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[BIRDS AND INSECTS CHIRPING]
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING]
SETH: I'm Seth Breedlove.
I make movies about strange and unusual subjects.
In 2015, I made a documentary
about an unknown creature sighting
which occurred near the village of Whitehall, New York,
called the Beast of Whitehall.
That story had introduced me to a region of the country I'd never been to before,
and one that's frequently overlooked
even by East Coasters like myself...
the Adirondacks.
In the years since the film was released,
I constantly found myself longing to go back.
In March of 2020, the United States was wracked by a virus
that had closed down large swaths of the country.
Political leaders and talking heads
urged people to stay indoors and avoid the outside world.
As COVID-19 made its way around the world,
I spent time at home with my family
and put my energy into work I could do from home.
Despite loving the newfound abundance
of time I had to spend with my wife and son,
I miss the adventure and excitement of being on the road,
filming documentaries in new places,
and the hours I got to spend in the forests.
So, while the rest of the world pondered a future
full of quarantines and four walls,
I began to make plans for a journey
that I would take with my friends Mark Matzke, Mark's son Andy,
and Adam Duggan.
It would be a trip that would reunite me with the natural world...
and one that would take me back to a subject
I've been locked away from for nearly three months.
The search for Bigfoot.
[DISTORTED VOICES]
[INAUDIBLE]
The Adirondack region of Upstate New York is sprawling.
When I first came here in 2015,
I was completely unprepared for what I found.
A wilderness that stretches beyond the horizon with pine forests,
endless rivers and streams, and distant mountains.
Once we'd reached the park, we met up with Aleksandar Petakov,
a friend and frequent collaborator
who moonlights as an adventurer and explorer
when he isn't spending time working on various documentary projects.
When I described this expedition to Aleks and the rest of the crew,
I explained that we were going to Upstate New York
to explore one of the largest wild areas on the East Coast,
and one of the largest protected forests in the United States.
We weren't simply going to find Bigfoot, or evidence of the creature.
In fact, I was already firmly in the camp
that they could, and very probably, did exist here,
if they existed anywhere.
The mission was two-fold,
and while Bigfoot made up one part,
the other was something I couldn't quite explain.
It was an idea, an idea that even to this day,
I'm struggling to put into words.
It involves nature and man's desire
to be among the trees and streams and mountains.
It's about Bigfoot as a driving force
to reconnect with the world outside when we most need it.
And what better place to reconnect with the natural world
than a place who's serene beauty and rugged landscapes
seem painted onto a blank canvas?
[BIRDS CHIRPING]
The Northeast has a rich history of historical accounts,
if you want to attribute
a lot of the early wild man sort of stories to Bigfoot.
New York Bigfoot reports go back a long way,
certainly to the days of the Native Americans,
in which they were called Wendigo or stone giants...
uh, that's what the Iroquois called them.
In more recent times, after the settlers arrived,
newspaper reports began to emerge
of wild man sightings in New York State,
especially in the Adirondacks, where there was a lot of wilderness and still is.
So, if you were to use a search engine
and look for Bigfoot-type reports,
you wouldn't put "Bigfoot,"
you would put "creature" or "weird bear" or "wild man."
And if you put "wild man" in, you will get tons of hits.
As far as history goes, I try and remain skeptical
because when it comes to newspapers,
those are reporters, they're trying to sell a paper.
But at the same time, there are other historical accounts,
like, take Theodore Roosevelt's account, for example.
He talks about a friend he had who saw a creature that looked a lot like Bigfoot.
So, I try and remain skeptical when I hear stories like this.
So, we have various cases and some are kind of celebrated.
We have the Vermont governor named Jonas Galusha,
and he was able to actually lead searching parties
after a creature called Old Slipperyskin,
and that was in the 1770s,
and what he was banking on was that if he brought this creature in,
it would win him the election.
And he didn't, and it didn't.
In one of the earliest encounters, really, that's recorded at least,
uh, in a non-oral sort of Native tradition, would've been in Massachusetts.
There were... there was a sighting, I believe in the 1760s,
well before America was even really a country.
It's interesting that you have that back story all throughout this area.
PAUL: And you have these flaps of wild man sightings
going from the, uh, 1770s right up to, you know, the 1920s or so.
Throughout all of human history,
there've been these incidences of monstrous creatures.
These, sort of, liminal beings, whether it's trolls or ogres,
and they tend to inhabit the forests and the swamps and... And the mountains,
notably sort of outside civilization.
And so, you've got sort of two tropes.
Either the monster, like in... Like Grendel and Beowulf...
comes from the, sort of outside into the civilized space and causes problems.
The other trope is human beings that go
too far beyond the civilized space into the wild
where they either encounter a monster,
or they undergo some kind of trauma that makes them into a monster.
Throughout all of human history, there's been this kind of dynamic
between the civilized space and the wild and the monsters that it contains,
and sort of a necessary separation between the two.
[RAVEN CROAKING]
SETH: It's important to understand the layout
of the northeast portion of the United States
because the geography and terrain of the area plays a key role
in where these creatures are seen.
While southern New York is known for being fertile, flat, pasture land,
the northern part of the state is rugged and wild,
with only the occasional major metropolitan areas such as Albany
breaking up the acres and acres of forest.
The northernmost part of the Adirondacks
is defined by a section called the High Peaks Wilderness.
While I had visited the Adirondack Park three previous times,
I'd never managed to make it to this area.
So, I set aside the final two days of our trek
to work our way to the High Peaks.
To the east of the Adirondacks lies Vermont,
where the Adirondacks spill into the Green Mountains,
and to the Northeast, New Hampshire, where you have the White Mountains,
another untamed, rugged wilderness,
though one not quite a sprawling as the Adirondacks.
To the southeast is Western Massachusetts,
another destination we would soon visit.
All of these areas are connected by forests and streams,
which, if there's anything I've learned
in my brief time involved in the search for Bigfoot,
it's that they always follow the creeks.
[SHOUTS]
Did you hit your head already?
Dude, this thing is nuts.
This is as far as it goes, bud.
I mean, it doesn't look like it's been carved.
-It's smooth over here, like, it's really smooth. -Yeah.
These are called drip mine's rust.
[INDISTINCT TALKING]
The, the... first time I came in here,
like the thing that's crazy to me about the Adirondacks
is you don't... I don't think you hear as much about this area...
but having been in like the Pacific Northwest
and like the Olympic Peninsula and all that stuff,
there's a lot of similarities between the two,
in that you've got this, like huge, vast... essentially like an ecosystem
where things can exist and live off the land
and no one has to know anything's here.
It's like you can stick five of the biggest national parks
-within the boundaries of... -Right.
...of this park.
I've heard Yosemite,
-this is bigger than Yosemite, this whole area. -Mmm-hmm.
Here you have New York, but it's like still a four-hour drive from the city.
So, uh, that's why I think you do hear some of these reports from this area.
Just always been really interesting to me.
I've never really had a chance to explore it
aside from Whitehall on the, kind of, periphery,
so, really exciting, just be here
and see all the different wildlife...
and, kind of, what similarities it has to other areas,
but how different it is, too.
The thing I was surprised by, and probably shouldn't have been,
is the fact that there's a lot of lakes
just interspersed between the peaks,
and that when you said about the Pacific Northwest,
that's what reminded me of that, as well.
When I started Adirondacks, I just thought... like, Great Smokys,
-you know, like mountains rising up. -Yeah.
I didn't realize the lake system that was here, as well.
So many water sources, lots of fish, that sort of stuff, and...
It's interesting because it's... It's...
It's more dense than I thought it would be.
The forest floor is, there's a lot of cover.
There's a ton of cover.
And we were talking as we were driving into, like, it is...
it is really, really dense.
Coming from Tennessee,
like, we have lots of forests, but it's... It's not like this.
I mean, there could be some animal, right,
20 feet in that tree line right there just watching us.
We'd have absolutely no idea 'cause you can't see that far in.
Yeah.
SETH: It was day one,
and despite a hike deep into the forest near Wells, New York,
we'd barely experienced the true scope of the park.
