Bigfoot (Sasquatch )

‘Bigfoot’ was a major fascination in the 1970s, explored in numerous documentaries (such as the In Search Of . . . series hosted by Leonard Nimoy), and imagined on such series as The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman. 

Also known as ‘Sasquatch’, the large hairy ape apparently roamed the forests of the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

There were tales of the ‘hairy man’ in a number of Native American legends, and the idea of such a being can be seen around the world (just think of the Yeti in the Himalayas or the Almas in central Asia).

But the incident usually credited as the first evidence of Bigfoot came in 1811, when British explorer David Thompson found 14-inch-long, eight-inch-wide, four-toed prints in the snow of Alberta, Canada.

The name ‘Bigfoot’ came later, in 1958, from an article in the Humboldt Times about another series of prints found in California. These turned out to be the result of a prank by a man named Ray Wallace.

Since then, there have been thousands of sightings and footprints, the most famous being a short film of a walking Sasquatch in Bluff Creek, California, shot in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin (pictured at the top of this page).

Hell, he even starred in his own Saturday morning series, Bigfoot and Wildboy.