Sasquatch is woven into the American fabric. For decades, people have collected video, photo and physical evidence of this hominids existence. In the 70’s, Ron Morehead and Al Berry captured something no one else has: Sasquatch’s voice. These recordings, now known as the Sierra Sounds, are the most compelling of its kind.

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Hosted by Ray Tarara

Written & Produced by R.J. Blake and Ray Tarara

Theme Music by Terra Monk

Special guests: 

Ron Morehead - ronmorehead.com

Dr. Jeff Meldrum - The Relic Hominoid Inquiry

Scott Nelson - Bigfoot Language

Joe Hauser - Montana Vortex

Marc Beauchamp

Gilbert Moore

Additional music by: 

Sergey Cheremisinov

Kevin Hartnell

Kai Engle

Ghost Stories Incorporated

Serge Quadrado

Techthiest

RAY: The thick forests of the Pacific Northwest are rumored to hide a secret so unbelievable, so captivating, that on first glance, it would seem to be nothing more than a campfire story. Sasquatch has left an incontrovertible mark across North American legend and pop culture. Could there be an unknown giant hominid yet undiscovered to science?

[Sample of Sierra sounds]

RAY: These recordings of reported Bigfoot vocalizations captured in the 70s by businessman Ron Morehead and journalist Al Berry deep within the Sierra Mountains are truly nightmare inducing. The recordings could be some of the most conclusive evidence for the existence of Sasquatch. Ron Morehead told us more about this encounter.

RAY: Known as the Sierra Sounds their story is compelling, controversial, and truly a Strange Phenome non.

Dr. Jeff Meldrum, professor of Anthropology at Idaho State University, is convinced that there is enough evidence to warrant consideration to the existence of an unknown hominid in North America. Dr. Meldrum is one of the eminent scientists pushing for serious inquiry into the subject. He runs a peer reviewed paper called the Relict Hominid which publishes papers on the topic and is available for free online. He also owns one of the worlds largest Sasquatch footprint collections, much of which he inherited from the late Grover Krantz, a respected anthropologist.

Jeff Meldrum: Sasquatch is is a name and anglo-lasized form of a indigenous name derived from particularly from the tribes of the British Columbia coast, the Pacific Northwest, which which translates essentially as wild man of the woods. And throughout history, we have evidence of a fascination by human cultures with the possible existence of non-human humanoid creatures that usually are denizens of the forests,

Jeff Meldrum : so we're talking in this case about a relic hominid, as I would refer to it, a persistent population of of in this case, very large, you know, averaging anywhere from six and a half to nine and a half feet tall, hair covered, but but otherwise, generally humanoid looking in appearance only in the sense that it stands upright, you know, vaguely the outline of a human. But there's so many aspects where we go on and on about the distinguishing characteristics, very large in physique, very robust, very, very ape like in many of its qualities, but resembling humans in that it stands and walks and runs on two legs.

Stories of Sasquatch have existed in North America for centuries. Different Native American tribes have various names for the creature, but they all essentially describe the same thing.. A giant, hairy, wild humanoid creature who lives in the forest.

Jeff Meldrum : Even tribes that occupy areas now that seemed very constrained and atypical of where one might encounter Bigfoot, their oral traditions and legends extend to times when their their population may have occupied areas that were ecologically appropriate… In addition to their big size and and the fact that although they haunt the you know, the nether regions of the mountain is forested areas there, they're feared oftentimes because they often are attributed with abducting adults, especially women and also children and eating them their cannibal giants.

RAY: The most common evidence for the existence of Sasquatch are eyewitness reports. There are thousands of accounts from credible witnesses spanning decades. Even Jane Goodall weighed in on the subject. On NPR she said, “Well now you’ll be amazed when I tell you that I am sure they [sasquatch] exist. . . I have talked to so many Native Americans who’ve all described the same sounds; two who have seen them.” Other than eyewitness testimony, what other evidence exists? Depicting the most iconic imagery of Sasquatch to date, the Roger Patterson film shows a large hairy humanoid creature crossing a creek. The authenticity is still hotly debated nearly 50 years later. Mysterious giant footprints are found all throughout North America. Casts of these footprints have been captured, with some of them even showing dermal ridges within the toes.. Dermal ridges are the details found in fingerprints, and are incredibly convincing evidence of a real life creature.

