April 12, 2020 / By mobanmarket
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PORTLAND, OR — Bigfoot is dead. Well, maybe. Also, maybe not. The FBI normally only releases files publicly after the subject of the files — Bigfoot in this case — has died. The bureau released 22 pages of documents related to the possibly real, possibly mythical Sasquatch on June 5.
So, is Bigfoot dead? Did the giant, ape-like creature rumored to have roamed the North American wilderness for years ever even live?
The bureau’s not saying either way.
Peter Byrne has a lot to say on the subject, and he’s pretty sure that Bigfoot is alive and well and still out there.
“I am hopeful,” Byrne told Patch from his home in Pacific City, Oregon. “I would love to see evidence that he’s out there. There is still so much to pursue.”
Courtesy photo of Peter Byrne.
Byrne, who is 93, has been chasing Bigfoot and Yeti for more than 60 years — beginning in the 1950s when he was in Nepal through the 1970s when he started The Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in The Dalles, Oregon, through today.
“We’re looking into an incident last year,” he says. “It happened by the Wilson River east of Tillamook by the Cascades. Seven loggers were out working when they saw what they thought was a very large man walking about 150 yards away.
“They quickly realized it was not a man. It was very large with light brown hair. They said that whatever it was stood more than 7 feet tall and must have weighed more than 400 pounds.”
It was a similar incident 43 years ago that led to Byrne’s name appearing throughout the 22 pages released by the FBI.
15 Hairs
Byrne was running the Bigfoot Information Center in the fall of 1976 when he got a call. Two biologists from the U.S. Forest Service were working in the woods when they saw something unusual —a tall creature covered in hair, making its way through pairs of Douglas firs.
“I arrived the next day,” he remembers. “Looking around, it was clear that the trees were very close together and that if the creature had passed through them, it might have left a trace. There were also many bramble bushes so I was hopeful that it might have left a trace.”
Byrne was on the mark. Examining the trees and the bushes, he found clumps of hair that he collected and brought back to the information center.
That led to the question of what to do with what he’d found.
“I had read that the FBI had analyzed supposed Bigfoot hairs in the past,” he says.
In 1975, the Army Corps of Engineers published a new edition of its “Washington Environmental Atlas,” which included a section on “Sasquatch” or “Big Foot.”
Along with the report was a map that pinpointed 73 sightings in Washington, Oregon, California and British Columbia. It also said this: “Alleged Sasquatch hair samples inspected by the F.B.I. laboratories resulted in the conclusion that no such hair exists on any human or presently known animal for which such data are available.”
While the bureau’s newly released files indicate that when investigators approached the author of the page, he could not find the source of that last bit of information, Byrne only knew what he had read.
Coincidentally, he had been in contact with the FBI in August 1976 after seeing the Sasquatch reference in the environmental atlas.
Taking care to let the bureau know he considered (and still considers) the Bigfoot Information Center a credible endeavor, he chose his words carefully.
Page from the FBI file.
“Please understand that our research here is serious,” he wrote. “This is a serious question that needs answering.”
Byrne also indicated that he was aware of why the bureau might not want to be associated with his work.
He said that if the bureau agreed to examine hairs, it did not mean that they were at all “associated with our project” and wouldn’t in any way confirm “the possibility of the existence of the creature(s) known as Bigfoot.”
After getting a response from FBI Assistant Director Jay Cochran, who oversaw the bureau’s lab division at the time, Byrne followed up with a second letter, this one more direct.
“We do not often come across hair which we are unable to identify,” Byrne wrote, going on to say that he was enclosing “about 15 hairs attached to a small piece of skin” and asking the FBI lab to examine them.
“We feel (they) may be of importance,” he wrote.
Cochran wrote back, saying that while “the FBI Laboratory conducts examinations primarily of physical evidence for law enforcement agencies in connections with criminal investigations,” they do occasionally make exceptions “in the interest of research and scientific inquiry.
“With this understanding, we will examine the hairs and tissue mentioned.”
Byrne sent the hairs to the lab as Cochran asked and waited. And waited.
WW II, Katmandu, A Finger
Byrne was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1926. Like so many in his generation, his life was changed by World War II.
“I joined the Royal Air Force and was assigned to an air rescue unit,” he remembers, saying that he spent the war years in Southeast Asia.
“It was in that time that I first trekked to Nepal and the Himalayas,” Byrne says. “It was then that I first started hearing more about the Yeti or Sasquatch.”
