Bigfoot in Branson

“Missouri is squatchy,” according to one of the cast members of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot.”

The cast and crew of the show were in Branson Friday at the White House Theatre seeking witness testimony from a crowd of more than 200 people.

“The theme of this episode is the history of sasquatches in Missouri, in a way, because as the European culture that settled here, and took the land from Native Americans, started moving to the West, this was the frontier,” said Cliff Barackman, “Finding Bigfoot” cast member. “As pioneers moved out here and cut down trees and started living here, they ran across the creatures that lived here, whether there were bears, or in this case, sasquatches.”

The purpose of the meeting Friday was to hear testimony and information on sasquatch sightings to explore the areas in which the sightings were reportedly made.

“What we do is we extend out various invitations to witnesses and we actually put the word out in radio and in newspaper to invite the public out,” Barackman said. “We knew witnesses were going to come because we invited them. However, there’s always that wild card that we love because some people say, ‘Ya know what, I watch that show because I’ve seen a bigfoot, I want to share my story with them and nobody has ever heard it before.’ Sure enough, we got a couple of those tonight.”

Witnesses told stories about finding bigfoot tracks, sighting sasquatches on camping and hunting trips, and even on a vacation, all in Missouri.

Barackman, and other cast members on the show, have been doing sasquatch research for decades.

“I’ve been doing field work on bigfoots for over 20 years now, but I’ve always been interested in the subject, all the way back to the 1970s,” Barackman said.

He said he became interested in sasquatches from an anthropology perspective. He came across the topic at his college library when he browsed books during breaks between his courses.

“One day I stumbled into the anthropology section and I found a collection of scholarly papers written on sasquatches,” he said. “Those scholarly papers were written by folklorists and anthropologists, both physical and cultural anthropologists.”

Barackman, who calls himself a quirky person, said he became excited at the prospect of sasquatches, often portrayed in the films of his youth, being real.