'Feels like a hoax': Purported Bigfoot video from Colorado attracts skeptics, believers

A couple vacationing in Colorado think they captured video evidence to prove once and for all that Bigfoot creatures do indeed walk among us.

Shannon and Stetson Parker had been scanning the mountains for elk during a sightseeing railway tour this week in southwest Colorado when they saw something else instead. There walking among the tall grass and rolling landscape was what appeared to be a tall, furry brown creature.

It didn't take much for the Parkers to conclude what it was they were seeing.

"Stetson sees something moving and then says, 'I think it’s Bigfoot,'" Shannon wrote in a post on Facebook. Shannon scrambled to snap some photos of the beast while a man sitting next to her and her husband recorded a video of the figure as it crouched down amid the brush.

Shannon shared the videos and photos on Facebook along with her account of what occurred, kicking off a social media fervor this week as people weighed in on whether what they saw was legitimate.

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Not the first time sasquatch sighting has been reported in area

The alleged sighting of the elusive cryptid took place Sunday as Shannon and Stetson parker were taking a train ride through the San Juan Mountains on the way to Durango from Silverton.

“It was at least six, seven feet or taller," Shannon told The New York Post. "It matched the sage in the mountains so much that he’s, like, camouflaged when crouching down.”

It's not the first time that an alleged sasquatch has been sighted in those mountains, which are located in the San Juan National Forest. Four Bigfoot sightings have been reported since 1989 in San Juan County, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.

The most recent sighting was in 2008, when a hiker chasing after his three children on a trail outside Durango reported spotting a “large hairy figure” walking on two legs that could have been up to nine feet tall.

USA TODAY left a message Friday morning with Shannon Parker that was not immediately returned.

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Was it a hoax? Some express skepticism of sighting

But not all are convinced that what the couple witnessed was authentic.

Skeptics on Reddit speculated that the sighting could have been a hoax perpetrated by the nearby Silverton-based RV company Sasquatch Expedition Campers. The company, however, is denying involvement.

“We, The Sasquatch Crew, feel compelled to address recent allegations and rumors that have been circulating, suggesting our involvement in the train sighting," the company wrote Thursday in a Facebook post. "We want to make it unequivocally clear: It wasn’t us."

If the denial seems hard to buy, it might be intentional on the part of the so-called "sasquatch crew." Written as if with a nudge and a wink, the statement was accompanied by imagery of clumpy dark fur, as well as a photo of a person wearing sasquatch hands and feet while working on a camper.

Capitalizing on the publicity, the company also posted a promotion for new social media followers to be entered into a drawing to win free T-shirts.

But if it the camper company wasn't behind the hoax, some skeptics suspect someone else was.

Primatologist Mireya Mayor, a researcher on the Travel Channel's docuseries "Expedition Bigfoot," took to Instagram to express her skepticism of the sighting's validity.

"What's kind of suspect is yes, this is a remote area, however, there are scheduled trains that come through here," Mayor said in the video. "Anyone who wanted to pull off a hoax, which is of course unfortunate, would know that there would be a train full of passengers very excited about the sighting of something unusual, something that looks like an elusive creature trying to blend in with the environment."

The quality of the video itself became degraded because it was recorded from such a distance, making it difficult, Mayor said, to gauge the size of the figure. However, what Mayor could observe allowed her to conclude that it was likely a human in an ill-fitting suit.

"To me this feels like a hoax; the movement of this individual is so human like that there's not the least animal quality about it," Mayor said. "It almost looked like a thin individual wearing a suit that was far too big."

But as for Shannon and Stetson Parker, the couple is convinced that what remains for many a creature of myth is now an undeniable reality.

“Y’all, out of the hundreds of people on the train, three or four of us actually saw (it,)” she wrote in the Facebook post. “I don’t know about y’all, but we believe.”

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com