Heinselman, Craig (ed). Hominology Special Number I. NH: Heinselman, 2001. Hominology Special Number II. NH: Heinselman, 2002. This book, by a retired science teacher and Bigfoot researcher living in Oregon, was a radical work of its time that put forward novel ideas about Sasquatches and their behavior — from their propensity for habituation to the possibility that they emit infrasound. It is one of the more interesting books with a somewhat metaphysical bent. The work represented a watershed in Powell’s evolution as a researcher. The author, who began as a traditional investigator, today focuses on the paranormal phenomenon that is reported alongside some encounters. Powell asserts that logic and objective scientific methods won’t solve the mystery alone, as the creatures transcend our material reality and are best studied subjectively. When people describe the behavior [of such creatures], they seem to be very curious, but non confrontational," Tompkins said. Provo Canyon: 2012 His friend and producer Zach Cregger recommended the Sasquatch Chronicles podcast, a collection of interviews with people spinning yarns of their run-ins. “Right away, I had no interest,” Rofé laughs. “I’m not a huge monster movie person, not that into creature-features. He told me to just try one episode, and four days later, I’d listened to 11 of them.” He was moved by the intensity and vulnerability of the contributors, and realized that even if the 10ft oddity they all claimed to have glimpsed might not be real, his potency in the collective imagination definitely was. This spark of inspiration set him on a search for an angle, some event or incident that spoke to the distinct spirit of Sasquatch country.

I've got over 300 footprint cast copies and original materials in my laboratory that form the basis of a remarkable body of data that attests to the fact that there is something out there leaving these footprints." Meldrum said. "And the most straightforward answer is that it's a bipedal primate species that's not recognized by science." Meldrum noted that anatomical features visible on the film, such as the proportions of the face, match up with early humans such as Paranthropus boisei— a species that lived around 2.3 million years ago to 1.2 million years ago, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The size of the creature in the film is estimated to be between around 6 feet to 7 feet (1.8 to 2.1 m) tall. Hall, Mark A. and Loren Coleman True Giants: Is Gigantopithecus Still Alive? NY: Anomalist Books, 2010. Hunter, Don and René Dahinden. Sasquatch. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1973. Dahinden, René and Don Hunter. Sasquatch/Bigfoot: The Search for North America’s Incredible Creature. Buffalo: Firefly Books, 1993.Bindernagel, John A. North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch. Courtenay, BC: Beachcomber Books, 1998.

The last shot of the creature in the video comes just as it stands up, similar to the 2012 Provo Canyon video. Unfortunately, people filming Bigfoot have a tendency to suddenly jerk the camera and run away just as they're about to get a good view of one — understandably fearful if the creature exists, but convenient if they're creating a hoax. This is one of many reasons why skeptics decry such videos and ask believers to produce a body. Hoax bodies: 2008 and 2012 So how does one navigate this cacophonous, shaggy, free-for-all of book offerings? A lifetime’s experience exploring this topic has led me to compile a list of some of my personal favorites. Books by legitimate scientists in support of unclassified primates are rarer than sightings of the Mothman. This groundbreaking work by Dr. Jeff Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, is perhaps the most authoritative of them. In it, Meldrum, an expert in the evolution of hominid bipedalism, argues for the existence of Sasquatches owing to their apparent physical traits inferred from footprint evidence and the Patterson-Gimlin film that shows what appears to be a female Bigfoot walking at Bluff Creek, California, in 1967. Those anatomical observations, Meldrum suggests, including the shape and structure of the Sasquatch foot, are biologically consistent for an animal of the reported size and weight of Bigfoot. His book constitutes a wider scientific inquiry into the topic. What you see on that film is exactly how we envision something like a robust Australopithecine to look," Meldrum said. "It's almost as if now the science has finally caught up to this whole phenomenon of Bigfoot."In North American folklore, Bigfoot or Sasquatch are said to be hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creatures that dwell in the wilderness and leave footprints. Depictions often portray them as a missing link between humans and human ancestors or other great apes. They are strongly associated with the Pacific Northwest (particularly Oregon, Washington and British Columbia), and individuals claim to see the creatures across North America. Over the years, these creatures have inspired numerous commercial ventures and hoaxes. The plural nouns 'Bigfoots' and 'Bigfeet' are both in use. His three-part project takes the myth of the shy giant allegedly hiding in the wilds of the west coast as a jumping-off point, leaving behind the cryptozoological to pursue something more tangible and knowable. What begins as an inspection of Bigfoot as a sociological phenomenon leads Rofé and his partner-in-true-crime, journalist David Holthouse, to a 1993 triple homicide said by locals to be the handiwork of the infamous ape-creature. But there’s a far darker truth buried deep beneath the legend, pertaining instead to a mammal capable of greater violence than any other in the animal kingdom. “Some monsters are real,” warns the production’s tagline; naturally, it’s referring to homo sapiens. Jump ahead to the 21st century where the continued elusiveness of the Sasquatch is belied by its ubiquity in pop culture — including in books. The Internet helped the formerly fringe topic explode in popularity and enter the mainstream. The nonfiction book offerings on the Sasquatch have multiplied exponentially in tandem. Many of them are by part-time enthusiast researchers. A few skeptics have added their voices to the cascading pile of wildman tomes. So too have those who plug the more esoteric takes on the Sasquatch, insisting the creature is supernatural, interdimensional, and/or extraterrestrial.

