Illustration by Jason Raish

If you think coyotes and bobcats are the only things that go bump in the desert night, think again. According to some, the Valley is teeming with ghosts, UFOs and our very own Bigfoot.

Alex Hearn first met Bigfoot when he was just 12 years old. The incident changed Hearn’s life and set him on an unending mission to meet the creature again – a mission that Hearn says he’s since accomplished more than once.

But that first time he encountered the monster is one experience Hearn says he will never forget. Hearn, who now lives in Phoenix, was hunting with his father in the very tip of New Hampshire that long-ago day, toting his rifle about eight miles from the Canadian border. At the time of his brush with Bigfoot, Hearn says he was hanging behind the rest of his dad’s hunting party, taking care of some dogs that had wandered off. It’s a no-no, Hearn says, to let dogs into the woods during hunting season, for obvious reasons that usually involve an accidentally dead dog. So while the rest of the hunting party disappeared into the thick woods, Hearn dutifully walked the dogs, which belonged to a friend, through a wooded path and back to a nearby truck.

And that’s when Hearn first heard it: Something, something big, was walking alongside him, hidden in the surrounding woods.

Hearn remembers stopping to stare into the woods that surrounded him. Nothing. But then, when he took another step, he heard it again: something large moving through the thicket.

This went on – Hearn stopped, and the sound stopped; Hearn moved, and whatever was following him moved, too – until he saw the road, a strip of asphalt about 100 yards away.

That’s when Hearn let his nerves get the best of him.

“I booked,” he says. “And off to my right, behind me, I could hear something crashing through the tree branches. The thickets were moving. Whatever it was, it was running, too. It was definitely following me.”

Hearn made it to the truck. And he didn’t hear another peep from whatever was in those woods. But the experience changed him, he says. It introduced him to a new passion in life: cryptozoology, the study of and the search for unexplained creatures. You probably know these cryptids by many names: Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, Champ, the skunk ape, Chupacabra. Hearn, and many others, believes that these beasts are actually out there. Not only that, he believes they’re roaming the woods of Arizona. And some, he and other cryptozoologists say, tread awfully close to the Phoenix area.

Photography by Brendan Moore Valley residents Alex Hearn (left) and Mitchell Waite say they have proof that the Mogollon Monster – Arizona’s answer to Bigfoot – exists.

Today, Hearn runs his own group, The Arizona Cryptozoological Research Organization. He and his fellow members are dedicated to finding the truth about Arizona’s answer to Bigfoot, commonly called the Mogollon Monster. Hearn is convinced it exists and wants to prove the skeptics wrong.

Hearn is far from alone. Men and women in the Phoenix area are tromping through woods, staring up into the skies and spending their nights in haunted houses, hotels and mines to find ghosts, UFOs, monsters and other unexplained forces.

They’re not doing it for fame. And they’re well aware of the ridicule that often comes with spending a significant chunk of your life combing through animal scat in an attempt to prove that something undiscovered is lurking in the woods.

These local cryptozoologists, ghost hunters and UFO spotters consider themselves visionaries. They are looking for the next big thing, they say. They are the only ones out there prepared for the future, for the day when humans discover that we were never alone, after all.

“This is one of life’s mysteries,” says Mesa resident Mitchell Waite, another Arizona resident searching for proof of the Mogollon Monster. “There are so many people out there who have seen this particular creature that it has to be there. Yet there is no real proof that it does exist. That brings up the question of why. Why can’t anyone do anything about this? People don’t want to hurt it or capture one. They just want to know it.”

From left: Judy Graehling, Sandy McNatt, James Kelly and Susan Graehling, all members of a Phoenix ghost-hunting group, stake out paranormal activity in Vulture Mine near Wickenburg, where Kelly says he has heard unexplained noises before.

Exploring the Unknown
Remember when the Six Million Dollar Man clashed with Bigfoot in a made-for-television spectacle? That was way back in 1976. And people had been searching for Bigfoot long before that two-part Bionic Man/Bigfoot showdown occurred.

And Bigfoot is just one example. Humans have been searching for undiscovered creatures, apparitions and outer-space visitors for decades upon decades. Hearn and Waite are just the latest variation on these hunters of the unknown.

The fact that no one has yet found concrete proof of extra-terrestrial visitors, towering humanoid apes or ghosts is no deterrence to today’s local seekers.

James Kelly, for one, is certain that there are things out there that science can never explain.

“If you frighten easily, this is probably something you should not be into,” says Kelly, a Tempe resident and member of the Phoenix-based ghost-hunting group, Arizona Paranormal Investigations (API), and a self-described skeptic. “It’s a very natural human condition to be afraid of the unknown. But you have to reel in your emotions. When you hear a knock on the wall, is that a ghost or is it the natural settling of the house? It’s all about how you handle the information.”

Kelly and his fellow ghost hunters are a mixed breed, he says. Some, like him, are natural skeptics, preferring to look for a natural explanation for every odd occurrence. Others consider themselves psychic and feel a natural affinity for the spirit world.

Kelly says that most paranormal events have logical explanations. For instance, he and his fellow researchers with API once investigated a home in Phoenix for paranormal activity. One of the owners complained that he had heard strange voices every night as he went to sleep. He also was plagued by intense nightmares.

The culprit? It turned out to be the man’s clock radio, which rested just inches from his pillow. The radio was defective, Kelly says, and was emitting 199 milligauss, a unit used to measure the strength of a magnetic field. Typically, such clocks only emit 1 or 2 milligauss. Kelly and his fellow researchers surmised that the clock was the real problem, not vengeful spirits.

The man replaced his clock radio and hasn’t had any problems since, Kelly says.

But there are other times, Kelly says, when there are no logical explanations. In those instances, Kelly admits, there can only be one answer: the paranormal. And that’s exactly what Kelly says he experienced in March 2007, when he and the members of his group held a training session for new members at Vulture Mine in Vulture City, about 50 miles northwest of Phoenix.

The mine and its surrounding buildings provide a natural hunting ground for ghosts. The mine opened in 1863 and quickly sprouted a boomtown. It’s credited with helping to spark the growth of Phoenix.

But the mine closed in 1942 and never reopened. The site has since become a popular ghost town. Visitors to it often report ghostly experiences. Some even say that if you sniff the wind just right, you can often catch the whiff of a fresh cake baking in the long-closed mess hall.

Kelly was scheduled to teach a class to the trainees that March afternoon. As the clock ticked past 4:30, he walked to an old schoolhouse, built in the 1880s, with his tape recorder in hand. As he wandered through the building, which was empty except for himself, he issued a simple command: “If anyone else is here, rap twice on the wall.” Kelly didn’t hear any rapping, but he did hear something else: footsteps walking steadily across the floor. Problem was, Kelly says, he was still the only person in the building, and he wasn’t moving. Kelly waited and then ran outside. There was no one anywhere near the building. There was no one on the roof. He was alone.

“Ghost hunting is usually a boring thing to do,” Kelly says. “You’ll have many cases of nothing happening. Then you never know which case will have that surge of something happening, like in this case. I wasn’t scared, but I was shocked. I was really shocked. You should have seen me teaching my class afterwards.”

But what exactly did Kelly hear? That’s the tricky question. Skeptics would say it was the wind or the schoolhouse settling, or maybe even the tricks the mind plays when it’s secretly expecting something odd to happen. But when Kelly returned home and reviewed his audiotape, he says he was certain: Something was walking across that floor, and it wasn’t him or anyone else he could see taking those steps.

Kelly has since put the recording, and several others, on API’s Website, arizonaparanormalinvestigations.com. The recordings are definitely a creepy listen.