LeRoy Nail describes himself as a Bigfoot researcher. He's spent ten years seeking proof of Bigfoot's existence. "All of us that go out and do this, we want to experience something that you can't explain," Nail said. (Bente Bouthier / WFIU-WTIU News)
In winter when the trees are bare, it’s hard to imagine seven-foot-tall creatures hiding in the forests of Morgan County. But Bigfoot researchers are convinced they’re here.
LeRoy Nail leads the Indiana Bigfoot Research Organization, whose Facebook group has over 3,000 members. He has been researching the legendary creature for 10 years.
“A lot of people will say, ‘Let’s go Bigfoot hunting.’ Well, that’s bad terminology because we’re not hunting anything,” Nail explained. “What we’re trying to do is research and understand what might be going on.”
Nail and another researcher took us to a secluded lake in Morgan County where they had gathered evidence such as footprints and hair. We were looking for signs that might be attributed to Bigfoot.
“Right up here, that catches my attention,” he said. Nail pointed to a cluster of dead trees leaning against each other in the shape of a teepee. For hikers and hunters, it wouldn’t be worth a second glance. But to a Bigfoot researcher, it’s a possible sign.
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“Those trees are too big for a person to do that, and then you start looking at it and going, ‘Okay, did all those trees just fall into that point? Or would it be possible that they got stacked up?” Nail asked.
As a researcher, he tells me that we’re just looking for anything out of the ordinary. Nail isn’t convinced that these trees are a Bigfoot structure, but he would consider going in for a closer look.
“Now, if that’s what that would be or not, I have no idea,” Nail said.
America’s obsession with Bigfoot goes back to 1958, when a Northern California construction worker named Jerry Crew noticed his equipment had been moved and discovered large footprints trailing through the worksite. Jokingly, he referred to the mystery beast as “Bigfoot,” and when a local reporter caught wind of the story it spread like wildfire.
Since then, witnesses from across diverse educational, ethnic and income backgrounds have come forward with stories that have provoked fascination from some and ridicule from others. There have been multiple reported Bigfoot sightings in every state, except Hawaii.
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The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization collected 82 total reports from Indiana, the earliest from 1975. Monroe County leads the state with eight total encounters.
The Chapman University Survey of American Fears found in 2021 that around 18 percent of Americans believe that Bigfoot exists.
For most in academia, Bigfoot research exists beyond the edge of credibility. But a few scholars say those experiences need to be taken seriously.
Robert Dobler is a lecturer at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute. What’s important to him isn’t whether Bigfoot can be verified. He’s interested in the way Bigfoot narratives travel and how people come to terms with experiences that can be profound and terrifying.
“I think that there are instances where people are almost traumatized by what they've seen,” Dobler said. “When we encounter something that we can't necessarily make sense of, it’s something very human to want to close that gap.”
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He said most reported encounters don’t come from Bigfoot researchers but ordinary people, often those familiar with their environment. Dobler said these encounters usually begin with a sense of unease or a feeling of being watched.
“Generally, it's an unsought encounter, people encounter something in the woods that they did not expect to see,” he said. “And it's often met with terror, a lot of fear.”
But members of the Bigfoot Research Organization actively seek these encounters.
“I've had things thrown at me, noises all the way around me. I know that they've been around me,” Nail said. “But I haven't had that actual visual sight. So that's what I'm always chasing.”
Many people who believe they have had Bigfoot encounters are reluctant to share their experiences.
“There's a lot at stake for somebody if you've got a nice, stable, comfortable life to come forward, so it really speaks volumes for those that do come forward,” Dobler said. “It's another kind of tick on the side of maybe they did actually experience something.”
“Myself, I get made fun of all the time. Everyone I work with kind of laughs at me,” Nail said. “But at the same time, a lot of those people make fun of you in front of everybody, but a little bit later they’ll come up to you and say, ‘Hey, let me tell you what happened.’”
The Indiana Bigfoot Research Organization wants people to discuss the subject without fear of being judged.
Nail presents his research at lectures, such as one last month at the Morgan County library. The crowd is a mix of interested adults, parents and children.
He has a slideshow prepared with photographs of handprints and broken trees as well as plaster casts of footprints he found in the field.
The bigfoot researcher’s emphasis on proof and rigorous discourse, according to Dobler, is a mirror image of academic culture. He said researchers well aware of how little credibility their work can have and how society at large perceives them.
“Western culture has been very resistant to allow anything that is experiential over evidential into our discourse,” Dobler said. “There’s kind of an anxiety about certain topics staining or tainting the reputation of academia. A lot of that has to do with the cultural image of bigfoot hunters, which is quite different from the actual bigfoot hunters.”
But for those who make bigfoot research a part of their identity, it’s the experiential that drives them.
Even for Nail, the search for evidence is secondary to what it means to be a researcher.
“What really gets people in to doing this is it's not really getting the answers, because they always leave me with questions,” Nail said. “It's always, ‘What just happened? I can't explain what just happened.’”
Dobler posed some questions of his own. “What would happen if one of these groups did find Bigfoot? What happens next? What happens to the shape of these of the subculture? What happens to these groups? Do they double down on their efforts to find more? Or do they start to kind of lose interest?”
“I hate to see that happen,” Nail said. “Because the first thing they're gonna do is, someone's gonna say, ‘I'm gonna have that mounted on my wall.’”
He grew pensive. “These are part human. When people see them, they'll tell you, ‘That was human.’”