Along with footprints, the Skookum cast was captured in Southern Washington, and represents what some claim to be the lower half of a Sasquatch who knelt down in the mud.

Anomalous hair samples have been found, yet the DNA results have all been too inconclusive to prove what animal they came from. There are a plethora of photos and videos beyond what Roger Patterson filmed, many of which are too low-quality to identify if they are a hoax or not. Audio recordings of reported Sasquatch vocalizations are rare, which make the Sierra Sounds even more unique.

Dr. Meldrum gave us more background on Sasquatch sightings in the Sierra mountains.

RAY: Joe Hauser, an environmental consultant and biologist, told us about a personal encounter he had in the Sierras:

Joe Hauser: We're in a remote gold mining camp in the Sierras, and we were up there mining for the summer and. After we finish mining, we were sitting around the campfire after dinner…All of a sudden up the canyon from us, we heard two very loud screams, almost like a howler monkey on steroids. And that was followed by a very large whoop. And I kind of came off my chair and I looked at my partner. I go, I go. Herman, what the hell was that? He just looked at me very matter of factly and said, Oh, that's Sasquatch. Bigfoot, you haven't heard one. I said, No, I haven't. And then we threw some more logs on the fire and proceeded to have a conversation about his experiences in the Sierras in and around the area that we had been gold mining in

RAY: Sasquatch stories are entrenched in the region, with many credible witnesses reporting seeing something they can’t explain. In fact, not many years before the Sierra Sounds were recorded, there was a rash of bigfoot sightings in the same area.

When the officers arrived they reported hearing what sounded like a human in distress. The sounds seemed to shift from human to animalistic, similar to the recordings captured by Ron and Al, as heard here:

[Sample of Ron and Al’s recordings]

In the end, the officers had no explanation for the sounds and were unable to find any evidence as to what was making them. This is just one of many reported Sasquatch encounters in the Sierras. Not long after this, the encounters at the Sierra hunting camp began..

RAY: One of the hunters, Donald, was so terrified by the noises he left early the next morning, while the rest of the group, including his brother Bill , stayed behind. When the hunting party didn’t return as planned, he enlisted the help of friend Ron Moorehead to make sure nothing had happened to the group. Ron was intrigued by these stories of an unknown monster tramping through the camp and was curious to learn more for himself.

Ron Moorehead: I took the hike into camp. It's about an eight mile trek, pretty aggressive. And in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and deep into the wilderness, and it's about eighty four hundred feet, the elevation so pretty difficult to get to, but we got there, the guys are OK.

RAY: By this point talk of Bigfoot was spreading through the camp.

Ron Moorehead: I, I seen a big track tho. I said, well, that's a big foot. So therefore it's kind of a Bigfoot.

Ron Moorehead: All the creatures had the same type of splayed footprint that people see now that I posted. This is the same prints we've been seeing for years up there. And since I've been going up there for the 50 years now studying this phenomenon.

RAY: Warren Johnson, one of the brothers who owned the camp, was quoted at the time saying "I can't describe the feeling. Suddenly we got scared all over again. Oh, we'd heard about this bigfoot thing- I guess I had read about it in a magazine several years before, but neither of us ever talked about it or were the least bit interested. But there the prints were… there was no other rational explanation.”

The encounters at the camp continued over the months and the vocalizations and large human like footprints were unlike anything the group had ever seen.

