Bigfoot: Why Tracks, Hair, and Film Keep Appearing but Never Become One Unified Investigation

In the autumn of 1976, Peter Byrne of the Bigfoot Information Center sent a hair sample to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Byrne did not ask the FBI to hunt a monster. He asked its laboratory to identify the sample because his center lacked the equipment. The FBI file still shows that the agency received the sample, sent it for examination, and replied on February 24, 1977. The hair was identified as belonging to the deer family. The detail matters because it shows that the Bigfoot story once went beyond blurry images and forest tales: researchers brought physical material to a federal agency for testing.

Bigfoot, also called Sasquatch, is the name given to a large humanlike creature reported in forests of the Pacific Northwest. The modern story grew in 1958 after large footprints were reported in northern California. In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed a short sequence at Bluff Creek, California. It shows a hairy figure crossing a sandbar and turning toward the camera. Since then, tracks, plaster casts, calls, photographs, videos, and hair have been collected across many states, but they remain with hikers, hunters, local groups, and independent researchers.