Witnesses said it was a massive, hairy, loud creature standing about 9 feet tall
The Greater Orange County skyline aerial view with the cities of Irvine, Garden Grove, Buena Park and Anaheim in the very far distance.
Bigfoot sightings are typically associated with remote forests and deep wilderness, not quiet residential streets. But on the night of May 10, 1982, multiple witnesses in the suburban Orange County city of Buena Park reported seeing something they couldn’t explain: a massive, hairy, loud creature estimated to stand about 9 feet tall.
“First we hear a noise, then we all look,” Raymond Hinsley told SFGATE by phone. “… And then a foul odor came by.” Hinsley was 16 at the time, hanging out with his 18-year-old brother and friends in the back of his apartment complex, when the mysterious creature caught their attention about 30 feet away in a drainage ditch.
Hinsley imitated the sound the creature made next, vocalizing a snarling growl into the phone. The manifestation, he recalls, stood upright like a large person. “It got bigger as the roar got louder.”
He believes it had to have been Bigfoot — or, if he must concede, a bear at the very least. “It was not human at all,” he said.
“It was scary. It was real. Nobody will make me change my mind with it,” he said. “Me and three other guys really seen it, smelled it, heard it. I really think it was the real deal. … I really believe it to this day.”
Thinking police wouldn’t put much stock in the story, Hinsley’s brother asked an aunt to call authorities, according to an article in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner on May 12,1982. The apartment complex’s manager, Frank Missanelli, did too.
Missanelli initially didn’t believe residents when they started waving him over, he told the paper, but his skepticism faded when he heard a roar “like the dinosaurs in the movies” and smelled something “like hell — worse than a sewer.” The hairy creature was gone before he could see it, but after grabbing a flashlight, Missanelli said he saw large tracks.
“The prints were huge,” Missanelli recounted to the Herald Examiner. “Frankly, I was a little scared. I’m 67 years old. What if something that big decided it wanted to come into our apartment?”
Chuch Huges, an artist with the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, drew this picture of Buena Foot from eyewitness accounts. Los Angeles Public Library
Police were skeptical of the reports, and residents grew angry when it took officers an hour for them to respond, the newspaper reported.
“They should have just come on over instead of asking me my life history,” Missanelli said. “I told them I was the manager and they said, ‘We get a lot of crank calls.’ They should have had a helicopter get right out there. Then they would have caught it.”
Six officers eventually arrived, not finding any footprints or odor. Later, a police spokesperson told the newspaper, “It’s probably somebody’s pet.”
In the days that followed, around 100 area residents waited and watched for the creature’s return, dubbing it “Buena Foot.” The mystery became the talk of the town, while frightened residents locked doors and parents kept children indoors.
Police said they received hundreds of calls from concerned residents and their families. One caller reported an additional sighting in the canal. Police responded, but once again, nothing was found.
From left, Tom Muzila and Dennis Ruminer of “Special Force Investigations” are seen with plaster cast of a print left by the Bigfoot of Buena Park, Calif., in 1982.Los Angeles Public Library
Around the same time, two paranormal investigators, Tom Muzila and Dennis Ruminer of a group called the Special Forces Investigations, arrived to search for tracks. They even used divining rods in an attempt to locate the creature’s whereabouts.
During the investigation, they found what they called a humanoid footprint “with five big toe marks and about seven inches across the ball of the foot,” Ruminer told United Press International. “Before we got a good, clear look at it, another kid stepped on it and completely obliterated the track.”
Inside a drainage tunnel about 150 yards away, the two investigators located another unusual print. “We discovered a handprint in a mud bank on one side of the tunnel. We saw the first three digits of the right hand and a thumb print,” Ruminer said. “I put my hand next to the print and pushed it into the bank in the same manner and I couldn’t push it half as far and I weigh 170 pounds.”
They made a plaster cast of it, but its whereabouts are unknown today.
