Cave Junction, Ore.-- Assume, for a moment, that the truth is out there.
Internet Aids Long-Time Search For Elusive Bigfoot
If Bigfoot exists, it's likely getting as far as possible from the strange mix of humans clambering up this trail in Oregon Caves National Monument.
Leading the way is Matthew Johnson, a psychologist who made headlines in July when he reported seeing an 8-foot sasquatch in these woods.
Following are several Bigfoot enthusiasts carrying small, beat-up cameras. Johnson's eager friends are carrying bigger cameras. A few reporters and photographers round out the party.
With the exception of Johnson and a couple of other wilderness-savvy hikers, the procession tracks through the area with all the stealth of trick-or-treaters.
"I wanted to make sure you got one of my cards," a hiker tells a reporter in a booming voice, forgetting that he handed out his "Bigfoot Hotline" business card an hour earlier. Up the trail, Johnson climbs toward where the creature was spotted July 1, then recalls his encounter.
First there was the smell -- described as a vile combination of vomit and dying fish. Second was the sound. It was distant at first, sounding like a deep, guttural "whoa" repeated slowly two or three or four times in a row. Johnson thought it was his heart pumping blood through his head, until his wife and two kids started to hear it, too.
Finally, there was the sighting. "(The Bigfoot) was over on the left side of that tree, watching my kids," Johnson says, crouching and holding on to a sapling as he points downhill toward the trail. "I was watching it watch my family."
There's nothing the Bigfoot Field Researchers Association (BFRA) more hates more than a hoax. With that in mind, the volunteers look closely at every piece of evidence.
Bigfoot sightings have been recorded in the United States for nearly 200 years. Native Americans have passed on stories about the creature that date back even further. Film of a Bigfoot taken in 1967 in Northern California, considered a hoax by many, started the modern-day debate about its existence.
Now, with the Internet, researchers can catalog and analyze sightings as never before.
Researcher John Freitas says www.bfro.net/ gets more than 10 reports a day.
"You can pretty much tell when somebody is feeding you a line," Freitas says. "It'll be something like, Yeah, I was down with my girlfriend, and we were doing the wild thing, and here comes Bigfoot. Pretty soon he joined in.'"
Most reports to BFRO aren't considered credible, but Johnson's brought investigators running. For starters, it was recent. A majority of BFRO reports are years or decades old.
Also, Johnson says he read almost nothing about Bigfoot, yet the sights, smells and sounds he encountered were consistent with other "legitimate" reports.
Finally, a local ranger reported that the psychologist was in tears, sweating and in a panic when he came off the trail, a condition that would be difficult to fake.
Johnson sent his letter to the BFRO on the night of July 1. Freitas read it the next day while another BFRO investigator, Scott Herriot, read it from his Tiburon, Calif., home.
By that Monday morning, Freitas and Herriot were at Oregon Caves.
"On a scale of 1 to 10," Freitas told the Del Norte County (Calif.) Triplicate after he returned from Oregon Caves, "the credibility of this story is an 11."
What he saw on the trail last month, Johnson insists, was no bear.
Johnson says he rushed his family down the trail, but didn't tell them what he saw until the bottom. When he reached the ranger's station, he was in tears.
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