The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster - John O’Connor
Published in 2024 by Sourcebooks, Naperville, IL
304 pages
ISBN: 9781464216633
As a scholar specializing in the history and psychology of folklore, I have always had a soft spot for cryptozoology. I remember visiting the International Museum of Cryptozoology (then in Portland, Maine) during my time as a graduate student. A large, wooden statue of Bigfoot looms over the front entrance, greeting guests with his impressive stature and immense feet. Surprisingly, while there were plenty of weird and wonderful items to see at the museum (most notably, in my estimation, the jackalope and the white furred fish, pictured below), at least half of the collection at the museum consisted of beer can designs with Bigfoot on them, casted samples of large footprints, and a wide array of Bigfoot memorabilia and various kick-knacks.
It seems that, just as Bigfoot’s presence loomed large at the museum, the big hairy guy also retains a sizable portion of cultural influence. Iterations of monstrous beings haunting the borders of the known world have been with us across centuries and cultures, often reflecting our fears and anxieties of the chaotic, unknown, and untamable realm of the natural world. But there is something special about Bigfoot. Take any drive through the Adirondacks in upstate New York, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, or the flowing terrain of Kentucky and Central Pennsylvania, and you will undoubtedly find the big fella adorning everything from T-shirts and hats to beer cans and baby bibs. As elusive as he might be, Bigfoot merchandise is anything but difficult to find.
So what is it about Bigfoot specifically that draws us towards him? In The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster, journalist John O’Connor offers a compelling and often witty investigation into one of North America's most enduring legends. Far from a treatise on cryptozoology, O’Connor’s narrative is instead a work of immersive cultural reportage, attempting to understand not just whether Bigfoot exists, but why people continue to believe in such a figure in an age dominated by science, 24/7 digital surveillance, and secular rationalism.
Overview:
A self-described skeptic, O’Connor journeys across North America with the goal of understanding not just whether Bigfoot exists, but why people want to believe in it. Beginning in the Pacific Northwest and extending to Maine, Kentucky, Texas, and other regions, he attends cryptozoology conventions, joins field expeditions, interviews eyewitnesses, and analyzes cultural and historical perspectives, including Indigenous folklore and colonial-era sightings like the “Barrington Beast” of 1765. He is interested less in hard evidence than in the function of belief, such as what purpose the Bigfoot myth serves, what anxieties it encodes, and what deeper cultural or spiritual longings it expresses.
The book is not structured like a narrative with titles or self-contained chapters. Instead, it flows more like a blended field journal and essay collection. Early chapters focus on O’Connor’s travels across Bigfoot hotspots, from Mount St. Helens in Washington through Oregon, Kentucky, Texas, and Maine, as he shadows Bigfoot hunters (aka “Bigfooters”) on expeditions. O’Connor begins these chapters in an observational, travelogue mode as he offers witty, personable, and often self-deprecating observations of camping out in the woods.
As the narrative progresses, there is more philosophical introspection and socio-political commentary. The mid-section of the book shifts into thematic explorations, covering topics such as unreliable testimony, pseudoscience, cognitive biases, memory fallibility, and the cultural role of myth. O’Connor draws on philosophers, scientists, environmental history, and literary figures to contextualize Bigfoot belief. O’Connor examines the divide between “flesh‑and‑blood” literalists and more speculative “woo” believers, noting how memory, bias, and pseudoscience influence narratives.
The final chapters reflect on the politics of belief, identity formation among Bigfoot believers, and parallels between Bigfoot fandom and conspiracy culture. He connects Bigfoot belief to broader phenomena like political nostalgia, racial anxiety, and the longing for wildness, and he draws parallels between Bigfoot belief, Trumpism, and the broader spread of white backlash. He also delves into the camaraderie and purpose seekers derive from “squatching,” while also critiquing the appropriative use of Indigenous myths by largely white audiences. As such, the book is less a proof‑of‑Bigfoot treatise and more a spirited exploration of the people, culture, and psychology behind the myth.
