Bigfoot investigator talks DNA testing, disappearances and the UAP connection | Reality Check

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Hello and welcome to Reality Check. Now, one of my favorite secret listens or watches is David Polite's incredible missing 411 series, the story of weird disappearances of people all over North America. And in fact, I know he's turned his attention here to Australia at times as well. David's joining us today to talk about his new movie, American Sasquatch: Man, Myth, or Monster. It's a great opportunity to get to know David and delve into the detail of the mystery of mysterious disappearances all over the world, as well as Sasquatch Bigfoot.

There's a guy here in Australia who's been telling me for years I need to come with him up into the Blue Mountains behind Sydney and he guarantees to me he will at least find evidence of Bigfoot. So David Pilateses, you come from a law enforcement background. I think you were 20 years working in law enforcement around San Jose. You served on a SWAT team, the street crimes unit and various detective roles which gave you your investigation abilities. You left law enforcement and entered the technology sector as an executive before turning to cryptozoolology.

And you founded the North American Bigfoot Search Organization and you've authored books on Sasquatch encounters, most notably the Hooper Project, Bigfoot Encounters in California. Your group helped organize a controversial 2013 DNA study led by Melbour Ketchum, a very reputable scientist, I'm told, which claimed evidence of a human primate hybrid, but it faced widespread scientific criticism as usual from anyone who doesn't like hearing about cryptozoolology. Your signature work, Missing 411, began around the early 2010s and the project originated when a park ranger told you about suspicious missing person's cases. And that's a large part of the reason why people know you. But David, I was quite intrigued.

I didn't realize until I was doing the research for this interview that you actually started out with Bigfoot. You were working in a technology company. I think the people who owned it wanted to remain anonymous, but they'd had their own Bigfoot encounters. Welcome to Reality Check and let's kick off from there. >> It's great being here, Ross.

Thank you very much. Uh, I was working in HR. I was running the HR organization for this company. I had two kids. I spent my time.

I left. And these guys right as I was leaving said, "Dave, we have a business opportunity for you." That's the way they put it. They called me into a room and they said, 'Hey, when we were young kids, we didn't know each other, but we each had different incidents in the mountains involving a Bigfoot and we need somebody to go out and investigate it. You're the perfect guy. We know you're credible.

You have investigative background. We want we'll fund the whole thing and you do it on your free time. I said, "No, thank you." I said, "No, thank you." Three different times when we met. Eventually said, "Okay." And I spent 50% of my life for 2 years on the Hoopa reservation just about 30 mi south of the Patterson Gimlin footage from ' 67 uh researching through the elders on the Hoopa tribe about Sasquatch, Bigfoot, etc. >> So let's remind our audience about the Patterson um footage that you're talking about there.

Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin. The 20th of October 1967. They shot film depicting a Bigfoot in Northern California in Del Naughty County on the Six Rivers National Forest. Um Patterson had previously been interested in Sasquatch stories and Bigfoot stories and he'd self-published his own book in 1966, a year earlier. Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? And I guess because of his prior interest, he copped a lot of stick, a lot of allegations that he'd hoaxed that film, that it was all nonsense.

What did you find and what do you think of the Patterson Gimlin footage? >> So, one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that after the footage became public, a guy named John Green from British Columbia, who was a newspaper man, took that footage to Disney Studios. And Disney at the time had the most advanced costume shop in the world. And the people that ran that shop and made the costumes said, "Number one, if we were going to make a costume, we'd never make a female costume with breasts. And number two, that costume, if it is, and they didn't think it was, is so advanced that we couldn't come even close to touching it." They said you could see the muscles on the back of the biped flex as it walked. He said there's nothing on earth that we could even contemplate making can touch that.

>> Can I make a confession to you, David? When I was writing my book, In Plain Sight, I was talking to people way way up in Northwest Cape in Northern Australia, which is the the location for an American military base that is now taken over by Australia called the Harold Eyee Halt Naval Communication Station. And it's an area that is something of a hot spot for paranormal phenomenon. And a lady told me that she'd looked out of her kitchen window and she was trying to find out who was stealing her mangoes. She thought it was local kids. And she swears blue and blind to me that what she saw was a Bigfoot, a Sasquatch.

And she's not somebody she's a very reputable person in the community. She she sits on the one of the local town council bodies. Um she's a a reputable woman with nothing to gain by telling me this story. A lot of people have these sightings and yet they are totally ridiculed and vilified frankly for coming forward and talking about it, aren't they? >> I think that was very truly the case say 20 years ago. I think the tide has turned.

I've written four books now about Bigfoot. And in each one of my books, I have people that come forward, show their photo, sign an affidavit to the story. And I have had more positive responses from that than anything you can imagine because the stories are credible, the people are consistent, their backgrounds are credible, um, and the facts line up when you look at it over time. I I think a lot of the press and the TV shows that have come about regarding Bigfoot in the last 20 years has helped the topic migrate from myth to, hey, this might be true. >> It's a bit like the UFO story.

You know, UFOs were similarly vilified and ridiculed until very recently. Do you think the same thing's happening with Bigfoot? >> 100%. I've been a muon investigator for 17 years, worked on UFO projects for decades and the the parallels between the two groups are so close it's unreal. >> Okay, let's let's go through this. You did this work for the two technology executives.

