, Florida. I was young then, and I remember seeing reports of a “skunk ape” on the local news and reading about them in the newspaper. The people that were talking about seeing skunk apes were not cranks or weirdos, they were reputable people. We’re talking about police officers, wildlife officers, people who were ac countable and serious. I remember asking my biology teacher about the skunk ape, and I remember he did not dissuade me; he seemed to think it could be real. I joined the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) and started going on expeditions, and collecting reports, and it was like being hit over the head with a 2x4.

Tons of people were seeing them and interacting with them all the time! They were seven to nine feet tall; they weren’t just being seen in remote areas either. And not only were there tons more reports than the media was letting on, the reports were weird.

Bigfoot had glowing eyes. It would walk behind trees and disappear, or appear from behind trees. Witnesses would come right up to them, blink, and they would be gone. I collected these reports and gave them to the BFRO, and they would edit these parts out! So, after about four or five years in the BFRO, I left and moved to North Georgia.

In Florida, I wanted to do something that families would enjoy, and I had all this Bigfoot stuff, and a space came up for rent, and my wife and I cleaned it out and start ed Expedition Bigfoot, a 5,000-square-foot museum on Bigfoot.

And I have to tell you, the very day the Expedition Bigfoot sign went up, before the museum was even open, we got this knock on the door. This guy was there asking if we were doing something on Bigfoot, and I said yeah and he just starts going off about all the times he’s seen Bigfoot out here, and how other people have too, and then the next day, again, we get this knock on the door! And there’s a different guy there, saying he’s seeing whole families of Bigfoot go to the apple orchards, and this goes on, and I tell you, I get stacks of reports about Bigfoot every week, and North Georgia wasn’t even really known as a place with a lot of sightings to the BFRO.

Rob: What are they, where did they come from, and why are they here?

David: Wherever they are coming from is a big secret. It’s the same as the giant bones, you know, the giant humans. There is active suppression of this information. These things are all over the world. All over! We just got a report from Italy of one going into a vineyard. We just got a report from Australia. China has whole parks set aside for them. There is absolutely a connection between Bigfoot and UFOs. Absolutely. Wit nesses see UFOs come down and drop them off. They’re like scouts or watchdogs. Do they come back and pick them up? Check out the book Silent Invasion by Stan Gordon.

Some friends of mine, Adam Davies, John Carlson, and Dr. Matthew Johnson, heard there was a family you could interact with in the Southern Oregon Habituation Area. They would run experiments there, to find out what food they like, for example. They like sweet bread. They like cinnamon rolls, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They wouldn’t take oranges or tomatoes.

When they were out there one night, they saw a small light overhead. Then this light got bigger, and it turned red, and then through it you could see a red sky. It was a portal to another dimension. This is what they don’t want us to know.

Then these two things jumped out of the portal, they were about three-and-a half feet tall, they were hairy, and had red glowing eyes, and they charged right at them. John had a flashlight with him and hit them with the flashlight and they’d disappear, and then reappear somewhere else. This went on for a while, then stopped.

Bigfoot hates artificial light, but they like sunlight, of course.

Bigfoot comes from another dimension. They probably get most of their food from there too. They are huge! They must need 10,000 calories a day. They are expert hunters, but how could they get all that out in the wilderness? We also know that in the wintertime when most of the U.S. freezes that the sightings do not spike in the South ern states, like you’d expect. You’d expect them to go south for the winter to get food, but they don’t.

Rob: Does the government know about Bigfoot?

David: I know for a fact they do. The secret services work with Bigfoot. They know all about Bigfoot. And the dog men too. They’re keeping it covered up because it’s terrifying. They don’t want us to know about the other dimensions. People get taken. People disappear without a trace, even with their packs and gear. They get taken to other dimensions.

This stuff is too weird for the museum. But the truth is the truth.

Rob: How is Bigfoot society organized?

David: Witnesses tell me the males move in groups of three or four. They were probably kicked out of the family for being troublemakers. These groups are the ones causing trouble. The other groups are families.

Rob: Do they build houses or towns?

David: Not that I know of. They build structures, but they don’t seem to have any discernible purpose. You see them in the woods and you know they are theirs because they don’t have tool marks. They are teepees of some kind, but they don’t keep the weather out. Maybe they use them as hunting traps.

Rob: How intelligent are they? Do they speak?

David: They speak telepathically. Wit nesses report Bigfoot speaking to them directly into their minds. They usually say something like “Get out of here” or “If you shoot me I will kill you” but sometimes they have longer, deeper conversations. A major theme of those is “Be the light.”

