LEAGUE CITY — Credit union bankers such as Daryl Colyer deal with hard, cold facts. When Colyer closes the books on his predictable world of mortgages and loans, however, he opens the door to a very different realm. He puts away his calculators and loan applications and dons camouflage gear and night-vision goggles and, in the dead of night, tromps through the middle of the woods hoping to stumble upon a 7-foot-tall hairy beast.
Colyer is a Bigfoot hunter, a description that invokes disparate reactions.
To some folks, he is completely off his rocker. But others, including his wife, regard him as a resourceful amateur scientist whose intimate knowledge of the nocturnal primate, also known as Sasquatch, legitimizes the creature’s existence.
Still pumped up from the annual Bigfoot conference held less than two weeks ago in Jefferson, Colyer and Craig Woolheater, director of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center in Dallas, will provide a history of Bigfoot on Friday during a College of the Mainland lecture.
Despite their unwavering dedication to their goal of providing irrefutable evidence that the creatures are real, they are somewhat guarded during interviews. It’s tough being a Bigfoot aficionado when your theories are often ridiculed.
“I have an advantage over the skeptic in that I’ve seen this animal,” said Colyer, who lives in Lorena, just south of Waco. “The skeptic is the one who is just taking a wild guess. He’s not out there in the woods. He hasn’t seen biped tracks in the mud or heard their vocalizations. The skeptics propel and drive me to prove these animals do exist.”
Woolheater, who owns a family plumbing business in Dallas, said interest in the creature has never been higher, evidenced by the nearly 400 people and national media attention focused on the Bigfoot conference.
The research center’s Web site, www.texasbigfoot.com, has had more than 2 million hits in the past 19 months, and Bigfoot sightings are reported regularly to the center’s hotline from in and around the fringes of the state’s 12 million acres of forest.
“There is a long history of Bigfoot sightings in Texas, and thousands of people have reported seeing these creatures around the country,” said Woolheater. “Now some could be lying, and some could have had a prank played on them, and some could be misidentifying them. And some really could have seen what they saw.”
Theories about Bigfoot’s origin have been around as long as the reported sightings. Woolheater laughingly dismisses those who believe Bigfoot is an extraterrestrial being or some kind of ghostlike spirit or monster. Some believe it is a missing link, a descendent of prehistoric apes that once roamed the landmass that developed into North America.
The most well-known and controversial evidence in the world of Bigfoot is the Patterson-Gimlin 16-mm color film shot Oct. 20, 1967, in northern California that clearly depicts an apelike animal striding away from the camera. Bigfoot enthusiasts say the film is dramatic proof of the creatures’ existence, while some members of the scientific community suggest it is merely a man in a monkey suit.
The most famous Texas case, Woolheater said, surrounds the “Lake Worth Monster” sightings in 1969 near Fort Worth, when repeated up-close encounters with a Bigfoot buzzed around the area. As for the creature’s proximity to Galveston County, well, the center’s Web Site includes one only 40 miles north of Houston (Cleveland, 1995).
Colyer and Woolheater travel around the state gathering eyewitness reports. Before sitting down, however, they conduct a phone interview to weed out crank calls, which amount to about eight of every 10 contacts.
If a particular region is subject to numerous sightings, Colyer and his buddies will don their night vision goggles and haul infrared cameras, CD players and speakers into the woods in the middle of the night to play primate vocalizations at full blast in hopes of luring Bigfoot from its lair.
“A lot of these legitimate reports come from ministers and law enforcement officers or members of the military, people who I believe would have no motivation to create a false story,” Colyer said.
Woolheater said that many of the sightings reported today are from people who claim to have had encounters decades earlier.
“It’s traumatic when people see these things, and it’s cathartic for them to finally be able to tell their story to someone who won’t just call them names,” he said.
Woolheater and his wife were traveling through Louisiana in 1994 when the headlights revealed a 7-foot hairy creature standing upright at the edge of the woods along the highway.
“I wanted to get out of the car to take a look, but my wife refused to stop,” he recalled. “Seeing is believing, and it changes your whole outlook on reality.”
As for Colyer, his two encounters were more nerve-rattling, the kind of stories suitable for a campfire at Halloween. The most recent was in September when Colyer’s team of 10 sleuths combed a section of Big Thicket National Preserve in southeast Texas in response to recent sightings.
Colyer said the team was playing gibbon vocalizations through loudspeakers after dark when something he claims was a Bigfoot answered back 150 yards from camp. Several hours later, at 3 a.m., Colyer and a team member awoke to what he describes as blood-curdling growling noises from the woods near their tent being answered by one of their tracking dogs. When the team members started yelling, the growling stopped.
With his wife a few yards behind him, Colyer said, he got the shock of his life in Liberty County a year earlier on a trail at dusk when he saw a “reddish-brown hairy creature” accompanied by a pungent musky odor. The animal quickly bounded away, though that memory is constantly on his mind.
“I know they are there,” he said. “The discovery of the century is just beyond our fingertips.”
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What: “Bigfoot, Sasquatch at COM” evening lecture.
When: 6:30 p.m. Friday.
Where: College of the Mainland Learning Center, 200 Parker Court, League City (off FM 518).
Details: Seating is limited and preregistration is recommended.
Cost: $18 (in-district attendees: residents of Texas City, Dickinson, La Marque, San Leon, Bacliff, Hitchcock, Santa Fe, Algoa, Arcadia and Alta Loma; $23 (non-district attendees).
Information: Call (281) 332-1800.
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Bigfoot Sightings
There have been more than 2,550 reported Bigfoot sightings in North America in the past century. British Columbia had the most with 362.
These are the states with the most reported sightings:
• California 343 • Washington 286 • Oregon 176 • Florida 104 • Ohio 95 • Montana 74 • Texas 63* • Colorado 60 • Pennsylvania 58 • New York 53
— Source: The Associated Press/”Meet the Sasquatch” by Christopher Murphy, citing data from Canadian researcher John W. Green and the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
*Editor’s note: The Texas Bigfoot Research Center’s Web site, www.texasbigfoot.com, documents 252 sightings in Texas.
