10 Bigfoot Sightings That Made The News

Stories about Bigfoot date back thousands of years, but some of the encounters were compelling enough to be picked up by news stations.

The Patterson-Gimlin Film

Two men riding their horses through northern California in 1967 captured less than 60 seconds of a large, hairy creature walking across the rocky terrain. The beast glances over its shoulder at the men as it walks through the camera shot. The film’s authenticity remains a heavily debated topic.

Strange Sounds In Kentucky

A bigfoot sighting became a federal investigation when a man fired his weapon inside a national park in Kentucky. A backcountry camper at Mammoth Cave National Park in western Kentucky said a man approached him and mentioned he had heard some strange noises nearby. When the camper heard gunfire a few minutes later, it was the man shooting at a Bigfoot that he said stepped out from behind some trees.

The First Footprints Photographed

A British explorer hiking through the Himalayan Mountains in 1951 took a photograph of a 13-inch footprint that was definitely not human. The explorer followed the footprints for a long time and took several more photographs. Those photos sold for several thousand pounds at auction in 2014.

Thrown Logs

A pair of Bigfoot hunters were hot on the trail of the cryptid outside Houston, Texas, in 2015, but they soon realized the creature was unhappy with their presence. As they began their overnight hunt, the lead investigator realized that something was throwing full-size logs at them from the treeline. The creature then ran away, according to reports.

Footprint Casts

Paul Freeman, an employee with the U.S. Forest Service came almost face-to-face with a hairy, brown creature standing almost 8 feet tall. That encounter spurred Freeman’s quest to find a Bigfoot. His hunts led him to collect a series of plaster casts of Bigfoot prints he found in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Eye Contact

A driver in Midland County, Michigan, was driving on a country road in 1997 when he saw a large, hairy creature climb out of a ditch on the side of the road. As the witness got closer to the beast, it made eye contact with him before disappearing into the trees.

The Traffic Cam Sighting

A Washington Department of Transportation traffic camera near Sherman Pass purported to capture Bigfoot standing in the snow in January 2020.

A Large Footprint in Pennsylvania

Stories about a “wild man” or Bigfoot-type creature in Pennsylvania date back to the mid-1800s, but a massive footprint discovered in the 1980s was the talk of the town in Johnstown, a small city about an hour east of Pittsburgh. The 17.75- by 7-inch footprint was photographed and carried across the Associated Press wire.

Slapping The Water

In 2015, two men canoeing in a Tampa, Florida swamp were expecting to see an alligator when they heard rustling on the bank. They soon realized the creature they were watching was no alligator. The hairy beast appeared to be grabbing something out of the water before it walked away.

A Falling Bigfoot

Hikers in Frisco, Colorado were taking a break when they saw something strange on the snow-covered mountains above them. At about 11,000 feet of elevation, they watched a dark figure fall. The hikers immediately began hiking up to the place where they’d seen the fall, but all they found was a series of footprints and handprints in the snow.

Need more Bigfoot sightings? Watch Jack Osbourne search northern Idaho for Bigfoot on Jack Osbourne’s Night of Terror on discovery+.