They are at least as intelligent as us, but they’re intelligent in a different way. They eat roadkill after all.

Rob: What can we do to improve human-Bigfoot relations?

David: We have to get over our fear of Bigfoot. I know big, masculine, hunter and military-type guys who just lose it when they see Bigfoot. They’re scary! Even experienced researchers who think they’re ready to see them never are. Sometimes they look at you like they’re going to kill you. But they never do! There is another entity involved. There is us, Bigfoot, and something else calling the shots. I know for a fact there is a directive that they can’t harm us, and that they’re not supposed to be seen. Witnesses say that when they see them, the Bigfoot gets mad at themselves for being seen.

Rob: How can I meet Bigfoot?

David: Go outside Helen, Georgia, and camp out at a campground by yourself. Build a fire, cook some food, especially fish.

Rob: I make great cinnamon rolls.

David: Great, bring those. They like those. And sit there alone. You don’t have to be alone, but your chances are better if you’re alone. You can take a flashlight but don’t use it, definitely don’t swing it around. And just sit there and call out to them with your thoughts. If you do this two or three times, they will come.

Rob: I will do this. Is there anything else you would like to add?

David: Yes. When I was young, older folks, older men used to show me things, teach me things, things you didn't learn in school. They would pass on the incredible wonder of our planet. Things aren’t cut and dry. Not everything has been discovered. You don’t need a top-secret clearance to discover some amazing things.

03

An Inuit shaman told me the sasquatch are a precursor to the modern human. We have devolved from them. During their era, there was higher value placed on living naturally, communally, and spiritually. The Sasquatch have no interest in modern technology, but they do make and use tools.

When studying theosophy, I found a similar account. Prior root races had more hair and physical strength and were more connected to God and nature. Only later races became obsessed with sight, materialism, and the desire to subjugate nature and their fellow human beings. Viewed through this lens, Sasquatch is far more civilized than we are.

The scientific method corroborates these accounts. Expedition Bigfoot has Sasquatch fur and even went so far as to have it genetically sequenced. Other people, like Dr. Melba T. Ketchum, have done the same. The results yielded a species that is clearly a distant relative to the modern human. Ketchum reports:

"Sasquatch is a human hybrid with mitochondrial DNA identical to human mitochondrial DNA and nuclear DNA that is of “novel,” or nonhuman, sequence . . . it is definitely not an ape."

Despite Ketchum’s credentials, meticulous methods, and use of stringent controls, the scientific community flatly forbade the results from being published in any journal or from undergoing peer review, then lambasted Ketchum for failing to publish in a reputable journal or to undergo peer review. Other critics called the results “impossible” without explaining why. Genbank refused to enter the data.

Dr. Ketchum also found abnormalities in the Sasquatch genome that should have had scientists stunned:

“Electron micrographs of the DNA revealed unusual double strand–single strand–double strand transitions . . . The high quantities of single stranded DNA, interspersed with double stranded DNA . . . may suggest substantial structural abnormalities of the DNA itself . . . the abundance of single-stranded loci observed by EM could be interpreted as high numbers of replication forks or another structurally altering genomic process involving an increase in helicase activity.”

Comparison with genetic sequence from Genbank’s over 100,000 distinct, naturally occurring species reveals unique sequential and structural features of Sasquatch nuDNA that have never been previously observed.

This could be a massive discovery if the scientific community paid attention to it. Not only did the Sasquatch DNA contain novel sequences, it had a novel structure. This is a breakthrough, though the possibility of this has been hinted at before, meaning it is also plausible.

Unfortunately, the scientific community has decided, a priori, that the subject is profane. The culture of science ostensibly honors data over orthodoxy but the reality is the institutional process of modern science makes it nearly impossible to break new ground. Despite a large quantity of papers published, only tepid advances are made, the public is generally unaffected by them, and few results end up being reproducible.

When the science-minded are unwilling to accept what is right in front of them, they retreat to clichés, “n of one,” “anecdotal evidence,” “elaborate hoax,” and, a personal favorite from Carl Sagan, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” There is truth to this, but it is abused and misunderstood as much as Occam’s Razor. The claim that a species observed well over 30,000 times in modernity, and countless times throughout antiquity, that has even had its genome sequenced, does not exist, is an extraordinary claim. What is the extraordinary evidence that all of this is wishful thinking?

