Emily Fleur began her well-rehearsed presentation by asking if the audience in this packed pub realizes Patty, the nickname for the star of the precedent-setting 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, was female. As it had pendulous breasts and Bigfoots are not a subject on which I am unversed, I nodded. I might have been in small company tonight. There is an air of Girl Power to this question, something Fleur herself exemplifies. The Bigfoot art for her organization's website and printed materials keep the breasts intact, which one sees almost nowhere else in the cryptozoological world. What does it mean that the archetype of our most famous cryptid is widely misgendered? (Sorry, Nessie. You are too geographically locked for widespread appeal. Mothman? What bridge collapses have you warned us about lately?)
Standing behind a plastic table at the Barn Taproom in Red Hook, New York, Fleur wore a lime green top, stretch jeans, and a fanny pack. The latter is utilitarian tonight, carrying money to make change later. In most photographs, she dresses as if for a safari photo shoot, in practical khaki and boots, but fashionably so. Fleur would not be photographed coated in sweat and mud, which is not to say this does not result from her fieldwork--she is no slouch--but that she corrects any smudges before the photos are snapped. She has an image to maintain, and sponsors like Manscaped and Bigfoot Bushcraft (who have paid for her posts) do not make a habit of giving money to messy women.
Though she could be a Christopher Guest/Wes Anderson character, Fleur is no tourist, saying that this is her "life's purpose" and that her "mission is to increase public understanding of the Sasquatch species & advocate for their protection." Where she was once reluctant to hike, it "is her [favorite] pastime," and she no longer fears the noises. Sasquatching has changed how she approaches her life.
Is there something implicitly masculine about going into the woods to stalk a hairy ape? Women are every bit as capable of poking through cryptid scat as men. Coming into this, I had considered her the Bindi Irwin of undiscovered apes. When I shared a little about her, a friend called her the Danica Patrick of Sasquatches, succeeding in a field that most consider the exclusive purview of men, balancing her skill and knowledge against her appearance and being in her late 20s. She wants to be--and to my understanding is--taken as seriously as one can be tromping through the woods in hopes of oversized footprints, but she is not above exploiting any advantage that will make people pack a room to listen to her. She is a stylish and cheery woman, her hair accented with a striking silver streak that could alone be her trademark. In a field by its nature frumpish, Fleur has social media savvy, knowing that her gender and poise puts her above the shoulders of the type of men who gravitate to the subject--those in Coke bottle glasses and half-tucked shirts, physicality more suited to discussing theories than hiking up a mountain for evidence. I've rubbed shoulders and shaken hands with cryptozoologists and paranormalists, but Fleur is on the short list of those I could draw from memory. (The other is Loren Coleman, though I might sketch Jim Henson and neglect to color in the hair and beard.)
Fleur treats Jane Goodall as an aspirational figure, someone who, through careful acculturation, managed to integrate herself into a colony of chimpanzees and to describe their behavior in a way impossible from the outside. This might be less than satisfying for Fleur given that, as she notes on her site, a Sasquatch's go-to behavior is whooping, throwing rocks, pretending to charge, and running away. She is not wrong to invest her devotion in Goodall. According to Taylor Watson in The Week, Goodall does not rule out the possibility of the Sasquatch.
Fleur believes her quarry is physical and explicable but usually intangible and little explained. She noted Bigfoot has an apelike carriage, daring to mention as though it might be controversial that humans do as well, as we are a branch of the Great Apes. Had Fleur spoken to crowds who had not been aware of the scientific consensus of the last two hundred years? I sat in the front, awkwardly placed to survey the crowd, but I did not sense she received pushback. The Scopes Monkey Trial was almost one hundred years ago, and we cannot promise the aftereffects were felt in Upstate New York.
She referenced the Olympic Project, a consortium of Bigfoot researchers who believe the creatures are a biological phenomenon uncoverable entirely through science. (It is not to be confused with the Olympic Project for Human Rights, concerned with the civil and human rights of Black athletes and protesting racism in sports in general.) According to Fleur, members of the project posited that Sasquatches use the over twenty ground nests they found on the western-facing slopes of Washington mountains for birthing and raising young. She claims that little nests were alongside the larger, presumably parental nests, which resemble those of gorillas. The smallest were four feet, and the largest were a spacious nine.
