Finding Bigfoot: Footprint Evidence From NC
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 11th, 2011
Suspected Bigfoot footprint photos that will be featured in this Sunday’s episode of Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet June 12, “Caught On Tape.”
Muddy prints bring Bigfoot researchers to Gibsonville
Roselee Papandrea
Times-News
GIBSONVILLE — At first, Bernadette and Leonard Braley didn’t pay much attention to the spots of mud on the road about 50 feet from their home on Quartz Court in Gibsonville last October.
But then the Braleys began looking at the mud more closely and thought they looked a lot like footprints. Leonard grabbed the measuring tape and Bernadette a camera. They took photos of what they thought were 16-inch muddy footprints and then forgot about them for a few months.
This past January, Bernadette began thinking about the photos again while she was going through shows on her digital video recorder. One was news footage of man who encountered Bigfoot trying to attack his dog.
It got Bernadette thinking. She did a quick Internet search and found Bigfoot Lunch Club, a group that follows Bigfoot sightings, and there is one in North Carolina. Bernadette emailed her muddy footprint photos to the club. In February, the Braleys were invited to Troy to talk with a group from the Animal Planet television network that was doing some filming for a six-part series called “Finding Bigfoot” that started airing this month.
The Braleys will be featured in an hour-long “Finding Bigfoot” episode about Sasquatch sightings in North Carolina. It airs at 10 p.m. Sunday on Animal Planet, which can be found at Channel 63 on Time-Warner Cable in Alamance County.
“When Animal Planet got there, they went crazy when they saw the pictures,” Bernadette Braley said. “They wanted to come to our house and do filming for their series.”
A four-person team from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization — BFRO — as well as a producer, cameraman and several others spent a day with the Braleys in March, asking questions, filming and trying to recreate the footprints.
“Their first question was do you live near power lines,” Bernadette Braley said.
Power lines run on the opposite side of their house. The second question was about the deer population. The Braleys’ property backs up to woods and there are a lot of deer. At the time the footprints were found, there was a lot of new construction going on in the cul-de-sac and plenty of mud in the area.
“They have concluded that Bigfoot sightings are around power lines because they like to run along the power lines and also deer. They like to eat deer or run with deer,” Bernadette Braley said.
The footprints were about 12 feet apart.
“They did some tests,” she said. “They put mud on the bottom of their shoes. They had a fellow running in the area. He jumped.”
The test subject was 6 feet tall and he left footprints that were about 6 feet apart.
“They estimated it was probably a lot taller and a lot heavier and running on the ball of its foot,” Bernadette Braley said.
The four-person team of researchers includes Bobo, a commercial fisherman, Cliff, a professional educator, Matt, the president of BFRO and Ranae, a skeptical scientist. They all have varying experiences with Bigfoot and different beliefs about the existence of the creature, according to an Animal Planet release.
“What binds them together, however, is their longing to understand the creature, passion for proving its existence and willingness to stop at nothing to finally track down Bigfoot,” the release states.
The Braleys enjoyed the experience with the Animal Planet group. Bernadette made the whole crowd chili. The researchers left behind a motion-sensitive night-vision camera that they set up in the woods.
The Braleys have a lot of photos of deer and rabbits and leaves falling, but they still haven’t captured Bigfoot on film.
Leonard Braley was always a believer that Sasquatch existed. Bernadette said she was always skeptical. After doing a lot of Internet research, talking to people and interacting with the folks from Animal Planet, she’s starting to be a believer herself.
“I’m leaning in the direction that there’s got to be a Bigfoot out there,” she said. “There is just too many sightings for it to be people’s imagination or hoaxes.”
The Braleys haven’t actually seen Bigfoot and never reported anything to authorities last year. Bernadette suspects that whatever made the muddy footprints is long gone, but she holds out hope.
“I, personally, would like to see it,” she said. “I would love to actually take a picture of it.”
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.
lol…. well… They do have the appearance of footprints…but it is likely a fake or hoax. Seems awfully convenient.
Would like to see a close up of the other footprint. It seems that the nearest (Left) foot print has most the pressure on the upper and INSIDE of its foot. While the furthest (Right) seems to have the pressure on the upper and OUTER side of its foot.
So unless it was running haphazardly or trying to execute a sharp turn I’m not sure why the strange pressure patterns. This is, of course, assuming the mud was spread equally on both feet and if it was mucking about a muddy construction site I have no reason to think its feet were not equally thick with mud.
Also, can someone please verify this for me (as it may simply be my monitor) but above both sets of prints, there seems to be a light mark. It looks to be the same color as the mud the footprints are made out of.
Can anyone see and verify those light colored splotches? If you cannot please let me know and I’ll put it down to monitors rendering things in different manners (like color values).
Thank you.
Sorry for the flood of comments, but I went to the hosted site to get a better look at the pictures. Either this is the left foot only (look at how the ball of the foot curves in just below were the little toe would go, the foot prints are basically the exact same shape for left and right)) which would make it’s stride only 6 feet, well within human limits. Or it is a badly thought out prank.
One commenter on the hosted site made the supposition that it was some kids wearing ‘toe shoes’. I’m not sure what those are, exactly, but I imagine they are similar to the ‘bear’ foot bedroom slippers.
Pretty interesting, but not a body. Just another group of footprints to add to who knows how many have been found so far, hoax or possibly legit.
@ flame821
I noticed the spots, too, and wondered about them. Don’t know what they are. It would be interesting to compare these footprints to other, well-known, prints and the stride to that at other locations and see how they measure up (no pun intended).
@flame821–Too wide for “toe shoes” from a kid or adult human. That’s it.
Solving the other print that is directly above the “big toe” is the key to solving the mystery. What is it? It’s in each picture.
watch it just be that it was a fortunate splotch of mud on a large tire that stamped a foot like pattern as it rolled.
Very interesting prints though I am hoping for all the pictures and further analysis. I am inclined to think they are genuine. It is not generally appreciated that the evidence for bigfoot is very good if not conclusive and against this background it would not therefore be an impossible stretch to accept the prints as real bigfoot prints!
Well done ‘Finding bigfoot’
Please correct me if I am mistaken, but isn’t NC the place where the waving Knobby hoax took place not long ago? And if so, could these two events be connected? My time line sense is off this morning so, forgive me if the question is, well, off base.
And it does to me, with the smudge, (and it seems to be repeated with each track) look like a rolled out fake track way, or like a rubber block print (with an artifact for flaw in the rubber that left the smudge). We used to make stamps all the time it wouldn’t be that difficult to make large tracks with them.
Looks like someone used a pair of 1954 novelty crazy feet slippers (they even have dermal ridges bigfooters so highly prize in tracks on there soles!) to make these. Foot prints are like snow flakes no two will exactly the same but these are. Fake.
Just from these pictures it seems no one could say with any level of certainty if they are, or are not. genuine. A person would need to have been there to study them first hand. Pictures don’t allow you to get a look at a 3D image or its surroundings.
No more reason to say these are hoax (or not prints) than that they’re real. Although circumstances make hoax the last thing I would think.
But of course nobody’s going to find anything looking at prints, comparing prints, and trying to imitate prints. How do you compare when there’s no type specimen to compare to? Gotta find the ape; and that requires actually following the prints until they lead someplace.
C = П x D
or D = C/3.1415
C = 3.1415 x 45.84 = 144″ , 45.84 = Big dia. tires? But I believe Kahil has solved this one.