September 5, 2006

The Apache Way: Following the Trail of Bigfoot

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:

Part 1

Part 2 

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…

Filed under Artifacts, Bigfoot Report, Breaking News, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, Folklore, Forensic Science, Public Forum, Sasquatch, Television