Hiyah Zaidi
Published November 26, 2025 12:22pm
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Since 2019, it’s been free to read everything the FBI know about Bigfoot. The intelligence agency has made public 22 documents from its records archive, revealing that it opened an investigation into the possible existence of Bigfoot in the 1970s. This was done in response to a request from Peter Byrne, an Oregon Bigfoot hunter who spent decades trying to prove that the hairy mythical creature was real. So, is Bigfoot really out there?
Who is Bigfoot?
Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a mythical ape-like being said to live in forests, particularly in the Pacific Northwest of North America. The creature is described as a large, bipedal primate covered in dark hair. The creature has a long history with North American settlers who reported sightings during the late 1800s and into the 1900s, with the occasional claim of footprints, encounters and a few grainy photos and videos. From these encounters, it has been described as everything from a large, upright ape to an actual hairy human, sometimes said to be standing over eight feet tall and powerfully built.
The Bigfoot file is 22 pages long and largely follows the correspondence between the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition (BIC) in The Dalles, Oregon, and the FBI’s Scientific and Technical Services Division from 1976 to 1977. In 1976, BIC director Peter Byrne requested the FBI test a strange hair sample. He wrote: ‘We do not often come across hair which we are able to identify and the hair that we have now, about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin, is the first that we have obtained in six years which we feel may be of importance.’ (Picture: FBI)
Then, in a letter in response, the FBI said its lab ‘primarily conducts exams for law enforcement agencies in connection with criminal investigations’ but did agree to analyse the hairs after several newspapers, including the New York Times and Washington Star-News, brought light to Bigfoot’s possible existence. Then, after a few months of follow-ups, the FBI delivered the results of the test to both Byrne and the organisation that supported his research, the Academy of Applied Science.
So what was the hair? Assistant FBI Director Jay Cochran wrote in a December 1976 letter to Byrne: ‘The hairs which you recently delivered to the FBI Laboratory on behalf of The Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition have been examined by transmitted and incident light microscopy. It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of a deer family origin.’
Although the agency closed the investigation in 1977, the amateur investigators are still searching for the creature. In a new study, Dr Jamie Lewis of Cardiff University spent three years conducting more than 150 interviews with Bigfooters and those interested in Bigfoot. He said: ‘As a sociologist of science, I’m really interested in the ways that ordinary people create knowledge, using scientific rhetoric and technologies, in attempts to prove their theories. As well as drawing from scientific practices, Bigfooters use a suite of modern technologies such as drones, thermal imaging, and parabolic dishes in their investigations.’
Dr Lewis found that while a minority of Bigfooters believe that Bigfoot is extra-terrestrial, other dimensional, or supernatural in origin, the overwhelming majority believe that Bigfoot is a biological creature which simply needs formal discovery and classification. It was this group, known as the Apers, who the researchers are interested in as they are making claims that are, in essence, compatible with mainstream science. (Picture: Getty)
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