Did you find what they had seen or do you think that you found the group of Bigfoot or Sasquatch that they believed that they had seen? Were they in the same area when they had their sightings? >> So, that wasn't the edict that was given to me. They said, "Go out and see if the the topic is true. Is this a hoax issue? Are there bipeds living in the Sierra Nevada mountains? If you can find the proof, get DNA, do something that can advance the topic." And that's that's the path I took. We ended up finding hair samples that came off a little shed on the Hooper Reservation. A lady saw this thing walk into its yard.

It set off a motion light. She saw it lean over the shed, grab a couple bags of garbage, and walk away. One of our investigators went out right where that shed is, pulled out a pile of hair. We I I made like six different calls to universities asking them to test it. Nobody would touch the topic.

Eventually, I found Dr. Ketchum in Texas and we sent her the hair and she said there's only one other time in the history of her work has she ever seen hair like this and that was when Josh Gates submitted hair on a Yeti in um in the Himalayas. >> Wow. So, let's go through what you have found. Have you ever seen a Bigfoot Sasquatch yourself in person? You know, Ross, I've I've always been somebody that doesn't answer that question.

There's so much judgment that goes with that, and it detracts from really the topic that I'm trying to push forward, which are the facts surrounding this. If I say I did, then I'm going to immediately get labeled by some groups as a quack. If I said I didn't, people go, "Oh, well, you know, maybe he is really legit because he's saying he didn't." So, I'm not going to say I did or I didn't. I will say that there are tens of thousands of sightings of Bigfoot and Sasquatch in just North America. And then where you live in Australia, there's there's another bunch of sightings.

>> It's it's actually quite extraordinary. Right. Right where I live, there's the Blue Mountains up behind Sydney. And it's I mean, I've had so many people contact me telling me that they've seen weird beings up there. Um, there's a gentleman who contacted me who was a national parks ranger who refused to go on camera.

He wouldn't speak publicly, but he said whatever it is, it's real. And he'd seen, interestingly enough, he'd seen what you often describe in your film, The American Monsters, the the idea that there's often a flash, that there's some kind of light involved. And um it was interesting to be talking to a a New South Wales government national parks ranger and they're talking to me about the very real possibility that what they saw was something coming through a portal. Uh and I I guess if we are talking about paranormal phenomena, if we accept that there is a non-human intelligence engaging with this planet, which frankly I I David I I have to say I think I do, why is it inconceivable that there would be cryptozoological creatures that are somehow transitioning as well into this realm? U let's go through though what what you found. You what what exactly did the DNA test show? What did uh the Dr.

Kinchum actually aduce from the DNA samples that you derived? >> So the first hair samples that we found were sent to Dr. Ketchum. She sent them to a hair and fiber expert. There's this is a known profession. Uh say there's a crime scene and there's a body laying on a rug and the body is later found in a dump and they found fibers on it.

They can tell which rug these fibers came off of. Well, on the same token, mammals from all over the world have different hair. Under a microscope, all these hairs look different. In North America, these experts have all the hair of all the animals in North America. When the Bigfoot hair goes up against these and you look at under a microscope, it looks entirely different than anything.

It almost looks like it has scales on the outside. Now, if somebody tells you that they take a a substance and they immediately send it in for DNA, they're lying to you or they're not competent. First thing you want to do is get an expert look at it and say, "That's not deer. That's not cows. That's something unusual that's never been classified." Then we send it on for DNA testing, which is what we did with many of the samples.

These samples, you have to have a follicle at the end, which contains the mitochondrial DNA, which is the female side of the equation. We sent that on for testing. Dr. Ketchum came back and said, "Dave, let's see if we can get more of this DNA." We went on a radio show, biggest one we could get on, which was huge, and from Canada and the USA, we ended up getting 110 different samples, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, and those all came back the same, which is surprising. They came back that 12 to 15,000 years ago on the female side, it came back to the Middle East.

On the male side, the nuclear showed that that had never been in Genbank before, which Ross they will claim is impossible because everything in the earth has ever been has been classified. But and Genbank's the world receptacle for DNA. And they said, "No, this this has never been seen before." >> We're going through the same thing at the moment, David, with the tridactyl beings alleged in South America from Peru. And I haven't formed an opinion yet. Uh because of course some of the uh independent peer-reviewed DNA testing hasn't been done, but um early DNA testing does appear to suggest that there is indeed something anomalous about at least the beings that have been tested and that they're not artificial objects.

But the level of hostility to that possibility is really strong. And um it's interesting too the date that you're talking about there because that would precede the end of the younger dus, wouldn't it? The um the last ice age. >> Correct. Correct. >> And there's a there's there's some people I don't like to do it, but some people have said there's a lot lot of religious associations with that time frame as well.

>> Oh, tell me more. What what do you mean by that? >> I really don't go into that much. I I'm believe in Christ. I'm Christian, but I don't delve into that side of it. [gasps] >> So, if it came from the Middle East, we're talking here about a phenotype of human.

Are we a variant of human beings that somehow immigrated from the Middle East to America? >> I don't believe that. I there's no evidence of that. But it does show that the female side is a homo sapin. Uh it's a human. But on the male side, we don't know.

Now, funny is we were filming American Sasquatch and I met with a man named La Marzulli. LA was doing extensive testing on the elongated skulls. He says that they had the same results when they went for nuclear DNA on the elongated skulls. >> Oh, really? That's interesting. Wow.