Our next stop was somewhere near Lake George,
where we would meet up with Steve Kulls
and some of his Bigfoot research team.
Steve is a private detective and security expert
who runs an organization comprised mostly of current
and former law enforcement officials,
many of whom have encountered Bigfoot for themselves.
Steve took us to a camp on Buck Mountain
where his team had experienced numerous unusual things.
We were only a handful of miles away from Whitehall,
and in terms of travel paths, Buck Mountain seems as good a place as any
to encounter a creature just passing through.
Despite the nearby tourist haven of Lake George,
Buck Mountain is densely forested,
runs down to a mostly uninhabited section of Lake George shoreline
and is overrun with deer and other wildlife.
Like most rural spots in this part of the Northeast,
it's the ideal place for a person to encounter a Sasquatch,
and many claim to have done just that.
Um... what brings you out here?
Well, what brought me out here, originally,
was a sighting report of a man and his wife
that had a fairly aggressive encounter
where they walked off trail...
and something started screaming at them.
And the guy had been coming up here for years
and never heard anything like that.
He was a bit of an outdoorsman.
As they retreated from where they were,
going back to the trail and then back out to the road area,
they... he could see something moving, you know, off to the corner of his eye.
You know, basically, escorting them out.
And to me, that's very indicative that they may have interfered
with a territorial type of... Of area.
MICHAEL: You know, I've been up in the Adirondacks,
where I've come across trackways
and found an adult... What would be an adult-sized trackway
with a juvenile-sized trackway. At the end, there's hair.
So, we know we have two different size individuals
moving through that area.
The generally, the Adirondack... uh... You know, that's something...
I got a sighting that... yesterday, up in the St. Lawrence County area,
uh, from another law enforcement officer.
Family has been smelling odors.
They did some knocks.
They got some screams.
But I got quite a few photos and got some other evidence
that make it look like it's a viable area.
In 2011, I was up here with my team
and we were all sitting by, by the fire.
I needed to get some batteries for my headlamp.
So, I went out to my car.
And, uh, you know... sometimes I like to just walk away and listen.
Uh, I know their strategies.
They like watching us.
That's why we have those types of sightings
where they're off on the...
the... the edge of the forest, watching people do things.
And I shined my flashlight down to the north side of the road.
And then I spun around to the south side of the road,
which is at an uphill grade, and they're standing there...
uh, right next to the utility pole was this eight-foot dark creature.
I could see... its eye shine was reflecting back at me,
and the first thing it did was turn around...
kind of... it kind of turned its body and looked...
and I think it was looking for an escape route, just in case.
Now, mind you, I'm shining a light in its face,
or, you know, at a distance of... of maybe 100-150 feet.
Uh... you know, time slows down.
So, it could have been... I thought it was 40 seconds.
It could have been longer, could have been shorter, I don't know,
but I shook the light, and with that it turned,
and it started to walk back into the woods
around the south side of our camp.
What are some of the... the things you've experienced,
or been a part of experiencing during some of those investigations
or night ops, or whatever you want to...
[SIGHS] You know, I've been paced out of the woods
with a couple other, uh, investigators.
The rock throwing incident.
Sometimes I sit on the skeptic side, and then...
bam, I got hit in the face with something.
Literally, the rock throwing incident,
I was leaning over the top of our car,
while another investigator was pulling a camera out of his car to get it set up.
Another investigator, in the front of the car, working with night vision...
and boom, one rock in the face,
another one skidded across the roof of the car.
I'm moving around the car going to get the thermal camera out to get that set up.
We can hear thumps.
Can't get thermal camera on fast enough to get to that particular area.
SETH: It had been a long day, but a real purpose in coming to this area
with Steve and his crew was to actively try to have
an encounter with Bigfoot for ourselves.
Our night investigation consisted of two parts.
Part one was a simple walk down the forested gravel road
that leads up to the parking lot near our campsite.
Yeah. Can you give us a rundown real quick of what we're about to go do?
Okay, yeah, so, what we're doing is sending a team out to walk the road.
-There's been times we've been out here before... -SETH: Mmm-hmm.
STEVE: ...where we've been paralleled,
actually on both sides of the roads at times.
-SETH: Mmm-hmm. -Uh, we actually repeated that
on the same night with another team.
So, the whole idea is, send that one team up.
We're going to stay here in base camp with a flare and monitor.
We have to always make sure that they think they're in control.
So, if you see, I'm gonna lead,
um, with Austin and Fred.
-Mike's gonna probably stay back with you guys. -[CAR HORN HONKS]
-Um... -Yeah.
Mike, I'm just telling 'em. what we're gonna do is we're gonna walk for a while
-and we're gonna pause and observe. -MICHAEL: Okay.
And when we pause, it's important for everybody to be quiet.
-Okay. -Let's go.
SETH: We wandered down the gravel road about a half mile,
stopping every 50 yards or so
to listen to the sounds in the forest surrounding us.
-I don't know what that was. -What's that movement?
-It just sounded like footsteps. -Yeah, it did.
[WHISPERING] It sounded like footsteps going through the woods.
-Right. -Yes.
-And then it just stopped. -Yeah.
SETH: It was deathly quiet.
Outside of Area X, I'd never experienced the kind of stillness
that was pervasive in our Buck Mountain camping area.
There was the constant sense that we were not alone in this place,
and yet, the lack of any ambient noise
should have led us to feel the solitude.
Did you see what it is?
[MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
True that.
I don't want to look.
-What you got? -I had one... No, I had a tree rat
and probably a small chipmunk or something like that go behind it.
SETH: Having no luck during our road walk,
we headed back to base camp
where we made the decision to try call blasting.
[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
SETH: While one team stayed at the camp,
four of us, including Adam Duggan and myself,
moved into the woods about 200 yards to hunker down
and see if we could spot anything moving in toward camp.
Call blasting is a technique frequently utilized by Bigfoot researchers
to elicit a response from their quarry.
Typically they'll blast animal noises or other purported Bigfoot recordings,
but tonight they're trying something else, something different.
[SCREAMING]
SETH: If there was anything present on the mountain that night,
besides Steve Kulls and his crew of investigators...
it didn't want to make itself known.
Despite a lack of anything definitive presenting itself the previous night,
we woke up on day two ready to get out and experience the Adirondacks.
Our destination was a mountainous area to the southwest of our camp
on Buck Mountain and Lake George,
a mild incline of 1,500-plus feet
up the 3.4-mile Hadley Mountain Trail.
Leaving the Lake George area, we began to discover the acres of forest
that covers the Adirondacks.
When the lockdowns began in early March,
like everyone, it relegated me to my home.
I would while away days editing on my laptop or researching future projects,
but I would often find myself dreaming of the days
when I would again be able to get out and explore rugged mountains on foot.
SETH: There's nothing like a global pandemic
to leave you in the worst shape of your life.
And as I trudged up Mount Hadley,
I couldn't help but think that this was the best kind of misery.
MARK: The Adirondack Park was established in 1892,
and two years later, there was a Forever Wild clause
that was added to the New York State Constitution
that ensured that the state lands
would not be sold or leased,
and also that the timber
would not be harvested, uh, from those locations ever again.
And then, in 1912, it was further clarified that
where the boundaries for that all existed because there was state forest,
there was private properties that were also a part of that.
Well, you... You have swampy areas.
You have heavily wooded areas.
You have rugged mountainous areas.
I think we have 46 main peaks in the Adirondacks.
You've got a wide diversity of rugged terrain in the Adirondacks,
and it would certainly be able to sustain a mystery for a long time.
I would imagine that the habitat needed for something like Bigfoot to exist
would have to be quite vast in the sense of natural resources
where you'd have plenty of water sources, plenty of food resources,
both in terms of carnivorous, omnivorous, and basically, anything in between.
Even though the Adirondacks are vast, they're not isolated.
They're connected to other areas, other ranges.
There's ample wild areas on the western side of the Hudson River.
On the eastern side you have,
probably no more than 50 miles away,
you get into Western Massachusetts,
where you have Mount Greylock,
where you have Savoy State Forest,
and there is a, uh, green trail, if you will...
uh, looking at this from a forested standpoint...
uh, that runs north and south throughout New York State,
Vermont, New Hampshire, even going up into Canada, as well.
