The Hudson Valley Sasquatch Hunters Who Say Bigfoot Is Already Living Among Us

The Hudson Valley Sasquatch Hunters Who Say Bigfoot Is Already Living Among Us

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The Hudson Valley Sasquatch Hunters Who Say Bigfoot Is Already Living Among Us

A dedicated team of researchers in upstate New York claims they’ve documented hundreds of Bigfoot encounters — including one creature caught dumpster diving at a Dairy Queen.

SQUATCH COUNTRY: THE BIGFOOT HUNTERS OF NEW YORK’S HUDSON VALLEY

Gayle Beatty was doing the dishes one evening in 2011 when a sound from the television stopped her cold. The show “Finding Bigfoot” was playing in the background, and the vocalization coming from the speakers was identical to a scream she’d heard decades earlier — a “godawful scream” that had sent her running down Stissing Mountain in Pine Plains, New York, as a teenager in the 1960s. She’d been grounded by her parents and had hiked up the mountain to be alone when the noise erupted from the woods around her. The blood drained from her face, and she ran home white as a sheet. For years, she had no idea what she’d heard that day. The television gave her an answer she wasn’t expecting.

SOMETHING IN THE WOODS

That moment at the kitchen sink changed everything for Beatty. After hearing that scream again — this time identified as a potential Bigfoot vocalization — she ran a quick search for Bigfoot sightings in Dutchess County. What came up surprised her. There was a report of a daytime road crossing witnessed by two women on Lake Road in Pine Plains, which is the same general area where she’d had her own terrifying encounter all those years ago. The mountain where she’d camped as a rebellious teenager apparently had a reputation she knew nothing about.

Beatty started talking to hunters, anglers, and other people who spent serious time outdoors in the region. These weren’t the kind of folks prone to wild stories — they were practical people who made their living off the land and water. And they told her things. Stories about sounds they couldn’t explain. Shapes moving through the trees that didn’t match any known animal. She started going out with friends to investigate these accounts firsthand, treating each report as something worth taking seriously.

The evidence, according to Beatty, piled up quickly. Tracks in the mud that were far too large for any known primate in North America. Structures made of stacked branches arranged in patterns that seemed deliberate rather than random. Hair samples snagged on barbed wire fences up on local farms. Each piece added to a picture that Beatty found increasingly difficult to dismiss.

Since she founded Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley in 2013, the organization’s Facebook group has grown from a handful of curious enthusiasts to over 6,300 followers. That’s a lot of people interested in Sasquatch sightings in a region most Americans associate with apple orchards, antique shops, and weekend getaways from Manhattan. Beatty says she’s received approximately 300 reports from as far south as Westchester County — practically in New York City’s backyard — to deep into the rural stretches of upstate. The most recent report came just two months before January 2026, when a “juvenile” creature was spotted on a property in Elizaville. The sightings, it seems, haven’t slowed down.

On a recent Sunday at Poet’s Walk Park along the Hudson River — a scenic patch of oak, beech, and maple trees that offers occasional views of the river and the Catskill Mountains beyond — Beatty led a small group of investigators through the forest. The park itself is a popular destination, and just a few hundred yards away, the trails were filled with day-trippers and second-home owners in athletic wear getting their steps in. Beatty’s group wasn’t there for exercise. They were hunting for Sasquatch, and they were doing it within earshot of people who had no idea what was happening in the trees nearby.

THE EVIDENCE THEY’VE FOUND

The signs of Bigfoot activity are everywhere in the Hudson Valley, according to Beatty’s team, if you know what to look for. Trees that appear to have been pushed over with tremendous force. Dead animals — deer, for instance — found floating in water under circumstances that don’t quite add up. And then there are the “Blair Witch Project”-style stick figures that show up on their motion-tracking equipment, arranged in patterns that seem too purposeful to be coincidental. These markers, the team believes, indicate territorial boundaries or communication between creatures.

Beatty scans the surrounding trees with divining rods while explaining the nature of what they’re tracking. And this is where her perspective diverges from what most people might expect from a Bigfoot researcher. These creatures, she contends, are more than just an undiscovered ape living in the woods. They possess abilities that go beyond the physical — including, she claims, the ability to cloak themselves. They can be present in an area without being visible to the human eye. This isn’t a metaphor for good camouflage skills. Beatty means it literally.

