The Durango & Silverton Railroad Bigfoot Video

The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad winds 45 miles through the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. On Sunday 8 October 2023, a Wyoming couple, Shannon and Stetson Parker, rode it for their 10th wedding anniversary. It was hunting season. They hoped to spot elk before leaving the high country. At about 3:30 p.m. the train was departing Silverton, bound for Durango.

"We were looking for elk in the mountains and my husband sees something moving," Shannon said. Then Stetson said it: "I think it's Bigfoot." The figure was on a mountainside just south of Silverton, at least several hundred yards away. Shannon put it at "at least six, seven feet or taller." Stetson Parker said its arms seemed too long to be human. The hands reached its knees. "It matched the sage in the mountains so much that he's like camouflaged when crouching down," Shannon said.

It walked on two legs, then squatted down in what looked like an attempt to hide. "It didn't move like a person," Stetson said. "It looked more like an ape but didn't walk like an ape so much." On the video, a voice says: "Oh, he's just squatted down." Out of hundreds of people on the train, Shannon wrote, only three or four actually saw it.

Shannon Parker took two photos with a DSLR and a 300 mm lens. The passenger beside them, named in coverage as Brandon, filmed a short clip on a phone with a 9× zoom from the back of the last car. Credited to @bt92.travels, it reached OutThere Colorado and spread. By the Durango Herald's count it drew 3.5 million views on X alone. "It's a one-in-a-million, one-off thing to see something like that," Stetson said.

The USDA Forest Service said it could not speculate on the video's authenticity, and promised to alert the media "if and when a Sasquatch is sighted by officials on National Forest System lands." The railroad could "neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of this video." Its owner, Al Harper, said the railroad had nothing to do with it. DeAnne Gallegos of Visit Silverton recalled a man claiming to be with a film crew who had asked about sightings the week before. "If you couldn't drum up any sightings, why wouldn't you create your own?"

Many viewers, sceptics and believers alike, decided it was a person in a costume. Metabunk users linked a Reddit claim of a local stunt to Sasquatch Expedition Campers. The company posted a photo of someone in Sasquatch hands and feet. "It wasn't us."

Sharon Hill wrote: "All signs scream that this was a stunt set up for the train passengers." Mick West's verdict: "Looks very much like a human." Cliff Barackman of Finding Bigfoot said: "I thought it was a suit." Jim Myers of the Sasquatch Outpost called it "clearly a hoax." One Metabunk user thought the figure was mimicking the Patterson Gimlin footage.

The witnesses pushed back. Stetson saw no bow or rifle, and Shannon said it was not AI. A staged act, she argued, would have been placed where the whole train could see it. Still, by the time she spoke to the Durango Herald, she was split 50-50. "I just think we saw what we saw."

Silverton residents have dressed as Bigfoot for passing trains before, though not for many years. Yet no one has confessed to this one. No one has been identified as the figure on the mountainside. Stetson's own verdict stands beside the doubters: "I'm definitely a believer now."