I mean, I've It's interesting. Why do you think there is this resistance from establishment science to even considering the possibility that there is a um slightly off-the-wall explanation for this phenomenon? There is such hostility, isn't there, to even engaging with the subject matter. >> So Ross, you'll appreciate this. When I give speak talks at conferences, I say that our government will not acknowledge what they can't control. >> UFOs, Bigfoot, they don't want to acknowledge it.

and they'll never be able to control it. I don't think they can kill it. >> So, what's going on? Because I noticed that you go through the possibilities in your film. You you discussed the possibility that it was a gigantopithecus that went extinct in China about 300,000 years ago or the paranthropus boise which went extinct about 1.1 to 2.5 million years ago. You actually raise that as something that is speculated about.

But then I I guess I'm left at the end of American Sasquatch with the impression that you think the explanation for the Bigfoot Sasquatch phenomenon is something far more paranormal. So I'm a man of facts. I believe in science and we've recovered so much DNA that it's ridiculous at this point. And if we had recovered DNA of what the ape people believe is Bigfoot, there's one side that believes that this is an ape or gorilla. Another side believes uh this is something out of this world.

The aper gorilla people have been consistently saying for 20 years it's giganopythecus paranthropus. But you have to think science-wise. We've recovered the DNA from these locations. We have the DNA on Giganopythecus and Panthropus. If that DNA was that, the DNA would come back to them.

It's never come back to them. We've never found any evidence they were in North America. There's no bones. There's no blood. There's no hair.

So why that other site is even entertaining that, I don't understand. >> So what are they? If Bigfoot is real, David, what is it? So, it's flesh and blood while it's here on Earth. That's been proven because of the evidence that we've acquired. They have this ability almost like a Star Trek show to be able to move in and out of our time frame almost at will. Now, we brought on a team that had spent almost 20 years at Skinwalker Ranch under Mr.

Bigalow. We brought in the chief investigator for that, Colum Keller, and his scientists had seen that exact thing come through a portal, step up onto the land, and walk away. >> Yeah. Colum column's story is chilling. I mean, basically what he describes is essentially, as you say, a biped being coming down a glowing tunnel in three-dimensional space that emerges from nowhere and and steps out onto the landscape.

what is it about 8 foot tall and then it lops off into the darkness. Uh [laughter] I've actually spoken to people who have knowledge of that incident apart from column and uh they they give it huge credibility. Uh the tragedy is they didn't film it because of course they were packing up their gear at 2:00 in the morning. But uh I mean that implies that what we're talking about is potentially interdimensional. >> I think so.

The same way that in in the UFO world, it would appear that UFOs can move in and out of our ability to see, whether that's a stealth mode they have or they're moving in in and out of dimensions. Seems like Bigfoot parallels a lot of what they do. >> Okay. So, let's let's go through how many sightings how many reliable sightings have you yourself collected, David, in your years of work into the Sasquatch? hundreds. >> And there is a there is a thing that floats around in the UFO area as well, which is that witness evidence is no evidence.

That we shouldn't give credibility to witnesses because their evidence is so contaminated by their own prejudices and perceptions. What do you say to that? So, there's something called a FBI forensic artist. somebody who's trained by the FBI to sit down with a witness and draw a sketch of what the witness saw of the suspect. There was a man I found in Oklahoma named Harvey Pratt. He's a Cheyenne Rapjo chief and he was the number three man at the time in the Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation.

I explained to Harvey, I have all these witnesses in Hoopa. I'd like to fly you out, sit down with them and draw a sketch of what they saw. Harvey says, "Hey, I grew up with this in my culture. I'd love to come out there." That started a 15-year relationship with Harvey. He's he just did the sketches in my newest book.

And he came down, he sat down, and what Harvey had done in the past is say draw a bank robber. Amazingly, Ross, if you set that bank robber down in a room, it looked like Harvey drew that sketch with him sitting there. That's how accurate this man is. Well, when we finished that first day of eight drawings, his wife was there, who's also a special agent. We all just looked at each other and said, "We all thought that these were apes or gorillas.

These all have a human quality to their face." It was stunning. >> And the witnesses each stated, "That's exactly what we saw." >> It's interesting you should say that because I was watching your film, and when you see Harvey's images, his drawings, he he gives he imbuss the beings with a look of intelligence in their eyes. They're not they're not just beasts. They're not dumb animals. Uh they are intelligent, apparently emotional, compassionate animals.

Is that your impression? >> So I wouldn't call them animals, but I would say yeah, I I would say that they are highly intelligent because they have the ability to think strategically. Um and that's exemplified by how they maneuver around you when you're in the woods. um how they can evade things that we don't quite understand like game cameras uh and how they have this ability to move in and out of our dimension. So, let's talk about that because the obvious skeptical rejoinder is if if there are these beings, these cryptozoological hairy 8- foot tall beings loping around our forests, why haven't they been captured on some of the game cameras that are remotely installed all over North America and and indeed here in Australia? Why aren't they being captured on that technology? I think that they could see in that infrared zone that the camera puts out and they can see that beam and I think they avoid it. Is there a way of capturing them? I mean, have you thought of ways of doing it without projecting infrared? Is there a is there a system, a night vision system that could be used that would allow them to be captured without them realizing that there's technology there? I thought about that.

