Let me begin by saying that I have never seen a sasquatch, although there have been serious anthropological inquiries made into my sisters and I. We wear the shoe size known by the industry term of 'gun-boats'. Results of these inquiries are inconclusive, although DNA samples have been sent to universities and laboratories for testing, and we are eagerly awaiting results. As far as we can tell, however, there is no actual connection between my family line and the creature popularly known (in North America, at least) as Bigfoot.

Familial oddities aside, stories of a giant, hairy, humanoid creature span the globe. Bigfoot; Sasquatch; Yeti; Yowie... The names are regional, but descriptions generally follow the same basic pattern: a large, hairy figure, shaped like an ape, walking like a human, leaving behind footprints much larger than any human's. Thus cometh the name by which its North American manifestation is most commonly known: Bigfoot. It supposedly lurks in the Pacific Northwest, and in the mountains of the Himalayas. There have been sightings in Australia and Florida; Tibet and California; Canada and Brazil and elsewhere. It's nearly a global phenomenon. Similar creatures have been sighted in Japan, all through South America, Asia and Eastern Europe.

It's a figure of some controversy, in the nature of such things. Skeptics are rampantly skeptical; believers are rabidly insistent, and there seems to be no middle ground. The most well-known 'evidence', a 1967 video shot by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, has been alternately hailed as proof, and decried as a palpable fakery. Many people have either claimed to, or have been accused of wearing an ape suit for the film, although the suit itself has never been produced. The family of a man named Ray Wallace claim the entire legend was created by him in the 1950's, initially to deter trespassers from his logging equipment but continued because of a love for pranking. Wallace's nephew Dale has been photographed with the carved-wooden 'feet' used on multiple occasions to create 'Bigfoot' prints. (One of Wallace's sons further claims that his father knew about the Patterson video and claimed that it, too, was a hoax.)

Now, however, there are new claims being made for evidence of the creature's existence. According to a November 9th article in the NY Post, the film crew for History Channel's show "MonsterQuest" says they had a close encounter of the hairy kind with the subject of their documentary. On the last night of filming in Ontario, Canada, the crew says they played an adrenaline-fueled, brief game of catch with something that threw a rock into their campsite. The next morning, they discovered tissue samples, blood and hair in a bear trap they'd earlier laid outside their camp. Apparently, these samples do not match any known mammals native to the area. (For those interested, according to History.com, the episode in question is due to air again at noon on January 5th.)

On the other side of the world, another film crew recently set out to explore the possible existence of the yeti, Bigfoot's Himalayan cousin. On November 30th, MSNBC.com reported that the "Destination Truth" team has found three footprints that they feel certain validate claims for the creature's existence. Plaster casts of the footprints are due to be analyzed, with results presumably to be made available in an upcoming episode of the SciFi channel show (browsing the show's website did not reveal a Himalayan episode as having already aired). It's not the first time Josh Gates and "Destination Truth" have investigated this sort of creature. In Season 1 of the show, the crew tackled the Bigfoot story in Malaysia, causing a media stir in the Malaysian press, and returning with a plaster cast of a potential Bigfoot footprint, and a recording said to be a Bigfoot growl.

I have to confess the skeptic in me finds it interesting that this new 'evidence' has been brought to light in both cases by people who went out expressly to find exactly that sort of thing-- but then again, who else would find it? One doesn't exactly stumble across a slumbering Bigfoot in a Detroit backyard, if legend has any grain of truth to it at all. Still, I wonder how much 'evidence' would have been uncovered if the Sasquatch or Yeti didn't quite so easily capture the public's imagination.