Episode Details
Back to Episodes
May 11, 1999: Bigfoot & the Florida Panther - James McMullen
Published 1 year, 9 months ago
Description
Art Bell welcomes James McMullen, a naturalist and independent tracker who has spent 23 years in the Florida Everglades pursuing the endangered Florida panther. McMullen describes how he verified 64 individual panthers in a region where experts declared them virtually extinct, earning the trust of Seminole elders and old-time swamp dwellers along the way.
The conversation shifts to Bigfoot when McMullen reveals that his decades of panther tracking also led him to unexplained encounters with an unknown creature. He details his August 1997 sighting of a large, upright, chocolate-brown figure standing 35 feet away in a tree line, breathing visibly, with dark caramel skin and long hair-covered arms ending in clearly defined fingers. He compares and contrasts the creature with the famous Patterson film footage.
McMullen discusses the physical evidence he has gathered, including plaster casts of massive footprints with dermal ridges, strange vocalizations heard at close range, and his philosophy of naturalistic observation over capture or killing. He argues that a skilled tracker can build a case for an unknown species without ever harming one, and urges protection for the creature he believes has inhabited the Everglades for generations.
The conversation shifts to Bigfoot when McMullen reveals that his decades of panther tracking also led him to unexplained encounters with an unknown creature. He details his August 1997 sighting of a large, upright, chocolate-brown figure standing 35 feet away in a tree line, breathing visibly, with dark caramel skin and long hair-covered arms ending in clearly defined fingers. He compares and contrasts the creature with the famous Patterson film footage.
McMullen discusses the physical evidence he has gathered, including plaster casts of massive footprints with dermal ridges, strange vocalizations heard at close range, and his philosophy of naturalistic observation over capture or killing. He argues that a skilled tracker can build a case for an unknown species without ever harming one, and urges protection for the creature he believes has inhabited the Everglades for generations.