And in some houses, they have pressure pads that you activate when you're away. And if a burglar comes in your house, they step on the pad, it activates the alarm. Well, you could step on a pad and it could activate a camera. And there is no infrared coming out of the camera at the time. It just activates when you step on the pad.

That's the only other thing I've ever thought about that may work. So what we're talking about here, David, is you hypothesize possibly interdimensional. So if you think about what Mr. Keller or Dr. Keller said, "If you think about the work that's been done by others before me, there's really no other scientifically supportive theory except that because NASA has advised that portals are real." They have a group of eight physicists that work for NASA and they get together every month and they talk about portals.

And one of those scientists has talked to me and said, 'Dave, it's not a question if portals exist. We're actually talking about portals and how to use them offensively in battle. The same way he told me one day, he goes, "Dave, I think that some of the people you've talked about in your missing 411 are taken by way of portals because nobody ever sees it happening, but you turn your head and then all of a sudden they're gone." and he says,"I think that we have to understand how to manipulate that portal for us offensively." >> I have no way of verifying the story I was told, but I recently spoke to a person in Scotland in border Scotland and they are a highly incredibly intuitive human being um who claimed to be in contact with paranormal phenomena. And they described how as a very young boy um they were telepathically connected to a group of Bigfoot beings close to their home in country Scotland. And uh they they've cheerfully described to me meeting a Sasquatch family.

And um what what they impressed me about was, you know, they're not doing it to gain any glory. They're not they're not presenting in any way as mentally ill. They're they're just genuinely wanting to share a phenomena that that they believe is real. Have you I mean I'm struck in the film that you you talk to a lot of Native American people who who seem also John Dover who's an old friend of mine as well. I've got huge respect for John Do who's one of the former Navajo Rangers um who who actually investigated if you like the ex Files for the Navajo people.

Um, they give it a lot of credence, don't they? Oh, >> I think John's 100% there. And he believes exactly the path that we laid out in the film. And he supported that by several of his stories that he was assigned. He goes, "Dave, I didn't have an option to do this. I was told by my supervisor, this is your new job." And he goes, "I guess we're the X-Files for the Navajo." and he said that ended up with years and years in the field documenting many of the things that we're talking about today over and over.

>> So, one of the things I'm really interested in of course is UFOs and do you think there is a connection between the visual phenomena of unidentified anomalous phenomena and the Bigfoot that you've been investigating? >> Absolutely. Um, there's been so much work done on this specific issue that's been thwarted in the past. Specifically, there's a man named Stan Gordon, a very, very reputable man out of Pennsylvania who has documented hundreds of incidents where a UFO was seen above the mountains, comes down low, and then seconds later, a Bigfoot scene walking away, or a Bigfoot scene walking under a UFO, and then they both disappear. time and time again. >> There's a moment in your film, I forgotten who it is who actually says that they saw this, but they describe um a horizontal beam of light, an extremely bright beam of light appearing in a forest and something comes out of it.

They see a humanoid creature emerging from it. You know, the the incident I'm talking about, >> Adam Davies. So, talk me through that because I was fascinated with that one because I'll be honest with you, that's what the park ranger told me they saw here in Australia. >> Really? >> Yeah, >> that's interesting. So, uh >> almost identical account.

It was quite chilling to hear it. >> So, Adam was invited to a site in Oregon that someone had seen a lot of Bigfoot and he goes, "Hey, if you come to my site, you're going to see a Bigfoot. There's just no doubt." So, Adam brings his friend from the East Coast. They sit down and during the night when it's very dark, they don't see a beam coming down out of the sky. They see a horizontal beam parallel to the ground that's extremely bright.

Unusual. Nobody had seen this in this area. And Adam said that all of a sudden this glow starts to appear in the light. Very similar to Skinwalker Ranch where they see this glow in the light. And then Adam says slowly these creatures come out of that glow and he said that you could see down that tube and in fact at one point he's he could see a tree at the end of this tube.

So he said it was three-dimensional but he said that these things come out and they start coming at them at him and his friend. And he said David I've never been more scared in my life. Adam's super credible been all over the world researching Yeti Himalayas all kinds of things. He says, "I've never been more scared. I thought I was going to die right there." >> They had teeth.

They had big teeth, didn't they? >> So, Adam's friend shines a a light on him and they just disappear. >> Yeah. >> Adam Adam says, "Well, we've got we've got to go for round two on this." And and they stuck around and it happened again and the things come out again, Adam. And a lot of people have asked, "Well, are those baby Bigfoot?" And Adam said, "No, he didn't think they were. they were some other type of entity in the exact same area that Bigfoot was in, but they weren't a Bigfoot in his mind.

>> It's interesting because the the current, I guess, probably most popular theory to explain the UAP UFO phenomenon is not so much that they're extraterrestrial. And I noticed that the Pentagon shies away from allowing the use of the term extraterrestrial. Um, it it it uh well, sorry, it uses the term extraterrestrial to deny any knowledge of any extraterrestrial engagement with this planet, but it won't use the term nonhuman intelligence uh as a substitute. And it raises the question, it it's it's an often posed question in euphology. Is what we're talking about cryptoaterrestrial? Is it on this planet sharing this planet with us? Or is it interdimensional? Is it coming from another dimension, another frequency, another realm? What's your take? What do you think? >> So, when this movie came out, we had about six or seven hours of more video that we could have put on the movie.

