Photos by Angela Parrish

The Murfreesboro Pulse Expedition Team has completed its first exploration mission: an excursion to Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park with the goal of gaining evidence of Bigfoot.

While no solid evidence was uncovered, team members say they still consider the mission a success.

Team leader Cameron Parrish

The team has demonstrated it can quickly set up a functional base camp, exist fairly comfortably in near-freezing temperatures and execute an assigned mission. Plus, it has assembled a roster of sponsors dedicated to exploration and fun.

Team leader Cameron Parrish planned multiple methods to attempt to find evidence of the existence of Bigfoot—or Sasquatch (a word adapted from the language of native people of the Pacific Northwest)—a large, bipedal, hairy apelike creature with large feet.

These methods included placing bait buckets (provided especially for the expedition by Better Days BBQ) containing chicken wings, other meat scraps and even a potato for the big guy, placed in two different areas of the forest.

One of these buckets had a Premiere Home Inspection game camera positioned on it; the other did not. Parrish theorizes that Bigfoot has the ability to sense the camera, and wanted one bucket to be placed without a camera.

The rest of his plan included venturing into the woods in the middle of the night, when humans rarely enter the dark forest, to make a little noise and attract attention.

Upon arriving at Mammoth Cave National Park midday on Friday, Oct. 16, the team took a ferry across the Green River to the park’s back-country area and proceeded to set up Camp MOAB, the group’s home for the weekend.

Parrish selected the area for the excursion due to the high number of reported Bigfoot sightings in and around the park. Sightings tend to be at their highest in locations near a river (he speculates that Bigfoot uses waterways to travel), and in locations with vast areas of forest touched rarely by humans, such as isolated portions of national parks.

The expedition leader soon set out with team quartermaster Joey Odom and cameraman Zook Montague downriver a piece on kayaks to set the first bait bucket. They returned to Camp MOAB and set a second bait bucket not far from camp, this one with a game camera nearby to capture any movement.

As night fell, the team heated up food packed for them by expedition sponsor Better Days BBQ and enjoyed a hot meal by the fire, along with some much-welcomed provisions from Murfreesboro’s own Mayday Brewery.

Parrish and Jim McPeters then led a discussion on some of the science and mythology related to the Bigfoot species.

McPeters brought up the multiple unexplained disappearances in national parks over the last century, and recommended people check out The Secret Vanishings in America’s National Parks, a book by David Paulides, who spent years researching thousands of unexplained missing-persons cases.

Parrish shared some of his research with the team, and discussed various cases of humans coming into contact with the Sasquatch. He said the creature can range from 6 to 10 feet tall, and that there may even be sub-species within the Bigfoot community; just like humans, their hair color can vary, ranging from dirty blond to jet black.

Generally, Parrish said, when footprints are found the pattern is one foot directly in front of the other, unlike humans, whose tracks occur at shoulder width.

And when a human observes a Bigfoot retreating into the woods, they generally do not appear to be in much of a hurry to escape, taking long strides with their feet close to the ground, resembling the strides of a cross-country skier. Their slow retreat indicates that the humans are typically more frightened than the Bigfoot.

“Many who have encounters wish that they did not,” Parrish said.

Some individuals who have encountered Bigfoot, Parrish explained, reported a paralyzing fear like nothing they have ever experienced, and one that profoundly changes the rest of their lives.

“They may be able to communicate in some unknown way similar to dolphins, disabling their prey . . . telepathically, even,” Parrish said of the Bigfoot.

This supernatural, low-frequency means of communication could vibrate an observer’s body to the core.

Additionally, Parrish says, multiple people who have had encounters keep quiet because they don’t want the federal government taking their land.

Why has no one taken a Sasquatch body?

“Some hunters have said they have had them in their sights, but all of a sudden were surrounded by others and didn’t shoot,” Parrish said.

So, with all of this in mind, about midnight, the team loaded up in trucks and drove a couple miles down a gravel road in the park to the White Oak Trailhead, where they then set off on foot.

Parrish spoke very highly of his expedition team, an incredible group of almost superhero proportions.

“Everyone has been invited for a reason,” he told the group. Numerous other interested individuals even offered Parrish handsome sums of money for the opportunity to come along, but he didn’t want anyone along he could not trust, nor did he want too large of a group.

The diverse members of this fine team represented a wide range of specializations and skills, including psychology, weapons and military training, hunting and tracking experience, music and the arts, communication, commercial aviation and navigation, paranormal research and more.

After a brief night hike the team paused, and Parrish tried some tree knocking. Bigfoot researchers often knock on the base of trees, and say sometimes their knocks will be answered by other knocks off in the distance. The Bigfoot possibly associates the sound of axes chopping down trees with humans.

After the knocks echoed against the hills probably a mile away, Parrish’s wife, recording artist Angela Ammons, then sang in an effort to attract attention from the mysterious Sasquatch. Her powerful vocals filled the night woods with a beautiful, echoing melody.

Though there was no observable response, the team of adventurers had escaped modern life for a weekend at least and found themselves in the middle of the woods in the wee hours of the morning in the name of science and exploration.

The troupe returned to Camp MOAB for some rest before the sun came up and began warming the world.

Around the fire the next morning, a science and conspiracy symposium of sorts took place; topics of conversation ranged from electromagnetic pulses, UFOs and extraterrestrials, portals and stargates, seismic activity, the sun going out, American pharmaceutical companies’ involvement in the holocaust, oil companies’ desire to control the world and the Large Hadron Collider.

This is a group that wants answers, with a desire to help unlock mystery and uncover humanity’s next great discovery.

Parrish says he knows looking for Bigfoot in the woods is like trying to find a needle in a haystack and, he notes “that needle might not want to be found.”

Just like playing the lottery, the chances of winning are small, but you certainly can’t win if you don’t play, and you probably won’t encounter Bigfoot if you don’t venture away from urban areas and into the wilderness.

The second night the team ventured back onto the White Oak Trail, and once again experienced the dark expansiveness of the woods at night.

But again, there were no sightings of, or direct communication with, a Sasquatch.

Some team members, in a last-ditch, hail-Mary effort to lure the fabled creature from the forest, paid tribute to Bigfoot through song, a bilingual rendition of “La Bamba,” “Sr. Piegrande” (Mr. Bigfoot).

While there were no sightings of the bigfoot, one event worth noting transpired right at sunup on Sunday, Oct. 18. While the team members were in their tents covered with layers of blankets, a powerful howl emanated from the woods. Isolated howls continued from different locations; some, perhaps miles away, others seemed just yards from Camp MOAB.

Distinct knocks came in between the howls. Could they be coming from another camper attempting to scare away wolves? Or something else?

A 70-pound grey wolf was shot in 2013 just outside of Mammoth Cave National Park, so there is a distinct possibility that grey wolves have reached the area in numbers.

Parrish says a future excursion to Mammoth Cave National Park may involve a smaller group of humans, and a more remote site in the woods, even further from trails and campgrounds. Other potential sites for later Pulse Expeditions include the Florida Everglades and Nepal.

And in some ways, the team did find Sasquatch: we discovered the wild creature that lives in us all.

Soy Piegrande; Semper Explorandum.