A new study claims Bigfoot could be lurking on the edge of towns and cities instead of staying hidden in the wilderness.
Research by retired police officer and Bigfoot expert Bruce Champagne suggests creatures known as Sasquatch could getting closer to humans and may be starting to make incursions into more populated areas rather than remaining under cover in America's rural areas and vast forests.
The study - titled The Urban Relict Hominoid: An Analysis of Incursions into Populated Areas - analysed 5,834 reports across 14 US states focusing on 25 accounts which Champagne claims offer potential proof that Bigfoot is coming closer than ever to American suburbs.
The study suggests the beasts could be creeping closer to populated areas because of changes to their habitat or food sources, reporting: "Comparisons with known primates and large mammals suggest several nonexclusive explanations for these reports, including food acquisition, dispersal, exploratory behavior, and responses to anthropogenic landscape change.
"Because the dataset is based mostly on archival witness reports rather than independently verified biological records, the findings should be interpreted cautiously.
"Even so, the patterning observed here suggests that urban incursions, while uncommon, are behaviorally structured events that merit further comparative and fieldbased investigation."
The study added the most likely time for a Bigfoot to be lurking around a town or city is during winter and is more common at night with the patterns suggesting the creatures are capable of highly-evolved behaviour.
It claimed: "Movement through complex urban environments, often at night, across multiple kilometers, and with limited reported detection, may be consistent with the use of spatial memory, route familiarity, and sensitivity to human presence."
The news comes after it was revealed the Bigfoot myth was taken seriously by the FBI back in the 1970s and officials launched an investigation in a bid to prove whether the creatures really are out there.
Documents released through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's FOIA Vault revealed officials looked into the fabled beast between 1976 and 1977 in a bid to prove once and for all whether the elusive creature really is hiding out in the American wilderness.
The 22-page report included correspondence between the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition (BIC) in Oregon and the FBI’s Scientific and Technical Services Division after BIC director Peter Byrne asked the agency to test a sample of hairs which had been collected and they had been "unable to identify". The FBI agreed to test the sample "in interest of research and scientific inquiry". However, the investigation stalled after the lab results came back and proved the hairs tested did not come from Bigfoot.
A memo regarding the lab result reads: "The hairs which you recently delivered to the FBI laboratory on behalf of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition (BIC) have been examined by transmitted and incident light microscopy ...
"The hairs were compared directly with hairs of a known origin under a comparison microscope. It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin."