Wednesday 29 February 2012

Bigfoot

One of the most recognizable and popular creatures of Folklore has to be Bigfoot, also known as the Sasquatch. Stories of the large footed human-like ape have circulated for years. Many witnesses have described the creature as being tall and covered in brown or dark reddish fur with large eyes and a pronounced brow ridge. Bigfoot is also known, of course, for its large sized feet.

Bigfoot gained popularity in the 1920’s in Canada when a reporter named J.W. Burns compiled local legends he’d heard into a series of newspaper articles. Each region seemed to have their own stories and names for the creature, most of the names meant “wild man” or “hairy man”, but it was Burns who coined the name Sasquatch as a way to identify the many creatures from the legends into one. These articles popularized the Sasquatch legends in Western Canada.

The name Bigfoot was popularized in the States in 1958 when a man named Jerry Crew found a series of 16inch footprints in the mud of a construction site in Northern California. He took casts of them and brought them to the news office. Because of the large size of the footprints, the media dubbed the creature “Bigfoot”. The name stuck and eventually replaced “Sasquatch” as the common name for the creature. It was later found out that Crew’s boss, Ray Wallace had a couple of large wooden feet and it is believed that he was the one who created the footprints.

Many people believe that most of the sightings were either hoaxes or misidentified animals but still the Bigfoot legends live on.

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