ANIMAL PLANET - Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need to Know

Meet the Finding Bigfoot team: Cliff Barackman, James Bobo Fay, Ranae Holland, and Matt Moneymaker!

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FINDING BIGFOOT. Copyright 2013 by Discovery Communications, LLC. Animal Planet, Finding Bigfoot and related logos are trademarks of Discovery Communications, LLC, used under license. All rights reserved. animalplanet.com/findingbigfoot

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN: 978-1-250-04089-3 (hardcover)

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ISBN: 978-1-250-04090-9 (paperback)

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Book design by April Ward

Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

First Edition: 2013

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eISBN 978-1-4668-6748-2

First eBook edition: 2014

I AM IN LOVE WITH MONSTERS. Always have been.

My first memories of bigfoot go back to when I was four or five years old. My dad, who is the best father you could ever ask for, joined something called the Indian Guides with me. We had to choose little and big Indian Guide names, and I almost went for Bigfoot. But even then, I was picky about words and didnt like how Little Bigfoot and Big Bigfoot sounded.

Ive always been interested in these animals, though. They fascinate a lot of people because of what they represent: an archetype that gives us clues about our own origins. They also represent the monster in the human condition. And as much as we like the comforts of home, a lot of us want to be able to survive in the wild as a bigfoot doesthats why all those survivor shows are so successful.

While I didnt start searching for a real sasquatch until I was older, Id always had a strong connection to the outdoors. Growing up in California, Id go camping a lot with my family, especially in Sequoia National Park. Wed go looking for animal footprints. I never thought Id see a bigfoot track, though. Back then, I thought the animal was a Pacific Northwest thing.

As I got older and started coming into my own self, I became even more drawn to weird things, as normal people bore me to tears. I like freaks and weirdos. I might look totally normal, and I have the dubious honor of being Bobo Fays most normal friend (and his parents love me because it means theres hope for their boy). But Im a pretty weird guy under it all. I was kicked out of the Boy Scouts because I didnt fall into line like I was supposed to.

In college, I rediscovered my fascination with bigfoot when I came across a collection of papers by cultural and physical anthropologists. They talked about stone heads depicting apes found on the Columbia River. These things were 1,000 years old, long before white men first visited the continent. Whats more, there are no apes in North America. So what might these have represented? Furthermore, every Native American tribe has something like sasquatches as part of their mythology, even if they dont call them that. These animals are thrown in there with other real creatures: bears, foxes, and wolves. Thats too big of a coincidence.

I was also impressed with the way physical anthropologists analyzed the Sierra Sounds, concluding that human beings arent capable of producing noises like those. And there was Grover Krantzs convincing reconstruction of a sasquatch foot based on the tracks of a crippled specimen found in Bossburg, Washington.

I got hooked on the subject after that. I devoured every book in the library on it, and I started realizing that holy smokes, these things might be real! It wasnt so much a single piece of evidence that persuaded me, but rather, it was the consistency and internal congruency of all the data that had been gathered. People have been describing animals that look like bigfoot and act like bigfoot for centuries or more.

Bigfoot is real. But dont just take my word for it. Read this book. Consider the evidence. Look at the tracks. Its true that bigfoot doesnt yet have academic acceptance, but thats mostly a matter of ignorance, by which I mean ignoring data and evidence.

Even better, go look for bigfoot yourself. My favorite way to seek it is to sit in the woods and just listen. I calm my mind and bring a sense of awareness. Im grounded when Im out there in the woods. To search for bigfoot is to find yourself.

Im a professional teacher, and teachers are learners. My life is bigfoot now, and the only answer I have for why is that I love it. I didnt choose it. It chose me. I am in this for life.

Cliff Barackman