Is Bigfoot in Colorado?
A Wyoming couple thinks so after spotting what they believe to be the “ever-elusive creature” while they were riding the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in southwest Colorado over the weekend.
Shannon and Stetson Parker were looking for elk during their Sunday train ride through the San Juan Mountains on the way to Durango from Silverton when Stetson saw what he thought could be Bigfoot.
“We were looking for elk in the mountains and my husband sees something moving and then can’t really explain it. So he’s like, ‘Bigfoot!’” Shannon told The New York Post. “It was at least six, seven feet or taller. It matched the sage in the mountains so much that he’s like camouflaged when crouching down.”
Shannon said in a Facebook post that she scrambled to take photos of the beast, while a man sitting next to Stetson took a video of the creature that has now gone viral on social media.
“Y’all, out of the hundreds of people on the train, three or four of us actually saw, as Stetson says in the video, the ever-elusive creature Bigfoot,” she wrote in the Facebook post. “I don’t know about y’all, but we believe.”
What or who is behind the sighting?
Theories about who — or what — was behind the Sunday sighting have gained traction online this week, including on Reddit, where users speculated someone from the Silverton-based RV company Sasquatch Expedition Campers could be involved.
When reached by phone Thursday, Sasquatch Expedition Campers co-founder Kass Kremer referred to the company’s statement on Facebook, which included a denial… of sorts.
“We, The Sasquatch Crew, feel compelled to address recent allegations and rumors that have been circulating, suggesting our involvement in the train sighting. We want to make it unequivocally clear: It wasn’t us,” the statement said.
But the statement was written on a white page next to several clumps of dark hair or fur, and an accompanying photo showed a person working on a camper while wearing Sasquatch hands and feet.
The company also posted a promotion for new social media followers to win free merchandise.
“Have you seen #Sasquatch? We know of a few that have been born and raised here at our world headquarters in Silverton, CO at 9,318 (feet)!” the company said in a Facebook post.
The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad runs through the mountains in the San Juan National Forest between Durango and Silverton, and according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, this isn’t the first time the cryptid has been reported in the area.
In San Juan and La Plata counties, where Durango and Silverton are, there have been four Sasquatch reports since 1989.
The most recent sighting in the area was in 2008, when a hiker outside Durango spotted a “large hairy figure” while on the Crater Lake trail.
Staff writer Katie Langford contributed to this story.
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