One might struggle to imagine what a crowd for a Saturday night Bigfoot talk would look like. It was a mix of people in flannel and baseball caps, women with candy-colored hair, and a startling amount of those who seemed to have come from a wine tasting and would end their evening at a political fundraiser where the cost of a plate could buy a used car. The former groups I can reconcile (locals and gawkers), but I wonder at the intentions of the latter. Who could blame them if it were only the selection of Bigfoot-themed cocktails, a gourmet food truck waiting in the frozen air outside, and a warm room of strangers looking at blurry pictures?
(The cocktails might alone be a reason to show up: the Close Encounter, Tall Dark and Hairy, Into the Woods, Fireside, and my favorite, The Patterson-Gimlet.)
None openly expressed skepticism of Fleur's conjectures. However, one man tapped me on the shoulder, asking whether my scribbling and photography signaled, I was a reporter. I assured him that though I authored several books, I work for no publication in this capacity. He was satisfied enough by my implicit harmlessness that he did not probe further.
Items for sale cover some twenty feet of tables in the front of the room. Fifteen feet of this was devoted to the goods of the second presenter of the evening, Gayle Beatty--partly Bigfoot, but also chartreuse alien dolls. Beatty did state in an article in Rural Intelligence, "I know that the Hudson Valley is known for paranormal and UFO activity and those go hand in hand with sightings of Bigfoots." (In full disclosure, Beatty and I have presented at the Pine Bush UFO Fair and likely will again. I'm not judging, just noting.) Indeed, books like Silent Invasion attest to this. According to ufologists, the Hudson Valley is one of the most active sites in the world, on par with Sedona and Roswell. Why shouldn't we have Bigfoots?
Aside from realistically shaped Bigfoot dolls, Fleur sells practical items: collapsible buckets for mixing plaster for footprints, tape measure bracelets, Nalgene bottles, survival bracelets, and evidence flags.
I admire that Fleur has done the nearly impossible and made this her career. Fleur claims to devote the proceeds from her merchandise to her field research, marrying her passions for Sasquatches and retail. Given that she boasts a degree in product development from the Fashion Institute of Technology, she is a natural. As she noted to Shout Out Colorado, "When it comes to Bigfoot research and merchandise, I knew there was a gap in the market, which inspired me to start [The Forest Fleur]." (She remains humble, crediting her former professors, David Brogna, Shannon Maher, and Noelle Smith for encouraging her "despite being mocked by many for starting an organization surrounding an animal that is said not to exist.")
She named her shop for Wild Wilma, who "could be found riding motorcycles, dressing like a pirate, & knitting" and collected stories of Bigfoot from people who lived in the Adirondacks. Wilma was also Fleur's grandmother, so there is a history between Fleurs and Sasquatches.
She thrust herself into the life of a full-time Sasquatch researcher and entrepreneur when she was laid off during the pandemic--though she had been researching for years prior. She interviewed "hundreds of citizen scientists" to learn all she could about Sasquatch, soon gathering a team to assist her with expeditions and research, including Levi Machovec, author of The Sasquatch Paradox. After living in Oregon for three months, working under established researchers, she decided the only way she could put in the necessary fieldwork was to move to upstate New York, a place evidently richer in Sasquatch sightings than the Pacific Northwest.
Despite being hominoid--a word meaning the entire ape clade, but obscure enough that her audience might regard it more with fascination than resistance--Fleur was explicit that Bigfoot is not some human-chimp hybrid. She laughed and said we should not even imagine how something like that could occur. "If the sample came back as half-human, originating from human females, it would have to mean that a human recently bred with an unknown hominoid & produced a single offspring whose DNA was studied by the scientist making these claims." Though hybrid vigor can result in larger offspring--look how a liger dwarfs its parents--it does seem unlikely an amalgam of human and chimp would reach such height and weight as Bigfoots are purported to possess. This humanzee (or chuman, depending on which species contributed which genetic charge) would have 47 chromosomes, which would not allow for little Bigfoots.