Ron Moorehead: We have a shelter up there, which we go into. It's kind of a makeshift shelter, or logs maybee got some cables that were up around a tree and put some dead fall across the top of it and put plastic over that. So we're huddled up inside this little group of trees. We'll call it the shelter. And we would stick our microphones outside or outside the shelter, generally through the dead fall logs, normally. Wait for them to come around, we a cassette recorder. That's all you had. I had a top notch one of the best you could buy at the time

Ron Moorehead: Wasn't until winter of 71 when Warren Johnson, the leader of the group he contacted Ivan Sanderson

Ivan Sanderson is a British biologist who is considered by many to be the founding father of Cryptozoology, the study of unknown animals.

And Ivan Sanderson read the letter, that Warren wrote him, 23 page handwritten letter, and he thought it was probably a hoax somebody pulling his leg, but he sent it out to Peter Byrn who…studied Bigfoot. And so Peter's read it. He felt the same thing, but he thought it send it out to Al Berry, who was in California where we lived and Barry got it and started coming out to interview us.

RAY: Al Berry, an investigative reporter with the Record Spotlight, decided to join Ron and the others on a trip to the camp. Al was certain this was all a hoax, but was eager to find evidence and prove it as such.

Al has since passed away, but we were able to connect with some of his colleagues at The Record Spotlight. Gilbert Moore was able to tell us about Al as a reporter:

Gilbert: I'm 83 years old. I'm a retired newspaper man, which is, of course, a line of work that is becoming less and less relevant in the modern world

Gilbert: I hired Al Berry on on on the basis of thinking he would make a good reporter because he seemed to have a very, which turned out to be absolutely true, a very dogged style.

Gilbert: Al really was a straight shooter.

Marc Beauchamp, who was 17 and worked with Al briefly, was able to add more color:

Marc : he was a big guy who was interested in the outdoors things, he wasn't one of the.. He wasn't a flashy fellow. He didn't talk a lot or tell a whole lot of stories in the newsroom like some other guys did. He didn't hold court. He was a guy, just did his job and did it well enough that he was, uh.. Expected, or called upon to to to take on stories on deadline, like murders and the like.... And he was well-liked by the other members of the staff.

Joe Hauser would later become friends with Al Berry and said this about his friend:

Joe Hauser: And he basically he went up there trying to debunk the sounds. He was convinced that maybe these guys were pulling the wool over his eyes or something like that. But once he got up there and set up his equipment, he actually recorded several hours of sounds.

Al Berry himself, spoke in an interview on an episode of In Search Of from the 70s:

“It was a remote, high mountain area, and I was aware that there had been some strange goings on in this area from accounts for the people who had been there. And it was a long hike in. And I got in there in the late afternoon. I set my tape recorder up, I put my mic, taped it to a tree a little ways away from where I'd be bedding down, and then proceeded to wait along and see what develops.

Later on that evening after dark, I was tired from the hiking and I had begun to doze off when all of a sudden I was awakened by some strange sounds. It was very startling. I didn't know what to think. I had very mixed emotions on one. And I was wondering, well, could somebody possibly be out there doing it? Some human being. And on the other hand, viscerally, my knees were shaking and my insides were turning a bit. And I was wondering if maybe what I was hearing was some creature that was stranger than anything that we knew.”

Al had become totally convinced that there were Sasquatch visiting the camp, and Ron and Al were even able to capture incredible audio recordings of the vocalizations that had terrified the hunters.

[Audio sample]

Ray: The recordings have drawn much scrutiny and are considered controversial due to the dramatic nature of what they claim to represent.

Ron Moorehead: We got in and started unpacking, and that's when I started having this encounter. And that's when I saw one that night and I started recording. I got my little recorder saddlebag and I get home a big one at a time and. The cassette recorder and started recording my interaction with them and a couple of woodknocks we say it is woodknocks, I've never seen one knock on a tree, but here there's knocks and they're rhythmic. We were recorded were ryhtmic

[Play sounds of Ron’s woodknock recordings]

and we also hear them pop rocks together the same way. And then you hear whooping. Different types of whoops will go around and that's how they interact with each other before they start jabbering their chatter. And they do chatter very rapidly when they get into chattering.

