Navajo Nation residents claim to have seen the creature

In November of 2020, 58-year-old Emerson Jim of Window Rock, Arizona, set out to hew down some trees in preparation for winter. Mapping out his route, he and other family members set out past Saint Michaels heading to the Summit. With the cold season coming up, Jim wanted to gather as much firewood as he could in hopes of not having to make the tedious trip again. Little did he know that this trip would cease any future firewood gathering in this area for him, as he believes he had an encounter with Bigfoot.

Bigfoot is said to be a large and mysterious creature that inhabits the wild forest areas of North America. Bigfoot is also known as Sasquatch. Most people who believe in Bigfoot’s existence, or claim to have seen one, describe a figure covered in long strands of hair that  have an apelike feature and stand up to eight feet tall. Some claim the creatures  are shy, which makes them elusive.

Jim said he’ll never forget the obnoxious stench and howlish scream he heard that day.

“I thought maybe an animal had died in the area and was beginning to rot, but the odor was overpowering,” Jim said.  "My family and I kept moving further into the grove of trees to select some good pine to cut down when we heard this howling noise. We stopped dead in our tracks and just froze.”

A deafening silence came over the forest after the screech. It was around 4:30 pm when Jim and his family were in the forest. They started to leave, but then they began hearing branches breaking, as if something heavy was stepping on them. Jim and his family took off running after that, and they haven’t returned to that forest since then.

The Navajo people have stories of a large hairy creature, sometimes even considered as holy men, called Yeti Di Kluii. In recent times, sightings have been common in the remote areas of the Four Corners region. As of 2012, there’s been an increase in sightings of a Bigfoot creature in the Chuska Mountains of the Navajo Nation.

One man, Jerry Lewis, came across Bigfoot when he took his livestock into the mountains. He spoke to the Farmington Daily-Times in 2012 with the help of an interpreter.

“My animals froze and I saw the thing walk over the hill, it was taller than 8 or 9 feet, taller than the bushes, upright and hairy,” he said.

The most recent Bigfoot sighting was captured on video Oct. 8 as a married couple were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary traveling on a train between Durango and Silverton in southwest Colorado. Shannon Parker and her husband Stetson spotted Bigfoot while filming the countryside.

“As we are passing by the mountains, Stetson sees something moving and then says, ‘I think it’s Bigfoot,’” Shannon said. “It was a cool sight for us to see, and seeing is believing.”

The Parkers’ video has gone viral.

This reporter did some digging and found that the legends of Bigfoot go back beyond recorded history and cover the world. Particularly in the Northwest, you hear tales of seven-foot-tall hairy men stalking the woods, occasionally scaring campers. The fascination with Bigfoot has prompted enthusiasts to form Bigfoot Search clubs. The whole paranormal aspect of searching for Bigfoot has grown immensely.

In 2013, some 300 people gathered over the weekend at the Walter Collins Center in Fruitland, New Mexico, for the inaugural Northern New Mexico Bigfoot and Paranormal Conference. Speakers came from as far away as Georgia and Missouri. The event was held to help educate people and provide tips on what to do in case they encounter Bigfoot.

Tips that reservation resident Brenda Harris could have used when she had a Bigfoot encounter.

“It was a summer night when something that was black, tall, and covered in hair tried to turn the doorknob of my mobile home and then fled off the porch,” Harris said.

The next morning, Harris found a footprint measuring about 18 inches long and four inches   wide outside her mobile home.

With the recent sighting and past encounters of Bigfoot, only time will tell when we will find out who or what Bigfoot is. But the big question is, once we find BIgfoot,  then what?

By Dee Velasco
For the Sun