Sassy, a toddler Bigfoot, is one of the museum's many memorable displays.

Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum

Hastings, Nebraska

"I was like other people; I always thought Bigfoot was just in California, Oregon, places like that," said Harriett McFeely. "But that's not true. They're all over."

Harriett McFeely, the Bigfoot Lady.

"All over" includes Nebraska, home of the Bigfoot Crossroads of America Museum, which Harriett -- known familiarly as "Bigfoot Lady" -- opened on September 12, 2018, her 73rd birthday. She was inspired, she said, because despite Bigfoot's proximity, there wasn't a Bigfoot museum within 500 miles of Nebraska.

Also, her collection of Bigfoot evidence, including the leftovers of many Bigfoot meals, had taken over her house. "I had no place to put another bone," she said. "They were all over my kitchen, and my dining room table. I didn't have very many people who wanted to come over for dinner."

The bones provide decor for the museum Bone Room, and were found by Harriett during her many Bigfoot field investigations. "They eat lunch and they just toss those bones," said Harriett, who calls the calcified remains of deer, raccoon, possum, and turtle "Killing Fields." Harriett, who has lived in Nebraska her entire life, has seen much evidence like this to convince her that Bigfoot is near, even though she has yet to spot the elusive Nebraska creature in person.

"If you just go out to look for Bigfoot, the chances of you seeing one are pretty small," she said. "One reason you can't find Bigfoot is because he's already found you."

Central and South American elongated skulls. Aliens? Giants? Bigfoot?

Harriett estimates that "way more than a hundred" Bigfoot live in the state. "There's all kinds of habitat and food, and also a lot of old, abandoned barns and houses where they could hide. I don't see any problem with there being that many at all."

In the Bone Room, Harriett offers a size comparison: human foot to Bigfoot.

This knowledge, however, only came gradually to Harriett. She'd believed in Bigfoot since 1953, but waited over 60 years to admit it in public, after she'd seen two Bigfoot while on a Colorado camping trip. "It seemed to me that once I said, 'I am a Bigfooter,' it freed a lot of other people," she said. "I thought I was the only person in Nebraska that was interested in Bigfoot. Then people started calling me and telling their stories. Boy, was that a surprise to me."

Harriett pinpoints reported Bigfoot sightings on a Nebraska road map in the museum, and believes that the actual number of Bigfoot encounters is many times that number. "99 percent of these people have never told anybody, because people will roll their eyes and say they're crazy or a liar.

"Most people don't like that," she said. "I'm used to it. I don't care one bit."

All visitors to the museum receive a guided tour from Harriett, "because I have a lot of evidence," she said, and she wants people to understand the educational and scientific purpose behind the exhibits. In additional to the expected casts of Bigfoot footprints, the museum has a collection of rare Bigfoot handprints, and a unique exhibit about Zana, "the Wild Woman of Russia," who may have been a surviving Neanderthal or a Bigfoot.

Skulls on display show that Bigfoot is not a bear or a gorilla, and there's an exhibit of Central and South American elongated skulls that were donated by Harriett's friend Joe Taylor, who runs the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Texas. "Are they aliens, giants, Bigfoot?" Harriett asked. Similar giants, she said, have been unearthed in Nebraska.

Bigfoot could also be called Bighand.

Harriett stands visitors next to an eight-foot-long 2x4 to give them a sense of Bigfoot's height, and has them place their feet on a plywood cutout that she traced from a Bigfoot footprint, over 18 inches long, found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Photos taken by Harriett of tree arches and fallen log arrangements made, she said, by Bigfoot, offer more clues to be scrutinized. A near life-size Bigfoot mom and toddler -- Patty and Sassy -- occupy a woodsy scene in another room.

Harriett has had 11 children of her own, she said, "and they all think I am stark, raving insane. None of them like Bigfoot. They don't want to hear about it. They don't want to be around it." But that's okay with the Bigfoot Lady, who is living her dream even if others disapprove.

"I always wanted to work in a museum, and now I have my own," she said. "My whole life I could never say what I loved, and now I can."

In October 2020, Nebraska governor Pete Ricketts issued an official proclamation designating October 20th as "Bigfoot Crossroads of Nebraska Day," and naming Harriet as the state's official "Nebraska Bigfoot Lady."