On August 10, 2026, at about 1 p.m., a 25-year-old woman hiking alone on her day off took two photos at a remote glacial pond and bog in rural Onondaga County, near Syracuse. She is identified only by her initials, K.D.

The pictures show a short, stocky figure, put at about 4 feet 9 inches, standing hip-deep in the water and muck. She first thought she had come across a naked man. Then, she said, it turned its head and stared at her. “It really looked inhuman,” she said. She ran.

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) is withholding the exact location. Its founder, Matt Moneymaker, posted the photos on Facebook with a long analysis. He said the figure does not look like a classic Bigfoot, but does not look like a normal human either, and suggested its smooth skin might be wet fur lying flat. He stopped short of a verdict: it might be an old man, he said, or it might not. A BFRO investigator met the witness and tried to recreate the photos. The group says it found the pictures authentic and the witness credible, and has floated the idea of a juvenile Sasquatch.

Skeptics have a simpler reading: a person going for an ill-advised swim. As they point out, in three decades of BFRO investigations, no photo has proven Bigfoot exists.