Author Denver Michaels

In June 2021, my wife and I spent some time in the Dakotas while traveling the nation in our RV. While I was in the town of Medora, North Dakota, located on the border of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I began thinking of the "Badlands Horror." I first learned of the Badlands Horror from a guy who contacted me through my website. He told me the story of a strange creature that went on a rampage killing livestock in the North Dakota badlands during the early 1930s. He also sent the text from news articles mixed with his own commentary. I posted the article on my blog and asked that anyone with more information contact me, but no one did. I ended up putting the story out of my mind, but upon my arrival to Medora, I began thinking of the strange tale once again. The article that the fellow sent me is printed below. Again, if you have any information regarding it, I would love to hear from you. Theodore Roosevelt National Park. THE BADLANDS HORROR The Badlands, in No...

Many in the cryptozoology community credit Theodore Roosevelt with recording an early Bigfoot encounter in his 1893 book The Wilderness Hunter .  Teddy Roosevelt's Bigfoot story began with him saying that frontiersmen, as a rule, were not superstitious. They lived hard and austere lives and had “little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural.” That said, Roosevelt did hear a “goblin story” that impressed him. I have reprinted Teddy Roosevelt's Bigfoot story, taken from his book, below:

Books about Bigfoot are a dime a dozen. I certainly have read my share over the years and I have a stack in my "to read" pile. Some Bigfoot books are great, some are terrible, and then there are plenty of so-so books. Having read a couple that fall into the mediocre category recently, I decided to reread a classic. So, I downloaded an e-book version of Ivan Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen, Legend Come to Life. While reading the other night, something Sanderson wrote grabbed my attention—the idea that Bigfoot creatures are more human than animal. ABSMs In his book, Sanderson lumped Bigfoot into an overarching category called Abominable Snowmen or ABSM for short. Everyone knows ABSMs are elusive. Sanderson hinted at why: It is simply that ABSMs are Hominids or, just as every benighted native has always asserted, human rather than animal, and thus are endowed in one degree or another with human attributes, and most notably their powers of survival, their adaptability, their to...

In my RV travels across the nation, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the shores of Lake Erie. Lake Erie is the twelfth largest lake on Earth and the primary source of drinking water for over 11 million people. The lake spans almost 10,000 square miles and holds six quadrillion gallons of water. For someone like me that has an interest in the weird and unexplained, some of the towns along Lake Erie are perfect for a visit. There are ancient burial mounds and tales of giants, lake monsters, haunted buildings , Bigfoot sightings and more. Monroe Monster In early autumn 2021, I stayed in a Michigan state park on the outskirts of the town of Monroe. Immediately, I began thinking of the “Monroe Monster.” The Monroe Monster made a name for itself in the summer of 1965 after locals began spotting the creature. The monster made headlines nationwide after it attacked a teenage girl named Christine Van Acker while she sat in a car with her mother. According to a report in the Independent (Lon...

A lady contacted me a few years ago and shared her skunk ape sighting with me. The encounter occurred in 2014 in a county park in Florida. The following is her account with some personal information edited out: "I'm rather nervous to do this. I never thought I'd tell anyone but one close friend... "...I often sought the solitude of the local wildlife park to unwind. My favorite walk was to a bivouac camp. It's only marked number three on their maps. "My son had camped there before and had warned me that wild boar frequented the area. He'd claimed to have found a wallow on his last trip out. When I reached the campsite I knew I made a bad mistake. I could smell the boar. It was horrendous. Then something moved in the palmettos ahead of me. And it stood up. And up. Now mind you this is like 1 pm. Not dark out. No rain clouds. "I am bad at estimating distance so bear with me. I was driving a Grand Marquis. This thing was about three car l...

There is a Bigfoot variant native to northwestern New Jersey  called "Big Red Eye"; Big Red Eye takes its name, obviously, from its red eyes—glowing red eyes. An eyewitness from 1991 had this to say about their Big Red Eye encounter: I knew it wasn’t a bear, it was too lean and upright; it was humanoid. It had been there the whole time, watching our approach. There was no noise, otherwise we would have heard something big crashing through all the underbrush. It was tall and shaggy with red eyes. The eyes were glowing red from reflected light, not glowing like LED lights. It just stood there motionless, arms hanging limply at its sides. It didn’t seem to have any bad intentions, it was just creepy. Then of course, we ran and did not look back. I don’t care what anybody says, I know what I saw. That is something you don’t forget, I definitely did not go back to that spot anytime soon. 1 Big Red Eye, as we know it today, seems to have gotten its start in the 1970s along New Je...

In 1977, a Bigfoot-like creature dubbed "Hawley Him" was making headlines in Texas.  The Corpus Christi Caller-Times  ran an article about the creature on July 7,  1977. The following is the article printed in its entirety: Abiline (AP) -- Neighbors, some with tongue in cheek, listened today to stories about the so-called "Hawley Him" -- described as a hairy, 7-foot tall monster -- roaming the countryside. Three teen-agers told of dodging rocks hurled at them yesterday by the ape-like creature on a ranch outside Hawley, a community 5 miles north of Abilene in West Central Texas. "Whatever it was, he looked like kind of an ape but was still a man," said Larry Suggs, 15. "He had huge arms -- they hung to his knees. "You'd have to see him to believe it." One of the rocks hit Suggs' right leg, he said, and others narrowly missed his companions, Tom Roberts, 14, and Renee McFarland, 15. Young Suggs and Roberts, who live at Abilene Boys R...

The Ogden Standard-Examiner ran the following piece on October 4, 1935 telling of "wild men" roaming the forests of British Columbia: Reports Tell of Canadian Monster Men Settlers Fifty Miles From Vancouver Describe Hairy Giants VANCOUVER, B. C., -- (UP) -Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of "wild men" who inhabited the rock regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are reported roaming the province again. After an absence of several months from the district of Harrison Mills, 50 miles east of Vancouver, the long: weird, wolf-like howls of the "wild men" are being heard again and two of the hairy monsters were reported seen in the Morris Valley on the Harrison River. Residents in the district tell of seeing the two giants leaping and bounding out of the forest and striding across the duck-feeding ground, wallowing now and again in the bog and mire and long, waving swamp grasses. REPORTED AGILE The strange men, it was reported, after emerging from the...

Land Between the Lakes is a beautiful piece of protected land in Kentucky and Tennessee . According to rumor this area may hold a frightening beast. Known as the monster of Land Between the Lakes, this creature might be a Bigfoot, dogman or worse. Wikipedia says the following about Land Between the Lakes: The Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area is a United States National Recreation Area located in Kentucky and Tennessee between Lake Barkley and Kentucky Lake. The area was designated as a national recreation area in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy. Originally managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which had constructed dams to create the two lakes in this area, the recreation area was transferred to administration of the United States Forest Service. In 1991 it was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere reserve. Some years ago, I learned of the monster of Land Between the Lakes. Eyewitnesses describe the beast in question as wolf-like and it fits today’s “dogman” de...

The Lowcountry of South Carolina is a great destination. The food and the beaches are amazing. Cities such as Beaufort and Charleston are full of history, stunning architecture, and antebellum homes with manicured lawns that embody the deep South. Large oak trees draped with Spanish moss form canopies along narrow streets and side roads. And of course, there is Bigfoot. Visits to Lowcountry I spent a week in the Lowcountry in the summer of 2020 and again in January 2022. But I was a good hour’s drive from Hilton Head; thirty minutes away from Beaufort; and around forty-five minutes from Charleston. I stayed at a campground “in the middle of nowhere.” The nearest town was Yemassee—a small community whose roads leading in were riddled with potholes the size of kitchen sinks. The point of this post is not potholes, Spanish moss, or antebellum homes—Bigfoot is the star here. As I usually do when I arrive in a new place, I began thinking of the elusive beast. I checked the Bigfoot Field Re...

Lately, I’ve spent a little time reading some old accounts of Bigfoot-like creatures from the former Soviet Union. One candidate is the Chuchunaa, a Russian wild man of sorts. Tales of “wild men” have always fascinated me. Old newspaper reports, especially from the 1800s, tell of wild men running around on the outskirts of towns. Oftentimes, these wild men are naked and covered in thick hair. Some researchers think these tales point to early Sasquatch sightings. Others think they might indicate there are pockets of “feral humans.” Behind the Iron Curtain Equally fascinating to me as the old wild man stories are strange tales from the former Soviet Union. As a kid growing up in the 80s, I always wondered what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. What were the average people like? Not the high-ranking military personnel and politicians that I saw one television, but ordinary folks—how were their daily lives? The Iron Curtain hid a mysterious world from the West. I often lost myself i...