So, New York would be the perfect habitat for Bigfoot
because it is a lot like the Pacific Northwest.
It's just really shrunken down.
Bigfoot resides in areas with heavy rainfall,
abundant wildlife and resources.
Bigfoot is sighted all over this region.
PETAKOV: I think these creatures would probably be opportunistic
because you have times of the year where nothing is growing.
You have really harsh winters here in the Northeast
and New York and Western Massachusetts,
the whole area.
You have five months out of the year where there's nothing
that's basically, except for flesh and blood, that's kind of running around.
So, that would be perhaps a time where meat would be more accessible.
PAUL: There are occasional cases of these creatures
being attached to maybe a downed deer,
and you wonder if it killed it or came across the dead animal already.
There was a report in Kinderhook, New York, of the creatures,
which seemed to be storing food in a snowbank.
PETAKOV: During the summer months, you have berries, you have lots of fruits,
you have apple orchards that we put out there.
There's been a lot of sightings
that are taking place near apple orchards.
You have other animals that do that as well.
Deer and moose, they'll feed off of our agriculture.
So, why would a creature like this not do that?
EMILY: Another reason why New York is the perfect place for Bigfoot
is because it backs right up to Canada, and it's right next to Vermont.
These creatures are migrating down.
They're migrating through Vermont through New York and then West.
SETH: Why do you say they're migrating?
-Why? What evidence do you have? -[GIGGLES]
Well, if you look at the map of sightings,
you can tend to see some migration patterns.
Canada has a lot of sightings around the Ontario area,
and then those trickle down into Upstate New York and Vermont,
whereas on the West Coast, British Columbia has a ton of sightings
which trickle down into Oregon and Washington and California.
If you look at the patterns, seasonally, of sightings,
you will begin to see correlations,
especially with the annual rainfall, as well.
PAUL: One of the patterns that we noticed right away in this area
was that August, September and October appear to be peak months for sightings.
Why did... Native tribes move back and forth from different areas?
Why animals migrate... your food sources, your heat.
And I think, up here you just... You have such a dense forest.
PAUL: It would appear that if a creature wants to be elusive,
the higher up it goes,
the less of a chance of an encounter with people.
That makes perfect sense.
SETH: Do you think there's some sort of, uh... migratory route or...
I think what's going on in this area, particular,
primates, like aboriginal Americans,
they would have summer homes and winter homes.
And they can migrate, depending on the food source,
you know, weather and stuff like that.
The reason why we have so much activity
from about the end of May till like the middle of December here
is because we're in the Adirondack State Park,
and in this part of the park,
it's oak, it's birch, it's maple, its leaves.
And come October...
those leaves start to drop, so, in winter time there's no cover for that snow.
So, you will get, you know, feet of snow up here.
So, I think what happens is that they move from here
to the Green Mountain State Forest,
and I think that's the reason why Whitehall is, like, this epicenter of everything.
They have some cover from the snow there.
And then you... And as well as camouflage.
And you have the forests here in the summertime,
which has an abundance of water and abundance of wildlife
and abundance of food source.
SETH: Talk about what it is about the geography or the terrain here
that, that might set it apart from other parts of the country.
I generally do a lot of my research
in the western part of New York,
uh, down into Pennsylvania 'cause that's where I'm located.
I do tend to get up here a couple of times a year to work with, uh...
With Steve Kulls.
You know, I've kind of been brought up in their thought theories,
but I also look at my own.
Today, you know, we looked at a mountain...
Um, and you could look, as you're going up in elevation, the change
going from hardwood to that pine.
And again, like we said, we're looking at those diversities in environment.
You could go forever without being seen up here.
I mean, it's a giant, giant area.
SETH: To say that the hike up Mount Hadley was rough
would be a dramatic understatement.
I could feel my legs under me just dying to give up.
My lungs burn, my back was coated with sweat
and I was breathing like a marathon sprinter nearing the finish line.
And then, there it was, the summit.
SETH: Suddenly, viruses, politics, elections, social unrests
were replaced by something I hadn't experienced in a long time.
Peace.
Here in the Adirondacks,
while searching for what most consider a myth,
I'd found a break from the chaos of the world outside.
I woke up on day three, tired and sore,
but eager to finally revisit the scene
of one of the most important recorded Bigfoot sightings on the East Coast.
Each trip brings me back to a town that has become a home away from home to me
in the waning years since we made our documentary based here.
Since we've released the Beast of Whitehall in 2015,
the town has embraced its strange legacy
as a hot spot for unusual creature sightings.
Even going so far as to host an annual Bigfoot festival
to accompany the myriad statues, sculptures
and wood carvings that dot the area.
Though it's situated at the base of the Adirondack Mountains
and just outside the boundaries of the park,
Whitehall still encompasses everything about the region
that makes it so unique and so perfectly suited
for a large animal to remain hidden.
Outside the village, the mountains spill out into fields and forests
that stretch all the way into nearby Vermont.
There are certain cases that become landmark cases,
and one of those was the Abair Road incident back in 1976.
And if we were to put it in a nutshell,
you had teenagers out on Abair Road,
a very rural road in... In Whitehall, New York.
They parked their truck and they encountered a creature
that was walking next to a telephone pole there.
They sped away, leaving tracks in the road
and went in to report it to the police.
Washington County Deputy Sheriff, the Whitehall Police,
New York State Trooper, all responded to the... To the scene.
And that night, which was August 24th, 1976,
they cited several sightings of a creature out on Abair Road
that was described as being about seven to eight feet tall,
dark colored, walking upright like a man,
but looking more like a gorilla and having red glowing eyes.
SETH: Paul Bartholomew is a born and raised Whitehall local
with connections to the Abair Road incident,
as well as most major cases from the area.
In the 1980s, Paul, along with his brother Robert,
author Bruce Hallenbeck, and Bigfoot investigator Bill Brann,
co-authored a book titled Monsters of the Northwoods,
a study of the phenomenon in Upstate New York.
The book helped to cement the Abair Road incident's place in history
and also to act as a connecting point for the research
of four of the most important figures in Bigfoot research on the East Coast.
Today, a rift has grown between Brann and the Bartholomews,
but despite this fact, the historical significance of the book
can't be overstated, in that it fully defined Whitehall
as a gateway to unusual happenings on the East Coast.
So, are those sightings over... by Carvers Falls...
am I wrong in remembering that? I thought there was something about... Okay.
-Big one. -SETH: Oh, okay, I thought you were saying I was wrong.
That's... You know what, I... I should have mentioned that and I didn't.
The Abair Road incident culminated with the Carvers Falls incident,
in which a fellow... came into the police station.
Back then, it was a great job to be a dispatcher.
You're on duty all night.
You're right there taking a couple calls, watching TV or whatever.
Guy comes rushing in the police station,
"I just shot Bigfoot."
So, uh, New York State Police were notified
'cause that's their jurisdiction.
They shooed out to, uh, Carvers Falls Road...
and, uh, go to the site, they find shotgun shell,
but they don't find any creature...
The Whitehall area has produced some extremely important researchers.
And the first of those is Dr. Warren Cook.
He was a heavyweight researcher and well respected in circles of higher education.
Dr. Cook also was heavily interested in mystery primates.
And certainly included in that number of researchers
was one William or Bill Brann.
And Bill Brann really became an instrumental researcher
in Whitehall cases, in particular, the Abair Road incident.
SETH: Can you talk about your...
Any insights you might have
to share about people who investigate Bigfoot,
specifically in this area, like...
There were two people involved in investigating these reports.
One was a college professor from Columbia-Greene College named Dr. Gary Levine.
The more serious researcher, I felt, was another college professor
from Castleton College in Vermont, Dr. Warren Cook,
who took a very biological approach to the creature.
He felt that in Whitehall and Kinderhook
there may have been breeding colonies of these things.