We just ran out of time. And so, I decided I'm going to write a book supplemental to the movie to fill in the gaps of what we couldn't fit. And one of those stories that I put in there happened in the early early 1900s. A man was a rancher and he ranched and he he kept his uh herd of cows on the Oregon border and they lived with these Native Americans through the winter. And he kept the journal.

Well, he was on a TV show in the 1960s, his uh grandson, and his grandson presented the journal because the story in the journal was amazing. He says, the man says that he's standing there and he sees a Native American walking by him with a huge plate of food and he says, 'Where you going with all that raw meat? And the guy goes, "I can't talk." He walks away and goes up to these cliffs. Well, the guy was best friends with the elders. So, he goes to the elders and he goes, "Well, if you really want to know," he says, "Do you want to see this thing?" And the guy says, "Yeah." Goes, "Okay, we're going to go up to these cliffs. It's a big person.

It's kind of like you and me. big, but there's hair all over the body. He's very kind. He won't hurt you, but we feed him. So, this cattleman goes up to the cliffs and he sees this thing in this cave, giant hair covered, no language, but they kept feeding him this food and it was very polite.

So, as he's coming back down the mountain, he asks the elder, "Where does this thing come from?" The Native American says once or twice a year, a flaming moon comes down out of the sky and lands in the meadow right here. And one or two of the crazy bears, that's what they called these, comes out, walks like you and me, and runs up to the cliffs. And then after that, a man from the inside that kind of looks like you and me waves at us, gets back into the flaming moon and leaves. And that was in a journal that was on TV in the 1960s. And I include that because there was questions about how did these things get here? And if you think about the language that was used, it fits.

>> So you say there in that account that there's no language. But what I also found intriguing in your American Sasquatch movie is you do start exploring the possibility that what we're talking about here in recordings that have been obtained by a guy called I think Ron Moorehead of Sasquatches, he he's obtained pretty sharp recordings of these alleged beings. And you had them looked at by a sound expert, an audio expert. What did he find? So, this was in the 1960s, way before digital digitalization, and it was a professor at the University of Wyoming, and he said that they haven't been manipulated. They're outside the scope of what a man could produce.

They haven't been re-recorded, and he said that whatever made these sounds had to have been huge, over a,000 pounds. Now, what's weird about that, Ross, is that, you know, was it 45 years later, I was with a researcher named Scott Carpenter, and we're in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park where there have been a lot of sightings. We're coming down a trail and Scott always had his recording going. We stop on this ridge line and just below us, the same sounds that were heard in the Sierra sounds, Scott recorded on his video camera. We sent those on to the analyst.

uh Scott Nelson who did the analysis on the Sierra sounds and he said that's the first time he's ever heard anything that matched the Sierra sounds that was from Great Smoky National Park in Tennessee and what I found fascinating was that that linguist Scott Nelson in your film he's talking about how even though he doesn't know what the language is saying there is repetition there are phonemes and structures to what sounds like a structured langage language and he he he basically he's a naval linguist I think by background um and he he essentially suggests that while he doesn't understand what they're saying it does sound like they're communicating and and using a structured phmic language >> correct and he's given that presentation for about the last seven or eight years and I asked him I said has anyone ever given given you a challenge on this he said no Dave because anybody who has the ability to understand language and work it like I have as a crypto linguist for the Navy understands the way language moves that this has to be language. We just we don't know what they're saying but it is. One of the other great mysteries in the same part of America is I think it's there's been at times where it's been suggested to be sitting literally along the 44th parallel is cattle mutilations, animal mutilations. Is there any link do you think between animal mutilations and the Sasquatches? >> I don't think so. >> Oh, it's interesting.

>> The um now what happened with that was uh Mr. Bigalow who was working at Skinwalker Ranch originally also had a team working on Sasquatch and on cattle mutilations. Uh Dr. Keller gave me this huge file on cattle mutilations. He said, "Dave, read it and yeah, I think you'll understand it." And it went all the way back decades.

And it turns out that part of the work we were doing up in Canada paralleled the work that they were doing. I walked into a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Canada and the guy says, "Are you with Bigalow's team?" And I just I just been with him like two weeks earlier. I said, "No, what happened?" "Oh, they were here last week." >> And so what did Bigalow's team find? They didn't find any connection between cattle mutilations and the Sasquatch. >> No, I don't believe they did ever. >> So what are cattle mutilations? Do you have a theory on that? So, I'll go back to what they did is that they were able to document people seeing craft above the body.

Uh, some people had seen black helicopters. It almost seemed like there were two parallel paths. one by a group from us, probably the military, maybe trying to understand what was going on, and another extraterrestrial or terrestrial ET taking these for some reason. There was a lot of theory that maybe the cattle were diseased and this was a message to us that they were, but the message never got across. When you mention the Bigalow team, the thing I constantly remind myself and George Knap's done such sterling work in this regard is that a lot of the work that was done by the Bigalow investigation team was funded by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

So you you you had an arm of one of the more elite intelligence services in the United States military investigating paranormal phenomena, including cryptozoological creatures like Bigfoot, which frankly flies in the face of the the skeptical rejoinder that this is all nonsense, doesn't it? >> I believe that's true. It also tells me that they have no idea what's going on, just like we do. to think our government has this all solved. I don't think so. >> So, you you've obviously had the ability to investigate up close all over North America, not just the Sasquatch phenomenon, but the missing 411 phenomenon.