Brian Herbst, a former tech worker who now dedicates his time to Sasquatch research, is one of the investigators on this particular expedition. He carries an arsenal of detection equipment that wouldn’t look out of place in a ghost-hunting show: a motion tracker that registers movement in the surrounding area, and an electromagnetic field meter that lights up in the presence of what he considers paranormal activity. The idea is that even if you can’t see a Bigfoot with your eyes, you might be able to detect its presence through other means. Herbst takes his readings seriously, documenting everything the equipment picks up.

Pat Kipp brings a different kind of credibility to the group. She’s an octogenarian nurse from Claverack who’s spent her career in a profession that demands rational thinking and careful observation. And she has her own experiences to share — experiences that she insists can’t be explained by ordinary means. Something once banged on the side of her house with enough force to get her attention. It went into her backyard and tipped over her picnic table along with all the chairs. The wind, she points out flatly, doesn’t do that. Not in a way that leaves everything else in the yard undisturbed.

According to cryptozoological estimates that have become standard in Bigfoot research circles, these creatures can grow to ten feet tall — significantly larger than even the biggest gorilla. But the physical size isn’t what makes Sasquatch difficult to pin down, according to Kipp. Along with camouflage abilities she compares to the alien hunter from the movie “Predator,” she believes these chameleonic beings can move in and out of dimensions entirely. They exist on a different plane, or perhaps multiple planes, and can phase between them at will. That’s why, she explains, they can see us even when we can’t see them with the naked eye. It’s not that they’re hiding behind trees. It’s that they’re not fully in our reality at all times.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS AND DUMPSTER DIVERS

Encounters with Sasquatch aren’t limited to the deep woods and remote hiking trails. Beatty operates Hook, Line and Sinker, a popular bait shop in the town of Red Hook, and her customers bring her stories from their time on the water. Boaters have reported incidents where small rocks, pebbles, or pine cones were thrown in their direction from the shore — not with enough force to injure, but definitely with enough accuracy and consistency to suggest intent. If a Bigfoot really wants someone out of a particular area, according to Beatty, it will scream. The sound is unmistakable and deeply unsettling, designed to communicate a clear message: leave now.

The creatures can also allegedly weaponize something called infrasound — a vibrational frequency below the range of normal human hearing that nonetheless affects the body. Exposure to infrasound causes disorientation, dizziness, and nausea in humans. Some researchers believe that Bigfoot can generate these frequencies deliberately, using them as a kind of sonic weapon to drive away unwanted visitors. Team member Tom Williams, a well driller from Carmel who joined one of the expeditions, reported suffering severe headaches during the investigation that he couldn’t attribute to any other cause. The headaches cleared up once he left the area.

Despite all of this — the rock-throwing, the screaming, the alleged infrasound attacks — Beatty maintains that ninety percent of the time, Sasquatch means humans no harm. The creatures are more interested in being left alone than in causing trouble. They’re territorial, certainly, and they’ll defend their space if they feel threatened. But they’re not predators hunting humans for sport. The relationship, as Beatty sees it, is more like the uneasy coexistence between people and bears in rural areas. Respect the boundaries, don’t provoke them, and everyone can go about their business.

Winter brings particularly interesting encounters, as the omnivorous cryptid — which supposedly eats everything from deer to muskrat to berries, depending on what’s available — is forced to scavenge human food sources when natural options become scarce. Beatty has received two or three reports of Bigfoot raiding dumpsters behind businesses in the region. One incident stands out in particular. It occurred last February at a Dairy Queen on Route 9 in Wappingers Falls. The manager was closing up shop around 11 p.m. and went out to dispose of garbage in the dumpster. He heard something moving around back there and shined his flashlight toward the source of the noise. What he saw, according to his report to Beatty, was a female Bigfoot dumpster diving — scrounging for discarded food in the garbage of a fast-food restaurant along a busy commercial strip. Not exactly the remote wilderness setting most people imagine when they think of Sasquatch encounters.

The group’s work has attracted attention from beyond the Hudson Valley. Back in 2016, they collaborated with Les Stroud, the survival expert and television personality who hosts “Survivorman.” Stroud is a well-known Bigfoot enthusiast who has dedicated episodes of his show to searching for the creature, and he came to New York to work with Beatty’s team on an investigation.

