- MOLALLA, Oregon (AM) -- Bigfoot enthusiast Charles Baker knew the signs:
the matted grass, the twisted branches, the stench that set the dog off
and the shrill scream that made it silent.
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- It was late one February night, and Baker
was wandering through the woods along the lower Molalla River. He didn't
see the beast. But the 28-year-old security officer and outdoorsman believes
he had a close encounter with the creature also known as Yeti, Yayoo, Skunk
Ape or Sasquatch.
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- "It's out there, and it's a lot
more intelligent than people realize," Baker said.
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- After all of these years, reports of
the elusive giant continue to trickle in from the forests of the Northwest,
the foothills of Ohio and the swamplands of Florida. And despite the persistent
lack of hard evidence, investigators continue to dog the beast, risking
savings and reputations to find proof that Bigfoot exists.
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- "I have every confidence it will
happen," says Ray Crowe, founder of the Western Bigfoot Society, a
Portland-based nonprofit group that is considered the largest of its kind.
"I'm just concerned someone else will beat us to it."
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- Crowe estimates that 50 to 100 researchers
are actively pursuing the creature around the world, using sophisticated
search tools ranging from infrared cameras to DNA-retrieving dart guns
and seismic sensors.
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- Still, the most conclusive evidence on
record is the primitive 1967 footage known as the Patterson film, which
shows a blurred and jerky image of what appears to be a large, hairy beast
running through the woods.
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- "No one can knock that picture,"
Crowe said.
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- These days, with the technology to alter
film and video easily and realistically, bigfooters know it will take more
than footage to prove the beast exists. They need a body -- dead or alive.
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- "That's the only way," Crowe
says.
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- Crowe, 60, has been looking for Bigfoot
since 1991, when he began transforming the basement of his used bookstore
into a Bigfoot museum and meeting place. The society was born, quickly
growing to 250 members, and Crowe began to publish the Track Record newsletter
every month.
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- It was Crowe who took the call about
some strange goings-on near Molalla. Baker, who has hunted in the area
since he was a child, believed he had come across the spot where a Bigfoot
creature had made its bed at the base of a ridge.
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- Several months old by then, the giant
footprint Baker saw pressed into the ground was long gone. After ducking
through a thicket for a closer look, Crowe concluded that the matted grass
was more than likely made by a camper's sleeping bag. The broken branches
were clearly cut by machete.
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- Still, there was no explaining the eerie
scream that echoed through the canyon. Or the stench, which is often reported
along with a sighting: "That sucker was ripe," Baker said.
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- And it wasn't the first such report in
the area. In 1992, Sharon and LeRoy Jones were camping nearby when they
say they heard something banging on the cage of their pet rabbits. They
say they then saw a Bigfoot dart back into the bushes.
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- There are dozens of accounts on the Internet:
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- -- In Portland last year, a student reported
seeing a Bigfoot while videotaping a class project near the Washington
Park Zoo, although his father believed the sighting was an excuse for losing
his new video camera.
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- -- Near Colton, southeast of Portland,
in 1995, a bow hunter sensed he was being followed, turned and saw a Sasquatch
staring at him about 25 feet away.
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- -- At a logging camp near Detroit, a
small town southeast of Salem, in 1970, a 16-year-old girl reported seeing
a Bigfoot with breasts stealing meat from the family's cooler.
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- Sightings haven't been limited to the
Northwest. There is an active Bigfoot society in Ohio, where one man recently
claimed to have videotaped a white Sasquatch. In Florida, recent reports
of the "skunk ape" can be found on the Internet.
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- Crowe writes up nearly all the sightings
in his newsletter, although he warns readers to keep on their "skepticals"
and is leery of reports that link Bigfoot with UFOs, psychic connections
and different dimensions.
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- "You don't throw out data,"
said Crowe. "You never know if it will be the thing that gives you
something new."
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- The greatest problem is not weeding through
the sightings, but getting information about them in the first place. Often,
people too embarrassed to come forward or don't know whom to call, he said.
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- Publicity had been boosting the Western
Bigfoot Society's exposure in recent years, and reports were rolling in
more frequently. But they've slowed in the last year, after the fire marshal
banned meetings larger than 10 people and Crowe decided to shut the store
down.
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- He hopes to replace it with a stand-alone
Bigfoot museum, which he plans to build along Interstate 5 as soon as the
funding is found.
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- His group still meets weekly at a north
Portland restaurant, where on a recent Tuesday a lively debate ensued about
what sounds, if any, Bigfoot makes.
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- They're a diverse bunch: an archer who
once heard unidentifiable screams on Dixie Mountain in the 1970s; an industrial
pump salesman who has taken to baiting Bigfoot with Spam in steep canyons
throughout Northwest forests.
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- And there's Peter Byrne, who with his
khaki clothing, field vest and silk ascot, would look more at home on safari
than in suburbia.
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- For five years beginning in 1992, Byrne
led the Bigfoot Research Project, the most technologically advanced search
for Bigfoot in history. Funded by a $1 million grant from a benefactor
who wants anonymity, Byrne and two assistants were equipped with a Jeep,
police gear, military search equipment and a toll-free phone number (1-800-BIG-FOOT.)
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- Dozens of volunteers were on call in
case of a sighting. Two helicopters were on standby, one equipped with
infrared equipment. Biopsy guns were readied to extract pellet-size samples
of tissue for DNA testing.
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- But the the best the searchers got was
a 31-day-old report from a policeman who believed he saw a Bigfoot walking
along the Oregon coast. Any evidence was gone by the time investigators
got there.
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- The project ended last year, and Byrne
is still working to drum up more funding. In the meantime, he and the others
continue the search on their own time and money.
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- Their motives vary. A few are all too
aware of the fortune to be made if the creature is ever proved real. Some
just want an excuse to spend time in the woods.
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- But most say they're motivated by the
mystery.
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- Todd Neiss, 37, has no doubt he saw three
Bigfoot creatures during a 1993 demolition exercise with the National Guard
-- a sighting corroborated by three others.
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- "If people don't believe me, that's
their problem," said Neiss, now a vice president of a transportation
company. "My point to find these animals is not to say 'Na-na-na-na-na-naaa,
told you so.' It's because I'm so fascinated and intrigued, I have to see
them again."
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