BIGFEET: The World of Bigfoot and Family

An Oddex Special Series — Part I of V

It’s late in the afternoon, the sun is low and shadows reach out from the trees along the remote forest trail that you are hiking. You begin to smell something foul in the air and notice that you no longer hear any birds chirping or squirrels racing across the forest litter. The uneasy feeling in your gut tell you to either turn around now or get through this. You quicken your pace. Something snaps and you instinctively turn your head towards the sound.

Something moves between the trees. It's enormous, covered in hair, and walking upright. You catch a glimpse of broad shoulders, unusually long arms, and a head that seems to sit directly on its chest. Then it's gone, leaving you wondering whether you just saw an animal, a person, or something that shouldn't exist. The foul odor dissipates and the forest comes back to life.

What was that? What would YOU call it?

In Washington, you might call it Bigfoot. In Florida, a Skunk Ape. In the Himalayas, perhaps a Yeti. In Australia, a Yowie. And in the forests of Sumatra, you might encounter something called Orang Pendek, although you'd probably be looking considerably closer to the ground with that one.

Across the world, people have reported encounters with mysterious, hair-covered beings that seem to occupy the uncomfortable territory between humans and animals. Some are enormous, others surprisingly small. Some reportedly smell terrible, some are described as peaceful, and a few have reputations that make Bigfoot seem like a Panda Bear.

Cryptozoologists have spent decades collecting these accounts, comparing footprints, examining photographs, interviewing witnesses, and debating whether unknown primates could still be hiding in the world's wilderness.

We tend to look at these creatures and group them all together, but the question remains: are all these creatures actually related?

Welcome to the Bigfoot family reunion. It's going to get hairy.

Meet the Family

Before we start handing out name tags, we should establish something important: Bigfoot isn't a scientifically recognized species, and neither are the creatures we're about to meet. No verified biological evidence has established the existence of an unknown worldwide family of hairy humanoids.

That said, it doesn't mean that these creatures don’t exist (you can’t prove a negative) and it certainly doesn’t mean that the stories aren't worth investigating.

Some traditions are centuries old. Others emerged during relatively recent waves of reported sightings. A few have inspired serious field investigations, while others are deeply embedded in the spiritual and cultural traditions of the communities that tell them.

And although modern cryptid culture often groups them together, the similarities aren't always as strong as they first appear.

Let's start with the fellow who made the family famous.

The Original Celebrity: Bigfoot and Sasquatch

Home territory: Western United States and Canada Reported height: Commonly 6–9 feet Distinguishing characteristics: Enormous footprints, broad shoulders, long arms, upright walking

Bigfoot is unquestionably the family's biggest celebrity. The modern image is familiar: an enormous, muscular, hair-covered creature walking on two legs through the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

But here's something that you may find surprising: Bigfoot and Sasquatch have different histories.

The word Sasquatch entered wider English-language awareness through J.W. Burns' writings about British Columbia's hairy giants in the late 1920s. Burns drew upon Indigenous accounts, including traditions associated with the Stó:lō peoples, although the beings described in those traditions shouldn't automatically be treated as our modern interpretation of Bigfoot.

The Sts'ailes First Nation, for example, describes Sasq'ets as a spiritually significant being associated with care for the land. That's a considerably richer tradition than the modern image of a giant primate hiding from wildlife photographers.

The modern Bigfoot legend began in 1958 when a journalist reported on large footprints discovered by loggers at a camp along Bluff Creek Road, in northern California. This story, published in the Humboldt Times, captured public interest and led to further media coverage. The name "Bigfoot" was popularized through these articles, which described the mysterious creature that left the tracks.

Nine years later, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin filmed the mysterious walking figure that would become known as Patty. This film, arguably the most famous cryptid film ever shot, was filmed along the same creek that ran near the logging camp where the story of Bigfoot began.

Don’t you worry, we'll be spending plenty of time at Bluff Creek in Part 2 of this series!

The Eastern Relatives: Skunk Apes, Grassmen and Swamp Monsters

Head east from the Pacific Northwest and the family resemblance begins to change.

Florida's Skunk Ape is commonly described as a large, hairy, upright creature with an especially unpleasant odor. Its swampy surroundings and sometimes reddish coloration have helped distinguish it from the classic Pacific Northwest Sasquatch.

The Ohio Grassman inhabits a different environment altogether: farmland, wooded valleys, and the forests of the Midwest. Modern accounts sometimes associate it with unusual grass structures or nests, although we'd need to establish how far back those particular details can be traced.

Then there's Arkansas' Fouke Monster, with its red glowing eyes, and which we've already investigated in the Oddex. Its reported appearance around Fouke in 1971 became the basis for The Legend of Boggy Creek, the influential 1972 film that helped introduce regional monster hunting to an enormous audience.

Missouri contributes Momo, the Missouri Monster, while Louisiana offers the Honey Island Swamp Monster. Appalachia has its Wood Boogers, and Alabama has traditions associated with the mysterious White Thang.

