{"id":31182,"date":"2023-10-12T21:36:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T03:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bigfoot-sighting-near-silverton-goes-viral\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:36:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:36:00","slug":"bigfoot-sighting-near-silverton-goes-viral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/bigfoot-sighting-near-silverton-goes-viral\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigfoot sighting near Silverton goes viral"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"This
This zoomed-in image shows a creature resembling bigfoot. Shannon Parker took the photo Sunday, Oct. 8, 2023, while departing Silverton on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. She used an SLR camera with a 300 mm lens. (Courtesy of Shannon Parker)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A bigfoot sighting caught on video Sunday led to a viral moment for Southwest Colorado, with the video being shown on \u201cTMZ,\u201d the Daily Mail<\/em> website and \u201cThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wyoming residents Shannon and Stetson Parker were celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary with a trip on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. While departing Silverton about 3:30 p.m., the Parkers were intent on seeing an elk before leaving the high country. They had keen eyes trained on a mountainside just south of town when Stetson Parker saw something moving in the distance.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cAll of a sudden he\u2019s like, \u2018I see something moving,\u2019 and then he just says, \u2018I think it\u2019s Bigfoot,\u2019\u201d Shannon Parker said in an interview Thursday with The Durango Herald<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Shannon lifted her DSLR camera with a 300 mm lens and snapped two photos. Meanwhile, a passenger sitting next to them used his cellphone to take a video.<\/p>\n

They didn\u2019t know what to make of it. Shannon zoomed in on her photo, but it was still too fuzzy. The passenger\u2019s video showed the upright specimen a little more clearly, thanks to his 9X zoom lens and the fact that it was moving across the landscape.<\/p>\n

\"Shannon
Shannon Parker took this photo Sunday while departing Silverton on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad. She had to zoom in on the image in order to see the creature resembling bigfoot. (Courtesy of Shannon Parker)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Their excitement spread to other passengers, who spent the better part of a 3\u00bd-hour return trip reviewing the video and discussing what they had seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to think to ourselves, \u2018Is it someone in a costume? What could it be?\u2019\u201d Shannon said.<\/p>\n

With the passenger\u2019s permission, Shannon shared the video and photos with OutThere Colorado, a digital publication affiliated with The Gazette<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not long after that, state, national and international media picked up the story. Shannon has given interviews to Newsweek <\/em>and the New York Post. <\/em>She also saw the story on \u201cTMZ.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gone pretty viral,\u201d Shannon said. \u201cI think it\u2019s just people are maybe enjoying the lightheartedness of a story in a world where everything bad is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has heard several explanations from people trying to make sense of the sighting, including that the video is AI-generated, that it was a prankster or it was a hunter in a ghillie suit.<\/p>\n

She said the video was not AI-generated. Rather, it was shot on a cellphone camera at a long distance by a man sitting next to her on the train. And if it was a hunter moving through the shrubs, he doesn\u2019t appear to be carrying a rifle or bow.<\/p>\n

Some people suggested the railroad might have paid someone to dress up in a yeti costume and crawl around the hillside to give passengers a thrill. But Shannon said that doesn\u2019t add up, because the Sasquatch was so far away that hardly anyone would have spotted it.<\/p>\n

Al Harper, owner of the D&SNG, said the railroad had nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

He said the sighting has been good for business. The trains were already packed with passengers wanting to see the fall colors, he said, and now even more people are interested in riding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re adding cars to the train because they want to see the leaves with bigfoot hiding in them,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n

The railroad posted a link to the video on its Facebook page.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of this video but it\u2019s common to see wildlife including bear, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and mountain lions from the train,\u201d the post says. \u201cTalk to any train crew or staff member and they\u2019ll have stories about strange happenings in the remote Animas River Canyon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shannon remains split 50-50 on whether it was someone dressed as bigfoot or it was the real thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. I mean, I just think we saw what we saw,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve seen anything that\u2019s definitive.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeAnne Gallegos, executive director of Visit Silverton, said residents have dressed up as bigfoot in the past to entertain train passengers, but that hasn\u2019t happened for many years. Even San Juan County Sheriff Bruce Conrad did it before becoming sheriff, she said.<\/p>\n

This is different, she said, and Gallegos thinks she knows who or what was behind Sunday\u2019s bigfoot sighting.<\/p>\n

She said a man who identified himself as being involved with a film production crew stopped by the Visitor Center last week to ask if there had been any bigfoot sightings in the area. He said he was interviewing and documenting people who have had such encounters.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then all of a sudden there\u2019s a video of a bigfoot, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s just them creating their own content,\u2019\u201d Gallegos said.<\/p>\n

The man even left a business card \u2013 something staff members have been searching for ever since the bigfoot video went viral.<\/p>\n

Gallegos said the bigfoot video is fun for the town, but Silverton residents by and large aren\u2019t under any illusions that they are living with bigfoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us are just like, \u2018OK, who did it? Who\u2019s wearing the costume?\u2019\u201d Gallegos said. \u201cCause locals have done that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The town used to have a bigfoot shop and a mini museum on Blair Street, she said. Now it has Sasquatch Expedition Campers, which sells high-end, rugged fifth-wheel backcountry campers.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy logical brain says it\u2019s most likely the gentleman who said he was with a production crew who came through our Visitor Center last week asking our staff if any locals had had any legitimate sightings,\u201d Gallegos said. \u201cIf you couldn\u2019t drum up any sightings, why wouldn\u2019t you create your own?\u201d<\/p>\n

shane@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

shown on TMZ, Daily Mail and The Late Show<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[170,28,1562,327,1187],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-headlines","tag-san-juan-county-colorado","tag-silverton","tag-tourism"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81347,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31182\/revisions\/81347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31182"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}