THE TIVOLI INCIDENT

Some of the encounters Beatty describes sound like something out of a science fiction movie rather than a field report from upstate New York. The events of December 30, 2014, in the small village of Tivoli stand out as particularly dramatic.

Beatty was investigating a man who claimed to have an entire clan of Bigfoot living near his property. This wasn’t a case of occasional sightings or brief encounters — the man had apparently established an ongoing relationship with the creatures. He fed them sandwiches and honey buns every night, leaving the food out for them like someone might leave seed for birds. The Bigfoot, according to his account, had become accustomed to this arrangement and returned regularly to collect their meals.

Accompanying Beatty were investigators from Massachusetts who had brought specialized nighttime camera equipment — technology designed to capture images in conditions where normal cameras would show nothing but darkness. They set up on the property and waited to see what would happen.

While they were watching, Beatty saw a white Bigfoot walk by the house. The color was unusual — most reported Bigfoot sightings describe dark brown or black fur — but the shape and movement were unmistakable to someone with her experience. The team geared up and went outside to get a closer look and hopefully capture footage of the creature.

The moment Beatty stepped onto the deck, everything changed. Trees started breaking around them — not in one location, but seemingly from multiple directions at once. The sounds of snapping wood and crashing branches filled the air. They pressed forward anyway, walking about a hundred yards toward a creek on the property. That’s when one of the Massachusetts investigators started filming. His camera captured five Bigfoot in the darkness, visible through the specialized equipment even though they couldn’t be seen clearly with the naked eye.

The creatures were not happy about being filmed. They grew increasingly agitated as the team continued recording. Trees came down around the investigators, snapping and falling like, as Beatty put it, pretzels. The message was clear: leave now.

The team ran back toward the house. And then they saw something that none of them could explain in purely biological terms — a blue light shooting up into the sky from somewhere in the woods. It rose vertically and disappeared above them. The experience, Beatty says, changed everyone who was present that night. They looked at each other with the same realization settling over the group: something otherworldly was happening in these woods. Whatever Bigfoot might be, it wasn’t simply an undiscovered ape.

A GROWING PHENOMENON

Beatty and her team don’t just investigate sightings in remote areas. They also conduct what they call residential investigations for people experiencing problems with creatures coming around their property. These are homeowners dealing with unexplained disturbances — strange sounds at night, evidence of large animals moving through their yards, the unsettling feeling that something is watching them from the tree line. The team comes in and looks for telltale signs: oversized tracks that don’t match any known animal, proximity to water sources that might attract large creatures, and teepee-like structures made from stacked branches and logs that appear in the woods nearby.

Once they’ve assessed the situation, Beatty gathers five or six people to conduct a more thorough investigation. They keep the identities of their clients confidential — nobody wants to be known as the person with a Bigfoot problem on their property. The stigma, even in communities where sightings are relatively common, can be significant.

One of their standard responses is to set up trail cameras around the affected property. The idea is that the cameras will either capture evidence of what’s causing the disturbances or, at minimum, deter the creatures from returning by making them aware they’re being watched. The problem, according to Beatty, is that Bigfoot are remarkably intelligent. They often maneuver around the cameras entirely, staying just outside the field of view. And in some cases, they’ve physically turned the cameras away so that the lens points in a useless direction. These aren’t stupid animals blundering through the woods. They understand what cameras are and what they do, and they don’t want to be recorded.

The protocol for encountering a Sasquatch in person, should that happen, is straightforward. Never throw anything at them or try to harm them in any way. That’s the most important rule. They will retaliate if they feel attacked, and a creature capable of snapping full-grown trees is not something you want angry at you. Instead, Beatty advises people to be respectful — put your hands up in a posture of submission that communicates non-aggression, and tell the creature that you’re going to leave now. The Bigfoot, she insists, will understand you. They comprehend English, or at least the intent behind the words. Then walk away slowly and calmly. Whatever you do, don’t run. Running triggers their predator instincts, and they will drop down on all fours and pursue. Walking signals that you’re not prey. Running signals the opposite.