On the surface, they sound like regional Bigfoots.

Were witnesses encountering similar creatures in different environments? Were older local legends being reinterpreted through the increasingly familiar image of Bigfoot? Or were unrelated events acquiring the same name because it offered an easy explanation?

There's no reason every reported encounter must have the same answer.

And that makes the Eastern family much more interesting than a collection of Bigfoot nicknames.

We'll meet these relatives properly in Part III.

South of the Border: The Family Gets Complicated

Cross into Mexico and Central America, and things get considerably stranger.

The Sisimite, also called Sisimito or by related regional names, appears in traditions across parts of Central America. Often portrayed as a powerful, hairy, humanlike wilderness being, it sometimes possesses a peculiar anatomical feature: feet that face backward.

That would certainly make tracking one frustrating!

But backward-facing feet aren't unique to Sisimite stories. Similar motifs appear in folklore elsewhere in the world, where they may signal that a being belongs to the supernatural wilderness rather than the ordinary animal kingdom.

Now consider what that means for our family portrait. A modern Bigfoot investigator might see a large, hairy humanoid and recognize a possible relative. Someone familiar with the original Sisimite tradition might see a being with an entirely different identity, purpose, and set of powers.

South America complicates matters even further.

In the Andes, the Ucumar, also called Ucumari or Ukumarí in varying traditions, is often portrayed as a hairy wild man or bear-like being. The connection to bears is particularly interesting because South America actually has a native bear species: the spectacled bear, which can stand upright.

In Venezuela and surrounding regions, stories of the Mono Grande, or giant monkey, eventually became entangled with one of cryptozoology's most controversial photographs.

And deep in the Amazon, we encounter the Mapinguari.

Depending on the tradition, this being may be enormous, hairy, foul-smelling, equipped with formidable claws, or described with features that are difficult to reconcile with any conventional primate. Ok, that sounds kinda Bigfoot-y.

However, some accounts include a mouth in its abdomen. Hmm. Maybe we double check that family tree!

Researchers have explored possible relationships between Mapinguari traditions and extinct giant ground sloths, although there's no verified evidence that such animals survive today. Anthropological research also makes clear that Indigenous understandings of these beings cannot simply be reduced to a search for an unknown mammal.

The farther south we travel, the more obvious our problem becomes: Being hairy and living in the wilderness doesn't necessarily make something a Bigfoot.

Part IV will investigate these fascinating Latin American traditions in their own right.

The Distant Cousins: Yetis, Yowies and Everything Between

If Bigfoot is the family's American celebrity, the Yeti is its Himalayan counterpart.

Long before Bigfoot became a household name, stories about mysterious beings in the Himalayan mountains were attracting explorers and Western audiences. Footprints photographed in snow, alleged relics preserved in monasteries, and accounts gathered from local communities helped create the international image of the Abominable Snowman.

Interestingly, the search for Yeti has produced an unexpected scientific discovery. In 2017, researchers genetically examined biological samples attributed to Yetis. Rather than identifying an unknown primate, the analysis linked the material to known bears and a dog. The bear samples nevertheless provided valuable information about the evolutionary history of Himalayan and Tibetan bears.

Scientists went looking for a monster and learned something new about real wildlife. That's a pretty respectable consolation prize.

Moving from the cold mountains of the Himalayas to the jungles of the southeast, we visit Sumatra and we meet Orang Pendek, whose name means short person in Indonesian.

Unlike the towering Sasquatch, Orang Pendek is generally described as a small, powerfully built, upright-walking creature. Conservation researchers and wildlife photographers have spent years investigating reports from the region, including serious camera-trapping efforts. The forest has yielded photographs of genuinely rare wildlife, but no independently verified Orang Pendek. At least not yet...

In Central Asia and the Caucasus, traditions surrounding Almas or Almasty introduce another variation: hairy beings often portrayed as unusually humanlike rather than gorilla-like. The terminology and traditions differ across regions, so we'll need to be careful not to treat every similarly named wild person as one creature.

Finally, Australia brings us the Yowie, an imposing hairy humanoid associated with Australian wilderness stories.

But Yowie presents a fascinating historical puzzle. The familiar modern creature emerged from a complicated mixture of Indigenous terminology, settler-era wild-man reports, and later cryptozoological interpretations. Determining which descriptions belong to which tradition is far more difficult than simply calling it Australian Bigfoot.

Food for thought: if Yowie really are an undiscovered nonhuman primate AND related to Bigfoot, how did its ancestors reach Australia? Stowaway on an outrigger canoe?

Part V will take us around the world, where we'll discover that some of Bigfoot's supposed relatives have surprisingly little in common with the American original.

The Family Resemblance: What Do They Actually Have in Common?

After meeting this international collection of mysterious beings, we can begin comparing their reported characteristics.