No scientific law prevents a large, hairy, bipedal hominid from existing. The circular reasoning usually goes something like, “Bigfoot cannot exist, because if Bigfoot existed the scientific establishment would know about and accept it.” From there they usually quibble that all the evidence that exists is not admissible. How then can any new discoveries be made? What they are really saying is that they have faith that scientific orthodoxy is both correct and complete. However, when viewed holistically, no scientist would make this claim. Many of them became scientists because of the mysteries of the world.

The pygmy races of Africa are also an ancient race distantly related to modern peoples. If some of our distant relatives are shorter, why couldn’t others be taller? There are also people born today with excessive hair growth, a condition called hypertrichosis.

We are foolishly tempted to believe that the vast territory of Alaska is entirely charted and under control because the government drew a line around it on the map. Alaska and many forested areas of North America are uncharted and filled with mystery.

We believe that everything that exists is on Google’s map, has a road going to it, and that what we can look up on a screen is both true and complete. How do we know that gazing at a screen all day and worrying about money is normal behavior and living off the land is not? What if we could break out of our simulated, savage world and see the true reality?

If Sasquatch is real, what else is out there? And what would the motivation be to hide it? Could the official information sources be respecting their wishes to be left alone? Or have they decided that they must be hidden from us for our synthetic worldview to be maintained? It is probably a combination of the two. If we ever want to improve human-Sasquatch relations, we have a lot of apologizing to do.

Why is Sasquatch footage so rare? Because they sense and despise electricity. One of the few videos of them was captured on analog film, and they were fully aware they were being recorded.

The existence of Sasquatch threatens our worldview and value system. If they were intelligent, surely they would drive Teslas and suck on vapes and tweet! They would pass written laws and regulations and obsess over market prices. They would charge each other interest and murder each other with AI weapons. Is this the behavior of the civilized or the savage?

Cryptozoology has never been taken seriously by the academy, but debates occasionally enter its halls. In England’s first expeditions to Australia, the explorers brought back descriptions and drawings of what seemed to be an impossible ani mal. There was, they claimed, an aquatic creature with the fins and bill of a duck, and the body of a beaver, a warm-blooded mammal that laid eggs! The academy was skeptical. The men were ridiculed, and it became common knowledge that they had fabricated the discovery in an attempt to raise funds for their next expedition.

For many years, the debate raged. When the subject was banned from the academy, it continued at pubs. Do you believe in the platypus? Nobody is more resistant to being wrong than a dignified scientist, and the resistance, in spite of the mounting evidence, was fierce. It took many years for the reality of the platypus to be accepted.

According to Ed Ferrel’s Strange Stories of Alaska and the Yukon, a young Sasquatch was captured alive in Alaska in the 19th century. A miner discovered an unconscious adolescent Sasquatch that had slipped and fallen into a cave and, with the help of some friends, took him to a nearby village where he was unfairly imprisoned.

The miners naturally sought a way to make money with the discovery and arranged for the Sasquatch to be shipped to England, to be shown to the Royal Society. Unfortunately, the Sasquatch was kept in poor conditions, and his keepers did not know what to feed him or how to treat him. He died in transit, as so many have, and a partially decomposed corpse arrived in London. A similar story is still told in Russia of Zana, a captured Sasquatch who even who even bore hybrid children with men.

I once believed the internet was both complete and accurate. The orthodox giddily shove their iPhone screens in my face to show me, as if I did not know, that the sacred Screen says I am wrong. And oh how the positivists love to be right. The scientist of the past was an explorer. Now they spend most of their time looking at computers. They have not been where I have been. They have not seen what I have seen. How could they be expected to believe what I believe? To know what I know? I have no problem leaving them to their cage of education, though I long for them to be free.

Sometimes, I feel like that young, captive Sasquatch. I awoke in a prison of usury and education, longing for my absent home and tribe. The savages imprisoning me think they are civilized. Dignified intellectuals scoff at me from their ivory towers. People deny I exist. I am perpetually a foreigner, staring suspiciously at the packaged dead food they eat and the poison water they drink and the dirty air they breathe. They think they are superior to me. They have no idea what the world is like away from their roads and screens.

Maybe Sasquatch is the way out of the simulation. Maybe they wait peacefully in the woods for any human ready to throw off their chains and leave the world of illusion behind. Maybe they are what makes our world of suffering ethical. We choose to remain out of fear. All I have to do to leave is go camping with some fresh cinnamon rolls and call to them, and they will come and show me the portal to the world of the red sky. Will I be able to face them unafraid? Will their world be better than this one, or worse? If I go, will I be able to come back? I have to know.

Rob Rhinehart is a publisher, baker, poet, founder, and friend.