Do you think there's a connection? >> No. Two standalone different topics. I have not found any common ground. So, let's let's go into the disappearances, the mysterious disappearances for a moment, because I I'm fascinated with this. And as you would appreciate, it's a very personal story here in Australia because there's been a young boy disappear off a uh a remote outback station in countries where, frankly, if a child had wandered off, you would expect to find the child's body at some stage.

But there's been literally months of search and this little boy has literally disappeared off the face of the planet. There's no scrub really, no little bushes that he could hide behind. Uh the land has been exhaustively searched for literally tens of kilometers from the family home. It's consistent with what you describe in the missing 411 series that essentially often children are taken or disappear. Let's not use an active word like taken.

They disappear and often they're within feet like a few meters of other family members and yet people turn around and they quite literally disappeared off a forest path. Can you describe the phenomenon to me and maybe give me your feedback on what you think is going on? So, after looking at hundreds of these cases over 15 years, I started to put piles in my living room of specific facts in each case. And those piles got to be large. Like the largest pile was when police brought canines to the scene, the canines couldn't pick up a scent. Other ones, they bring a professional tracker, they couldn't find tracks.

Uh, another one is there's a weather event in conjunction with the disappearance or shortly thereafter that inhibits the search. Uh, and there's 12 profile points. And in those profile points, I stick to it. I try not to diverge even though a lot of people want me to. And in the Australian case, they couldn't find any scent trail.

They couldn't find any tracks. So really what do you have? Well, you have to look at other things. I made a movie is called Missing 411, the UFO connection. And Ross, when I started that, I honestly, we didn't have a story line all the way to the end. It's almost like I was getting spoonfed along the way.

Ended up meeting a man in Wyoming. Uh his name was Carl. Carl was 91, sharp as attack. He was a hunter. and he went into the Wyoming uh medicine bow national forest hunting.

He always went with his wife, but this time he went alone. And he said that as he was walking through the woods, he saw some animals, lined up to take a shot, took the shot, and he said, "Dave, I could see in slow motion as the bullet came out of the gun, stopped a few feet away, and fell to the ground." says, 'I walked over, grabbed the bullet, put it in my pocket, and then this entity, like an alien, walks up to him and throws him a packet of what would look like vitamins, and mine speaks to him and says, "Take them." Carl says, "I know it sounds stupid, but I took it." Says, "Next thing I do is I wake up and I'm on a craft and we're flying away. We get to this location. I get off the craft and I'm told to walk by this big metal room divider kind of thing. He says I walk by it and they said, "We don't need you.

We're sending you back." So I asked him, I said, "Well, Carl, if they did need you, did that mean you're not coming back?" He says, "That was the feeling I had." And I said, "Well, then why didn't they want you? What's what's wrong with you?" and he says, "Well, I had polio when I was a young young kid and I've had serious lung issues and I have scarring. I also have had uh vasectomy." So, anyhow, now this is the important part. They send him back and he says he remembers falling through the sky, hitting the ground, and rolling down a hill. Ross, I cannot tell you how many people have died in the last 20 years from falling in unusual locations after being missing for long periods of time. Carl said he hurt his shoulder in the process.

His truck wasn't in the position that he left it in. It had been moved way deeper into the forest by I guess the entities. He eventually was found, went to a hospital. All the scarring on his lung was cleared. Doctors could not explain that at all.

And he had other medical issues that were entirely cleaned up. And the real kicker to the story is the bullet. He still had it in his pocket. The Wyoming Department of Criminalistics took that bullet and did an analysis on it and they said that they couldn't replicate how that bullet was deformed or what it could have hit because it made no sense. And there's a picture of the bullet in one of the books I wrote.

It's it's very weird. >> [sighs] >> So, we have a situation then where the the Sasquatch issue is as ridiculed and stigmatized as the UFO issue. You you're left in no conclusion. There's no doubt at all, David, that it's real, that that there is a real phenomenon here. >> 100%.

And if I I've stated it in many of my videos that this matches what happened to Carl. There's no A person was here one second hunting with a friend. They turn around, the guy's gone, but there's no tracks leaving the scene and there's no centrail leaving the scene. There's only two options. He either went in or he went up.

Um, where in the world have you investigated Sasquatch? Was it just in North America or have you looked in other countries? I'd love to get you down here to Australia. >> I have been to the Blue Mountains and I have met a few of you, the so-called experts in your area on the Bigfoot Sasquatch topic. And I was I was pleasantly surprised. The evidence they showed was convincing. And >> have you found any other countries in the world where there is this phenomenon occurring or is it just Australia and North America? So, the only country in the world that has actually put federal resources behind it is Russia.

And those Russian investigators believe what I just said, that it's a human hybrid. And they've stated that over and over to me over the years. They said, "You're the only guy that's gotten it right, Dave." And that was a federal investigation by five PhDs from Russia. >> So, they based that on a DNA analysis. How did they figure out that it was a hybrid? They based it on interviewing dozens of well probably hundreds of people and the inter relationship that the Almasti had with the citizens in that area.

There's several strong allegations that they they may have mated with each other. Wow. This gets deeper and deeper. How do you deal with the skeptics? I mean obviously the skeptical debunkers would say this is all a load of bunkham. It's all nonsense.

