Reports of tall, hairy, bi-pedal, ape-like creatures can be found in various parts of the world. Often described as being anywhere from 6-12 ft. tall, covered in black, dark brown, or dark reddish hair, and a human-like face. The eyes are commonly described as dark in color, whilst some have reported these creatures possessing “glowing” yellow or red eyes at night.
These creatures go by different names, depending on what region of the world they are seen: Sasquatch, Yeti, Skunk Ape, Yeren, Yowie—but most of us have become familiar with the name Bigfoot. Thousands of people claimed to have had sightings of these mysterious creatures, and this number continues to grow every year.
In Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, Volume I: Folklore, we are presented with evidence from eyewitnesses, investigators, and cryptozoologists worldwide that support the existence of some type of large creatures that inhabit the wilderness. We also see these Bigfoot creatures in a different light: not only as physical beings of flesh and bone, but we also learn about some of the supernatural events that happen during Bigfoot sightings: like luminescent eyes, or orbs of light.
In volume one, the reader will take a deep-dive into how Bigfoot, and Bigfoot encounters seem to have connections with other phenomena like poltergeist, extraterrestrials, magic, fairies, even ghosts. But most importantly, the book questions some of the assumptions about what Bigfoot is and could be.
We interviewed one of the authors of this book, Joshua Cutchin—Joshua has appeared on a wide variety of paranormal programs discussing his work including Coast to Coast AM, Mysterious Universe, and The Gralien Report. He’s the author of four books:
2016’s A Trojan Feast: The food and drink offerings of aliens, fairies and Sasquatch
2018’s Thieves in the Night: A brief history of supernatural child abductions
2020’s Where the Footprints End, Vol. I & Vol. II (co-authored with Timothy Renner)
Cutchin has been featured on the hit history channel television show Ancient Aliens, and is a recurring round-table guest on the Where Did the Road Go? podcast.
The following is a partial transcript from our interview with Joshua Cutchin—it has been edited for clarity and readability. For the full interview, click the YouTube link at the top of this page.
Volume One of Where the Footprints End, opens with George Kowalcyk recounting a strange event that happened on the evening of October 25, 1973, when he was 22-years-old. This took place in a rural region of Lafayette County, Pennsylvania, and is a great example of all the strange occurrences that sometimes seem to transpire when people have encounters with these Bigfoot creatures. Joshua tells us:
“It’s a fantastic story, and I mean that both in terms of it being great, and also in terms of being fantastical. It comes from the archives of Stan Gordon, who is one of the people who brought to everyone’s attention the connection between Bigfoot and UFOs.
There was a farmland in Lafayette County, Pennsylvania, and there was a large glowing orb that descended upon this hilltop where the farm was. They could hear this loud whirling noise and these sounds of like, babies crying—so the owners of the property went up to investigate.
They had some rifles that were loaded with tracer bullets, and they’ve got this big, glowing ball—and from alongside of it, these slow figures are coming forward. They were big and shaggy, and every time they fire the tracer round, they sort of reach out to to them.
They actually hit these things (because with a tracer round you can tell), and it sounded like somebody throwing something into water—like a little ‘plop’ of water every time they hit them.
All of the sudden, the light just completely goes out. The things are still standing there, making these sounds like crying babies and eventually they ran away.
The interesting thing is afterwards, Stan Gordon gets a call about this case and when he arrives (according to police reports), it was still bright enough at the UFO landing site, that people could read a newspaper there in the middle of the night for sometime afterwards that evening.
Stan Gordon himself claims that he actually saw [George] collapse at the UFO site when they went back out there, and when he came to, he apparently had this vision of the grim reaper and the end of the world—all this really apocalyptic imagery.
Some other things sort of trailed behind this encounter: there were some batteries that were drained, acrid smells—but there was also some sort of “Men In Black”-style activity that was happening as well.
There were two individuals who about two weeks later, came to George’s house to question him—they looked like they were in the Air Force. They warned him to not share his story, and they never appeared again. This is after they offered to hypnotize him for whatever reason.
It might be the strangest Bigfoot case, but it’s definitely one of dozens that are out there—I’ll say hundreds, actually, that are out there.”
