A couple taking a train ride through rural Colorado sent Bigfoot enthusiasts into a frenzy after posting footage of a mysterious figure walking through the mountains online – which many have speculated could be the elusive creature.
Shannon Parker and Stetson Tyler were travelling on the Narrow Gauge train ride from Durango to Silverton and were “looking for elk” when they spotted movement on the mountainside.
A video captured by a fellow passenger shows a large, bipedal creature moving across the pass, before stopping and squatting down on its haunches.
“After leaving Silverton and heading back to Durango, I asked Stetson to help me look for elk in the mountains. As we are passing by the mountains, Stetson sees something moving and then says I think it’s Bigfoot,” Ms Parker wrote on Facebook.
“Brandon, the guy sitting next to Stetson on the train, grabs his phone and starts recording… Y’all, out of the hundreds of people on the train, three or four of us actually saw, as Stetson says in the video, the ever elusive creature Bigfoot!
“I don’t know about y’all but we believe!”
Ms Parker later told The New York Post that the creature had been “at least six, seven feet or taller” and had been camouflaged amongst the mountain sage. She added that the train’s conductor told the couple of a similar, previous non-human sighting.
“He said that he went out snowshoeing in those mountains before and had seen footprints that were larger and of much bigger stride than snowshoes would have been,” Ms Parker said.
“He has seen unexplainable things as well.”
Ms Parker’s post on Facebook received mixed responses, with some users claiming that they also “believed” and others remaining sceptical.
“And what were y’all drinking?” one user commented.
‘Bigfoot’ spotted walking on mountainside in rural Colorado— (Shannon Parker/ Facebook)
Since the sighting, others have continued to express their scepticism, suggesting that the creature was in fact an “individual wearing a suit”.
Primatologist Mireya Mayor, a researcher on the Travel Channel’s docuseries Expedition Bigfoot, commented on the blurriness of the footage and the fact that the area, while appearing remote, had scheduled trains running through it.
“Anyone who wanted to pull off a hoax, which is of course unfortunate, would know that there would be a train full of passengers, very excited as the siting of something unusual,” she said, in an Instagram video.
"To me this feels like a hoax; the movement of this individual is so human like that there's not the least animal quality about it. It almost looked like a thin individual wearing a suit that was far too big."
In a more toungue-in-cheek post, Silverton-based RV company Sasquatch Expedition Campers also “denied” involvement.
“We, The Sasquatch Crew, feel compelled to address recent allegations and rumors that have been circulating, suggesting our involvement in the train sighting,” the company wrote on Facebook. “We want to make it unequivocally clear: It wasn’t us.
Alongside the statement they posted a picture of a person working on an RV, dressed in costume Bigfoot feet, with a suspicious clump of hair on the floor nearby.
According to the National Guard, legends of Bigfoot go back beyond recorded history, and come from all over the world – including tales of “seven-foot-tall hairy men stalking the woods, occasionally scaring campers, lumberjacks and hikers”.
Sightings of the creature, also known in other cultures as Sasquatch or Witiko, have been reported by North American settlers during the late 1800s and 1900s.
Alleged footprints, encounters and even some grainy photographs of such a creature have continued to fuel the myth, though debate and research continue.
Nowadays, entire organizations exist to study and document Bigfoot and prove its existence – with dedicated groups regularly searching the Northwest woods, looking for that ultimate proof.