Feeding Sasquatch creates its own set of problems, even when the intention is friendly. The man in Tivoli who gave them sandwiches and honey buns every night had essentially habituated the creatures to human food sources, similar to what happens when people feed bears in national parks. Once a Bigfoot associates humans with easy meals, it keeps coming back. And when the food stops appearing, the creature may become aggressive or desperate. Beatty warns against creating this kind of dependency, even though she understands the impulse to make contact with something so extraordinary.

THE NATURALIST PERSPECTIVE

Not everyone in the Bigfoot research community shares Beatty’s views on the creature’s paranormal abilities. The field is actually split between those who believe Sasquatch has supernatural characteristics — the dimensional shifting, the cloaking, the apparent psychic awareness — and those who take a more conventional biological approach. The second camp believes that Bigfoot is simply an undiscovered primate, remarkable but ultimately explainable through the same scientific principles that govern other animals.

Matthew Moneymaker, a 60-year-old Sasquatch expert who founded the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization in 1995, falls firmly into the naturalist camp. He’s been investigating sightings since the 1980s and has developed a reputation as someone who demands rigorous evidence and rejects claims that can’t be substantiated. When he hears stories about Bigfoot’s “psychic” abilities or dimensional travel, he’s openly skeptical. A lot of people telling stories, he notes, are shooting for the big wow. They want their encounters to sound as dramatic as possible, and that motivation leads to exaggeration and embellishment. The actual truth, he believes, is impressive enough without the supernatural additions.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization maintains what’s generally considered the de facto database for credible Sasquatch sightings in North America. Their classification system divides reports into three categories: Class A sightings involve clear visual observation of the creature in circumstances where misidentification is unlikely. Class B reports involve indirect evidence — sounds, smells, tracks — that strongly suggests the presence of a Bigfoot but doesn’t include a direct sighting. Class C reports are considered less reliable, often involving circumstances that make misidentification more likely or witnesses whose credibility is in question. According to the BFRO’s data, New York State has recorded approximately 93 documented sightings that meet their standards for inclusion in the database, with counties like Dutchess and Essex reporting among the highest numbers.

Moneymaker’s theory about what Bigfoot actually is centers on Gigantopithecus blacki, an extinct ape that lived in what is now China and Southeast Asia. Scientists who have studied the fossil evidence estimate this creature stood around ten feet tall and weighed up to 1,200 pounds — roughly twice the size of the largest gorillas alive today. The species went extinct somewhere around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, apparently unable to adapt when climate change shrank the forests it depended on for food. Only teeth and four mandibles have ever been recovered; no complete skeleton exists. But those fragmentary remains paint a picture of an enormous ape that would have been genuinely terrifying to encounter.

The theory, which has been promoted by various researchers over the decades, suggests that some population of Gigantopithecus — or a closely related species — migrated across the Bering land bridge into North America and survived in the vast, largely unexplored forests of the continent. Bigfoot, in this view, is a living fossil — a creature that mainstream science believes went extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago but that actually persists in remote areas where human contact remains minimal.

There are significant problems with this theory, and paleontologists have pointed them out repeatedly. No fossil evidence suggests that Gigantopithecus ever reached North America. The creature’s specialized diet of forest plants — possibly including bamboo, based on analysis of tooth wear patterns — would have made survival in North American habitats extremely difficult. And the total absence of any Bigfoot remains — no bones, no teeth, nothing — despite decades of searching is hard to explain if a breeding population of such large animals actually exists. Every other large mammal leaves behind physical evidence when it dies. Bigfoot, apparently, does not.

Still, Moneymaker believes that the strange things that happen in Bigfoot’s presence or vicinity might have biological rather than supernatural explanations. Enough weird occurrences have been documented, he acknowledges, that observers could reasonably think they’re dealing with something alien or paranormal. But large brains, he suggests, might account for abilities that seem almost magical. These are very big animals, after all. They don’t just have big feet. A creature with a brain significantly larger than a human’s might be capable of things we don’t fully understand — not because those abilities violate the laws of physics, but because we haven’t figured out how they work yet.