She introduced the topic of hair samples found on trees and fences, though not taken directly from the beasts (if one had such a find in their grip, we must hope they could get more compelling evidence). She postulated that DNA collection would be difficult owing to a deficit in the medullary streak of the hair strands. The samples from different sites do not match any known animal but resemble human and chimp hair.
Given the creatures' behavior and appearance, Fleur sees similarities between Sasquatch and gibbons, though the latter used their long arms to swing between branches. Sasquatch mostly seems to break or bend them. Given their heft, few tree limbs would bear the weight and velocity.
According to Fleur, Sasquatches are not known for making their environment suit their needs. There are no farmers among them. They have not even attempted to use fire, which would be easier for researchers to notice. She posits they have "complex language, basic tool-making, & family dynamics." She theorizes that, as humans spend almost a quarter of our sleep in the REM state and other primates are only an average of 9%, maybe Sasquatches are similarly blessed with the state that gives humans vivid dreams and potentially helps consolidate our learning. We can only know once we make one of the creatures do a sleep study, which might not be among the first dozen hypotheses scientists would test.
She considers that Sasquatch may be a descendant of Australopithecus Sediba, a "relic" species of australopithecine, the archetypal skeleton of which was found in Malapa Cave in South Africa--but our primate ancestors did originate on that continent, so it would be disingenuous to wonder how A. sebida made its way from the Cradle of Humankind to The Barn Taproom.
Fleur brightly stated that she would love it if she could call a university and tell them Bigfoot is real, but they would demand evidence researchers cannot provide at present- or decline to provide it because there are TV deals in the works.
Fleur's evidence was not scanty or only her assurances. She had footprints, as is de rigueur for this field, but also a plaster cast handprint the size of her torso. She laughed, noting this was not the size of the actual handprint but that the creature had pressed down. She stated that it contains dermal ridges--found only in primates and koalas--known to the laypeople as fingerprints. (Australian police are infrequently flummoxed by fingerprint evidence before realizing their culprit is munching a eucalyptus leaf, according to the Independent.)
On the eponymous big feet are a few distinctive features. Like humans (and unlike any other apes), Bigfoots have forward-projecting toes for bipedalism. They are not grasping tree limbs with splayed toes and divergent opposable halluces, the thumb-like big toes. Its foot is made for walking, and that's just what it'll do, to paraphrase Nancy Sinatra, even if its long arms are a holdover from tree-dwelling ancestors. It has a midtarsal break (apparently easily recognized in the weight transference in the footprints) that some mistake for an arch, which humans commonly lack. Fleur cited Dr. Jeff Meldrum, professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at Idaho State University and expert on foot morphology and locomotion in primates. As sources go on this, finding one that's more authoritative is challenging. Meldrum has devoted himself to the conjecture that Sasquatch is plausible based on his over two hundred plaster casts of footprints. His opinion is not universally embraced, no matter his accomplishments--some going as far as systematically disassembling his books and pressuring the university to reexamine his research in hopes of revoking his tenure. Still, it is enough to underscore Fleur's point. Like Fleur, Meldrum tries to be a voice of reason in a field tainted by blurry videos of bears and outright hoaxes, wanting books on Bigfoot to be in the natural sciences section rather than "the occult section, right between the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs," according to NBC News.
Fleur explained the variability in the size of plaster casts and photographs of footprints as sexual dimorphism. As one sees in humanity and other animal species, the female Sasquatch tend to be more petite--though still large enough to cause a problem for anyone underestimating them. Fleur underscored that humans err in trying to feed Bigfoots for the same reason as the colonists should not have given the Native tribes measles blankets (though, unlike her audience, the colonists meant to engage in biological warfare). What is a cold for humans could be a plague that wipes out a tribe of Bigfoots. As they wisely keep away from us, they may not commonly be exposed to our virulence. Also, more than likely, the food humans left out would either go uneaten or the wrong animals would consume it.
Fleur maintained that Bigfoots are an open secret among hunters, though one might imagine a few would let this news leak. She asked if there were any hunters in the audience and received only a tepid confirmation from one person, who didn't admit to having witnessed anything. Had he baited Bigfoots and didn't want to run afoul of the game warden?
