Behind every Bigfoot headline is a community of people who collect reports, walk the woods and argue over the evidence. Some are skeptics, some are true believers, and most land somewhere in between. If you're new to the field, here's a plain-English guide to the main groups and what they do.
Note: we're listing these organizations for information. Everything Bigfoot™ isn't affiliated with any of them, and listing doesn't mean endorsing every claim they make.
Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO)
Website: bfro.net
Wikipedia describes the BFRO as the oldest and largest Bigfoot research organization. It's best known for its free, searchable public database of sighting reports from across North America, organized by state and county. Reports are reviewed by investigators before posting, and the BFRO sorts them into Class A, B and C.
The BFRO also became famous through the Animal Planet series Finding Bigfoot (2011–2018), which followed BFRO investigators and popularized the word "squatching."
How the BFRO vets reports. According to the BFRO's own history page, its website launched in 1995 and was the first site to offer a database of Bigfoot sighting reports. The group says none of the modern reports in its online database go public without some kind of investigation. That can mean anything from phone interviews with the witness to field searches with trackers and wildlife biologists. If a witness can't be contacted and interviewed, the report isn't considered credible.
The BFRO's classes rate the potential for misinterpretation, not how honest the witness is:
- Class A: clear sightings where mistaking another animal can be ruled out with greater confidence.
- Class B: sightings at a distance or in poor light, and any report where something was only heard. Sound-only reports are always Class B, never Class A.
- Class C: most secondhand reports and stories with untraceable sources. These are rarely listed publicly, except for well-documented incidents from before 1958 and sightings covered in non-tabloid newspapers or magazines.
The BFRO is clear that Class B reports aren't considered less credible than Class A. In the public dataset behind our map, the 4,045 reports split almost exactly in half: 2,015 are Class A, 2,014 are Class B and only 16 are Class C.
Why it matters to us: our sightings page and map are built from a public dataset compiled from BFRO reports. Every entry links back to the original report on BFRO.net.
Get involved: you can submit a report through the BFRO form. See our step-by-step guide to reporting a Bigfoot sighting.
North American Wood Ape Conservancy (NAWAC)
Website: woodape.org
NAWAC is a nonprofit that runs long-term field projects. It uses the term "wood ape" rather than Bigfoot, and it argues for documenting and protecting what it believes is an undiscovered species. Its approach centers on sustained fieldwork in specific study areas rather than collecting reports nationwide.
The Olympic Project
Website: olympicproject.com
A Washington-based research group focused on the Olympic Peninsula, known for habitat research and footprint-cast work. (When we checked the website from our server it didn't respond, so try it in your own browser.)
Small Town Monsters
Website: smalltownmonsters.com
Not a research group exactly, but an important part of the community. Small Town Monsters is an Ohio-based independent film studio that makes documentaries about regional cryptid legends. Its 2015 film Minerva Monster covers Ohio's 1978 Grassman reports. According to the studio, founder Seth Breedlove started Small Town Monsters after that 2015 release, and the team has since put out more than twenty films, along with investigative series, web series and podcasts. Its stated mission is to tell "beautifully human stories rooted in the strange and unexplained," giving a voice to witnesses who've been ignored or mocked. Documentaries like these help preserve local witness stories and history.
Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO)
Website: gcbro.com
A long-running regional group that collects sighting reports from the Gulf South, including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma. If you live in the Piney Woods or the bayou country, it's a regional database worth knowing alongside the BFRO's. See our upcoming Texas guide for more on that part of the country.
Museums and centers
Some of the most active "organizations" in Bigfoot culture are museums:
- North American Bigfoot Center (Boring, Oregon), opened in 2019 by Finding Bigfoot's Cliff Barackman
- International Cryptozoology Museum (Portland, Maine), founded by author Loren Coleman
- Willow Creek–China Flat Museum (Willow Creek, California), with its large Bigfoot collection
- West Virginia Bigfoot Museum (Sutton, West Virginia)
We cover these and more in our upcoming Bigfoot museums guide.
A bit of history: the "Four Horsemen"
Long before websites and TV shows, a handful of researchers shaped the field. Author Loren Coleman dubbed four 20th-century figures the "Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery":
- Peter Byrne, who ran the Bigfoot Information Center and once got the FBI to analyze hair samples (they turned out to be deer)
- René Dahinden, a famously tenacious investigator
- John Green, a journalist who compiled thousands of reports and wrote Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us (1978)
- Grover Krantz, the Washington State University anthropologist who studied footprint casts
The scientists who took it seriously
A few credentialed scientists have studied the Bigfoot question in the open, and they're worth knowing by name:
- Jeff Meldrum (1958–2025) was a full professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University and an expert on how primates' feet are built and how they walk. He believed Bigfoot exists and wrote Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (2006). The book drew sharp criticism, including a detailed negative review in the Skeptical Inquirer.
- John Napier, a British primatologist known for his work on Homo habilis, wrote the 1972 book Bigfoot, which weighed the evidence cautiously.
- John Bindernagel, a wildlife biologist, sought evidence for Sasquatch from 1963 onward.
On the skeptical side, the standard reference is Abominable Science! (2013) by Daniel Loxton and paleontologist Donald Prothero. Investigators like Joe Nickell and Benjamin Radford have examined many Bigfoot claims, and Brian Dunning's Skeptoid podcast has compared alleged Bigfoot recordings with known animal calls.
"Apers" vs. "Woo-Woos"
Wikipedia notes that sociologists Jamie Lewis (Cardiff University) and Andrew Bartlett (University of Sheffield), who interviewed 160 Bigfoot enthusiasts over three years, described a split in the community. "Apers" believe Bigfoot is a flesh-and-blood animal, an undiscovered ape. "Woo-woos" lean toward paranormal explanations. You'll hear both views at conferences, sometimes in the same session!
How to choose a group to follow or join
- Look at their methods. Do they explain how they review reports and evidence?
- Look for transparency. Do they publish data, show their work, and correct mistakes?
- Watch for red flags. Be cautious of anyone selling "proof," asking for big money up front, or encouraging people to trespass or shoot.
- Prioritize safety and ethics. Good groups respect landowners, wildlife and Leave No Trace.
Where to meet these people
The best place to meet researchers face to face is a Bigfoot conference: Ohio, Texas, Florida, the Smokies, the Ozarks and more. Check our festivals page for dates, and pack well using our upcoming Bigfoot gear checklist.
And for the skeptical side, which every curious person should read, see Is Bigfoot Real? What Science Says and the full list of books and links in our research library.