Police dismiss claims
A few days later, the police held a news conference, saying the mystery had been solved. They shared a photo of a reportedly 5-foot-8-inch, bare-chested and unhoused man with shoulder-length hair and a beard, which was taken by another independent paranormal investigator on the street half a mile away.
A sign welcomes visitors to Buena Park in Orange County, Calif. albertc111/Getty Images/iStockphoto
The police explained that the man must have been mistaken for the creature, but the residents who originally reported the sighting were adamantly opposed to the theory, including Missanelli.
“The police department is covering up,” Missanelli told United Press International. Another resident, 25-year-old David Bianes, also disagreed. “This wasn’t a human, period. I guess they’re trying to get people out of there (the flood canal area),” Bianes told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in an edition from May 16, 1982.
In California, bigfoot sightings are common — so much so that a bill was recently introduced to name it as the state’s official cryptid, or creature whose existence is unproven. Most sightings usually occur in the mountain ranges from Mendocino County to Southern California, largely avoiding the majority of Los Angeles and Orange counties, which are densely populated.
“All I know is our local one down here was almost certainly not Bigfoot. It was almost certainly a false scare, and there was some poor soul down there in a drainage ditch,” Chris Jepsen, a local Orange County historian, told SFGATE.
An aeriel view of Buena Park, Calif., featuring Knott’s Berry Farm.Liz Leyden/Getty Images
Jepsen wrote about the mystery monster on his blog in 2018. He said stories about Bigfoot are unusual for the area.
“We don’t get stories like that down here, really,” he said. Aside from this incident, the only Bigfoot reference in Orange County he’s aware of was also in Buena Park at Knott’s Berry Farm, where its rapids ride was originally called Bigfoot Rapids, suggesting that Buena Foot might have inspired the ride. But Knott’s Berry Farm historian Allen Palovik told SFGATE in an email that the 1982 sighting of Buena Foot had nothing to do with Bigfoot Rapids.
Not ruled out by all
While some people are skeptical of Buena Foot, others point to similar animal sightings as a comparison. “One of the first things I would ask somebody is, ‘Hey, let’s consider wild animals. Orange County, LA County, do you occasionally get coyotes and bears?’” Eric Nelson, a volunteer at the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum & Bigfoot Collection in Humboldt County, told SFGATE. Coyote sightings are common in Orange County, and mountain lions also roam the area. Nelson suggested that if these wild animals are found in suburban areas, then why not others, like Bigfoot?
The Willow Creek-China Flat Museum in Willow Creek, Calif., houses the world’s most famous Bigfoot collection.Julie Tremaine/SFGATE
Nelson said the museum covers local history, including settler history and an exhibit on Native Americans, who he notes have passed down oral histories of a creature similar to Bigfoot for thousands of years. About one-third of the museum is dedicated to Bigfoot, including a collection of casts.
After reviewing the photo of the Buena Foot handprint cast that was taken in 1982, Nelson said it resembles other casts he’s seen “in that it seems Bigfoot sinks its fingers into hillsides in order to gain a hold as it climbs.” However, he’s not able to make out in the photo if there are lines and skin markings, like Bigfoot is believed to have, and a thumb that turns out “away from the palm about a quarter turn or more.”
When it comes to Bigfoot generally, Nelson considers himself a “hopeful skeptic.” He noted that scientists once believed there were a small number of prehuman species, and now there are over a dozen, so he said it isn’t unreasonable to think that there could be more. “I think there’s enough physical evidence out there, some people say circumstantial, to at least warrant further investigation,” he said.
Now living in Colorado, Hinsley is one of the few remaining witnesses to have seen Buena Foot that night nearly 44 years ago.
He said he has laughed and joked about the sighting along with nonbelievers, who think that he made it up. But deep down, nothing they say has changed his mind about what he saw, even after all this time.
“If they would have seen and smelled and heard, they would be believers,” he said.
About the Author