What Paul Bartholomew and... And Dr. Cook established in that region
was a sort of loose grouping of Bigfoot researchers
who were sharing information with one another,
and early on, establishing a database of sightings
and correlating both local legends and lore
with up to date sightings of the Bigfoot creature.
Well, this is one of my first time really diving into the Adirondacks.
I've just been sort of on the peripheries.
I've been to Whitehall a number of times,
and I think that Whitehall almost functions as a gateway to this area,
and kind of what we talked about to a lot of the researchers
was the possibility of migrational routes
and the way these things are moving into other states, into Vermont,
where there's other sightings.
And then you have this vast wilderness.
EMILY: Whitehall is kind of the Bigfoot capital of New York, you could say.
What's interesting to me is that you can go from New York City,
with a population over a million,
to Whitehall, with a population just under a few thousand,
and the landscape and culture changes so much.
You know, I've heard sightings go back as far as the '50s.
We're trying to get the actual definitive line on that. It's kind of hard.
But I do know, beginning in the '60s
that there were sightings on the Vermont side
just over the, the river, you know, from Whitehall.
And then, you know, obviously in the '70s, Whitehall.
We're not very far from Whitehall.
We are, you know, within 15 miles of Whitehall.
This forest here goes straight to that area.
Do you think there's a larger preponderance of reports
based around Whitehall?
What do you think that's attributable to?
You know, I'm not really sure if it's because the attention has been placed on the area
or if the area itself is synonymous with paranormal phenomena.
In this region, we can go to Kinderhook, New York.
We can go to Whitehall, New York.
We can go to Chittenden, Vermont, parts of Rutland, Vermont.
These all seem to be hot spots for creature activity in this region.
But I suspect that part of Whitehall's charm may be because we've focused on it.
There was another gentleman in 2003, I believe,
that was parked right outside this campsite's parking area,
which is maybe a few hundred yards from here.
He opens his door up, it hit something,
looked down, there's a hairy foot,
looked up and something's looking down at him.
He was sleeping in his car.
So, there it was, looking at him
and it just kind of turned and walked away.
And that's not uncommon over here.
Sometimes people, instead of camping, they'll just, you know,
they've done a hike, "I'm gonna hang out,
"and I'm gonna go sleep in the car."
It's a beautiful area. It's quiet.
It's desolate. You need to get away, it's perfect.
There was a young man with his uncle who loved to go fishing.
That was their hobby, and they would always go to the same place every summer.
It's in Rutland, Vermont, which is right near Whitehall.
And so, as they were fishing, they started hearing splashes in the water.
They started to get concerned.
As a fisherman, you don't really hear too much noise
unless a fish is jumping out of the water.
But the type of fish that were in this creek wouldn't do that.
So, they started heading down the creek,
and all of a sudden this young man's uncle
put his hand back and said, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Stay there."
They started making their way around to the other side of the creek very quietly
to see if they could find the creature and see a clearer image of it.
So, they got around the bend, and all of a sudden the creature came into view.
It was a huge, dark figure covered in hair.
They were about 40 feet from this creature,
so, they could see almost every detail.
It looked like a linebacker.
Its... Its body was humongous, and it was in the creek
trying to catch a fish with its bare hands
and getting frustrated while doing so,
hence, slapping the water.
One of the recent sightings from 2018 was simply a...
The most common sighting that we get, which is the road-cross sighting.
And it's usually... You weren't expecting it,
you aren't looking for it,
and it just crosses the road in front of you.
SETH: The bulk of witness sightings
in the Whitehall area take place near roads
and typically occur from behind the wheel of the car.
Even the infamous 1976 sightings are an example of this fact.
Whitehall, being just outside the Adirondack Park
and situated at the base of the mountains,
might simply be a stop on the way to someplace else for Bigfoot,
if it exists.
With multiple rivers and streams
that flow down from the high peaks region in the Adirondacks,
it's theorized that they could simply be following the waterways
which lead to or nearby the village,
which could account for the high number of sightings in this specific area.
On this day, Paul Bartholomew had set up a meeting with a witness
who wished to remain anonymous.
However, his sighting is within the last year,
and like the 1976 sightings,
it takes place near a road.
Everything was closed, I was relaxing at home.
I get a call from my friend that his truck overturned
and he needed my help down by the Apple Diner.
So, I live on... I live down in, uh, Whitehall.
So, what I did was, I got dressed, went outside,
get in the car, started down on 4.
And, uh, I ended up by the, uh, the electric panels,
they just put up that new field of electric panels.
And as I was coming down the hill,
just as I pass the electric panels, I was coming down the hill,
and I was looking up,
and all of a sudden I see this big shadow stepping over a fence,
the fence that was there, a little short fence...
and it was stepping over, his back was to me.
His arm was down here.
His other arm was, like, half up like this...
and he stepped over the fence.
And I look at it, I go, "Oh, my God..." I say, "Looks like a man."
But it wasn't a man, it was a big, hairy thing.
Then what I did was, as I kept on going,
by the time I got down there, I was about 400 feet away.
By the time I got down here, it was already down and went down
Because if you look down there, where I saw the footprints...
So, then I go home,
and then my wife says,
"Tomorrow morning, go and see if there's footprints."
I go, "Honey, I don't got..."
She says, "Go see if there's footprints."
I went there,
saw the prints, took the pictures, called Paul.
Paul went there, and he made a couple of casts of the right and the left foot.
of both of them. Just where the thing went over.
And I'm standing there looking at the footprints,
I'm going, "Oh, my God. There's footprints there."
And I couldn't believe it.
I made the pictures. I got the pictures in my phone, you saw them.
And that's the whole week. Then I went home, and that was it.
And then... Paul took care of the rest. They put...
How... How big do you think it was?
I would say, at least six-and-a-half to seven feet.
SETH: Did you see a color?
MAN: Black. All I could see was black, pure black.
SETH: Eye shine, any? MAN: No, he was back...
-His back... His back was to me. -SETH: Okay.
He was... He was, like, sideways...
stepping over there, just like this.
I'm coming down the road here.
And he's like this stepping over... like this.
And his back, his head, everything is...
Everything was, uh, in one big...
His head, there was no neck.
It was like hair coming down like this.
Shoulders like this, coming down.
One hand was out.
The other hand was like this on the side...
and he was stepping over...
and all black, all black hair.
And that was it.
I never thought that in a million years that I would ever...
-See it. -...see it.
You know, I'm born Brooklyn boy.
I don't know anything about that.
I never come upstate that much.
You know, when I moved up here, all of a sudden I saw a Bigfoot.
It was amazing. Do you want to see it again?
I would love to see it again,
but I doubt that's ever gonna happen.
Remember, I'm, uh, you know... I'm not a young guy and, uh...
it took a long time to see this one.
You know, it was amazing.
I was really shocked.
I can't believe it.
That thing was just standing, I could just see it.
-Yeah. -I... I genuinely appreciate you telling me your story.
That's great.
-Thank you very much. -It's really...
I... I hope someday I can have that experience myself.
I tell you, it's weird. You'd be very... I... I was shocked.
I mean, I... I was on the phone screaming to my wife.
I'm going, "I can't believe it.
"I just saw Bigfoot." "Yeah, you fool, my dad just saw Bigfoot!"
"I can't believe it! I just saw him just climb over the fence."
-The big black thing just standing there, you know. -Yeah.
It was weird.
It was really... It was really a weird thing to be out at that hour going to that area.
I usually never go down that way.
-It's strange. -Yeah.
SETH: As evening fell,
we made the decision to head to Carvers Falls,
a location tied to Whitehall's Bigfoot history.
While there have been multiple sightings
in the forests and fields surrounding the Poultney River,
Carvers Falls is an especially active location.
Geographically, the falls lie less than a quarter mile
from the location where the Gosselin sighting took place.
It's also the location where Bigfoot investigator Bill Brann once theorized
the creature may have called home for a short time.
Brann had even gone so far as to search a local cave for evidence
of the Beast of Whitehall's presence,
but had come away empty handed.
Carvers Falls has a large decline that runs down a steep hill
before spilling out into the valley that runs just behind Abair Road.
At the top of the falls lies a dam built to supply power to Plant 1491,
which sits along the banks of the river.
