Evidence Of Bigfoot In Oregon? Shrieks, Moans Recorded But Scientists Doubtful

There’s a swamp in the Umatilla Indian reservation near Pendleton, Oregon, that makes people who live near it nervous. At the end of November residents nearby started hearing shrieks and moans at night, but they were too scared to investigate or even walk their dogs by the swamp during the day. Some in the area say it’s a family of foxes or coyotes, but others point to another solution: Bigfoot.

“It’s causing an uproar around here,” said Sylvia Minthorn, who lives nearby, according to the Oregonian.

Colleen Chance, a tribal housing authority employee who recorded the sounds on her iPhone, also was unsure if a Bigfoot had been trying to make its presence known in the area.

“It’s kind of spooky,” she said. “Some say its foxes, some say it’s a female coyote and some say it’s Sasquatch. I don’t know what it is.”

Scientists have said that almost all evidence of Bigfoot, a sort of half-man, half-ape that’s also known as the Sasquatch and has reported all over the world, has been the result of either misidentification or a hoax.

Carl Sheeler, a wildlife program manager in the Umatilla area, said the foggy swamp is the perfect destination for animals including cougars, foxes, coyotes and the like to let out their shrieks.

“When they are breeding it’s absolutely hair-raising,” he said. “And the first time a person hears a fox calling in the night, kind of echoing, it raises the hair on the back of your neck. That wetland is the perfect place to have an echoing call sound eerie.”

The Umatilla Reservation spans roughly 178,000 acres and is home to 1,500 people across Oregon’s Blue Mountains. It's where supposed Bigfoot sightings have been frequent since someone found an 18-inch footprint in 1966. When a prankster named Ray Wallace died in 2002, his family revealed at his funeral that he had been the source of most of the Sasquatch “evidence” in the heavily forested Pacific Northwest.

Last year a video was posted online by an Ohio man who claimed to see a Bigfoot run across his path during a backwoods ATV ride. Thick Ohio forests are a similar habitat to the Pacific Northwest, leading many to question if the Sasquatch had made its way across the country. The video was later revealed to be nothing more than a man dressed in a bear suit playing a prank on his friends.

“Scientists have said that eyewitnesses have only presented circumstantial evidence over the years that make it impossible to confirm whether there really is a Bigfoot out there," the 10TV news station reported at the time. "Some swear that an audio recording known as the 'Ohio Howl' presents evidence that Bigfoot is real. A barking dog is heard in the recording and then a siren-like moan is audible."

Below are the noises recorded on Colleen Chance’s phone in Oregon.