MAN WHOSE LIFE IS
SUNDAY MIRROR
DEEP in the wilds of Alaska, where killer temperatures leave even the thermometers frozen solid, we are on the hunt for a legend that refuses to die.
I am in the company of Michael Thompson, a law enforcement officer who has spent 33 years on the trail of Bigfoot – or Sasquatch, to give the mysterious beast its proper name.
Michael, 52, is clutching a cast made from a footprint discovered on a track near Bluff Creek in California in 1963.
He wears a beret bearing a silhouette of the ape-like creature.
And he won’t be giving up his quest for answers any time soon.
“People think I’m a crank,” Michael admits.
“But the evidence is overwhelming when it comes to proving Bigfoot is alive. The rest of the world wants a body, alive or dead.
BRUSHED
“But I think there is enough physical evidence left behind to prove there is something out there, evading people.
“The most important evidence are tracks, they are most numerous and recurring. I have seen them myself in Island Lake and Hidden Lake and several spots where I live.”
His research suggests the beasts can weigh up to 92 stone, have 27ins footprints and are up to 10ft tall.
Michael is currently probing a report from Tet lin, eastern Alaska, in September.
A moose hunter was in his tent when a creature walked past, brushing the canvas. Unexplained tracks were found close by.
American reports of mysterious ape-like beasts go back more than 400 years. Experts believe a creature could have survived in Alaska’s deserted icy tundra on a diet of moose, caribou, coyote and berries.
Bigfoot truly became a phenomenon after Russia sold Alaska to America in 1867.
Fur trappers arrived in the 1880s and since then there have been 350 “of ficial sightings” which are considered reliable. But on top of that,
some 45,000 people in America have submitted online reports of their own “encounters” to Michael’s Bigfoot Field Researchers Organisation website.
And while enthusiasts, ghost hunters, UFO truthers and spiritualists bicker online whether Bigfoot is an alien, a shape shifter, or something that exists in a parallel dimension, Michael is in no doubt it exists.
He is also convinced there are many Bigfeet out there – and longs for the day he comes face to face with one.
The hunter goes on: “The theory that only one exists is impossible to be true. There have been countless reports of individual Sasquatches, as well as a mother and her child. Other people have heard groups of voices while out in the country, adding weight to the theory.
“Many sightings have been made hundreds of miles apart. Only one US state – Hawaii – has not reported a sighting. It is far from mythical.
“It is very real, flesh and blood, an actual physical being because it leaves tracks and other evidence behind that cannot be attributed to any other animal.
“What we are talking about here is the King of the Mountain.
“A man would be no match for it. A Sasquatch is the apex predator in America. It will kill anything before it, even a grizzly bear.
“If I was ever to see one I would try