Descriptions summarize recurring modern reports and interpretations, not verified biological characteristics. Local traditions can differ substantially.

There are similarities, certainly. Upright walking, unusual hair coverage, apparent intelligence, and a tendency to inhabit remote places appear repeatedly.

But there are also enormous differences in size, behavior, anatomy, cultural meaning, and the reliability of the surviving accounts.

So why have we grouped them together?

Did We Discover the Bigfoot Family—or Invent It?

There's a fascinating possibility that deserves serious consideration.

Humans have been telling stories about wild people for a very long time. In some traditions, they're dangerous inhabitants of remote mountains. In others, they're forest guardians, supernatural beings, ancestral figures, or creatures that exist somewhere between the human and animal worlds.

Those stories didn't necessarily begin with a common animal.

But as European explorers, colonial writers, journalists, and eventually cryptozoologists encountered different traditions, they often interpreted unfamiliar beings through concepts they already understood.

A hairy forest spirit could become a wild man. A wild man could become an undiscovered ape. An undiscovered ape could become another member of the worldwide Bigfoot family.

And by the twentieth century, the public already had a remarkably consistent mental image of what such a creature ought to look like. An image that may have influenced how later witnesses interpreted unusual encounters.

That's one possibility.

Another is that some traditions preserve observations of real animals, including bears, known primates, or creatures that have since disappeared. Others might involve misidentification, exaggeration, hoaxes, or stories that were never intended as literal zoological reports.

And then there's the possibility that keeps cryptozoologists searching: that somewhere among these accounts is evidence of an animal science has yet to document.

We shouldn't assume all these explanations are equally likely, or that one explanation must account for every story. A forest spirit in Brazil, an unusual footprint in California, and an alleged small ape in Sumatra are very different kinds of evidence.

But there's something undeniably compelling about the recurring image of a humanlike figure emerging from the wilderness. The overall “features of the creatures” and the lack of evidence to scientifically link or separate them may have taken root in that part of our human minds that needs to categorize things.

And in doing so, we may have created a family.

Five Parts. One Very Hairy Investigation.

Over the next four installments, we're going to get to know this extraordinary family, beginning with the creature that made the whole world pay attention.

Part II — Bigfoot Country

The Western United States, Canada, and the birth of modern Bigfoot. From early Sasquatch accounts to Bluff Creek, the Patterson–Gimlin film, and the evidence that keeps the debate alive.

Part III — Bigfoot Heads East

From the Mississippi to the Atlantic, we'll meet Skunk Apes, Grassmen, Wood Boogers, and the other creatures that gave Bigfoot some decidedly unusual American relatives.

Part IV — Pies Grandes: Bigfoot South of the Border

From Central America's Sisimite to the strange beings of the Amazon and Andes, we'll discover how complicated the family resemblance can become.

Part V — Bigfeet Everywhere

From Yetis to Yowies, we'll circle the globe before bringing everyone together for one final family reunion.

By the end, we'll have traveled through forests, swamps, jungles, and mountains across several continents. We'll examine famous photographs, disputed footprints, remarkable witness accounts, old folklore, scientific investigations, and a few stories that would fit perfectly into the Campfire page at Oddageddon!

And we'll try to answer the question that started this entire adventure: Are these creatures truly related, or have we simply given the world's mysteries a shared surname?

Either way, somebody's going to have to explain Mapinguari.

Our Take

We love the idea of an enormous, undiscovered primate wandering through the forests of North America. We'd also be delighted if a tiny, muscular Orang Pendek turned out to be running around Sumatra, completely unaware that humans have spent generations arguing about its existence.

But what excites us most about the Bigfoot family isn't simply the possibility that one of these creatures might be real. It's the extraordinary collection of stories, cultures, historical events, and investigations that have grown around them.

There's no scientifically established Bigfoot family tree. There may never be one.

Yet the stories themselves are real, even when their subjects remain unverified. They've inspired explorers, frightened campers, launched investigations, sold movie tickets, and convinced perfectly reasonable people to spend their weekends wandering around forests looking for enormous footprints.

That seems worth investigating.

Field Notes: The Bigfoot Family

📍 Location: Worldwide, with reported relatives across North America, Central and South America, Asia, and Australia

👀 First Sightings: Varies enormously by tradition; some have deep oral histories, while others became prominent during the twentieth century

🦍 Classification: Hairy humanoids, wild people, alleged unknown primates, and supernatural wilderness beings

📏 Reported Height: Roughly 3–10 feet, depending on the creature and account

👣 Common Characteristics: Hair-covered bodies, upright walking, unusual footprints, remote habitats, and an impressive ability to avoid cameras

💀 Threat Level: 2–8/10, depending on which relative you're visiting

🔬 Scientific Status: No verified evidence establishes an undiscovered worldwide family of Bigfoot-like primates

📖 Status: An international collection of legends, reported encounters, cultural traditions, and unresolved claims

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