The Apache Way: Following the Trail of Bigfoot
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on September 5th, 2006
KTVK, NewsChannel 3 out of Phoenix, AZ reports on recent events out of the White Mountains of Eastern Arizona. The station covered reported sightings from Arizona last July that we talked about here on Cryptomundo at that time.
Footprints in the mud. Tufts of hair on a fence. Ear-piercing screeches in the night. These are only fragments of the stories now coming from the White Mountains in Eastern Arizona.
For years the White Mountain Apache Nation has kept the secret within tribal boundaries. “We’re not prone to easily talk to outsiders,” said spokeswoman Collette Altaha. “But there have been more sightings than ever before. It cannot be ignored any longer.”
It is a creature the world knows as “Bigfoot”.
“No one’s had a negative encounter with it,” said Marjorie Grimes, who lives in Whitewater, the primary town on the reservation. Grimes is one of many who claim to have seen the creature over the last 25 years. Her first sighting was in 1982. Her most recent was in the summer of 2004, driving home from the town of Cibecue. She becomes more animated as the memory comes forth. “It was all black and it was tall! The way it walked; it was taking big strides. I put on the brakes and raced back and looked between the two trees where it was, and it was gone!”
Grimes’ son Francis has a story. Their neighbor Cecil Hendricks has a story. Even police officers have had strange encounters. Officer Katherine Montoya has seen it twice. On a recent Monday night dozens of people called into the tribe’s radio station, KNNB, to talk about what they’d seen. Others came in person.
The Newsroom was there. So was Tom Biscardi and crew from Searching For Bigfoot, Inc. The California-based team has criss-crossed the country pursuing reports of the mythic animal. New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas and Arizona have been hot-spots this year. Biscardi said the Apache land is an untapped resource for investigators. “There are way too many reports coming out of here, of seeing this creature. My God, people better start listening to, and coming to this thing because it’s happening!”
His ultimate goal is to capture a Bigfoot creature, study it for 90 days and return it to the wild. Two nights in a row Biscardi and crew strapped motion-activated cameras with night vision lenses onto trees in the nearby woods. They set up listening devices and made noises which he claims lure the creatures into view.
Video clips of the story are available here:
In the White Mountains last year, investigators found footprints, several tufts of hair and other material at the scene of a sighting. Tribal police made plaster casts from the prints and sent hair and plant samples to the Department of Public Safety for analysis in its state-of-the-art crime lab. Test results showed the hair was not human, but animal in origin. Further testing to determine what kind of animal was not done.
Above is the evidence examination report. Click on the image for a full-size version of the report.
The Arizona Game and Fish Department does not investigate Bigfoot sightings. Neither does the State Veterinarian’s office, a division of the Arizona Department of Health Services.
The field is not well organized and often manned by amateurs with little to no scientific background. Biscardi himself has come under fire in the past for promoting an alleged “find” that later turned out to be a hoax. He is more careful these days, and promises a huge revelation yet to come. It will be something even more fantastic than the hundreds of reports of the Apache Bigfoot.
Back on the reservation, Lieutenant Burnette wants outsiders to realize that the department takes these calls seriously, and so should you. “The calls we’re getting from people- they weren’t hallucinating, they weren’t drunks, they weren’t people that we know can make hoax calls. They’re from real citizens of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.”
It looks like another reservation with quite a bit of Bigfoot activity.
Well, I wonder what alleged "find" of Biscardi’s later turned out to be a hoax? Maybe "The Hand of Unknown Origin" perhaps? And another huge revelation still to come from Biscardi. Get ready folks, I bet it’s a doozy…
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Well I have no doubt that the people have seen a BF critter but with Tom B. on the site I guess it will turn out to be a circus again…..to bad native americans are good people and to my knowledge are not known to lie/or create hoax’s .
I work at an aquarium in Atlantic City, which has a room that can be rented out for parties and such. A week or so ago there was a reunion of retired Philadelphia homicide detectives, and one of the names on the list of guests was a Tom Biscardi. I did a double-take, and kept my ears open for someone checking in by that name. By the end of the day the name had been checked off, but apparently when I was elsewhere.
Surely, this is not the same Tom Biscardi, is it? If it is, I’d hate to think what he got up to in homicide division- Probably arrive on the scene, call a press conference, declare that the killer had been there just yesterday, and show off a blood sample that later turned out to be ketchup, then never follow up on any promising leads.
greywolf-
I don’t think you can proclaim that one ethnic group never lies or makes false claims. There are crooks, liars, and criminals of every background.
Hmmm…Could Biscardi’s “huge revelation” have anything to do with a certain “more than a million” dollar Bigfoot baby, now residing in New Jersey?