Commendations:
There are a few key strengths to O’Connor’s volume. First of all, O’Connor writes in a breezy, conversational, and casual tone, often utilizing self-deprecating humor to connect with his subjects and the reader. He largely avoids the overt condescension that often plagues journalistic accounts of fringe belief communities, and his willingness to participate in fieldwork lends an ethnographic quality to the book. His use of humor does not deflate or outright mock belief in Bigfoot, but rather contextualizes it as part of the human need for meaning, mystery, and community.
Additionally, O’Connor’s observations make for an interesting exploration of myth-making and how we justify irrational beliefs. He understands Bigfoot not merely as a legendary creature but as a symbolic figure that functions to bind a community together in shared ritual practice and belief. The Bigfoot believer is not just a crank or eccentric but a participant in a broader vernacular tradition (though not without its internal divisions and vitriolic sectarian divides). The monstrous figure becomes a figure of simultaneous revulsion and fascination (what Freud calls the unheimlich), and it reinstates a sense of enchantment to the community of believers. It also allows them to possess a self-identity as a curious truth-seeker, often defying the scientific establishment.
Thus, O’Connor’s framing of Bigfoot as a distinctly “North American monster” elevates Bigfoot to the status of a modern myth. He treats Bigfoot not merely as a legend, but as a secular devotional object that mediates people’s sense of place, history, and identity. By examining how oral narratives, sightings, and reenactments perform ritual-like functions for a particular community, O’Connor delves into the fundamental ways in which we establish belief, re-enchant the wild landscape, and forge community with like-minded people. This is a fascinating framework, as it helps the reader to understand Bigfoot not just in terms of cryptozoology, but in terms of mythopoeic function, which is the way stories generate meaning in destabilized communities.
Finally, while I am not sure I fully agree, I found O’Connor’s ruminations on the connections between Bigfoot belief and cultural anxieties to be undoubtedly interesting. For example, O’Connor links Bigfoot belief to broader cultural trends, including ecological grief, nostalgia for a mythic American wilderness, and political disenchantment amidst rural white communities. Particularly compelling is O’Connor’s suggestion that belief in Bigfoot is an index of white masculine anxiety in the face of social change. Thus, Bigfoot serves as a kind of mythopoetic coping mechanism for those disoriented and frustrated by modernity. These connections resonate with contemporary scholarship on American myth-making, populism, and the role of monster narratives in settler-colonial identity construction.
As such, O’Connor succeeds in demythologizing Bigfoot without deflating its cultural value. He takes the reader into the psychological drives of believers, as belief in Bigfoot taps into their yearning for the sublime, their distrust of dominant social and political institutions, and their desire for rewilding or control over the natural landscape. He connects this to a wide array of phenomena such as white nostalgia, Trump-era identitarianism, ecological grief, and a deep craving for pre-modern authenticity in an increasingly digitized, commodified world. As such, O’Connor implicitly links the Bigfoot myth to late capitalist alienation, wherein myth becomes both an escape valve and an ideological tool to ensure the smooth running of capital.
Critique:
Yet, despite the book’s nominal strengths, there are a few glaring shortcomings to O’Connor’s debut work. While some may appreciate the conversational and informal tone of O’Connor’s writing, it can often wear thin, becoming grating and eye-rolling far too quickly. In attempting to emulate the humorous, self-deprecating style of other authors such as Bill Bryson, O’Connor more often than not falls flat in his attempts at humor, often resorting to juvenile digs at historical figures. These little asides more often than not take the reader out of the narrative flow of the text, rather than contributing to and supplementing the text. Case in point: the questionable choice to include the story of how he missed while attempting to pee in a bottle in the middle of the night, soiling a sleeping bag that a generous fellow camper loaned him, only to bemoan, “If you’re reading this, sorry dude.”
There’s no doubt that O’Connor’s voice is witty, self-deprecating, and accessible, all of which are qualities that would normally make the book enjoyable. But there’s a noticeable dependence on ironic distance, which functions as both narrative shield and ideological hedge. While he does not outright mock Bigfooters, he rarely surrenders fully to their worldview, keeping a foot firmly planted in skeptical, NPR-friendly rationalism. This creates a tone of liberal detachment that allows readers to be amused, intrigued, and comforted without having to examine their own systems of belief or complicity in the mythologies they unconsciously live by.
