Paranormal Researcher Details Civil War Era Bigfoot Sightings

So, there's this fascinating conversation happening over on GhostBox Radio with Greg Bakun that every Sasquatch researcher needs to hear about. Lon Strickler, the man behind the long-running Phantoms and Monsters blog and author of nine books on paranormal phenomena, sat down to discuss something that rarely gets attention: Bigfoot encounters during the American Civil War. Now, Strickler is no newcomer to this field. His work has appeared on Ancient Aliens, Paranormal Witness, and he's made multiple appearances on Coast to Coast AM. But what makes this particular discussion so compelling is the historical angle. Strickler grew up near Gettysburg and has spent years digging through primary sources from that era, including a personal collection of hundreds of Civil War soldier letters. The accounts he describes are striking. Soldiers weren't using the term "Bigfoot" back then, of course, that nomenclature didn't even exist until the late 1960s. What they were calling these encounters with was "wild men." One Union soldier in western Virginia wrote home about a man-sized, heavily muscled, completely hair-covered figure breaking into a storage area where troops were keeping food. The descriptions sound remarkably consistent with what witnesses describe today: large, powerful, heavily haired beings that didn't quite fit the category of any known animal or human. Strickler also mentions an even earlier account from the French and Indian War period near Fort Pitt in western Pennsylvania, suggesting this phenomenon has been documented in American history far longer than most people realize. There's even a reported incident where Union troops apparently found themselves cornered by these wild men at some point, though the details on that one are harder to pin down. What's really interesting is how these historical accounts parallel modern sightings. The witnesses back then didn't have a framework for what they were seeing, so they defaulted to "wild man" or "feral human." Today, witnesses have the Bigfoot/Sasquatch framework, but the core description remains remarkably similar across 250+ years of American history. Strickler himself had a personal encounter back in 1981 outside Sykesville, Maryland, which is what initially drove him to research the phenomenon more seriously. That firsthand experience, combined with his deep dive into historical records, gives his perspective some real weight. This is definitely worth checking out if you're into the historical side of Sasquatch research. The full conversation goes into more detail about the primary sources and how these accounts were documented. GhostBox Radio has the replay available, and it's a solid listen for anyone curious about how deep the roots of this phenomenon really go in North American history.