Well, another phony story from Tom B.
az has been very active this summer. besides the above story we have had many reports out of what i call the bigfoot triangle. it is in coconino county from flagstaff down to payson. you will see that part of the country is a rough triangle. expand that and you have the bigfoot triangle. there are numerous lakes fish hatcheries rivers and a few dumps. this area has had reports of encounters and sounds all year long. usually around the lakes rivers and fish hatcheries. in the last year there have been ranger casting of prints in this area.
most people dont realise az is 2/3 forest and higher elevations. there are even ski area and forest in southern az near tucson. the area around patagonia has had many historic reports.
the reservations in the story is in forest that goes into new mexico and on into colorado. the northern and western mountians of new mexico are a historic hotspot. much of it is also reservation and thus the reports dont trickle out.
i am sad biscardi has rode the coattails once again of a recent hot spot.
az has much in the way of history with bigfoot. there are famous reports of boy scout encounters north of payson in the 40s.
being in az since birth and having family in the rim area i hear little bits of bigfoot stories all the time. my family have a good relationship with the rangers in the area. i heard my scream in the mid 90’s on this reservation south of hannigan meadow. that day i also had elk run from me while on a trail only to get spooked on the top of the hill turn around and almost run me over running from something on the hill.
to say the least, az is an area that should not be excluded from the area of study.
i just wish biscardi would go home!
At least Tom B. is making an attempt to locate this creature. Does anyone else put in the time and effort? Instead of constantly bashing this guy, why not give him the respect that he deserves.
you’re kidding right? your comment stinks of ignorance. learn a bit then re-evaluate that statement.
unless you are a pay per hoax kinda guy in disguise. if that’s true, I gotta say get some self respect tom.
Some of the Native American reservations certainly seem to be hot spots for Bigfoot activity! It would be wonderful if some “legitimate” researchers could gain consent to do some serious long term investigations at some of these locations.
As for Biscardi, giving him the respect that he deserves is precisely what most of us are doing.
Is it me, or has the Biscardi line of discussion grown somewhat old, at this point? Ol’ Tom has made his reputational bed, so to speak, and now has to lie in it. Unarguably, what is far more interesting about the AZ story, et al., are the cryptozoological aspects. Let’s leave Tom where he belongs, outside the realm of serious BF debate and inside the realm of supermarket tabloids.
Tom Biscardi’s antics have become a bit tiresome, I’d say. It’s a bit upsetting when he is getting more publicity than a lot of legitimate researchers out there. It really doesn’t sit that well with me that he gets so much exposure. That may sound a tad harsh, but from what I’ve seen of this guy, if the shoe fits…
Maybe you all should look at what the BFRO says about this Bascardi and his so-called research. And if you cant find the BFRO site then here is the excerpt from their site. It seems to me that the Vice-Chairperson has either been fooled again by Bascardi or she is in league with him. I think that the tribe should have a respectible organization like the BFRO do the research and not this Bascardi idiot.
BFRO Commentary:
Journalists, beware!
Tom Biscardi is not one of the “leading bigfoot researchers”, but rather a well-known scam artist on the American bigfoot scene who seeks media attention relentlessly to futher his scams.
In the 1980’s Biscardi was involved in the marketing of a collection of fake bigfoot footage made by in the infamous hoaxer Ivan Marx (see John Green’s “The Apes Among Us”).
Then in 2005 he orchestrated the infamous “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio show scam, regarding a supposed “captured bigfoot” in California. His claims about an imminent capture of a bigfoot in Northern California dominated the popular late night radio shows for several days, like an extended Orson Wells hoax. All the while he was claiming that he would soon show the captured bigfoot to the public via a $14 web-cam subscription. Lots of people, from coast to coast, signed up to see it, assuming that it must be true if it was being talked about on the radio. On the day of reckoning (after receiving an ultimatum from the talk show host) Biscardi claimed he was “hoodwinked” by his team, and there was no captured bigfoot afterall. When the radio host, George Noory, realized the whole story was a fraud on the part of Biscardi, he demanded that Biscardi refund all the money to those who signed up for the web cam service. No one knows if those people ever got their money back. The Coast-to-Coast AM radio show is listened to by millions of people across the US and Canada.
Biscardi made minor newspaper headlines again recently when he claimed to have a preserved “baby bigfoot hand” in a jar. The “hand” has been shown to several people, including reporters. It has no thumb, and the fingertips have been cut off. An experienced hunting guide recently examined the specimen in Wisconsin and said it is the paw of a bear, or possibly a mountain lion. The fingertips have been cut off to conceal the fact that they had claws.
The skeleton of a bear paw or mountain lion paw might be mistaken for the skeleton of a human hand, but for the lack of a thumb, and the presence of claws on the fingertips.
Biscardi said recently that people had paid as much as $1000 for a look at this “bigfoot hand”.
In recent years Biscardi’s media blitzing was apparently inspired by the BFRO. Shortly after the BFRO first announced the scheduling of open-invitation bigfoot expeditions in 2003, Biscardi and his sometimes partners created a business entity called the “Great American Bigfoot Research Organization” (GABRO) in order to capitalize on the apparent popularity of the BFRO expeditions. Biscardi, a former Las Vegas promoter, tried to license the knock-off expedition company (GABRO), but it now seems that he is having trouble getting paid for it.
Biscardi has, however, succeeded in getting more media attention this time around. The wire stories are once again (sadly), bundled with frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin footage , which is completely unassociated with Biscardi.
I am a tribal member here where Tom and his team are searching for the bigfoot. Maybe the reason why we kept quiet all these years was cuz people were gonna discredit us or the choices of who we were gonna ask for help for. Maybe we are better off ourselves just closing off the rez and keep our sightings to ourselves. All we want is understanding of what may be running around our backwoods.