When George was visited by these two mysterious men, he was not only hypnotized—he was also shown photographs of UFOs and Bigfoots. When asked if he thinks the government knows what is going on in regards to a possible connection between Bigfoot and UFOs, Cutchin said:
“I seem to be pretty skeptical of how much the government actually knows. I think that the government definitely has access to better and more data points regarding UFOs and Bigfoots and things like that. But I really do think these phenomena are so strange that they really don’t have a good grasp.
I am now in the camp that UFOs are not aliens, and that Bigfoot is not a giant monkey. I think they’re a lot stranger—having to deal with the way that, literally, reality works. I hesitate to say, maybe even having a spiritual component.
Now, as far as those individuals being aligned with the Air Force: he saw them in what he thought were Air Force blues. Hypnotizing people is not exactly Air Force protocol (not publicly) when they’re talking to witnesses.
Alleged Men In Black captured on security camera footage, visiting a hotel near Niagara Falls, New York, shortly after witnesses reported seeing a large triangular UFO outside of the hotel.
Its interesting—each phenomena sort of has these I guess, “gatekeeper” figures that show up. The Men in Black/UFO phenomena: a lot of people have thought they might be some sort of government organization, but oftentimes they look just a little bit “off” and they behave just a little bit strange. They’ll talk about needing to go recharge, or they won’t know how to read certain social cues.
One famous example: one of the Men in Black that approached a UFO witness tried to drink a cup of Jell-O, instead of using the spoon that he was given. So they seem to have more in common with the UFOs than they do government.
Similarly, in Bigfoot lore (these two apparent “Air Force officers” notwithstanding), you have two other figures that have come out recently, sort of fill the same role as the Men in Black through UFO reports.
Generally two individuals: one who’s shorter and very “strait-laced” in a black suit (almost dressed like a “Men in Black”), except not quite as outdated as they tend to be. The other individual is a big, tall—really tall biker dude with a big beard, sometimes wearing a flannel that some people have said answers to the name of “Bear.”
People will say these are government agents who are following around and harassing Bigfoot witnesses, and that may be the case—but some of the stories that you read just sound really strange. Again, it sounds almost like these “gatekeeper” figures are part of the phenomena itself, rather than part of the government.
A good example of that, is an individual—a police officer, who was in the middle of a Bigfoot sighting. He was warned to not intervene by these two figures and then, sure enough, out on the beat this officer runs into one of these Bigfoot and he pulls his gun and he’s aiming at it, but he just can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.
The creature runs off and when the police officer turns around, there’s this tall biker dude (who alluded that he was with the government), who looked at him and says, ‘Couldn’t pull the trigger could you? Good man.’ Is he following him around or is he, again, part of the strangeness of the phenomenon?
Does the government know something about Bigfoot? I don’t know. The stranger Bigfoot gets, the less likely (I think), that the government knows about it.
Now—if it is something like a mundane, flesh-and-blood primate or some sort of branch of the human evolutionary tree, then I think it’s entirely likely that they would have more knowledge of it.
A lot of things we talk about in the book, in my opinion, sort of lean away from that answer.”
A stabilized frame in gif format, taken from the Patterson-Gimlin film. Courtesy of M.K. Davis (Source) — Related Article: Bigfoot, JFK, And The Art Of Dissecting Video-Evidence, with M.K. Davis.
Asked about another account included in the book that examplifies its title—Joshua shared what happened to the Hilsmeier family at their farm back in January 27, 1978. In this intriguing case, a large, unknown creature left thousands of tracks that mysteriously ended in the middle of a snow-covered field:
“This is a property where something upsets the Hilsmeier family dogs—their German shepherds were really upset because there was something out in the back field. The next morning, Allen Hilsmeier and his sons found these three-toed footprints that were in the back field. Each was about 16 inches long and six inches wide and seemed to leave deep enough impressions to indicate that they were dealing with something quite heavy. The stride was about five feet from footprint-to-footprint, even though sometimes it went up hills. There were about 2,000 tracks and interestingly enough, they ended right in the middle of a field.
