15 reported Bigfoot sightings in QCA, data shows

Individuals in the Quad Cities Area have reported a Bigfoot sighting 15 times over the span of 50 years.

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is said to be a hairy, upright-walking, ape-like creature that lives in the wilderness and leaves footprints,

, which also points out “a majority of mainstream scientists have historically discounted the existence of Bigfoot.”

The Travel Channel reports it has analyzed thousands of claimed sightings nationwide using “never-before-released data” from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO).

The

shows from the 1960s until last year, BFRO has recorded 76 sightings in Iowa and 298 in Illinois.

Among those numbers are 12 reported sightings in the Illinois QCA, including one in Rock Island County, five in Whiteside County, two in Lee County, and two in Knox County.

Henry and Jo Daviess Counties in Illinois have one report each.

One of the claimed Whiteside County sightings occurred in 1986 along the Rock River near Erie, Illinois.

The person reporting the sighting is quoted on the BFRO website as having seen “a hairy humanoid figure” and seeing “big footprints in the snow from the pasture to the river.”

In the Iowa Quad Cities, the BFRO database shows three reported sightings in Scott County.

One of those is said to have occurred in 1989 near Eldridge, Iowa, by a camper describing an encounter with a creature that stood between 7 and 9 feet tall.

"I was so frightened that I would not leave the tent,” the camper reported.