Matt Pruitt is a member of the North American Wood Ape Conservancy and the producer of the podcast Bigfoot and Beyond, hosted by Cliff Barackman and James “Bobo” Fay, of Finding Bigfoot fame. In 1999, a teenage Pruitt had an enigmatic experience while camping with friends in the woods of his native Georgia. It wasn’t until years later as an adult that Pruitt started to believe they’d encountered a Sasquatch, a possibility which hadn’t occurred to him at the time because he didn’t yet believe such creatures existed.
This origin story is more than an amusing anecdote however — it’s central to the entire thesis of Pruitt’s new book, The Phenomenal Sasquatch: Seeking the Natural Origins of a Cultural Icon (2023).
The Phenomenal Sasquatch is an old-school Bigfoot book that argues the beast is a hitherto unrecognized species of ape indigenous to North America. All suggestions that Sasquatches are in any way supernatural or interdimensional are summarily rejected as needlessly extravagant and undermining the credibility of the subject. “It’s often said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” writes Pruitt. “In my estimation, there isn’t much about the biological hypothesis that should be thought of as extraordinary. After all, we know that apes exist.”
The only viable alternative to the “biological hypothesis,” according to Pruitt, is what he calls the “psychological hypothesis” — the idea that Bigfoot is a myth that people experience as a lived reality. Pruitt dogmatically opposes this idea, refuting it at every turn via a series of strange and sometimes contradictory arguments, like when he claims that Bigfoot can’t be mythical because it’s not a universal archetype.
Even if this weren’t irrelevant, Pruitt later contradicts himself by acknowledging that “mystery apes” are reported all over the world. Phenomenal Sasquatch also argues that eyewitnesses never report the creatures exhibiting supernatural abilities, as one would expect from a mythical monster. If that were true, why did Pruitt feel the need to spend considerable page space refuting this exact interpretation?
Related to this is Phenomenal Sasquatch’s contention that Bigfoot is never described exhibiting any fantastical features like “radiant colors.” Has Pruitt not heard of Fluorescent Freddie, the neon-green Bigfoot that over a dozen people in French Lick, Indiana, claimed to have seen in 1965? Pruitt also tries to suggest that Sasquatch can’t be mythical because people simply don’t see mythical creatures; “there are no credible historical or modern claims of dragon sightings or encounters.” I believe cryptozoologist Richard Freeman, among others, would take issue with that assertion.
Pruitt’s primary defense against the mythical Sasquatch is the field of phenomenology, hence the title of his book. He defines the term as “the study of how we experience the world […] It aims to differentiate the way that things ‘appear’ in human experience from the objective, material reality responsible for the experience.” This is technically correct, but Pruitt employs this idea to say that people in the past ascribed supernatural attributes to great apes and large predators like tigers and bears, even though these animals don’t possess such abilities. He then proposes that this is also the case with Sasquatch. In other words, rather than being a myth, Bigfoot is a real animal that’s been mythologized.
This however is not phenomenology, but euhemerism (the belief that all myths are based in truth), as promulgated by the “father of cryptozoology,” Bernard Heuvelmans. An actual phenomenologist would say that you can experience an entirely mythical Sasquatch in the woods for the exact reason that our subjective experiences don’t always correspond with objective reality. Judging by Phenomenal Sasquatch‘s bibliography, these errors likely derive from Pruitt’s understanding of myth seemingly consisting entirely of the writings of Carl Jung, and some outdated sociobiological theories which essentially amount to warmed-over euhemerism.
Considering Pruitt’s vehement denial of the possibility of a mythical Sasquatch, you might assume he believes the empirical evidence for the animal is thoroughly convincing. And while he certainly takes time to discuss the same old blurry photos, dubious vocalizations, probably hoaxed footprints, and the veritable litany of special pleading that accompanies the fact that no one has yet to bag a Bigfoot alive or dead, in Phenomenal Sasquatch, Pruitt is actually incredibly forthcoming on this point, which leads to one of the most brutally honest and surprisingly melancholy passages I’ve ever come across in a book on cryptozoology:
“The sad truth of the matter is that proponents have failed to provide any substantive proof for the existence of the Sasquatch. I include myself in that collection of failed contenders. Some have blamed ‘science’ for refusing to recognize their ‘discovery’ of the Sasquatch, unwilling to take responsibility for their failures. I felt this way for quite some time, but no longer participate in this blame and shame campaign. I accept my failures. It’s a humbling admission but is ultimately the correct perspective; one that provides an antidote to cynicism.” (p. 256)
Where then does this leave the ardent Bigfooter who refuses to accept that their quarry might not reside in the woods, but only in their imagination? For Pruitt, heir apparent of Heuvelmans, there is only one recourse: to prioritize belief in Bigfoot over evidence for Bigfoot.
Which brings us back to teenage Pruitt’s experience in the Georgia woods. As noted, at the time Pruitt was a non-believer, and so was unable to understand what happened to him. It was only after he started to believe in Sasquatch that he could see the evidence for his own encounter with the creature. However, this raises a serious quandary. If you have to believe in Bigfoot before you can see them, how is this anything other than psychological? After all, as science-fiction writer Phillip K. Dick once quipped, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
Special thanks to William D. Myers of the Coalition for Critical Thinking in Bigfoot Research for sending me a copy of this book.
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