The father [Allen], thought that this meant that there was a Bigfoot that was backtracking in it’s own steps (which I don’t know how it ever gets out of those steps, once it backtracks over those 2,000 footprints), but this is something you will run into time-and-again in Bigfoot accounts.
In these Bigfoot accounts, you’ll reach the end of the trackway and it’ll be in the middle of a gigantic field and the tracks just stop. A lot of people say the Bigfoot jumped really high or really far to a tree, or just some sort of harder ground where it wouldn’t leave footprints.
But I think the largest recorded jumps in the animal kingdom are 50 feet vertical and horizontal for species of antelope and snow leopards, and sometimes these [Bigfoot] footprints in the fields are surrounded by much, much, much wider areas of untouched ground than 50 feet.
So the implication is that these things just sort of dematerialize. They vanish—or they walk backwards (which, maybe, but it just sounds so silly on its face).
Some other people suggested they brush their tracks out with a branch or something, which—yeah, okay. But if we’re saying that (because we insist that Bigfoot is an ape), it doesn’t seem like very ape-behavior. It’s not out of the question, it’s just a little bit too elaborate of an explanation.
The fact-of-the-matter is the point that it disappears—so, that was the idea for the title of the book, because the best evidence that we do have for Bigfoot are these footprints. Some of them are magnificent, and they do seem to indicate that we’re dealing with a primate. They are the best evidence that we have, and yet, they have always led us to a certain point.
So the footprints in that sense, have ended—not only in terms of the tracks, but also, in terms of what they can tell us. We have to go beyond where the footprints end: to folklore instead of science, to see if we can gain some additional insight.
One final statement on the whole footprint thing. These footprints, everything about them really does often (not always, because there’s some strange anomalies like different number of toes and whatnot), but a lot of what the footprints will tell you seems to point to a large, undiscovered ape.
People say that that means nothing more than a large, undiscovered ape—and you think “fine.” But ghostly footprints? Ghosts slam doors. It seems like non-physical things can interact with the physical environment. It seems like they its just another variation on that concept.”
On the topic of footprints with different number of toes and if they point to more than one species of these creatures; and if certain type of phenomena corresponds to three-toed tracks, as opposed to the five-toed tracks—Joshua tells us:
Article from the Eureka Humboldt Times - September 4, 1962
“Some people have suggested in the past that the three-toed and four-toed (and even two-toed tracks), tend to correspond to ‘scarier’ Bigfoot reports, but that doesn’t seem to hold up. There are plenty of reports that are strange that involve five-toed tracks left behind, and plenty of reports that aren’t strange in any other respect than having odd number of toes left behind.
It’s possible that we could be looking at a different species, but three toes is a very distant departure from what we would expect from primate anatomy. Some people will say it’s inbreeding, or it’s injured—but these footprints tend to manifest identically symmetrically. In other words: the deformity would have to manifest identically on both feet to produce some of these trackways.
What’s more, if you look at these footprints, they don’t look like primate feet that are deformed. They look almost like giant chicken feet with an elongated heel and these three, equally-sized toes, straight out in front. So it seems like something a good deal different than the basic human or traditional Bigfoot feet.”
In his book, Joshua draws a parallel between Bigfoot and poltergeist-like activity (disembodied voices). Asked about “The Sierra Sounds”—these are recordings made in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California in 1971 by Alan Berry and Ron Morehead, who seem to have captured the vocalizations of Bigfoot creatures, and the infamous “wood knocks” many witnesses have reported hearing, Joshua tells us:
Are these the vocalizations of Bigfoot creatures captured on tape in the woods of the Sierra Nevada Mountains?
“I think the best description of the wood knocks that I’ve heard is that it sounds like someone taking a Louisville Slugger [baseball bat] and hitting a tree, which is the perfect description—so it’s pretty intense.
A Navy crypto-linguist named Scott Nelson who [analyzed “The Sierra Sounds”], said that there were morphemes, phonemes, and syntax—which almost sounded like the aspect of a language. Meaning, we can’t say what it is, but it certainly has the cadence and a lot of the structural similarities that one would expect from an actual language.