[SHOUTS]
What are your thoughts on this area?
Oh, it's a nice little... quiet area. [EXHALES]
There's been some disturbance...
There's a plant broken off.
Quite sure everyone is on...
Can you see, there seems to be... any kind of...
motion.
But whatever it is, it doesn't look like it's... very large...
if there is anything.
SETH: Our plan was to hike down the hill and end at the valley
where we would follow the river.
Paul Bartholomew had speculated that the Bigfoot seen in 1976
may have been following the Poultney River
and simply wandered away from the banks
in search of food or shelter.
Perhaps that's why it was seen in an empty field off Abair,
a concept which is bolstered by a strange deer kill
that was found at the back of the same field the creature was sighted,
just days after the incident occurred.
[SHOUTS]
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
-Yeah, you can't hear it. -You can hear from farther distances.
You kind of have to be on top to hear it.
SETH: Whatever the case, on this night, I couldn't help but think
that we might be walking in the same path
that the Beast of Whitehall had walked over 40 years ago.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
-...paper crack. -Yeah.
-It's hollow ground. -It is. Yeah.
And it's kinda funny after knowing Brian,
and hearing the story so many times,
you can see it.
And you can see him parked here,
and the trooper that was parked down the road.
And then the trooper peeling out.
And then Brian, hearing the... As he described the... [SCRAPING]
The... The rubbing of the legs.
And then, he gets out, puts the light up,
shines it on it, and it turns around.
He kinda has his back, turns around, goes like that.
And it just turns around and keeps on walking.
Like, historically, I think...
this location's really important to the... To the East Coast.
Especially to New York State,
'cause of the Abair Road incident...
But, like... I mean, you and I have talked about it so much
-you're well aware of this -Right.
But just... On, like, a personal level,
this is probably the place where I finally considered
the possibility the Bigfoot was real,
on a natural level. On a real level.
Like, beyond just, like, fun, myth-making kinda stuff.
What was it about the location then?
I've never been able to figure it out
because of all the places we've gone,
this is the location that I... genuinely love.
-Right. -I just love to be here.
Love to come out here.
And, we... We've spent...
I mean, I've been... This is my fourth trip here.
You know, on every trip we spend multiple nights
-out here, just doing this. Just hanging out. -Mmm-hmm.
So, I don't know what it is about the location
other than, maybe, just... You're just so aware of the history of the place.
That it... Being here almost brings it to life.
-Mmm-hmm. -The... The incident...
to life. And just you... You do, sort of,
gain a love or create a certain...
-There's a certain love for the story. -Yeah.
And this... This really does put it in a different perspective,
a real, like, real life perspective.
So I think that's a big part of it.
What's it like for you to be here?
Um, yeah, it's great.
-I mean, it's the first time I've seen any of it. -Yeah.
Yeah, it's... It's pretty crazy.
And having just been down in, uh...
-The river valley. -The river, yeah.
-You can kinda put some pieces together... -Right.
...in an interesting way.
-Where it might have traveled and why? -Right.
SETH: We headed back to base camp for our final night on Buck Mountain.
There, Steve Calls unveiled a piece of history, in the way of sighting maps
that he's been working on for over 20 years.
Maps that help to show the ebb and flow of activity around the region.
-Yeah, just tell us what these are first. -STEVE: Okay, so...
What I try to do is... These are the, uh, the geographical survey maps
of, uh, the areas that, you know,
are... Are, you know... From basically, Lake George to the Vermont state line.
What I've done is I've marked with dots
different events that had happened,
-relating to Sasquatch sightings... -SETH: Mmm-hmm.
STEVE: ...in and around the area.
This is the area we're in over here.
This is... You know, 20 years of me coming up here
mainly is the reason why it includes the forty end casts.
and the... And the, uh... You know, 2003 there was vocalizations heard,
pilot knob...
And, uh, you know, the different base camps, over the years, we've used.
SETH: How many individual events is that?
-A dozen, or so. -Okay.
Um, not... You know, some by our own team, some by others.
-The one right here... -SETH: Mmm-hmm.
-STEVE: ...is actually the one that... That brought us here. -Mmm-hmm.
STEVE: Brought me here 20 years ago.
And, as you can see, as you go west,
um, it's almost like this is a... A push...
through here, into the area.
Um, which is Whitehall, which is, kind of, to me, the crossroads.
And, you know, you see heavy concentrations of events.
And a couple of those events are... Are with our team.
But the rest of the events, actually, were from witnesses since the 1960s.
SETH: Where... Where's the Poultney, where we were tonight?
STEVE: Uh, Poultney is gonna be right here.
-As you can see, it's gonna come right along here. -Mmm.
-And it's gonna go into Whitehall that way. -SETH: Okay.
-You can see...right. -STEVE: ...how all those are... canal or waterway.
So, is it possible that some kind of straggled along and went that way?
Absolutely.
So, it... To me what it's showing is movement. -Right.
Um, even if they don't go into the Green Mountains,
it shows a lot of movement in here.
Of course, now that I've seen Carvers Falls,
-you know, there's a lot of pine in here. -Mmm-hmm.
Uh, so that... That's important
-because again it may provide... -Cold...
It might provide...
Yeah, it might provide some more cover, so...
So, well... maybe it's just kind of a movement into here and into Carvers Falls.
-Hmm. -And... you know, you kind of see the distinct pattern
-of where things are going. -Yeah.
SETH: Ninety-eight miles south of Whitehall,
lies another small New York town,
that has a significant role in Bigfoot's story on the East Coast.
I first became aware of the village of Kinderhook
while making theBeast of Whitehall.
Paul Bartholomew was eager for me to learn about the infamous rash
of strange creature reports that took place in the early 1980s.
And I was so fascinated by the stories
that I ended up including a brief news segment
that a TV news crew from Albany had done on the Kinderhook creature in our film.
We journeyed out of the Adirondack area to visit Western Massachusetts,
and to learn more about Bigfoot in the Northeast.
When we discovered that Kinderhook was right along our travel route,
we made a beeline for this tiny hamlet in the Hudson Valley.
Upon arrival, we met up with Bruce Hallenbeck,
a key player in the creature case,
as well as one of the co-authors of Monsters of the Northwoods.
Can you talk about the Kinderhook creature sightings...
uh, and... and... Bruce, and all that kind of stuff?
Sure. If... You know in some of these regions,
it's not what you would expect.
Albany, New York, uh, the capital of New York.
If you go just 10 miles south,
you will run into Kinderhook, New York.
They have a creature down there.
The leading expert on the Kinderhook creature
is Bruce G. Hallenbeck.
And Bruce Hallenbeck, uh, several members of his family,
have had close encounters,
with, uh, a creature, and multiple creatures down in that region.
And a lot of the Kinderhook creature sightings took place in or around 1980.
Which is not all that far removed from the Abair incident of 1976.
This was a time in history where Bigfoot sightings were happening
all over the country, and there was a general sense
that it's all right to talk about these things.
TV PRESENTER: ...creature or creatures in the Kinderhook area.
It's very elusive, whatever it is.
In fact, Hallenbeck says this thing is so elusive that he'll sometimes see tracks,
and then they suddenly stop, as if the creature had vanished into thin air...
SETH: Can you walk us through Kinderhook creature attacks?
The Kinderhook creature story
really is, in a way, the story of my grandmother.
But it started with another family member of mine
my cousin, Barry, who was
trapping down in the swamp land behind my parents' house.
One day, he came running up to the house, and I was here,
and his face was as white as a sheet,
and he said he had seen three creatures cross the creek down there
that were tall, bipedal, and had reddish-brown hair.
And they were making clacking and grunting sounds.
Much later that year, my grandmother had noticed
that something was taking her trash bags
from the... The garbage can on the porch.
Taking the bags down to the middle of the yard,
untying them like a person would do,
and rifling through, to apparently look for food.
So, it must've had fingers, right?
My grandmother also found out that
her neighbor, uh, a woman named Mrs. Walters,
was having the same experiences.
And she found her trash bag up in a tree, one day.