Despite his more balanced treatment of Bigfoot believers, O’Connor often comes across as belittling and derisive toward others with whom he disagrees, including being wholly dismissive of all religion despite never seriously studying it. As a religious studies scholar, I found this to be a kind of secular hubris that holds the assumption that all belief is explainable through cognition, culture, or politics and never something that might challenge the rationalist imaginary itself. As such, O’Connor’s ironic detachment allows him to explore the fringes of American spirituality without having to confront or reimagine the secular assumptions of his own worldview.
Relatedly, O’Connor’s attempts to connect with rural America often fall flat. Even though he tries to connect with the people he is around on these camping and exploration expeditions, it quickly becomes apparent that he often sticks out like a sore thumb. His efforts to come across as an outdoorsy liberal investigator of white rural America undergird much of the text. Much of the book reads like a typical liberal Gen-Xer who, stuck in the Cambridge bubble, finally breaks out and tries to connect with “real America.” As such, if you are not a stereotypical cosmopolitan liberal, O’Connor will likely come across as remarkably unlikable.
Moving beyond the tone and personality of the author, the book also possesses several limitations in its analysis of Bigfoot culture. First of all, despite its title, there is actually very little content about Bigfoot. While the first chapter is tightly focused on Bigfoot belief and the communities it engenders, the rest of the book quickly disintegrates into a wide array of tangents. One of the chapters only mentions Bigfoot as an afterthought, and is more about the elusive search for the ivory-billed woodpecker, while another is a meandering, surface-level examination of how philosophy and literature have depicted nature. Most of these tangents do not go anywhere, and the book largely strays from what’s on the tin.
The little bit of Bigfoot that we do read about is mostly a regurgitation of what’s already known, with some anecdotes tossed in. Instead of a book about the history of Bigfoot, O’Connor’s work is more of a long and rambling diatribe about what bothers him in the world (including Trump, Twilight, and ciders, to name a few). Thus, anyone looking for an in-depth look at the history of Bigfoot will likely be disappointed.
Additionally, although O’Connor references philosophical figures such as Heidegger and Kant and occasionally gestures toward existentialist themes, these citations are largely impressionistic, serving more as a seasoning than contributing much substance. There is little substantive engagement with the ontology of the unseen, the phenomenology of belief, or the metaphysics of monsterhood. He glosses over the semiotic ambiguity of Bigfoot as a “liminal being” (neither fully animal nor human), which folklorists like Victor Turner or Claude Lévi-Strauss would argue is key to its symbolic function.
He also does not grapple with relevant themes that could shed novel light on Bigfoot belief, such as the phenomenology of the uncanny and numinous, the ontology of non-human otherness, or even the symbolic function of monsters as boundary-policing entities (à la Mary Douglas, Timothy Beal, or David Livingstone Smith). This is a missed opportunity. A more rigorous philosophical treatment that draws on, for instance, Derrida’s work on spectrality or Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of faith would have elevated the book’s analytic depth, treating Bigfoot as a symbolic creature haunting the American psyche.
Furthermore, while O’Connor references Indigenous traditions that describe Sasquatch-like beings (particularly in the Pacific Northwest), he tends to use these stories as background validation for modern Bigfoot belief, treating them as curiosities or early evidence rather than living spiritual systems. He tends to treat Indigenous stories as a form of proto-cryptozoology rather than engaging with these traditions as ontologically independent systems. There is little sustained engagement with Indigenous cosmologies in their own right. This tendency to extract Indigenous stories without foregrounding Indigenous theorists or worldviews reinforces a pattern of epistemic appropriation common in settler-colonial narratives.
In many Native traditions (particularly the Coast Salish, Lummi, and Sts’ailes), the Sasq’ets or similar beings are not cryptids as we would understand today, but embodied spirits tied to land and moral order. They are relational figures, often serving as teachers, watchers, and boundary-keepers rather than monsters to be “found.” Indigenous myth systems are not mere “precursors” to Bigfoot, but are wholly different ways of seeing the world. O’Connor's failure to foreground Indigenous epistemology and instead reframe Bigfoot within a secular, Euro-American discourse reinforces the idea that Western frameworks are the default lens through which all belief systems must be interpreted. This is a continuation of a broader colonial habit of extracting meaning from Indigenous cosmologies while sidelining Indigenous voices. The epistemic violence of appropriating these traditions into a Euro-American Bigfoot narrative mirrors larger patterns of settler-colonial erasure.
