The mythical “Bigfoot” (aka Sasquatch or Wendigo) is no stranger to the southeastern United States. Sightings of the large, ape-like humanoid continue to pop up from time to time, despite skeptics’ best efforts to debunk the beast’s existence.
A photo sent into Mountain Xpress this morning adds a new entry into the annals of Bigfoot’s exploits in the Southern Appalachians. The above still was taken from trail camera footage from 2012 by an Asheville resident, who requested we refer to him as “Jack“, on a game trail in a forested area near Pullen Road, outside of Sevierville, Tenn.
After reviewing the misplaced footage recently, he came across the large, hairy beast above cutting into the camera’s view. “I normally expect to see deer so this was really strange,” Jack says in an email. “I thought it definitely could not be a black bear, by the way it was walking.”
This isn’t the only Bigfoot sighting within WNC in recent years. Last August, The Asheville Citizen-Times released a video submitted by Boone resident Eric Walters, who claimed he may have caught a similar creature darting off into a field during a vacation in Henderson County.
In 2010, Cleveland County resident Tim Peelers claimed to have accidentally summoned a sasquatch while calling for coyotes. “This thing was ten-foot tall,” Peelers told a reporter at the time. “It had beautiful hair.”
Despite eye-witness accounts, most officials within the scientific world maintain that there is no evidence that such a creature has ever walked the face of the earth, let alone the hollows of Southern Appalachia. In 2014, researchers at Oxford University released the results of a 3-year DNA study on hair from “anomalous primates” collected across the world, concluding that none of the submitted samples came from an unknown primate species, according to an article from Time Magazine.
While the question of whether the creature captured above is a sasquatch, a confused bear or a prankster in a gorilla suit may never be answered, Jack says he likes to think it may have been the legendary Bigfoot.
As 19th century American author and philosopher Elbert Hubbard once said, “The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.”
Good grief. Give me a break. Why do people keep clowning-around with this stuff? Moreover, why would the Mountain Xpress bother giving this any attention?
Hi Walter. Thanks for commenting. In response to your question: some people find this stuff interesting or entertaining, even if others are skeptical or find it silly. Our blogwire section of the site is an aggregate of things reported to us over the course of a given day, generally sourced from other media or submissions. If you don’t want to give it any attention, then simply don’t read it.
Whatever your position on Bigfoot, I think we all can agree that this is a poor attempt to hoax. Baggy fur suit, narrow little shoulders, short little arms, wrong stride and what kind of shoes are those?
Perhaps some sort of bearfoot novelty slippers?
Kinda looks like a wookie costume to me tbh. But if it is real and not a hoax then it is a juvenile Sasquatch.
I have a audio that my sister in law sent me that I would like someone to listen to where can I send it, the first initial howl is what caught my attention , and apparently every coyote and dog around, it’s from Pigeon Forge Tennessee area
All these ‘Bigfoot’ sightings always seem to occur in mountainous areas know to have clandestine cannabis, ‘marajuana’, grows. And many potent strains of cannabis have a skunky odor. Just my guess, though I would love to find that Australopithecus still lives, lol.