And then, uh, one morning, my grandmother got up early, around 5:00,
and it was just getting light,
and she looked out the... The kitchen window,
and saw something lying on the ground
all curled up, she said, like in the fetal position.
A creature curled up in the fetal position on her lawn.
And she watched for a minute thinking it was a bear
that was gonna get up and walk, you know, and lumber away.
Whatever it was, got up, stood on two legs, and walked away.
And they wrote to theTimes Union back then,
a columnist named Barney Fowler.
And he dubbed it, "The Kinderhook Creature."
MAN: ...encounter with the creature.
[MUMBLING]
Big, tall.
And it was standing on its two feet,
just like a person.
And covered with black hair. And...
So, he published a letter,
and as a result of that,
scores of other people wrote in,
saying that they had had similar experiences...
They'd either seen something, or they heard something they couldn't explain.
And they were all in the same general area here in Columbia County.
It got to the point where he was getting deluged with so many letters,
he finally had to say, "Okay. That's enough. We have to stop now.
"We have to go on to other topics."
Finally, in September... September 24th, 1980,
my aunt Barbara was bringing my grandmother home from her house.
As soon as my grandmother got out of the car,
she heard this noise from around the side of the house,
that she described as sounding like a person in mortal agony.
[SCREECHING]
My aunt Barbara heard it, and she was so... So terrified that she panicked,
and she locked all the doors before my grandmother could get back in the car.
What eventually happened was my grandmother came in to the house,
and my aunt Barbara went to get my cousin Barry, who had a shotgun,
My grandmother stayed in the house,
holding a hammer in her hand.[CHUCKLES] Sitting by the window.
Ready for anything, I guess, 'cause she was a tough lady.
My aunt Barbara came back with, uh, her son Barry.
And Barry got up on the porch with a shotgun.
And he heard the rustling of leaves,
and he heard the thing moving near the trees.
And, so he fired the shotgun up into the air,
and everything went silent.
Then he fired it again, and he said this time
flame came out the barrel of the gun,
and the creature screamed and ran away.
And, uh, that was the end of it.
They didn't hear anything more that night.
So, there were a lot of sightings, and a lot of vocalizations
going on through the '80s...
up in... into, uh, late 1988 actually,
when my mother tape recorded a strange creature,
making all kinds of bizarre noises across the road from their house.
SETH: Can you, uh, start by telling me,
uh, your name and your connection to the story.
The Kinderhook Creature story.
I'm Susan Hallenbeck, and I live here.
My mother and I would tape the noises, and...
uh, heard noises for quite a while over that one summer.
When was it, like '82 and again in '88.
'82 was a variety of strange noises,
like, uh, sometimes it would sound like a pig squealing,
and other times it would sound like a giant bird.
Like a pterodactyl or something.
And, um, sometimes it would sound almost like a monkey.
Um, there was also... I think it was when we made a tape,
if I'm not mistaken,
that my father went over across the road with a shotgun,
trying to see if he could see anything.
And he said he saw something with red eyes.
Something that he saw with red eyes,
and he said there aren't really any animals native to this area
-that have red eyes. -SETH: Mmm-hmm.
So... [CLICKS TONGUE] That was part of it.
-WOMAN: Still plays. -It still... Oh, you have the original one?
Is that in there? Oh, okay, you've done it.
-SETH: That's exciting. -All right.
[STATIC ON RECORDER]
That it?
Well, I was trying to turn it up.
[STATIC CONTINUES]
[SQUAWKING ON TAPE]
I don't think we can hear anything else, but...
We were almost wondering if it was some kind of a bird thing, because...
Yeah, it would make weird bird noises... We still don't know about that.
And then we shined the light on it,
and then, couple seconds later, it was down
at the other end of the field where that driveway is.
Yeah, it moved fast, whatever it was, or there were two of them.
It moved fast whatever it was.
SETH: But he said he saw something with red eyes.
Red eyes, that's all he saw...
BRUCE: The sightings continued.
Uh, there were some very interesting experiences
that, uh, people had, who were neighbors of ours.
There was a fellow up the road named, uh, Philip Wineguard
who said that he saw it in a swamp.
You know, the... The typical description,
and he said it was making a horrible sound.
There was an excellent sighting by a fellow named Mike Mabb,
who was fishing at a nearby dam, one day.
And he saw across the creek,
this creature come out of the woods.
And this was in broad daylight, mind you, this was in the afternoon.
He said it had reddish-brown hair,
very big dark eyes.
He even said that he could see its fingernails were black.
And finally it turned and went back into the woods,
and that was the end of it.
So what you have in the Kinderhook location,
is that green pathway,
going from the Adirondacks, down around the Albany area
and along the Hudson River then.
You can also extend that eastward.
And if you go about 50 miles east,
then again you're running into Greylock, uh, Mountain.
You're running into the Savoy State Forest in Western Massachusetts.
While it wouldn't seem immediately evident
that this would be a place for strange creature locations,
uh, there seems to be a... A sensible way
that this is linked to other areas of New York.
SETH: It's somewhat surreal to visit a place like Kinderhook.
Almost like you've stepped foot in a fictional location.
This town, like Whitehall, is so tied into Bigfoot lore
that any book, documentary, or podcast on the topic,
will almost inevitably get around to bringing it up.
"A landmark case," as Paul Bartholomew would call it,
can imprint itself onto an entire community.
Even if it's only in the eyes of those who experienced
something unusual for themselves.
It reminds me, in a way, of the Pacific Northwest
and how towns like Willow Creek
are forever linked to their local Bigfoot.
And just like Sasquatch left a mark on the men and women
who experienced it in the towns where the legend was born,
here on the East Coast, the story remains the same.
One thing that's impressed me in the 40 years is...
how this topic can be a life changer for certain people.
A lot of people, this is not a positive experience,
but can be a negative experience for them.
Uh, some researchers I've met, treat this almost like a religion.
And I would warn against that.
Take the information down, enjoy life,
and just, uh, report on it as accurately as possible.
MAN: And just on a... A sort of practical level, you know,
just the... The idea of human beings exploring their world.
Whether it's just other people, or other... places,
and these exotic, remote countries and that type of thing.
It is just sort of a natural inclination to human beings
to... To go out and explore...
At the same time, uh, you have things like
ghosts or the paranormal or some kind of anomalous phenomenon
that seems to, sort of, toy with us.
And wants to be explored whether we want it to be around or not.
SETH: By the time we left Kinderhook,
it was already late afternoon.
That evening we were to meet up with Squatchachusetts,
a Bigfoot research group, operated out of Western Massachusetts,
and headed by Jonathan Wilk.
We were still roughly two hours from the location
where we would be conducting our night investigation,
so, with the sun setting behind the hills around Kinderhook,
we made our way further east.
As we began to journey from the populated regions of Upstate New York,
the changing terrain gave way to the densely forested areas of the Northeast Coast.
Here, not far from the suburban sprawl of cities,
like Boston and Hartford,
we found ourselves
among strangely familiar mountains and foothills.
Familiar, because here, nine hours from home in Ohio,
we'd once again found ourselves in Appalachia.
The frontiers of the Adirondacks,
had given way to the backwoods of the Appalachian Mountains.
And maybe here, three hours from Whitehall,
we would find some clue
as to where the creatures that wandered down from the high peaks...
might end up.
All right, um, start out by telling me your name
and your connection to the Bigfoot subject.
Uh, my name's Jonathan Wilk,
and, I... We're here
in Savoy Mountain State Forest this evening
and my connection to Bigfoot was...
I was a park ranger up here,
uh, back in the '80s and the '90s.
And I had one run right out in front of my pickup truck one night.
About a mile from where we are tonight.
SETH: What is it about this particular area
that you think draws them here
-or might... Or might contribute to their existence... -Well, all of New England
is... Is full of patchy sections of forest.
New England was clear-cut three times over the past 200 years.
And, so there... There's not a lot of,
uh... Uh, protected forest land up here.
And, if you wanna find a Sasquatch in New England,
go to the few patches of forest that are left.
The Pacific Northwest is so vast,
there's so many places to hide.
