New documents reveal FBI investigated Bigfoot in 1970s
Just weeks after the Indian Army allegedly discovered the mysterious footprint of the yeti, the FBI released documents Wednesday regarding a 1976 investigation into another hairy mythical creature: Bigfoot.
In 1976, federal investigators responded to a request by Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition, which was sponsored by the Academy of Applied Science in Boston, to analyze mysterious hairs attached to a piece of skin. After the "Washington Environmental Atlas" wrote in 1975 that the FBI had analyzed a scrap of hair and it "was found to belong to no known animal," Byrne asked whether the FBI had truly conducted this analysis.
"Will you kindly, to set the record straight, once and for all, inform us if the FBI has examined hair which might be that of a Bigfoot; when this took place, if it did take place; what the results of the analysis were," Byrne wrote in an Aug. 26 letter.
"Please understand that our research here is serious. That this is a serious question that needs answering and that an examination of hair, or the opposite, by the FBI, does not in any way, as far as we are concerned, suggest that the FBI, is associated with our project or confirms in any way the possibility of the existence of the creature(s) known as Bigfoot," Byrne continued.
The FBI told Byrne that it had no record of this analysis reported, but agreed to analyze a scrap of hair sent by Byrne in a November letter. In an internal memo, the FBI said that the analysis was being done for the sake of "scientific inquiry."
However, after a thorough analysis, it was found that the "hairs are of deer family origin."
The brief investigation of the existence of Bigfoot concluded in February 1977. However, amateur investigators have continued to search for proof of the existence of Bigfoot, convinced that the truth is out there.