FBI Releases 1970s “Bigfoot” Documents Championed by One Man

The now-93-year-old Bigfoot hunter still hasn't given up hope

Bigfoot
One man's hunt for Bigfoot lives on. (Getty)
Getty Images

An Oregon man who was so obsessed with uncovering what he believed to be evidence of Bigfoot’s existence was persistent enough that he got the FBI to test hair and “tissue” samples in their official lab in the late 1970s.

“The FBI has analyzed hair in connection with the search for Sasquatch, aka ‘Bigfoot,’” an internal memo from the FBI dated February 1977 read. “[And] It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of a deer family origin.”

Though it appears the analysis didn’t exactly conclude what believer Peter Byrne — who forced the initial testing — hoped it would, the now-93-year-old still hasn’t given up, according to NBC News.

“It’s a great challenge,” Byrne said recently when asked to explain his interest over the past nine decades.

He “has always had an interest in the unknown and the mysterious,” Byrne’s website noted, adding that he found two or three sets of what he believed were Yeti footprints over the past 50 years in the Himalayas at altitudes of 15,000 feet. Byrne conceded, however, that those prints could’ve been left behind by indigenous peoples.

So he took his search to America’s Pacific Northwest in the 1990s with what he said was the backing of wealthy men.

“I was in it full-time, seven days a week,” Byrne said of his Bigfoot hunting days.

“Right now,” I’m still active,” he added, “We have motion-sensitive cameras out in the [Oregon] mountains.”

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