Additionally, while the author acknowledges that Bigfoot culture is overwhelmingly white and male, the analysis of gender, race, and class is cursory. O’Connor undoubtedly draws some interesting parallels between white nostalgia, settler mythologies, and the search for purity or “wildness.” However, these observations rarely go into any theoretical or analytical depth. For example, it would have been fascinating to read more about how Bigfoot quests serve as rites of passage for men adrift in post-industrial America, or how racialized others (particularly Black and Indigenous communities) have historically been positioned as monstrous, feral, or nonhuman, and how Bigfoot intersects with those tropes.
It would have also been insightful to analyze how class, regional identity, and evangelicalism inform belief systems differently than liberal skepticism does, and how these are reflected in the material reality of these regions. As such, the book would have benefited from a wider intersectional analysis, particularly how Bigfoot narratives interact with histories of racialized monstrosity, nationalism, and masculine myth-making in the wilderness. These gaps suggest a reluctance to go beyond the “fun, weird, poignant” narrative frame into more dangerous (and, frankly, more revealing) territory.
Finally, as a religious studies scholar, I found that the biggest missed opportunity may be O’Connor’s unwillingness to fully recognize Bigfoot belief as a sacred system. While he touches on the affective, ritualistic, and communal aspects of belief, he stops short of treating these systems as legitimate forms of religious experience. Many field encounters function like religious pilgrimage, complete with initiation rituals, sacred geographies, and eyewitness testimony that mirror reports of miracles.
In fact, the connection between the monstrous and religion is a key component of Bigfoot mythology. The book’s subtitle refers to Bigfoot as an American “monster,” which already frames the being as marginal, aberrant, or unnatural. But for many believers, Bigfoot is a bridge to the divine or the utter mystery of the Other, what Rudolf Otto calls a numinous presence akin to angels, ghosts, or forest deities. To dismiss this as irrational (even with empathy) is to miss a key component of lived religious experience: Belief is not about empirical truth. It is about lived and embodied meaning. In this way, O’Connor’s rationalist bias and disdain for anything resembling religion ultimately reaffirm the Enlightenment boundary between “real” and “irrational” without seriously interrogating that superficial binary.
Conclusion:
Overall, The Secret History of Bigfoot is a modestly engaging, though unfocused, entry into the growing field of belief ethnographies, offering insight into the emotional and symbolic functions of the widely mocked cultural phenomenon of Bigfoot seekers. While O’Connor’s writing style will undoubtedly grate on some readers, and his meandering, tangential diatribes will turn off all but the most invested reader, those who stick with it will find that it does occasionally open some interesting avenues of inquiry. While it rarely delves into the religious, political, or philosophical depths necessary to unpack the phenomenon, the book does pose important questions about belief, identity, and the sacred in late modern America.
Ultimately, O’Connor offers a humorous, moving, and thoughtful exploration of the story behind the search, rather than the creature itself. His work is best understood not as a book on cryptozoology, but as an exploration of American postmodern folklore and the longing for belief in a secular age. O’Connor is at his best when showing how stories form communities, bind wounds, and offer symbolic resistance to modern despair.
If that sounds compelling, this book might be a memorable and surprisingly profound ride. For those interested in pursuing these deeper inquiries, O’Connor’s book might serve best as a provocative starting point. However, many readers will likely be disappointed in the overly broad and meandering nature of his writing, or potentially struggle to finish the book due to his divisive tone. I must admit, even though I don’t disagree with many of his complaints about our current political climate, I still found much of the book difficult to get through.
In the end, this book is ideal for readers curious about American folklore, cultural psychology, and quirky subcultures. It is especially enjoyable if you like narrative nonfiction that blends travel writing, interviews, and reflective commentary. However, those expecting hard science, exhaustive sighting accounts, or serious cryptozoological analysis will undoubtedly be disappointed. It serves as an accessible narrative that gestures toward, but does not fully inhabit, the profound spiritual and political stakes of North American monster folklore.