There was some subsequent analysis of the sounds by some researchers who specialize in vocal cords, and how (basically), we’re able to postulate a correspondence between the height of an individual or the size of an individual, and their vocal apparatus. According to these researchers, whatever made these sounds would probably have to be between 6’4” and 8’2” in terms of the height.
I don’t know what to make of those recordings but they definitely sound like a language, and it’s creepy—it’s very confronting when you hear it.”
When looking at the similarities between Bigfoot and fairy folklore, Joshua shares another account he included in his book. Originally published in 1857, it tells the story of a boy from Oregon who was kidnapped and taken underground by a Bigfoot-type creature.
“It’s from the June 9, 1857 issue of Salem, Oregon’s Weekly Oregon Statesman. It’s a story about this boy who was out looking for livestock with an older gentleman—they were camping in the forest, and they heard this cry in the woods.
They boy woke up that night and he saw a large hairy man about 12 or 15 feet tall—his eyes were glowing ‘like liquid balls of fire.’ It grabbed the boy and ran away into the forest to a trap door—it opens up this trap door in the forest and climbs down a ladder into a subterranean lair.
Inside, the boy sees this room that’s illuminated with a peculiar phosphorescent light above it—he said it all seemed to be composed of seashells of every conceived shape and color, and he could hear music coming from somewhere else.
According to the story, the creature ended up bringing back a young lady who was absolutely beautiful. She handed the boy a card (like a business card), and it read: “Boy, depart hence forthwith or remain and be devoured,” and he ends up escaping while the beast is sleeping.
What I love about that story is, it sounds like a Bigfoot—I mean it’s Oregon, it’s a large hairy man with his glowing eyes, but everything else about the story is straight out out fairy lore. That sort of weird dim lighting of fairy land—you could draw some comparisons to the sort of underground dome-space that people see in DMT trips.
That detail about the girl who comes and warns the boy to leave. You find that time and time again in stories of people (or their children) who are kidnapped by fairies in Ireland, or people who stumble into a fairy party and they’ll see someone who walks up to them—and it’s a young girl who died last year, and she tells them to not drink any drink, or eat any food, or else they’ll be trapped at the fairies forever like she is. It’s an exact comparison there.”
We also touched on the topic of DMT / Fairies / other dimensions / meditation, and if we have to be in-tune to see some of these creatures like Bigfoot, aliens, fairies, etc. Joshua (who does an excellent job at drawing similarities, and show how there may be some type of connection between all of these), says:
Related Article: DMT: Exploring The Spirit Molecule with Dr. Rick Strassman.
“I’m convinced that the ‘altered states of consciousness’ angle has something to do with this. You can achieve it by a lot of different ways: you can see it through certain psychedelic substances, you can achieve it through meditation—[psychedelic] substances are quick, but you’re unprepared for it. Meditation is a lot slower, but you tend to arrived much more prepared for what happens to you.
I think some people are just born with it. I think other people are sort of forced into it by trauma or by disassociation. I think that’s why we see the same sort of imagery popping-up in near-death experiences.
But I do think that there’s something—so much of this paranormal stuff comes back to the witness and what they’ve got going on in their lives. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve talked to people who were talking about a UFO sighting that they had, and I asked them what was going on in their life? They’ll answer, ‘well, I’m in the middle of a divorce and we were renovating the house at the same time,’ or something like that.
There’s always this transitional/liminal aspect to a lot of these things, and I think that something about being in that state of mind is really conducive to these phenomena.
I’m always thrilled to explore where the Venn diagram overlaps on a lot of these, and Bigfoot is in the middle of a lot of it—that’s for sure. You can draw comparisons (as we do in the book), to Bigfoot and ghosts, Bigfoot and UFOs, Bigfoot and fairies, Bigfoot and witches, Bigfoot and these archetypal women in white—I mean, it really is the gift that keeps on giving.”
Be sure to pick up a copy of Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, Volume I: Folklore (here), and visit Joshua Cutchin’s website to learn more about him and his work. We look forward to having Joshua back in the near future to discuss part two of this work, Where the Footprints End, Vol. II: Evidence (available here).
