Some call it Bigfoot. Others call it Sasquatch. Several even call it Yeti.

We’ve all heard the story of the large, hairy ape-man that lives in the woods.

But is he fact or fiction?

Legends of Bigfoot date back beyond recorded history and cover the entire world.

In North America specifically, there have been tales of tall hairy men wandering the woods and scaring campers, hikers, and lumberjacks.

According to Bigfoot researchers, several visibly different types of this hairy bipedal mystery primate occur in North America.

The tallest of these is the so-called “true giant,” which, according to eyewitnesses, stands 6-19 feet (3-6 metres) tall, making it the tallest Bigfoot.

“True giant” is a term coined by Mark A. Hall to distinguish the very large giant hominids from the smaller neo-giant (Bigfoot), taller hominids, and shorter hominids.

Such huge entities have been reported from several different regions including South Carolina and Pennsylvania in the USA and British Columbia in Canada but seem to occur most commonly in the high mountains of the west of the continent and in the spruce forests of the north.

“True giants” are said to leave four-toed tracks which are 9 to 30 inches (22 to 76 cm) long and 3.5 to 15 inches (8 to 38 cm) wide.

They are described as lean and covered in red to dark-brown hair, with flat faces, no neck, and large hands.

Thousands of people claim to have spotted the hairy hominoid, but there are few clear photos of the beast and bones have never been found.

However, research and debates continue, with entire organisations dedicated to studying and documenting Bigfoot to prove its existence.

In the Northwest, the creature is linked to indigenous myths and legends.

The historical record of Bigfoot began in 1904 with sightings of a hairy “wild man” by settlers in the Sixes River area in the Coast Range of Oregon.

Decades later, similar accounts by miners and hunters followed.

In 1924, miners on Mount St. Helens, Washington, claimed they had been attacked by giant “apes,” and local Native Americans used the event to publicly discuss their own knowledge of “Tsiatko,” or “wild Indians” of the woods.

After 1958, woodworkers east and west of the Cascade Mountains began reporting on seeing creatures and even discovering their massive tracks along logging roads.

Witnesses claimed to have seen the humanoids crossing roads at night and digging for food in rock piles.

By the 1970s, former Yeti-hunter Petere Byrne had created the Bigfoot Information Center at The Dalles, Oregon, which claimed national media attention.

Even today, footprints in dirt or snow are found and reported to multiple organised groups who have followed Byrne’s efforts.

Native Americans in Oregon have tied Bigfoot to traditional belief systems as beings with cultural significance.

Tribes have related Bigfoot to ancient tales of “wild men” who prowled near villages, leaving their tracks.

Members of Plateau tribes, like those at the Warm Springs Reservation, identified Bigfoot as a “stick Indian,” a different category of likely hostile beings who stole salmon or confused individuals by whistling, causing them to become lost.

And just like salmon, Bigfoot has become a significant symbolic resource through which many residents of the Northwest have defined themselves and their place in the world.

On the Tule River Indian Reservation in Central California, petroglyphs made by a Tribe of Yokuts at a site known as Painted Rock depict a group of Bigfoot called “the Family.”

Local tribespeople named some of the larger glyphs, which are estimated to be between 500 and 1000 years old, “Hairy Man.”

Spanish explorers and Mexican settlers in California from the sixteenth century also told stories of los Vigilantes Oscuros, or “Dark Watchers,” which were known as large creatures who allegedly tracked through their camps at night.

In Mississippi, a French Jesuit priest was living with the Natchez people in 1721 and reported stories of hairy creatures who crept through the forest and were known to scream loudly and take livestock.

The debate on whether Bigfoot actually exists is likely to go on for years to come, but with sightings reported throughout the US, there’s no doubt that Bigfoot is the most famous legend associated with America’s woods and mountains.