Ron Moorehead: That night I saw one, like I said, made a big samurai cry behind me, you know, crossed so fast. I can't tell you the details of this very big, very smooth run through the woods like that. I don't know.

Jeff Meldrum: of all of the recorded sounds or vocalizations attributed to Sasquatch, I think the Sierra sounds, they are to to sound recording what the Patterson Gimlin film is to is to photograph. They are just kind of head and shoulders up there. Now, there remains questions about it. And of course, if you don't if you don't aren't open to the possibility of the existence of Sasquatch, you'll focus on all of the other potential explanations and and hoax conspiracy theories.

Jeff Meldrum: whatever it is, is is producing very loud, high volume vocalizations. There are there's, you know, growls and grunts and chatter. Some of the most interesting have been referred to as samurai chatter because they sound like that very very guttural Japanese utterances that that, you know, you hear on some of the World War two, my mean samurai movies and so forth. And but one of the one that caught my attention more than anything was the whistle. Yeah. There's a point where the witnesses are. They whistle trying to call them in. And there's a response. You can clearly hear the human, the kind of muffled sort of whistle and whistling between their teeth, which I cannot do. But the response comes back loud and clear. But it's different. It sounds like it has a harmonic like there's an an overtone to it now that's been described.

[Sample of the whistle interactions]

I know there is one paper that's been published. It's published in the proceedings of a conference that was held up at University of British Columbia. And it to authors Kollin and Hertel. They're not linguists or biostatisticians or but they have skills in sound analysis. And they do point out that it is possible to generate that kind of harmonic if the microphone is saturated. In other words, that the sound is so intense and so close to the microphone that it can create this apparent harmonic. Or the other explanation is that it represents a much shorter vocal tract than the other very loud vocalizations, suggesting that they're creating this sound by also employing their their pharynx. So they're not whistling through their teeth or through their lips, but they're whistling back in the back of their throat, which is really quite interesting. I mean, it, you know, like a bird would sing with its syrinx, it's called in and it there are some examples of human humans capable of creating an undertone. The throat singers of Juv and the Eskimos have a way of singing where they create this.

Jeff Meldrum: that was fascinating to me because that actually suggests the potential for some, you know, some extra laryngeal air sacs and in the Sasquatch, which wouldn't be unexpected at all because they're present in the other three groups of great apes. You're seeing chimps and gorillas to the greatest extent in the orangutan, to the least in the chimp. And so in humans, they're very rare, but they do pop up every once in a while.

Jeff Meldrum: one of the other hesitancies I have about the whole thing is the footprints. I mean, my yeah. My litmus test is the footprint…It measures of 20 inches long. I think most of them were came in. That state has been 18 inches. But the thing about it that causes concern is, is the sole the foot looks extremely triangular with a heel that's fairly narrow and five toes displayed, almost like those notorious Easter eight inches and across the square across the end of the foot. So squarely that I can't tell you if it's a right or left foot. Interesting. And Ron has graciously shared photos of other footprints. There was a photo in his in his book Voices in the Wilderness, which also was cause for concern because. It it doesn't look like a spontaneous footprint. It has a little ridge of pine needle duff all the way around it like it was shaped, you know, and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone or passing judgment. I'm just saying that it makes me uneasy that there's not a a compelling corroboration by very credible looking footprints associated with this event.

Ron Moorehead: I asked Dr. Meldrum, Jeff Meldrum, who is a footprint expert, and he wanted to see him, but I see no upside to that because he based everything on the Peterson track, which I don't think compares at all. He shows them the midtarsel break in those and ours didn't seem to have that. But again, we don’t have the same turf, decomposed granite or pine needles all over the place. I just didn't didn't let him look at them, didn't give them to him. He could see pictures of them, but I'm afraid he would use a classical science to try to judge them and thinking they have to compare the Paterson tracks, so they're not real. And we knew they were real. Whatever was up there was real. And nobody's pulling it out his leg. And how can anybody be after year after year after year, showing the same type of footprints? And they're different sizes because we are different size creatures.

