Something’s Out There: Searching for Bigfoot in the Adirondacks
John Sheridan discusses Bigfoot in the Adirondacks on the ADK Talks podcast.
Something strange is happening in the Adirondack woods—or at least, a growing number of people believe it is. Some have heard enormous knocks echoing through the forest. Others have found footprints, heard unexplained vocalizations or glimpsed something they insist was neither human nor bear. And some have kept those encounters to themselves for decades.
On this episode of ADK Talks, hosts Jane and Steve Ackerman join John Sheridan, creator of Adirondack Bigfoot, to explore what happens when those witnesses finally decide to tell someone what they experienced.
Sheridan has become an unlikely keeper of Adirondack Sasquatch stories. He interviews eyewitnesses, visits the places where encounters allegedly occurred and documents his investigations through video, audio, drone footage and fieldwork. What began as curiosity about why so few Bigfoot encounters had been documented across the Adirondack Park has grown into a community where people can share stories they may have been reluctant to tell anywhere else.
Stay on the trail and keep your eyes and ears open if you’re searching for Bigfoot.
Listen: Something’s Out There
On this episode of ADK Talks, Adirondack Bigfoot creator John Sheridan joins Jane and Steve Ackerman to talk about eyewitness encounters, field investigations, unexplained sounds and the stories people have carried for years before finally sharing them.
The conversation moves from Whitehall and Lake George to Wells, Brant Lake, Ticonderoga, Keeseville and other corners of the Adirondack Park where Sheridan has followed reports of possible Sasquatch activity.
Sheridan’s work starts not with a random search through the woods, but with the people who contact him after experiencing something they cannot explain. Many are not longtime Bigfoot enthusiasts. Some have waited years — even decades — before feeling comfortable enough to tell their stories.
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From Whitehall curiosity to Adirondack Bigfoot.
Sheridan grew up in Troy in a family of nine children. Once a year, his parents packed the family into a station wagon and headed north to camp in the Adirondacks. Those trips left an impression. When he eventually had the opportunity to choose where he wanted to live, Sheridan chose what he'd thought of since childhood as paradise: the Adirondack Park.
Bigfoot had always been part of his cultural vocabulary, but a visit to Whitehall's annual Sasquatch festival changed something.
19th century Bigfoot illustration.
Sheridan knew the famous Whitehall encounters. What surprised him was the community surrounding them—and, later, how comparatively few Sasquatch reports he could find documented across the rest of the six-million-acre Adirondack Park.
He wondered: How could that be?
That question eventually became Adirondack Bigfoot.
Today, Sheridan doesn't describe himself as a Bigfoot researcher. He prefers investigative journalist. Rather than heading randomly into the wilderness hoping to find Sasquatch, he starts with people.
Someone tells him what happened. Sheridan listens. Then, when warranted, he goes looking.
The stories people don't want to tell.
That distinction leads to one of the most fascinating parts of the conversation.
When ADK Talks previously spoke with longtime Sasquatch researcher Paul Bartholomew, he described witnesses' reluctance to discuss unexplained encounters for fear of ridicule. Sheridan is seeing much the same thing today.
Bigfoot humor.
In fact, Sheridan says most of the people who contact him aren't Bigfoot enthusiasts. They're people who experienced something they couldn't explain.
Some wait years to talk. One recent witness Sheridan interviewed in Wells was 68 years old and described an encounter he'd had while camping at 18—50 years earlier. He had even kept items from that camping trip tucked away in his shed.
As Adirondack Bigfoot has grown, however, Sheridan says something has begun to change. More witnesses are approaching him with recent encounters. Creating a place where one person can tell a story without being laughed at may be giving someone else permission to tell theirs.
What you’ll hear.
Why Sheridan believes fall Bigfoot activity may trace a migratory corridor along the eastern Adirondacks between Lake Champlain and Lake George.
The remarkable story of an Adirondack family who heard unexplained wood knocks—and why one witness believes something in the forest may have warned him that his grill was on fire.
What Sheridan makes of footprints, tree formations, trail-camera images, vocalizations and other possible evidence.
The story of hearing what sounded like monkeys in the Adirondack woods during an investigation near Wells—and what the recording sounded like when played back later.
Why Sheridan says the best way to search for Bigfoot may be surprisingly simple: stop racing toward the summit and start paying attention to what's around you.
Bigfoot byway?
Some of Sheridan's most intriguing ideas come not from individual encounters, but from putting them together.
He has become particularly interested in the eastern side of the Adirondack Park, including the sparsely populated country between Lake George and Lake Champlain. Sheridan jokingly calls Route 22 the “Bigfoot Byway.”
His theory: some Sasquatch may move south from Canada as the seasons change, following the Champlain corridor toward Whitehall and beyond. He has also become fascinated by the region's old mines and caves and the possibility that they could provide shelter.
Sheridan readily identifies these as theories. But they're theories emerging from the geographic patterns he believes he's seeing as more witnesses come forward—and they're driving where he looks next.
Do you believe Bigfoot’s out there?
So what counts as evidence?
Sheridan's answer is more nuanced than simply finding a broken tree and declaring victory.
He looks at whether apparently unusual tree formations could have occurred naturally. He considers whether an image might show a bear. He looks for details in footprints and trackways. And he acknowledges that much of what he encounters isn't concrete proof.
But every once in a while, he finds something that leaves him wondering.
Near Lake George, Sheridan cast a large footprint discovered while investigating the location of a reported encounter. Near Wells, he and fellow investigator Bud of The Wilds of Wells heard strange vocalizations in the forest. Near Brant Lake, a hunter's trail cameras produced several images Sheridan found difficult to explain.
And then there are the stories.
A man says he struck a Bigfoot with his truck near Keeseville decades ago—and watched the creature get up on two legs and walk away. A family living on hundreds of acres in the eastern Adirondacks reports unexplained knocks, falling trees and the persistent sensation that something is nearby.
Proof? Sheridan doesn't claim that.
Worth asking questions about?
That's where things get interesting.
Bigfoot has become an Adirondack experience.
Adirondack Bigfoot has also grown beyond Sheridan's original investigations. He now produces extensive online content, speaks at events and joins other investigators and witnesses in a regional Bigfoot community that appears to be getting larger.
This fall, that community will converge on Whitehall for the annual Sasquatch Calling Festival. The following day, Sheridan and Bartholomew will take the conversation onto Lake George aboard the Minne-Ha-Ha for an Adirondack Bigfoot cruise—pointing out locations around the lake associated with reported encounters and telling the stories behind them.
It is hard to imagine a more Adirondack collision of folklore, landscape and curiosity.
The annual Sasquatch festival in Whitehall, NY.
Want to go Squatching? Slow down.
Near the end of the episode, Jane and Steve ask Sheridan what they should do if they wanted to join the search.
His answer isn't thermal cameras, elaborate equipment, or even tree knocking.
Most experienced hikers move through the woods with a goal: the summit, the pond, the lean-to, the destination. Their eyes are often on the trail ahead—or directly beneath their boots.
Sheridan suggests doing something different.
Slow down. Look around. Listen.
Whether that leads to a Sasquatch encounter is another matter entirely.
But in six million acres of Adirondack wilderness, there's plenty out there most of us never notice.
Hear the full conversation with John Sheridan on ADK Talks. Then subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite platform so you don't miss the next Adirondack story hiding in plain sight—or just beyond the treeline.
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