Let let's go through some of the standard arguments. You know, a lot is made in say your missing 411 of how people often um their clothes are found or part of their clothing is found a long distance from from um either where their body is found or where their body is never found. And I I guess I I I lived in New Zealand for a large part of my childhood. And I can remember once dealing with a a German Swiss tourist who was suffering from exposure and she'd peeled off all her out of um uh warm garments in a freezing cold snowstorm because she was suffering from hypothermia and she had no understanding of how cold she really was. And her reaction was to remove her external clothing because she was fearful that she was overheating.

Um, people do weird things when they are hypothermic, don't they? Does that explain the phenomena, the weird stuff that you find in and around these locations when people disappeared? >> It would if the person did that in a time frame for them to become hypothermic. Dozens of times I found that person walks out of their house, they go on a hike and a 100 yards down the hike hiking trail they find a pile of clothes and it's the victims. Not enough time to become hypothermic. The other strange aspect to it is many times these clothes are found folded and that's odd. >> Yeah.

It's funny, too. You know, the ones that really made me sit up watching your Missing 411 series were little children who are actually part of a family group, maybe just lagging a few meters behind. Uh there's quite a few of those where the kids just disappear even though they're actually with a group at the same time. >> Correct. Yeah.

In fact, a journalist wrote a story about my work and they they titled it, "Don't be last in line." [laughter] [gasps and sighs] >> So, what's going on? I mean I mean obviously we all expect you to wrap this up with a bow and make it look pretty. David, try and explain to us what what the phenomenon is of missing 411s. What what are what are these mysterious disappearances all about? >> I don't think there's one general application you could put on it, but I do believe that one aspect of this is abduction. And as somebody who's interviewed many, many people that have claimed abduction over the years, I 100% believe it's a true issue. And to think that it only occurs in the bedroom or in a car would be ridiculous.

But there's many other aspects to this is why why only certain people? And one of one of the things that I've done is I categorize disappearances sometimes by the person's profession. I'll give this to you. There's six physicists missing in the world that have disappeared in the wilds of the world. They're all German. They're all German.

>> Wow. I actually I vaguely recall one of them. It was near the Grand Canyon that you you told a story about and and his car was found, but he was never recovered. There's another uh visiting physicist from Germany, university professor that disappeared at Arrowhead Lake in Los Angeles County. There's another one that disappeared in Antarctica at the ice station, the bird ice station, never found.

And there's others besides that. [gasps] Do you think that indicates that the phenomenon that lies behind this is malevolent, badly disposed towards humans? It's out of my pay grade, but I I would say logic says it's probably doesn't have our best interests. Yeah. So, I mean, I if that's the case, then what we're talking about is something that is at the very least indifferent to human suffering. It doesn't seem to be concerned about how humans will react if they're taken, particularly little children.

It seems so heartless to take a child. >> Oh, 100%. And I think that's one thing that we could all agree upon. If you stayed away from kids, maybe we'd have more sympathy symphony uh symph we'd more h have more concern for your feelings and thoughts. But once you start removing kids from us, that's a whole different lifestyle issue.

>> Sure. So, I mean, it's a huge dilemma this because ultimately you you're describing a phenomenon which is real. I mean, you've gathered an enormous amount of data on both the Sasquatch and missing people, and you've you've essentially been led to an alarming conclusion in both cases that there is something potentially paranormal behind the reason for those disappearances. There's no prosaic explanation that you can think of that would explain either of those two phenomena, the Bigfoot or the mysterious disappearances. Well, Ross, you've been in the UFO world a long time, and you know how evasive our government is on that topic.

How about this? Several years ago, there were a series of missing people in national parks in the US. So, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request against the National Park Service Police for a list of missing people from their system. Well, they came back to me and they said, "No, we don't have any lists of missing people in any national parks." George Knap, the investigative reporter that we talked about earlier, he came right on his show and he said, "Dave, they're liars. They have a list. They don't want you to have it." >> What? Why? >> What? What explanation did you get? Did you get Did you ever get any explanation as to why they excluded it? >> The only explanation I had is they said, "If you want a list, we can put it together for you for $1.4 million." >> [laughter] >> Um I vaguely recall you you talked about Australian national parks and they had the same kind of disappearances as well that there were the similar kind of unexplained disappearances in Australian national parks.

You've cast your net beyond North America. You think this is an international phenomenon. >> So I've written stories about disappearances in 16 countries. Australia being one of the bigger ones, New Zealand, UK, uh, Africa, it's it's pretty flagrant. As the news has gotten around the world of what my profile points are, people have submitted stories to me, thankfully, that really help progress the research because otherwise I'd never hear from them.

>> You make the point that clearly government knows a lot more than it's letting on. The simple fact that the Bigalow team was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency to investigate among other things cryptozoological phenomena shows that you know even the most elite intelligence services in the United States are taking a close interest in this phenomenon. Do you think the United States government intelligence community knows a hell of a lot more about this phenomenon than it's letting on? >> 100%. 100%. Um, and if you just look at at the evasive way they handle the topic, why not be transparent about it? Well, why not? I mean, essentially, if people are disappearing to the extent that they are in national parks or or any remote area in the United States, why isn't that an issue of extraordinary concern? If it was happening on the streets of our major cities, it would be an extreme worry, wouldn't it? >> Absolutely.