Fleur mentioned Whitehall, New York, which, according to the New York Post, made "the willful harming" of Bigfoots illegal in the early 2000s and turned the town a protective habitat. Likely not coincidentally, they also started a Sasquatch Festival & Calling Contest that brings in tourist dollars without too much worry they are going to summon forth the beasts.
Not all of New York takes this enlightened perspective. Peter Wiemer, director of the Chautauqua Lake Bigfoot Expo, wrote a letter to the Department of Environmental Conservation, concerned about a $10 million bounty on the creature, according to All Over Albany. The Chief Wildlife Biologist, Gordan R. Batcheller, replied, "This mythical animal does not exist in nature or otherwise. [...] [N]o program or action in relation to mythical animals is warranted."
Sasquatches are better seduced by relaxing around a campfire. They have chill vibes and don't want to be sought directly, said Fleur, as hundreds of thousands of reports over the decades attest. That number seems a touch high, but I am technically an outsider. I may not be in the loop. If given the choice between plodding through mountain mud in hopes of catching sight of one and hanging out with friends roasting marshmallows, many might choose the latter.
She suggested we use their curiosity against them, making them wonder about the bizarre hairless hominoids tromping through their territory. Indeed, she advanced the idea that one had more luck stumbling upon a nest rather than seeking them out, cameras in hand. (As Beatty emphasized after, one could get the sense Bigfoots specifically know when a camera is turned on and will make themselves scarce until such a time as they can no longer be recorded.)
Fleur's advice is to enter the area quietly, do a call, wait half an hour, then do it again. If the Bigfoots do not answer the call by the third attempt, the beast might be ducking you like you want to talk about its car's extended warranty. At that point, you can, in good conscience, make a smore.
Fleur stated that the Bigfoots like the Hudson Valley because it is a temperate rainforest. Parts, though not all, of Upstate New York do qualify owing to our annual rainfall, and this area would be more comfortable than a tundra. Even when it comes to the lashes of winter winds, Fleur points to Bergmann's rule that larger versions of species are found in colder climates. The typically cited evidence of this rule are king penguins, Inuits, and polar bears. Sasquatches are rarely mentioned. (Biologists do not universally support Bergmann's rule. The crux is that a larger body mass to skin area allows less heat to escape.)
I had encountered Fleur for the first time in her booth at the Dutchess County Fair. For a moment, I thought it belonged to the Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley. I was startled to see instead an attractive, round-faced woman wearing an explorer's hat, which appeared on a sketch of her dwarfed by hominid cryptids. She spoke with customers next to vinyl banners describing her theories and investigations, emphasizing that she did "scientifically grounded Sasquatch research." On either side of the booth were jerky sellers, secondhand clothing retailers, and a haunted trail soliciting employees and customers for the coming season. Across the path, a tent sought to interest fairgoers in hot tubs.
I mentioned my lifelong fascination with the paranormal and the book I would have out that September, The Curious Case of the Talking Mongoose. She seemed satisfied that I was not a doubter and knew enough that she wouldn't have to give me Sasquatch 101.
On the topic of Gayle Beatty, Fleur had been politic, putting on a smile and saying they had yet to speak. She was sunny in responding to the twentieth person to act like Fleur wouldn't have heard of her competition. How could she not befriend or butt heads with someone who, by bizarre coincidence, was seven miles away and had already established herself as the expert in Hudson Valley Bigfoots, a title that Fleur might feel should belong to her?
Second to her ignorance of Beatty, I was confused that I had not encountered her before. I make a nuisance of myself to anyone in the area tangentially involved in ghosts, witchcraft, UFOs, and Bigfoots. How had she slipped beneath my radar? She must have learned some tricks from the subjects of her research.
When I broached the subject of Fleur with Beatty months later, she said with a folksy sweetness that she was suspicious of Fleur in general and her opinions on the phenomenon in specific. Could Fleur's Instagram supporters, souvenirs, and occasional corporate sponsorships be enough to fund her research? I could not answer this, but I agreed it was worth asking.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.