After the war was over but before he returned home, Byrne and a friend went hiking there and he saw what he considers to be the first of several Yeti and Bigfoot footprints he would see.
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He returned home but moved back to the region not long after, taking a job at a British tea company.
“The region is beautiful and my job allowed the opportunity to return to Nepal and the Himalayas.”
He took part in two attempts to find Yeti during that time, each one lasting a month.
It was during the second trip that his friend, the legendary sherpa Tenzig Norgay, who accompanied Edmund Hillary up Everest, told Byrne that an American would be financing a Yeti search in the Himalayas of Nepal.
“We went three times over a few years,” Byrne says. “They were productive.”
During that time, they made several notable finds. Byrne found one set of footprints and the American millionaire financing the expeditions, Tom Slick, also found a set of prints.
They also spent time at the Pangboche Monastery, 13,000 feet up in the mountains.
There, Byrne first encountered what the monks described as the preserved scalp and preserved hand of a Yeti.
“I wanted to bring back a hand,” Byrne says. “The monks would have none of it.”
Following instructions from Slick, Byrne negotiated a deal with the monks on his second trip to the monastery. He gave them $100 and was allowed to take a finger from the hand, swapping out a human finger made up to look like the supposed Yeti’s.
“The question was how to get it out,” Byrne says.
Slick had developed a plan. He was friends with the actor Jimmy Stewart, who was in Calcutta with his wife, Gloria.
The Stewarts were all too happy to help. The finger was smuggled out in the suitcase of Gloria Stewart’s undergarments bag, Byrne says.
Years later, it would be tested, determined to be human, and returned to the monastery.
Byrne examining a “Yeti scalp” at Pangboche (via Peter Byrne).
The Pacific Northwest
After one of his trips, Byrne received a message from Slick asking him to come to Texas.
“He told me that the Pacific Northwest was worthy of exploration,” Byrne says. “There had been many reports of a Yeti-like figure called Bigfoot.”
With deep forests, mountain ranges and miles of unexplored land, the area seemed rich with possibility.
Photo of “Bigfoot” hair from the FBI.
“It just makes sense that the region would be home to Bigfoot,” Byrne says. “So, we set up shop.”
For years, Byrne explored on pretty much on a shoestring budget, using funds from Slick and some other deep-pocketed benefactors to hire a couple of people and organize some expeditions. At times, he had scientists, helicopters and other resources ready to pursue tips.
That is what eventually led to the incident in 1976.
Finally, A Response
“When I didn’t hear back from the FBI, I didn’t give it too much thought,” Byrne says. “It is the FBI. And there was work to keep doing.”
Byrne’s work attracted attention over the years — stories in The New York Times, Rolling Stone — burnishing his reputation as he continued searches, pursued tips, and wrote books.
As the years went by, Byrne continued his work though his pace has slowed down.
“I’m still at it,” he says. “It’s more of a hobby now. I had been doing it 24/7 but I’m 93 now. I can’t keep that up.”
The release of the FBI file is keeping Byrne busier than he’s been lately.
“It’s been amazing,” he says.”Calls from newspapers all over. In the United States and out.
“They all want to know what I think of what the FBI said.”
What the FBI said is contained in the more than 40-year-old, just-declassified documents.
FBI Assistant Director Cochran wrote that the hairs “have been examined by transmitted and incident light microscopy. The examination included a study of morphological characteristics such as root structure, medullary structure and cuticle thickness in addition to scale casts.
“Also, the hairs were compared directly with hairs of known origin under a comparison microscope.”
What did all those tests lead the FBI to conclude?
“It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin,” Cochran wrote.
Moving Forward
“It would have been more interesting if the results had been different but they are what they are,” Byrne says. “This is science. All it means is that we keep looking.”
Byrne knows that the FBI results, which the file says was sent to Byrne though he’s sure that he never received it until the file was finally released, will give ammunition to skeptics but he says he doesn’t care.
“I have no time for skeptics,” he says. “Skeptics are people who usually just don’t know anything, haven’t read anything, don’t care to learn.
“If they’re willing to listen, I’m willing to share what I know.”
Despite the length of the search, Byrne is not discouraged.
“I would love to see proof,” he says. “I know there are a lot of people who are not going to be convinced until they see a body on the table. There could be 12 priests and 12 nuns swearing that they saw it and that won’t make a difference without the body.
“Still, I believe it will happen. The day will come when everyone sees.”
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