10 OCTOBER 26-NOVEMBER 1, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Do You Believe? COLORADO BIGFOOT RESEARCHERS WEIGH IN ON THE MOST RECENT SASQUATCH “SIGHTING.” BY EMILY FERGUSON While Jim Myers, owner of the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, prepares to tape his weekly Untold Radio Network podcast, The Sas- quatch Outpost Podcast, the Outpost itself is bustling with customers perusing the store’s merchandise: books on bigfoot, “bigfoot hair” in small glass vials, pins and stickers, and an incredible array of T-shirts, one of which is emblazoned with a stern bigfoot crossing its arms by the words: “BIGFOOT DOESN’T BELIEVE IN YOU, EITHER.” But since a recent video of an alleged bigfoot taken from the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad went viral, believ- ers have been coming out of the woodwork... and into the Outpost. The main draw here is the museum, which includes a history of bigfoot sight- ings, casts made from bigfoot tracks (both of “babies” and full-growns), plaques explain- ing phenomena attributed to bigfoot and a large map that guests can mark with pins based on their sightings. Red pins symbolize visual sightings, black indicates footprints, blue reports rocks thrown (a classic bigfoot move), green represents those who’ve heard a big- foot (via howls or knock- ing on trees), and yellow attests to breaks in trees, or trees twisted into arch- ways or a tipi shape (these are thought to be bigfoot nests). Headphones hanging on one wall re- veal recordings of bigfoot sounds — a loop of haunt- ing, whooping howls. Myers rented the build- ing, the oldest in Bailey, in 2012; he and his wife fi rst ran it as a market, but also encouraged people to re- port bigfoot sightings there. “Well, that took off, and more people were com- ing in to talk about bigfoot than people who are buying groceries,” Myers recalls. They took out the grocery section and rebranded the place as the Sasquatch Outpost in 2015; they bought the building the next year. Fascination with the creature goes back to Myers’s childhood. “What kid isn’t in- terested in bigfoot?” he asks. “I mean, it’s a fas- cinating topic if they’re a myth, which they’re not. But if they were a myth, it’s a good one. Their ap- pearance and behavior lend themselves to being an urban legend, if you want to call it that. But they’re real. And there’s more of them than any- one wants to admit. And more people have seen them than anyone could ever imagine.” A couple on the train, Stetson and Shannon Parker, who posted the video, saw a bipedal, brownish figure walk- ing in shrubs on a slope before crouching down and appearing to almost fade into the surround- ings. You know, the way people in camo hunting suits do. But the Parkers have no doubt about what they saw. In an interview with the New York Times, Stetson said that the fi gure had arms too long to be considered human, and it moved like an ani- mal. “I’m a believer now,” he told the Times, adding that it “didn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I don’t think it’s a hoax. And if it is, it was a really good one.” Unlike Stetson, Myers is a longtime be- liever — but he calls the video “a hoax” that shows a man in a bigfoot suit. Such ersatz sightings are a frustrating challenge for bigfoot researchers like him, who take their work very, very seriously. “If you do that, then you have no credibility with people,” Myers says of the video, shaking his head. It also stokes the fl ames of what Colorado fi lmmaker and paranormal researcher Alan Megargle calls “Squatch fever.” “You have a bigfoot en- counter or something of some sort, and now all of a sudden you’re seeing things everywhere,” he explains. “Your mind kind of takes over.” Megargle, who has collaborated with Myers on films and bigfoot re- search (most notably, the documentary The Bigfoot of Bailey Colorado and Its Portal, in which they identify “an alien portal located in a Native Ameri- can sacred tree”), founded the National Paranormal Network in January 2022, which includes his produc- tion imprint Twisted Tree Films; a web series called Trails to the Un- known; the Sasquatch Clothing Company; and Bigfoot Adventure Weekends, which he hosts seasonally in Bailey with Myers. “A lot of people are putting a lot of stuff out there, including the new video, and you should question and be cautious of that,” Megargle warns. It’s not just videos or photos that people need to question, he says, but also their own minds. He recalls one couple who reported a bigfoot sighting to his National Paranormal Network; they were absolutely convinced that the sounds and other mysterious hap- penings around their cabin were signs of a bigfoot. But after a couple of days of research, Megargle and his team found nothing con- clusive. “I think a lot of what they were experiencing was kind of fabricated in their heads, because they wanted it to happen so badly,” Megargle says. Squatch fever. Along with Estes Park and Pikes Peak, Bailey is a hot spot for sightings — as well as for people like Myers and Megargle, who will validate what others believe they saw (with the right evidence, of course). According to Megargle, you can “just tell” when someone is being truthful about their experience. Back in 2012, when a national TV show crew featured Bailey, there was a bigfoot conference in the town. Hundreds of people were there, many sharing stories of sightings. “I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Wow, and that’s just around here,’” Myers recalls. “So everybody who thinks this is a phenom- enon of the Pacifi c Northwest is completely wrong. In fact, they’ve been seen in every state in the continental U.S. and virtually every continent in the world. “So yes, there’s NEWS continued on page 12 KEEP UP ON DENVER NEWS AT WESTWORD.COM/NEWS A video that allegedly captured a bigfoot sighting from a Colorado train quickly went viral. A model of a bigfoot and its baby inside the Sasquatch Outpost museum. YOUTUBE EMILY FERGUSON
