WNC 2024

​Coast to Coast for the Cause: Sasquatch Syndicate at the WNC Bigfoot Festival 2024

There's something that happens when a Pacific Northwest Bigfoot nonprofit decides to pack its cameras, hop a plane, and fully immerse itself in the largest Bigfoot festival on the East Coast. Logistics happen. Connections happen. And if you do it right — gold happens.

This is the story of how the Sasquatch Syndicate crossed the entire country — from our home base in Washington State to the rolling green hills of Fletcher, North Carolina — to attend, observe, film, and gather the kind of raw, authentic, face-to-face witness content that you simply cannot manufacture from a recording studio. It's the story of Alaska Airlines boarding passes, National rental car keys, production gear shipped ahead via UPS, and the remarkable people who made every mile worth every single cent.

We didn't have a booth this time. We had something better: front-row seats, incognito disguises, sunglasses, microphones, and an open invitation to absorb the greatest gathering of Bigfoot believers on the East Coast.  Next time, we'll have a booth. But this time, we got exactly what we came for.  Buckle up. It's a long way from Seattle to the Blue Ridge.

The Logistics: Getting the Gear to the MountainsRunning a production trip across the country is a different kind of undertaking than running a booth. Instead of merchandise and displays, we were moving camera equipment, audio gear, interview setups, and all the production infrastructure needed to capture high-quality content in an unpredictable, live festival environment.

Our solution, as always: get it there before we do. UPS handled the advance shipment of production gear to Fletcher so that when the team stepped off the plane in North Carolina, we weren't wrestling heavy cases through baggage claim and praying nothing got rattled in transit. Having the gear waiting on arrival meant we could focus immediately on what we came to do — engage, explore, and capture.

Alaska Airlines carried us across the continent, and there's something quietly powerful about flying from the Pacific Northwest — the very epicenter of the modern Bigfoot legend — toward Appalachia, where a completely different but equally deep tradition of Sasquatch sightings and creature encounters has been documented for generations. Two halves of the same country. Two halves of the same mystery. The Sasquatch Syndicate was about to stand at the intersection of both.

National rental cars got us on the ground and moving through some of the most jaw-dropping scenery any of us had ever driven through. The Blue Ridge Mountains are not subtle. They don't ease you in. They just show up — ancient, enormous, and green in a way that the Pacific Northwest would recognize as kin. Every drive to a meal, every route to and from the WNC AG Center in Fletcher, came wrapped in a landscape that reminded us exactly why Bigfoot sightings in this part of the country are so easy to believe.

Stops Along the Way: Meeting Familiar Voices in Person
One of the quiet gifts of a cross-country production trip is the opportunity to do something you simply cannot do from a podcast studio: show up in person for people who have been part of the Sasquatch Syndicate journey from a distance.

Past guests. Researchers we'd interviewed remotely. Witnesses whose accounts had stayed with us long after the recording ended but whose handshakes we'd never had. The road to Fletcher gave us the chance to change that.
There is something irreplaceable about sitting across a table from someone whose voice you know well but whose presence you're experiencing for the first time. It grounds the work. It makes real what can feel abstract when you're communicating through microphones and digital files. Those stops — brief as some of them were — added a dimension to this trip that no session inside the AG Center could have provided on its own. We arrived in Fletcher already fuller than when we left Seattle.

The Festival: The East Coast's Biggest Bigfoot Weekend
The WNC Bigfoot Festival is the creation of John Bruner and the Bigfoot 911 team — a nonprofit that has spent years genuinely, methodically, and passionately exploring the mountains of Western North Carolina in pursuit of Sasquatch. After several close encounters in those ancient Blue Ridge forests, they were inspired to build something for the entire community: believers, skeptics, serious researchers, curious families, and everyone in between.

What began as a local gathering has grown into the largest Bigfoot-themed festival on the East Coast, and the 2024 edition — held at the WNC AG Center in Fletcher across May 17–19 — was a testament to just how far this movement has come.

The festival kicked off Friday evening, May 17th, with the inaugural Bigfoot Jam at The Box Factory — a night of live local music at 29 Logan Street that set exactly the right tone for the weekend ahead. Energy high, community together, Appalachian darkness falling soft over the mountains outside.

Opening ceremonies on Saturday morning were memorable. Marion Mayor Steve Little presented the Bigfoot 911 team with an official proclamation naming Bigfoot the official animal of Marion, NC. We will simply note that this is a sentence that now exists in the world, and every single person in that building was happier for it. The crowd responded accordingly.

Over 165 vendor booths filled the space with Bigfoot-themed art, research materials, handmade crafts, books, gear, and merchandise from creators and investigators across the country. Two food vendor courts kept thousands of attendees fueled. Live music from the Main Stage sustained the festival energy from open to close. And the legendary Flavors on Main Bigfoot Calling Contest — where randomly selected competitors unleashed their best Sasquatch vocalizations for crowd approval and eternal bragging rights — delivered the kind of joyful, completely sincere spectacle that only this community can produce.