BIGFOOT NATION

Sasquatch enthusiasm has never been more mainstream than it is right now. The creature that was once relegated to tabloid covers and late-night talk show jokes has become a legitimate cultural phenomenon with a dedicated and growing following. There are more than 30 active podcasts dedicated to the hairy humanoid, covering everything from sighting reports to the history of Bigfoot research to interviews with witnesses who claim direct encounters. Sold-out spotting tours draw eager participants to areas with frequent sightings, turning Sasquatch hunting into a form of adventure tourism. Documentary films like “American Sasquatch: Man, Myth or Monster” examine the mystery using expert testimony, DNA analysis, and even quantum mechanics, treating the subject with the kind of seriousness that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago.

The numbers support the idea that belief in Bigfoot is growing rather than fading. A CivicScience survey found that belief in Bigfoot among U.S. adults increased by 18 percent between 2020 and 2022, with 13 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement that Bigfoot is a real, living creature. That’s up from 11 percent who said the same thing in May 2020. Interestingly, the uptick seems to have come primarily from cities and suburbs rather than rural areas — rural Americans were no more likely to believe in Bigfoot in 2022 than they were in 2020, but city-dwellers and suburbanites showed increased belief. Americans living in the western states remain the most likely to believe, with 15 percent expressing conviction compared to 11 percent of those in the Northeast.

A 2024 study found that Bigfoot-related merchandise generates $140 million annually. That includes everything from t-shirts and bumper stickers to books, documentaries, and equipment marketed to would-be Sasquatch hunters. Social media has accelerated the spread of alleged photos and footage, with platforms like YouTube and Reddit serving as distribution hubs for a community that shares and debates evidence with genuine passion. Whether that evidence holds up to scrutiny is a separate question, but the enthusiasm is undeniable.

Beatty believes the creatures live in every state, not just the heavily forested regions of the Pacific Northwest that most people associate with Bigfoot lore. The Hudson Valley, she points out, has extensive wilderness areas that remain largely unexplored. The Catskill Mountains and the forests along the river corridor provide exactly the kind of habitat a large, intelligent creature would need to avoid detection: dense cover, abundant water sources, and enough prey animals to support a population of apex predators. New York might seem like an unlikely Bigfoot hotspot to outsiders, but to Beatty, the evidence suggests otherwise.

KEEPING AN OPEN MIND

Before every expedition, Beatty performs rituals that might seem unusual to the uninitiated. She purifies her team members with white sage smoke, waving the burning herb around each person to cleanse them of negative energy before they enter Sasquatch territory. She leaves tobacco as tribute at the edge of the woods, an offering meant to show respect for the creatures they’re seeking. These practices draw from Native American traditions and reflect Beatty’s belief that Bigfoot is more than just an animal — it’s a being that deserves reverence and careful treatment.

The skeptics, she says, don’t bother her. She’s encountered plenty of them over the years, including people who have come into her bait shop and expressed flat disbelief in everything she does. Some of those same people have returned later with different attitudes, shaken by their own experiences while hunting or fishing in the region. Something happened to them in the woods — a sound they couldn’t explain, a shape moving through the trees, a feeling of being watched by something they couldn’t see — and suddenly Beatty’s stories didn’t seem so implausible anymore.

The goal of the Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley isn’t to capture one of these creatures or to prove their existence to a skeptical world through force of evidence. The goal, as Beatty describes it, is understanding. She wants to help people who have had encounters comprehend their unique experiences and process what they’ve seen without feeling like they’re losing their minds. She wants to learn enough about these beings that humans can safely live alongside them, respecting their territories and avoiding the kind of confrontations that could end badly for everyone involved.

Because according to Gayle Beatty, these creatures aren’t going anywhere. They’ve been in the Hudson Valley for a long time, probably longer than humans have been building houses along the river and hiking through the parks. They’re part of the landscape, whether people choose to acknowledge them or not. Whether we’re willing to share the woods with something we don’t fully understand — and whether we can do so without making the kind of mistakes that turn a wary neighbor into an angry one — remains to be seen.

The investigations continue. The Facebook group keeps growing. And somewhere in the forests of upstate New York, something large and hairy may be observing from the tree line, waiting to see what the humans do next.

REFERENCES

NOTE: Some of this content may have been created with assistance from AI tools, but it has been reviewed, edited, narrated, produced, and approved by Darren Marlar, creator and host of Weird Darkness — who, despite popular conspiracy theories, is NOT an AI voice.

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