Searching for Bigfoot Open Lines

Jen Kruse is the founder of She-Squatchers, an all-female team searching for Bigfoot in the Midwest. She joined Connie Willis (info) in the first half of the show to discuss their investigations and experiences. Kruse explained that prior to 2015 she “didn’t know anything about Bigfoot.” She was doing a paranormal radio show at the time, however, and asked cryptozoologist Loren Coleman if he would do an interview for the show after meeting him at the Minnesota ParaCon. That was when she first learned of Bigfoot reports from Minnesota. It was Coleman, according to Kruse, who first encouraged her to take out a group of female researchers, “without men, dogs, or guns.” She said Coleman told her that most of the Sasquatch seen by witnesses were young males “probably out doing things they’re not supposed to be doing,” and that was when they were seen. “He thought these younger male Bigfoot would be a little bit more inclined to get in a little close to some ladies in the forest, if they didn’t have anything threatening,” she claimed, noting the aforementioned “men, dogs, (and) guns.” By the end of the show, she said, she was convinced and ready to give it a try. So, she began putting together a team.
On their first outing, she said, they drove to an area with reported sightings on a Native reservation in northern Minnesota. Once there Kruse, who told Willis she is, “also an energy worker… (and) a reiki master teacher,” who can, “feel energy on a physical level,” began to try to “tune into the energy of Bigfoot.” In the report they were following up on a Native fisherman had been intimidated by a Bigfoot following his movements from the shore, but she didn’t believe the dock they’d found could be the correct one. So, she and her crew drove around until she, “again… asking to feel the energy of Bigfoot,” began to “feel a vibration.” Though they didn’t see anything in the daytime that indicated Bigfoot activity, she dropped a GPS pin in her map and decided they would come back after dark to investigate. On that return, Kruse noted, her colleague not only saw red eyes, but they both saw “the heat signature of somebody standing there.” A somebody, she said, who was human shaped, but didn’t appear to be wearing any clothes based on the thermal signature they could see. But, when she dropped the camera briefly to look for the red eyes that her colleague Marla had seen, she wasn’t able to find the heat signature again. It was only later, after gaining more experience with thermal imaging technology, and realizing that clothing gives a distinct signature, that she realized the being they had seen on that first outing couldn’t have been clothed. Later, she said, after attempting to emulate the whoops they heard on paranormal programs, they were startled – not by a vocal response, but by what sounded like a large “something walking.” That was enough to drive them out of the woods that evening, she said. But not enough to drive them away forever. When they went back to follow-up, because she drove separately from the others and couldn’t get them to go into the woods, she chose to go into the woods alone. But, she said, she cut that solo outing short when she realized she was almost in a trance-like state, and could hear a voice in her head, calling her by name to venture deeper into the woods. Then, a second voice, this one screaming in her head, told her, “don’t go into the fairy ring. They’ll take you and never bring you back.” Other events, too, she said, have blurred the line between Bigfoot as a purely biological being and a more spiritual being, included snippets of speech heard in an archaic form of the Ojibwe language that she was only able to partially understand.