Here, in New England, there's not a lot of places to hide.
So, it makes it a lot easier to pinpoint
where these creatures may be, or may have been.
Western Massachusetts is at least 50% forested.
From the middle of Massachusetts, west, towards New York,
there's, there's well over half a million... Uh, forested acres.
SETH: Uh, start out by telling me your name
and your connection to the Bigfoot subject.
I'm Dave McCullough from Massachusetts.
I work with Squatchachusetts.
I started out, New York, 2005,
probably about four years straight,
just goin' up there.
That's when I...
Before I met Jon and Squatchachusetts
and getting reports around Mass.
I was always, "Uh, gotta go at least three to four hours
"up to New Hampshire, Maine, or..."
Right after going to Whitehall, I was just hooked, and...
I got to know Paul Bartholomew, a few guys up there,
uh, you know them all, Paul Gosselin and...
just talkin' to them, they... They're there.
They're there. I know they're there.
Got me hooked and, uh, I've been steadily into it since.
What is it about this sort of region of the country
that you think might appeal to something like a Bigfoot?
Until I actually read up on the East Coast reports,
Paul Bartholomew, Loren Coleman
and other researchers from the East.
Uh, I've just realized it's in my backyard,
I didn't have to travel far, like,
in Massachusetts, in general, there's a lot of farms, rolling hills,
Not as steep and hilly as say maybe New Hampshire, Maine.
But abundant food supply,
from west to east, it's really a vast state.
Doesn't look it on the map, but there is a lot of farms and lands and swamps.
SETH: So, where are we going tonight?
Tonight, we're going, uh, about 50 feet over here
into Savoy State Forest.
One of the squatchiest places, I feel, in New England.
There are more reports up here
then I... Then I know of anywhere else in the area.
I know this area like the back of my hand.
I've been working up in here for years.
I know all the trails.
I know all the hills. I know all the hiding spots.
And we have pretty good luck up here.
I say, you come with us, you got about a 20% chance of something happening.
-Mmm-hmm. -You got about a zero chance of ever seeing one...
-Yeah. -But, you might...
You're almost guaranteed to hear something.
Either hear something, or have something thrown at us.
We love when stuff's thrown at us.
-Yeah. [CHUCKLES] -We encourage that.
So, 'cause it never really lands near you,
it just lands around you.
And they just try to intimidate you, and let you know
that you're really not welcome here.
And that we're invading their area.
And we always respect that. We back out.
And we... And we just, uh, we go on.
-Yeah. -And... And that's the end of the show for the night
when... When something like that happens anyways,
'cause usually we're pretty...
-Everyone in the group's shooken up, and we're ready to... -Yeah.
-We're ready to move on to the next place. -Sort of respectfully.
-Yeah, you respectively retreat. -Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
Try to walk kinda quietly,
you know, 'cause everybody's trying to turn their ears on as much as possible,
and listen.
Uh, we have extra flares. We can pass 'em around if anybody wants to use 'em.
And let's go have some fun.
All right. Let's do it.
SETH: You can travel all over the country, maybe even the world,
and find a variation of the same story.
A human being, an unexpected encounter,
a life changed.
Something about being in the forest here in the Northeast
just drives it home for me.
While the Pacific Northwest is vast with endless acres of forest,
here, we're never that far from civilization.
Yet, people are still claiming encounters with the creature known as Bigfoot.
In their own backyard,
these men and women are still able to wander into the forest
and maybe, just maybe,
find themselves with something more than just a mystery
or an excuse to head outside during a pandemic.
Here, along the Appalachian Mountains,
we're in the heart of the Adirondacks.
You can find yourself face to face with a legend.
It was a really hot summer night and we just had a thunderstorm.
And I always remember that fresh smell of the ozone in the air.
Had the window rolled down.
It was probably about 80 degrees out.
Listening to the Red Sox on my AM radio,
checking some of the outlying boundaries.
Which one of them is not too far from here.
So I pulled into this place called Tannery Falls Parking Lot.
It's a day-use area where people can have a picnic
and also go visit this, uh, 300-foot cascading waterfall.
And I get out of the truck to pick up some garbage that was on the ground.
And as I came around the truck, this noise came from the woods.
This six and a half foot tall, hairy creature came running out,
grabbed the trash in front of me
and took off around the other side of the truck.
As it came around the side of the truck, it looked me right in the eye.
I was pretty much paralyzed with fear and shock and awe.
I went to jump in the truck, and when I turned,
there was about an eight and a half foot one standing behind the truck
that let out a scream that can only be compared
to probably a gorilla and a lion screaming at the same time.
The other one took off. It was out of sight.
Because it was pitch dark up there
all you could see was just what the headlights
and tail lights were illuminating.
-Did you hear that? -Yeah.
-Oh, oh, he's here. -Is it moving?
-It did. -It could be the windmills.
[INDISTINCT CHATTERING]
It could be the windmills.
There's windmills way up in the entrance.
[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]
Everyone was talking at once.
Yeah.
And in the middle of it, there was a real...
[KNOCK]
-Did you hear that? -Yeah.
[KNOCK]
-Did you hear that? -Yeah.
[KNOCK]
They're huge. They're far, far, far.
-They're like 40 miles... -Seth said he heard something.
Dude, I thought in the middle of all you guys talking, I think I heard him.
-Thought you... -Oh, I don't...
Did you not... Did you hear something that sounds like drumming?
-No. -You didn't?
-I didn't. -Everyone was talking at once.
Yeah.
That first one, I think was legit.
Where do you think it came from?
The first one, I have no idea, 'cause it was literally right when you guys saw that.
-Everyone started talking... -Yeah.
and all of a sudden, I just heard it.
Remember when I talked about discipline tonight?
Here I am breaking my own rules, you know.
It was... It was kind of like...
-You're sure those red lights... -It was there.
That one was distant but not that distant. Not as distant.
This one was like way off in that direction.
-I think that was a car turning around I saw. -Okay.
'Cause there's a clearing up there.
There's like a... Where a bunch of trails come together.
My guess is they took the wrong road.
Anything we didn't touch on yet that you wanted to talk about?
Uh, just the camaraderie, all the great people I've met in this,
it's been a great ride.
This has been a lot of fun.
We've been all around the country.
Met some really interesting people, hundreds of witnesses.
And going to some of those things
and seeing people that really affected their lives.
I've seen people crying, talking about their report.
Changes people's lives.
From most of the witnesses I've heard,
they look at the world differently and... need some answers.
SETH: When planning this adventure, we'd consciously decided
to save our trip up into the High Peaks for the final day.
During our stay in New York,
and even while in Massachusetts,
we've heard about the High Peaks.
How the waters flow down from those mountains,
how Bigfoot seems to follow the pass down from the High Peaks
during certain times of the year.
Patterns upon patterns,
many of them mapped by investigators like Bill Brand and Steve Kulls
or noted by authors like Paul Bartholomew and Bruce Hallenbeck.
It's hard to look at the maps that Steve has compiled
and not see pieces of a puzzle slowly compiled over the course of decades.
If Bigfoot isn't real, then why are there consistent sightings
at certain points of the year in certain areas
with creatures that behave in very specific ways?
Why do sightings seem to correlate to seasonal changes,
types of habitat, water sources, food sources?
But at the same time, I've just spent a week here,
heard a lot of fascinating stories,
and aside from a very suspicious wood knock,
haven't experienced much of anything for myself.
Then again, guys like Dave McCullough and Paul Bartholomew
has spent their entire lives in this area
and neither have had a sighting
despite spending hours and even days of their time on the hunt.
I think on a psychological level,
it's sort of been incumbent on humanity
to delimit between sort of chaos and order,
and our brains are sort of necessarily noticed patterns.
And anything that doesn't function outside that pattern
is at best a mystery
or at worst, like a threat of some kind.
And Bigfoot seems to kind of represent
that... That mystery, maybe threat,
that as conscious beings, we want to grapple with.
And so it's sort of a mystery...
It's sort of an embodiment of that mystery
that human beings just like to grapple with.
That we like to ask questions of things that are beyond us
and we want to figure things out
that don't readily present themselves to us clearly.