Concept image of a man looking at a Bigfoot-like creature. (Image credit: David Wall via Getty Images) But this is an unemotional survey of what I consider the ten best books on the subject matter. It is true that some of the discussed books are exceedingly rare and out-of-print but if you look hard enough and scour the four corners of the internet long and hard you are likely to be rewarded. Bayanov, Dmitri. America’s Bigfoot: Fact, Not Fiction – U. S. Evidence, Verified in Russia. Moscow: Crypto-Logos, 1997.Coleman, David. The Bigfoot Filmography: Fictional and Documentary Appearances in Film and TelevisionMcFarland, 2012. Bigfoot doesn’t need to be real, ultimately. The not-knowing is frightening enough. “In a way I wasn’t before I embarked on this weird adventure, I am now truly afraid of the woods” he says. It looks like a gorilla squatted down, big broad shoulders, little peaked head and it's pulling off chunks of wood that seems to demonstrate extreme strength. Then, all of a sudden it stands up and it's got these long legs," Meldrum said, impressed by the video but yet to examine it in detail. Markotić, Vladimir and Grover Krantz (eds), The Sasquatch and other Unknown Hominoids. Calgary, Alberta: Western Publishers, 1984. Debant, Jean-Paul Sasquatch/Bigfoot and the Mystery of the Wild Man: Cryptozoology & the Mythology in the Pacific Northwest (translated by Paul LeBlond).

Just curious about the Sasquatch literature. I'm a retired paleontologist, and the absence of reasonably recent (say, in the last 10,000yrs) paleontological evidence for the continued existence of these things is a pretty serious obstacle. Still, not impossible. After all, they just identified a new species of toothed whale recently. Call me a skeptic, but until some gun-toting woodsman brings one in dead (or one gets killed by a vehicle), I just can't believe. Hope to be proved wrong some day. Daegling, David J. Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America’s Enduring Legend. AltaMira Press, 2004. Halpin, Marjorie Myers and Ames, Michael M. (editors). Manlike Monsters On Trial: Early Records And Modern Evidence. Vancouver, British Columbia: The University Of British Columbia Press, 1980. Skunk apes are supposedly swamp-dwelling versions of Bigfoot that are rumored to roam the southeastern U.S. On Oct. 28, 2013, a YouTube account named " Josh Highcliff'' uploaded one of the most popular skunk ape videos. In it, the cameraman films a potential skunk ape foraging in a Mississippi swamp.Folklorists trace the figure of Bigfoot to a combination of factors and sources, including folklore surrounding the European wild man figure, folk belief among Native Americans and loggers, and a cultural increase in environmental concerns. In a subject area whose works tend to push hard arguments, it’s nice to read a book about the Sasquatch that straddles the line of the exist vs. doesn't exist debate — while also telling a story. Washington State natural history writer and author Robert Michael Pyle weaves an entertaining and insightful yarn that is part travel memoir, part meditation on Bigfoot, and part manifesto on nature. The book chronicles his trek into the unprotected wilderness of the Dark Divide near Mount St. Helens. Pyle navigates landscapes of ecology, geography, and human belief. The book’s philosophical approach fills an underrepresented niche in the Sasquatch literature. Prospector Albert Ostman claimed that he spent around a week with a Bigfoot family near Toba Inlet, British Columbia in 1924. Ostman was camping alone when he says he was scooped up in his sleeping bag by a papa Bigfoot and taken to meet momma Bigfoot and two Bigfoot children. Ostman was supposedly held captive by the family, but said he eventually escaped when papa Bigfoot ate Ostman’s chewing tobacco and fell ill, according to a retelling of the story in anthropologist David Daegling's book " Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend" (AltaMira Press, 2004). I hope the choices assist those folks who are attempting to build a good resource library of new and old Bigfoot books. Here we go…