A ‘Clear as Day’ Bigfoot at 1:20am in East Texas

An American black bear, for comparison. It isn’t the animal seen on Highway 80. Credit: Kimberly Emerson/USFWS, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What happened

At about 1:20am on Friday 12 June 2026, a driver heading east on U.S. Highway 80 in East Texas, on a stretch where “80 turns into a 2 lane road and dense woods on either side”, says a tall figure stepped out of the trees on the eastbound side “like it was going to cross the road”. In his report to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), he wrote: “I had my bright lights on and I saw it clear as day.”

Coast to Coast AM picked up the report on 18 June and named the witness as Dustin Dean, so we use his name. His wife was in the car but didn’t see anything, so we don’t name her.

Media evidence: none. There’s no photo, video or dash cam footage. The evidence is a single witness’s written report and the BFRO investigator’s phone follow-up.

Timeline

• 1976: The FBI tests 15 hairs sent in as possible Bigfoot evidence and finds they are “of deer family origin”.
• 1995: Matthew Moneymaker founds the BFRO, which runs the database where this report was filed.
• 12 June 2026, about 1:20am: the sighting on Highway 80, between Big Sandy and Wilkins. It’s a “clear night”, per the report.
• 12 June 2026: the report is submitted to BFRO (#81252).
• After 12 June: BFRO investigator Matthew Moneymaker speaks to the witness “at length by phone” and publishes a follow-up.
• 18 June 2026: Coast to Coast AM / iHeart publish “Texas Man Reports ‘Clear as Day’ Bigfoot Sighting.”
• 4 Nov 2026: we rechecked. No physical evidence, photos or second witness have been published.

What believers claim

The account is unusually detailed for a sighting at highway speed. The witness describes hair “matted with a brownish red look”, a face that “was not like you see in pictures”, an ape-like nose but a “more human-like” mouth, and eyes that “didnt glow but did reflect the light enough to look hazy reflective”. He puts the figure at “7-8 foot tall and about 3-4 foot wide at the chest”. Moneymaker calls him “a credible witness” and says he is willing to work with a sketch artist.

Moneymaker also argues that the location fits a pattern. He lists “four (4) higher-probability factors”: dense woods, a railroad bed, a powerline route, and a feeder creek for the Sabine River, “Little White Oak Creek”. He links the report to others from the Sabine River corridor.

What the research found

The viewing conditions are documented, and they’re brief. According to Moneymaker’s follow-up, the driver “was travelling at roughly 60 miles per hour” and came “within 30 feet” of the figure, which was “fully lit up” by his high beams. At 60 mph a car covers about 88 feet a second. The report itself says that “by the time I passed it, it had already disappeared into the dark woods.” That’s a sighting of a few seconds at most.