But again, it goes back to the our governments like us to believe that they are in control at all times. Well, if it came out that they weren't in control and they couldn't control this, what would that say about them? Well, maybe they're not as strong as you and me think. You think maybe that's the explanation for why they're so evasive about the UFO phenomenon? >> 100%. >> Yeah. So, where does your investigation take you next, David? Obviously, you've described a mystery and and that's what I take from American Sasquatch that you've essentially very successfully convinced me that there is a real mystery there, just like we're all aware now that there is a real mystery with the UAPs, the unidentified aerial phenomena or anomalous phenomena.

What what can you do to develop your investigation? What kind of work can be done to try and prove what what would you like to achieve? So, I think it's unfortunate, but people don't read books at the rate they used to. I mean, I wrote 12 books on missing people, all titled Missing 411. But I learned long ago that people will watch a movie, Ross. And right now, we're 99% done. It'll be out in the first quarter of next year.

Missing 411 National Parks. It's a documentary. It's going to be outstanding. I've already seen it. It's almost ready to go.

And I think we're going to open up a lot of eyes with that movie. And hopefully with each with each one of these movies, new evidence rolls in as people hear about it for the first time. >> Just a devil's advocate, I guess the National Parks Administration might be worried that you'd be scaring people away, that that you're telling people that maybe national parks aren't the safe, happy places for families to visit that a lot of people might think. Uh could that explain why there is so much government confidentiality and refusal to engage with you on this issue? No, it's just the opposite. When we publicize that there's, say, a Bigfoot activity at a park or we publicize there's UFO activity at the park, attendance rises at those locations.

[laughter] >> People want to go and see a Bigfoot. So, if you do want to see a Bigfoot in North America, where would you go? >> You know, I think they're going to make the determination if you're going to see him or not. And there it's so inconsistent. I couldn't say that. Yeah, you have a better chance here than there.

In reality, almost anywhere in the mountains of North America, you have a decent chance. >> But you don't think they are living in those mountains? Whatever they are, they're coming to those remote areas for a short period of time. >> I think they move in and out of there. Why? How? How is by portals, but why? I don't know. And I guess one of my final questions would be I get the impression looking at your film and reading your books that they don't want to be found that they're shy or evasive with us humans.

Why do you think that is? >> To me, that's the million-dollar question. Uh I've heard hundreds of times that they can mind speak to people, not verbally, just mindto mind. Why not come into a campsite someday when it's you and me out in the middle of nowhere camping and talking and mind speak to us and just talk? It's almost as though they they live by a set of rules that we don't understand and they can't violate because it's so consistent. No matter where you are, they won't come in and allow that to happen. >> Well, it's a fantastic mystery.

And David, I I have to say to you, um, you know, I came into the whole subject of UFOs a total skeptic about eight years ago, and I've slowly come around to the idea that there's a reality there. And, um, having read your books and watched your latest film, American Sasquatch, I am fascinated by the possibility that there is a reality to the whole Bigfoot phenomenon. Where where can we watch your film? Where where is American Sasquatch viewable? Amazon and iTunes. And if you want to watch the trailer or other shorts that we've posted, you can come on to my YouTube site. It's called the Can-Am, a Canadian American Can-Am Missing Project.

[gasps] I tell you what, we'll run the trailer here for our viewers to go out. But David, before we go, I just want to say thank you very much to you and I hope we can continue a relationship with you. I I love your work and I really commend it. Maybe we could have you back when you have your national parks book. It would be fascinating to hear your story.

>> I'd love to be back, Ross. Thank you very much. >> Good to talk to you, David. And uh congratulations on your work. I I like the fact that you're standing up against the stigma and the taboo.

Keep on proddding and causing mischief. Thank you very much for joining Reality Check. Thank you. >> I've been a woodsman all my life and and I've never been afraid of anything that's in the woods, but I am just a little bit afraid of these uh Bigfoots. When you go up there, you're in their backyard.

>> They have been here for a long time. >> Oh, there you go. >> It's not simply some creature. There's two divergent thoughts on what Bigfoot is. One side believes it's an ape gorilla.

The other school of thought is it's multi-dimensional. >> There's a physical and a non-physical aspect to it. >> You've got Bigfoot, you've got orbs. And I mean the two go hand in hand. >> You'll have a Bigfoot sighting and then a UFO sighting or vice versa.

>> There is high strangeness attached to almost every meaningful Bigfoot encounter. >> We started tracking this creature. The tracks disappear. [music] They just they're gone. >> Some people know some things that they don't want other people to know.

It's [music] pretty surprising what we found. Skinwalker Ranch research on orbs, Bigfoot. There were unusual creatures on Skinwalker [music] Ranch. >> There's a lot of information that doesn't get talked about. The paranormal things that no ape could certainly do.

>> If you're [music] out to solve the problem, you're going to have to know all aspects of it. I saw a [music] Sasquatch and it vanished into thin air >> through the night vision. Seeing something completely different. >> There's things out there [music] we just don't see or understand. Has the ability to cloak.

>> It rewrites history. >> They were [music] astonishing to see >> right here. >> Oh god. And before we go, please don't forget to send in your questions for our weekly question and answer. You can email us at realitych checkck@newsnationow.com.

We look forward to hearing from you. >> Thank you for watching. Subscribe below and download our NewsNation app right now on your phone and you will get fact-based, unbiased news for all Americans.