Jeff Meldrum: Ron is a very, very mild mannered man. He he comes off very credible, very believable. He has some different ideas about Sasquatch and its nature than I do.

Ron Moorehead: These things are more than that, a lot more. And they started doing some things up there that we could not put the finger on, you could not figure out how they did it and what was going on. Lights and sounds and things. It just had no classical answer in classical science anyway. Al Berry having a masters degree in science said don't tell people about this stuff it says or they won't ask you to speak anywhere because we didn't talk about that for quite a while. But I do now because I think I found the science that might might help people understand more about what these things could be. That's quantum science.

Jeff Meldrum: I think he's strayed a little into the weeds on his notion of quantum the application of quantum physics to the macro world. Yeah, but and how that would relate to the Sasquatch phenomenon. But, you know, I've had no reason to doubt him is his credibility. And it's always been a little an uncomfortable tension. My hesitancy to accept on face the footprint evidence and then the potential implications of what that would mean if they're not incredibly exciting. And so and so we you know, we I'm I'm usually pretty good at maintaining good personal relationships with individuals, even in the face of of differences of personal opinion. But, you know, I've had no reason to doubt him is his credibility.

Ray: Ron and Al reached out to an established organization to listen to their tapes to provide a professional opinion on what may have caused them. Fauna Communications Research Organization, which studies endangered animal communication, needed someone to visit the site of the recordings and provide a report on the surrounding area prior to them commenting.

Joe Hauser was the one who submitted the report to the group.

Joe Hauser: after spending three days up there, my conclusion was based on the remoteness of the area and no evidence of faking it. I didn't feel that the films were faked. I felt they were actually real. And also, based on what I had heard in the Sierras, I felt that they were probably on the right track.

Ray: Al Berry even had the tapes analyzed by the acoustic laboratory Syntonic Research Inc, the same company who studied the Nixon Tapes.

Ron Moorehead: He went to them and asked them if they could look into what they looked and said, the sounds are spontaneous. So they were taking at the time of recording studio. They were too powerful to a human made. And that was I.E. Tibo, t president of Syntonic Laboratory.

Ray: Dr. Lynn Kirlin, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with an interest in electronic speech analysis, conducted a year long study on the recordings.

Kirlin: From what we could determine, there were no evidences of rerecording at slower speeds, definitely features in those sounds that were correlated to an extremely large human male measurement that you would expect seven to seven and a half feet tall.

Ray: The tapes were also analyzed by Nancy Logan, a human speech expert, who stated:

“I believe that some of the primitive communication is going on in the form of primitive language. The first time I listened to the tapes, I thought it was linguistically a little more sophisticated than I do now. After listening to them again, I think that the creatures are a little more animal sounding, but I still think it is a language. I challenge anyone to make those exact same noises with the exact same pronunciation at that speed.”

Scott Nelson: I'm a 20 year veteran of the U.S. Navy. As a linguist in an interpreter of Russian, Spanish and Persian,

Scott Nelson: . And you know, what we were trying to do is to listen into communications. You know, whatever our target languages were. But also to be able to identify languages that were not, you know, our target language,

Scott Nelson: I know. Maybe probably two guys, uh, that have listened to more human voice on tape than I

Scott Nelson: ...and then when I got out of the Navy, I started teaching and that's what I did for 20 years in those languages.

Scott Nelson: my son Steven had the day off from school, but we did not. So he came to school with me and that's school. We're sitting in my classroom and he had a project to write a paper on, something of his interest. So I called 12 year old boys right there. Well, I want to on Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster or UFOs to take your pick. OK, so you said Bigfoot. So we started Googling Bigfoot.

Scott Nelson: So we were finding stuff, and he says that. What do you think bigfoots sound like?… Well, let's Google it. So I Google I literally Googled Bigfoot sounds, and that's when I came on up on Ron Moorehead. And the his tape recordings, him and Al Bery's tape recordings.

Scott Nelson: I think. I walked out of there with my son that day at school and I walked out and I was kind of in shock, and my son Stevie was like "dad what's wrong with you?", you know, so but almost immediately there were three things.

