The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday released a correspondence file containing the results of tests it performed on a tissue sample alleged to be from Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch — a purported human-like creature that was sporadically reported to be roaming the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest.
The 22-page file, made public following a Freedom of Information Act request, showed that the FBI agreed to test a hair sample “attached to a tiny piece of skin” obtained and submitted by the Oregon-based Bigfoot Information Center.
The letters show the group sent the sample after a 1975 report in the “Washington Environmental Atlas” referred to tests by the FBI Laboratory “in connection with the Bigfoot phenomenon.”
The FBI kept a Bigfoot file, which was released Wednesday. (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty Images)
“Will you kindly, to set the record straight, once and for all, inform us if the FBI has examined hair which might be that of a Bigfoot; when this took place; if it did take place; what the results of the analysis were,” Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Information Center, wrote in a letter to the bureau. “Please understand that our research here is serious.”
The FBI said it had no record of conducting such tests.
But in a subsequent letter addressed to Byrne, dated Dec. 15. 1976, Jay Cochran Jr., assistant director of the FBI’s Scientific and Technical Services division, told him to send the sample to the FBI Laboratory in Washington.
“The FBI Laboratory conducts examinations primarily of physical evidence for law enforcement agencies in connection with criminal investigations,” Cochran wrote. “Occasionally, on a case-by-case basis, in the interest of research and scientific inquiry, we make exceptions to this general policy. With this understanding, we will examine the hairs and tissue mentioned in your letter.”
Three months later, the FBI reported the results of its tests.
“The hairs are of deer family origin,” Cochran wrote.