Do you have any regrets... uh,
about your, I guess, your time
researching the paranormal and...
I have not seen Champ.
I have not seen the Kinderhook Creature.
I have not seen the Whitehall Beast.
I've heard some things that I can't explain.
My only regrets for, you know, being a cryptozoologist,
if that's what I am is, uh,
that I have never seen my quarry.
Do you have any regrets?
[SIGHS] That I didn't get started in earlier.
It's a passion.
There's fights there, there's causes, there's...
I've never been the one to shy away from it.
If people don't like me or...
You know, 'cause I believe or I do this kind of stuff,
then they're not really my friend.
It hasn't cost me relationships.
At least not that I think of.
I'm not super obsessed.
Normally, I would ask people, like, "Do you have any regrets
"about all the time you have put into this?" and that sort of thing.
Do you sort of see this as a lifelong thing
or, you know, you think you'll reach a point where... Where you sort of move away from it?
Bigfoot is going to be in my life forever.
I love this creature.
I've fallen in love with the mystery and the science behind it.
I've fallen in love with the chase of trying to find evidence of it.
What intrigues me most about the Bigfoot phenomenon
is that there is a creature roaming the forests of the United States.
This creature is eight to 10 feet tall,
dark in color,
screams louder than anything you've ever heard,
yet science has not officially discovered it yet.
I want to find this creature.
I want to learn about its behaviors.
I wanna learn about its brain and its capabilities.
And that is what drives me to keep going on this search.
SETH: I think the reason I wanna go up isn't just
to see the scenery or that sort of thing,
but to actually get a lay of just how expansive the place is.
I think a lot of people don't understand the size and scope of the park either.
How much habitat there is for something like a Bigfoot to exist out here?
Well, just other wildlife too. I mean, if you think about it,
we've been skirting sort of the edges here.
I mean, we've mostly been in the southern
and a little bit south-central portions or the eastern portion.
And now we're going directly in the center
where the High Peaks' wilderness is.
-Yeah. -So there's just so much there.
There's parts that are four hours from us as we stand here now.
So we're not going to those parts right now.
So it will just be a good way to cover terrain
we probably wouldn't do with a car in a week, let alone a month.
Like you said, I think getting out into it a little bit
even though we're not gonna be on the ground,
is gonna be... It's gonna be really cool to see.
And to get an idea of the expanse like,
because I think we only see so much standing here,
but up from there, you can really tell, like, is there enough room?
SETH: The first thing I notice is the flatlands
that lie just at the foot of the mountains,
the same flatlands where Whitehall sits.
When you hear that Whitehall is at the base of the Adirondack Mountains,
it's literal.
It sits just below them
with the forested hills spilling into the same pastureland
that you find around places like Abair Road,
And then the lakes.
The lakes fed by mountain streams.
Lake George, and above it, Buck Mountain,
where we'd spent the first night of our trek.
Buck Mountain connects to the same forest
that run down from those High Peaks.
It's easy for me to speculate
that maybe there are so many Bigfoot sightings around that particular area
because, as with Whitehall,
the creatures follow the streams down in the winter
to seek shelter in the coniferous forests around the lake.
We spend what seems like an eternity flying over mountains
that rise ever higher into the sky with endless green
only broken up by the occasional river or lake.
And then our pilot comes over the radio
and points toward the distance
and introduces us to the High Peaks,
the last frontier of the East Coast...
just the place for an undiscovered animal to hide.
Suddenly, it makes a little more sense
as to why so many feel pulled to these mountains.
Here, just on the outskirts of civilization,
lies over six million acres of cover.
For Bigfoot, if it exists,
it's cover from the prying eyes of human beings.
For us, it's cover from the chaos of a world slowly decaying from within.
It's a place to get lost
and I'm happy to lose myself here.
Personally, I just view nature as something I could not live without.
Just getting out on the mountains,
I don't know how I would kind of function without it.
I think it really goes perfectly hand in hand
with cryptozoology, with Bigfoot, of course,
because these are the areas that this being is purported to exist in.
So how could I not want to just spend some time
and have a little bit of that wonder?
I think sometimes a trip like this
could be framed in terms of an escape.
But for me, it wasn't so much an escape
as it was an embrace of life,
the way that I like living it.
Embracing the fact that there are risks inherent in everything that we do.
But what on the trail of, enabled us all to do,
is to make our own assessment of the risks again
and say, "You know what?
"To go and do this right now, at this time in history,
"in this time in our own lives,
"it's worth it."
I want to not just exist.
I wanna do more than survive.
You know, I wanna live life.
And being out here in the woods and on the mountains
and searching after a mysterious creature
is living through a time of challenge
instead of just existing.
SETH: Wait, I don't think you...
ADAM: I've been here for, this is my fourth time here.
I had no clue how vast the Adirondacks were.
We took that flight,
and to come out of the area that I have been to,
that I have experience going to,
and see that I haven't even been at the tip of the iceberg of the Adirondacks
and how expansive it is
especially when you get up into these High Peaks.
I mean, just that fact that it is one of the largest managed parks in America.
A lot of people think you have to go West for that kind of stuff.
No, it's right here in New York of all places.
Obviously, it's in your city.
I think for me, just comparing it to what I'm familiar with in New England,
where there is a lot of wildlife as well,
and there's a lot of terrain and the same kind of thing,
people don't associate it with that.
So if you combine parts of Vermont,
Western Massachusetts as we saw with this area,
you have millions of acres, essentially,
where you can get from one state to the other,
to the Canadian border and back.
You've got suitable habitat for large animals
such as moose and black bear already,
so why wouldn't something else simply adapt?
And it seems like every little town we've been to,
there's been sightings here or a Bigfoot story.
Even down the Kinderhook, which isn't even in the Adirondacks.
This really, I mean, you get into this particular
the northern third, I suppose, of the Adirondacks,
and it's much more mountainous.
And the other thing, too, that just struck me, again,
is the sheer amount of waterways.
Mountain streams, lakes.
And what we were looking at a map of the Adirondacks this afternoon,
and just the number of inland lakes,
connecting streams.
It's just when we talk about the habitat that would be necessary,
not only do you have the sheer acreage
but the water sources that you would need
for a population of larger creature.
The biggest thing for me was probably going to...
As weird as it is, going down to the Poultney River
and being able to geographically figure out
how those sightings follow that river.
And so Whitehall to me previously
was a really fascinating, isolated case.
Since seeing Steve's maps and talking to Paul about all the sightings,
and hearing about the Kinderhook Creature,
and then spilling over in the Western Massachusetts
and finding that the same thing is going on there as well,
there's a much bigger picture that we're looking at.
There's that saying that there are two elements to a Bigfoot encounter.
You know, there's gotta be a Bigfoot.
Then there has to be a person.
You add in a space like the Adirondacks to that,
there is plenty of room for a Bigfoot,
and it is more than vast enough
for that person to never come into the picture.
What was so, uh, moving, I guess, in a certain way,
was to see the camaraderie that built up with these groups that go out together.
Just by dint of spending time with one another,
and being dedicated to this cause, as it were,
you get to know each other
just because you're out in the woods multiple times a month...
regardless of what you discover.
To really, like, start to see the drive those guys have
and the desire to keep coming out,
they all have their... Their disparate reasons
for why they're coming out and doing what they're doing.
SETH: Most investigators spend years of their lives
in the forest looking for Bigfoot.
We spent five days in this part of the country
and in that time saw nothing for ourselves
that could equate to Sasquatch activity.
But the vast landscapes and acres of forest helped explain that for us.
And on the sixth day, as we drove back to the real world,
a world overrun with a pandemic,
rumors of wars and civil unrest,
none of us felt that the journey had been a failure.
The target had eluded us,
and yet its presence was always felt.
In the months to follow, the world around us grew only more tumultuous
and my desire to head back to the forests of the Adirondacks
became more and more prevalent.
Like Bigfoot itself, those mountains called to me
to come and experience something different.
Something extraordinary.
A call to escape, to wander, to get lost.
The journey is calling... and I must go.