Cain Retires to the Sunshine State

I’ve always been fascinated, yet skeptical of the Bigfoot story. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized the version I grew up with was unique from the rest of the country. In rural Utah Bigfoot was not myth, but a reality linked into God’s eternal plan, something rarely preached from the pulpit but propagated by Mormon culture. As it was told, there were four Bigfoots who were actually the three Nephites (sometimes they are hitchhikers too) and Cain left to roam the earth until the second coming as told in the Book of Mormon. I recall my brother-in-law “bearing his testimony” about his bishop seeing Bigfoot pass through his field as he was tilling back in the early 80’s- at this time there’d been a rash of sightings in our area and coincidentally the “Miracle of Forgiveness” containing the text below was reprinted about that time.


“On the sad character Cain, an interesting story comes to us from Lycurgus A. Wilson’s book on the life of David W. Patten. From the book I quote an extract from a letter by Abraham O. Smoot giving his recollection of David Patten’s account of meeting “a very remarkable person who had represented himself as being Cain.’


‘As I was riding along the road on my mule I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me… His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing, but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark. I asked him where he dwelt and he replied that he had no home, that he was a wanderer in the earth and traveled to and fro. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he had earnestly sought death during his sojourn upon the earth, but that he could not die, and his mission was to destroy the souls of men. About the time he expressed himself thus, I rebuked him in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by virtue of the holy priesthood, and commanded him to go hence, and he immediately departed out of my sight…” (Miracle of Forgiveness, Spencer W. Kimball, pg 127, 1969)


If you look in the spring 2008 Journal of Mormon History, there’s a researcher who found a 1919 manuscript in the church archives from the papers of E. Wesley Smith, president of the Hawaii mission who tells his brother, Joseph Fielding Smith of an attack on him by Cain, described similarly to David Patten’s earlier sighting. So there’s a long history of the Bigfoot legend being linked to Mormonism.


In 2000 I produced a radio program for a church-owned radio station where the guest was Ryan Layton, a resident of Layton, Utah and one of the country’s experts on Bigfoot. He claims Utah is a “hot spot” for Bigfoot sightings and I was amazed at the number of people that called in claiming to have had an experience. So, I’m going to ask you the same questions I put out that day- do you believe in Bigfoot? Do you believe there’s a Mormon connection? Why is a culture that’s so quick to accept the idea of ghosts and sasquatches, just as fast to dismiss the thought that other religious possibilities may exist? By the way, the photo is purported to be of a "skunk ape," which is Florida's version of Bigfoot. I guess humans aren't the only ones who like to retire there.