FBI releases trove of documents related to Bigfoot investigation 40 years ago
- Twenty two pages of documents were released on Wednesday from the FBI’s records vault into its Bigfoot investigation from 1976
- The documents mostly include correspondence between the FBI and Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in Oregon
- Included in the documents was an analysis of hair samples that were allegedly found in the woods that supposedly belonged to Bigfoot
- The FBI were sent the samples by the director of the center who asked for help analyzing them
- Following an analysis, the FBI determined the sample belonged to a deer
By Emily Crane For Dailymail.com
Published: 16:43 EDT, 5 June 2019 | Updated: 02:59 EDT, 6 June 2019
The FBI has just released a trove of documents that shows the agency investigated Bigfoot more than 40 years ago, including how they tested and analyzed samples of hair provided to them.
A total of 22 pages of documents were released on Wednesday from the FBI‘s records vault that details the FBI’s Bigfoot research from 1976 to 1977.
The documents mostly includes correspondence between the FBI and the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in Oregon.
Included in the documents was an analysis of hair samples that had allegedly been found in the woods that supposedly belonged to Bigfoot.
The FBI has released 22 documents related to a 1976 investigation it carried out into Bigfoot, including an analysis of this hair sample provided to them. The FBI later determined the samples belonged to a deer
The samples were sent in to the FBI by Peter Byrne, who was the director of the Bigfoot center at the time.
Byrne had written to the FBI requesting them to test 15 hair samples attached to a piece of skin, which he saw as an exciting breakthrough in relation to Bigfoot.
‘Briefly, we do not often come across hair which we are unable to identify and the hair that we have now, about 15 hairs attached to a tiny piece of skin, is the first that we have obtained in six years which we feel may be of importance,’ Bryne wrote.
FBI Assistant Director Jay Cochran, who headed the scientific and technical divisions at the time, agreed to test the sample ‘in the interest of research and scientific inquiry’.
A total of 22 pages of documents were released on Wednesday from the FBI’s records vault that details the FBI’s Bigfoot research from 1976 to 1977. Pictured above is a supposed Bigfoot sighting in California
The FBI agreed to test the sample after they were sent in by Peter Byrne, who was the director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in Oregon
He said the FBI laboratory focused on criminal investigations but sometimes they made exceptions to the policy.
The documents indicate that the FBI analyzed the hairs via ‘transmitted and incident light microscopy’ but they ultimately determined to be deer hairs.
‘The examination included a study of morphological characteristics such as root structure, medullary structure and cuticle thickness in addition to scale casts,’ Cochran wrote in response to Byrne.
‘The hairs were compared directly with hairs of known origin under a comparison microscope… It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin.’
The samples were returned to Byrne and the FBI’s brief investigation was closed in 1977.
Amateur investigators have long sought to prove Bigfoot’s existence.
FBI Assistant Director Jay Cochran, who headed the scientific and technical divisions at the time, agreed to test the sample ‘in the interest of research and scientific inquiry’
Byrne had written to the FBI requesting them to test 15 hair samples attached to a piece of skin, which he saw as an exciting breakthrough in relation to Bigfoot
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