Scott Nelson: and that was... I was hearing a language Number one. And number two, it was not a human being. You know, yeah, and number three, it was not fake

Scott Nelson: And by the way, there's actually areas on the different parts of the tapes where we think they're referring to each other by name. Yeah, but in the first part of the big male. Almost seems to be telling a joke about the humans. And you can almost imagine him saying, oh, look at these little hairless apes, you know how we could kill them in a moment if we wanted to. And then he almost sounds like he actually laughs at his own joke.

[Sample that could represent language]

Scott Nelson: So that's part of the characteristics of language. You know, the expression of emotion. Yeah. You know, that all goes into, you know, the overall analysis of it.

Ray: Scott has become an advocate for the authenticity of the recordings, and is actually working on a project to transcribe what he hears on the tapes. He has yet to release his findings.

Scott Nelson : I think that they have abilities that are way beyond us, especially out in the woods. I think I think the forest, you know, is their machine, you know, people claim that, oh, they don't have culture, they don't have technology. I say bullshit. The forest is their machine. And somehow they want to use it, in my mind to protect themselves, you know, and the number one thing that protects them is elusiveness from us.

Ray: While Ron won’t disclose the exact location of the hunting camp for those curious to have their own experiences, we did ask him if he has any advice for those looking to have their own encounter. He recommends going out to the woods and camping in areas where Sasquatch are commonly sighted:

Ron Moorehead: Go there and set up camp and don't change things around, just be still, and don't jump up and down when they start hearing something like a big crack and or big whoop or knock or something like this, just be still. That's why I think we got to see the that night in 74. Because we knew from our experiences in years past with these things that just be still. And just keep doing what you're doing. They don't think they got your attention and you're not going to jump up and down the shine a flashlight in the woods, that's the worst thing you can do. they don't think they got your attention. They'll keep getting closer and doing more, and that's what was happening with us that night.

Ron Moorehead: And don't try to trick them because they'll see right through that. We tried to trick them- so many people ask why didn't you get a picture? Well, you had so many experiences up there how come you didn't get a picture. It's not like you're trying to trick a bear or a mountain lion or something like that. They got a consciousness about them, an intuitiveness about us. And we don't we don't we didn't understand then. I do now.

Joe Hauser: But most of the sightings that you are, most people that are having experiences and have experiences over the years are just kind of like at the Sierra camp are hunters out hunting, people camping, people down by the river, playing with their kids, having a good time. Their purpose is not out there to look for Sasquatch. And so I tell people go out in the woods or research areas through the BFRO, find an area where there's a lot of activity and go out in the woods and set up a camp and stay there and keep going back. And as you go back, if they're there, they get used to you. And my experience is eventually they will make some sort of contact with you.

Ray: The question remains, are the recordings real?

Jeff Meldrum: Oh, I definitely think it could be, yes. I mean, I'm I, I. You know, I don't I wouldn't say I wouldn't use the word believe, but based on the evidence, I think the possibility is very real. And and it's very it's very probable that it represents I mean, given the the scrutiny that has been directed to it by comparison to some other recordings out there of supposedly Sasquatch talking or communicating, they are much more naturalistic sounding, much more what I would expect for a large primate than someone trying to, you know, concoct an artificial, you know, sham. But I you know. I'm not 100 percent put it that way,

Jeff Meldrum: I have perhaps a bit more reservation and that may stem in part, in part because of my lack of expertize on the vocalization.

Joe Hauser: People who are who are questioning the Sarah Sounds based on my research being at the Sierra camp and knowing Al Berry and Ron Moorhead for years, I know that this is an honest representation of what they recorded up there and the experiences they were having and based on the remoteness of the place and the time and technology at that time. I don't think there's any way that they could have been faked

Ron Moorehead: Well, I have experienced crazy things and

Ron Moorehead: we're not the we're not top of the food chain as far as I'm concerned here.

[Sample of Sierra sounds

[END]