The nation’s most prominent Bigfoot hunter has died suddenly at the age of 51, friends have said.
Claudia Ackley, 51, made international headlines in 2018 when she sued California‘s park service after officials attempted to discredit her sighting of a sasquatch by saying that she had merely seen a bear.
Ackley’s partner, Ed Brown, told The Sun that she was found dead in her home in a chair in Tennessee.
Ackley is survived by her two daughters. A separate report said that Ackley died after suffering a heart attack.
Brown was away on a business trip and became worried when he didn’t hear from Ackley for a few days. He had police perform a welfare check at their home on July 2, which is when her body was discovered.
In March 2018, Ackley was out for a hike with her daughters near Lake Arrowhead, California.
She says they were at a trailhead with their dog when one of her daughters saw something that made her freeze in her tracks.
Ackley said she saw an alpha-male Sasquatch looking at her from behind a tree, apparently one of her daughters had been taking a video at the time.
In the video Ackley’s daughter says: ‘I swear to God…Mom?’
Ackley is adamant: ‘I swear to God, on my life, we ran into a Sasquatch.’
She called the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, which sent out an investigator. She showed the video to the investigator who said she saw a bear.
Ackley rejected that saying: ‘My daughters have seen bears. They’re not scared by bears.’
Ackley’s says this isn’t the first time she’s seen the creature, the first time was in Washington state during a Bigfoot trek arranged as a vacation with her then-husband in 2014.
She saw what she thought was a small, 5-foot-tall Bigfoot in the trees and locked eyes with it. She even made a plaster mold of an alleged footprint.
‘They’re supposed to be there to protect the public. They’re not doing their jobs,’ she says. ‘If I can save one life, it will be worth it.’
‘I realized at that point, looking at the creature, that there’s so much of life that we don’t know. Life is so beautiful, and I’m wasting my years,’ she says. ‘I lost 125 pounds and decided to get a divorce . . . It motivated me to chase my dreams and live my life.’
Michael Shermer, an author, professor and publisher, says for Ackley to win in court, she’s going to need more than just eyewitnesses.
‘You can’t sue the state of California to protect a species if you can’t prove the species exists,’ he said.
‘That applies to everything from a snail to Bigfoot. You can’t just show up at a conference and say, ‘I saw this incredible thing at 3 am on a camping trip, can I name it?’ No. You have to have a body.’
Shermer says the way to talk to people about these things is to respect them, even if you don’t necessarily respect their beliefs.
‘First of all, you have to listen to them,’ he says. ‘You have to show respect. Ask questions. Ask them what it would take to change their minds.’
The lawsuit was dismissed a little more than a month after it was first filed.
At least one fellow Bigfoot enthusiast, Daniel Perez, told the San Bernardino Sun that Ackley’s lawsuit was a bad look for their community.
‘I did talk with some people recently who live near Claudia, and they know the area well and they reported that outside of Claudia and her claims, no one else is reporting anything like Bigfoot in the area,’ Perez told the newspaper.