The Presenters: Learning From the Best in the Field
For a production team that came to listen and document, the speaker lineup at WNC 2024 was a genuine masterclass.
John Bruner — festival founder, Bigfoot 911 leader, and the man whose backyard is the Blue Ridge Sasquatch corridor — anchored the event with the kind of regional authority and firsthand experience that cannot be faked or studied from afar. Hearing him speak about what he has encountered in those mountains, and why he built this festival, set the entire tone for how we approached the weekend.

Author Margaret Langley, known for her paranormal research and writing including Haunted Broughton, expanded the conversation beautifully beyond traditional cryptozoology into the folklore, documented history, and cultural strangeness surrounding Bigfoot and related phenomena across the Southeast. Her sessions were a reminder that the mystery has real depth — historically rooted, well-documented depth.

Paranormal Roadtripper
Zach Bales brought kinetic energy and a road-tested perspective on chasing the unexplained across the American landscape that resonated deeply with a team that had just done the same thing to get here. The NC Squatch Watchers delivered hyper-regional expertise on Carolinas sighting patterns, terrain, and investigation methodology that you genuinely cannot find anywhere else. And the BFRO — the Bigfoot Field Research Organization — represented the systematic, evidence-based documentation approach that has anchored credibility in this field for decades.

To every presenter who gave their time, their research, and their stories at WNC 2024: the Sasquatch Syndicate is sincerely grateful. The witnesses who find courage in your sessions, the newcomers who discover for the first time that this is serious inquiry, the longtime researchers who feel affirmed by your commitment — all of that matters. Thank you.

The Witnesses: The Real Reason We Made the Trip
Here's the part that doesn't fit neatly into a festival recap but is the entire reason the Sasquatch Syndicate crossed the country with cameras and audio gear: the witnesses.

WNC 2024 drew thousands of attendees, and among them — as always at events like this — were real people carrying real experiences. People who had seen something in those Blue Ridge forests that they couldn't explain and hadn't spoken about publicly. People who had waited years for a room where they could talk freely without being dismissed or laughed at. People whose accounts were detailed, consistent, and quietly extraordinary in the way that credible witness testimony always is when you give it the space it deserves.

We listened. We filmed. We asked careful questions and gave people room to tell their stories fully and on their own terms. The content captured at WNC 2024 is heading into upcoming Sasquatch Syndicate episodes, and we can say with confidence: it is extraordinary. The Southeast has its own Sasquatch story to tell, and it is every bit as compelling as the Pacific Northwest narrative we grew up with.

That is what we came for. And we got it.

The Road Home: Full Cards, Full Notebooks, Full Hearts
Then came the trip back — and anyone who has done production travel knows this particular flavor of exhausted satisfaction. Storage cards full of footage. Notebooks packed with contact information and follow-up reminders. Gear cased back up for the return UPS shipment. National cars returned. Alaska Airlines carrying a very tired, very fulfilled team back across the continent toward home.

The drive to the airport had the same Blue Ridge scenery on the way out that it had on the way in. It hits a little differently when you know you're leaving. There's a reason people come back to Western North Carolina — the mountains get into you. We understood that a little better on the return flight than we had on the way in.

We landed back in Washington with more than we left with. Not just footage and interview recordings — though there was plenty of that. But connections, context, perspective, and a much deeper appreciation for how broad and how serious the Bigfoot research community is from coast to coast.

Next Time: We'll Have a Booth
We want to be honest about what this trip was: a reconnaissance mission as much as a production trip. We went to WNC 2024 to experience the event firsthand, understand the community, document witness accounts, and build the relationships that will carry Sasquatch Syndicate forward into future years.   Had Chuck been there we would've been spotted for sure so I just personally wanted to thank the production team for attending with an open mind so they can experience the movement.

Mission thoroughly accomplished.
Next time the Sasquatch Syndicate comes to the WNC Bigfoot Festival — and there will absolutely be a next time — we will be set up and ready with a full presence. A booth. Merchandise. Research materials. The whole operation, done right for the community this event deserves.

Because now we know exactly what WNC is. Now we know what it deserves. And we intend to show up for it accordingly.

Thank You, WNC
To John Bruner and the entire Bigfoot 911 team — thank you for building something the community genuinely needed and delivering it year after year with heart, passion, and real professionalism. The WNC Bigfoot Festival is one of a kind, and spending a weekend inside it was a genuine privilege.

To the presenters who shared their research and their time — your work is the backbone of this field and we left sharper because of you.

To the past guests and friends who made time for us along the road to Fletcher — those in-person moments meant more than any blog post can properly express.

And to every witness who sat down with us at WNC 2024 and shared their story openly and honestly — thank you. Your experiences are the foundation of everything we do. We heard you. We took you seriously. And your accounts will be treated with the full respect they deserve when they reach our audience.

We crossed the entire country to be in that room with you. It was worth every mile.

The search continues.

BELIEVE

​By Chanelle Elaine, Chief Marketing Officer, Sasquatch Syndicate Inc.