Parker Wallis

This year has seen a recent influx of alleged Bigfoot sightings in the Great Lake State, documented by Bigfoot researchers and on social media. 

A Michigan man on Tik Tok, for instance, has been recording his supposed encounters on the app for nearly two years, exchanging gifts with an entity he believes is the fabled Sasquatch. The man, Casey Dosert, lives somewhere in the Upper Lower Peninsula. 

Dosert’s Tik Toks are not the only Bigfoot-related videos with a focus on Michigan sightings. Among the slew of reported sightings, a viral video recorded on the Cass River claims to have spotted the elusive cryptid. 

For decades, Michiganders claimed to have laid eyes on the beast and taken blurry photos of it in the wild. Gabe Heiss of the Southeast Michigan Bigfoot Research Organization cites encounters in Monroe in 1965 and in Romeo near 34 Mile and Dequindre roads in 1981 as well-known examples. Even the Metro Detroit area has a history of Squatch sightings dating all the way back to 1862 when Native Americans and settlers reported seeing the creature. 

In June of this year, a sighting was reported in Shelby Township, described as a “suspicious incident” and a “shadow or silhouette” that appeared on a resident’s surveillance camera. Local authorities downplayed the sighting in an official release, confirming that officers searched the area and “after a thorough investigation, there was no Bigfoot sighting in Shelby Twp.”

Some Michigan Bigfoot researchers question the police reporting of the incident. Both Heiss and Josh Parsons, producer of the Hide and Seek Archives Bigfoot podcast, explain that this response is typical of police and government officials. They say urban Bigfoot sightings tend to make people uncomfortable. 

“A lot of times police want to keep Bigfoot reports quiet,” Parsons said. “Part of it may be that they don’t want to alarm people.”

Heiss claims that police also downplayed the 1965 Monroe sighting, describing how they “went as far as taking a caveman statue from the Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills and placing it in a field near the reported encounter as a cover-up.”

Heiss asserts that there have been sightings in every Michigan county, including four in Macomb County, six in Oakland County, seven in St. Clair County, and four in Lapeer County.

“There have been reports in Wayne, Oakland, Washtenaw and Macomb counties for years,” Heiss explained. “A lot of times, they are near parks and are almost always near streams or bodies of water.” Heiss considers a sighting in Shelby plausible due to the town’s proximity to Riverbends Park and the Clinton River.

While reports of Bigfoot are more prevalent in heavily wooded or swampy areas, Parsons believes that there are more urban encounters than people think. “A lot of times,” said Parsons, “people are reluctant to tell anyone that they had an encounter. They are afraid of being ridiculed or that people are just going to think they’re nuts. That is probably doubly true for people who have experienced an urban sighting.”

Parsons says that attending Bigfoot conventions and meetings gives people an outlet to share their experiences and feel more comfortable about talking about them.

Although Bigfoot has yet to be captured or officially confirmed, researchers like Heiss and Parsons refuse to give up the chase. Perhaps Sasquatch is in hiding because he knows that they’re hot on his trail.