Bigfoot hunter Claudia Ackley found dead at home

A prominent Bigfoot hunter who claimed to have filmed the cryptid — and even sued the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to prove its existence — has died.

Claudia Ackley, 51, was found dead at her Tennessee home on July 3 following a suspected heart attack, her heartbroken partner Ed Brown confirmed to the US Sun.

After allegedly first sighting the mythical, hairy humanoid nearly a decade ago, Ackley devoted her life to showing that the species does exist — and to warn others that the creatures are dangerous.

Brown told the Sun that the Bigfoot community had “lost a soldier” with Ackley’s death. He was away on a business trip over the weekend and became worried after he hadn’t heard from her between Thursday and Sunday.

He had a friend check in on her and saw from a window that she was in bed and not moving. Police were called to the house, and Ackley was pronounced dead.

“It could be caused by hypertension or an issue with her medication. but there is nothing to suggest anything untoward or anything related to any conspiracy theory,” Brown told the Sun. “It is so important to me that is made clear.

“I want to protect her legacy, she was a great person with a heart the size of Texas and she wanted to help everybody.

Ackley filmed a purported sighting of Bigfoot while she was out hiking with her young daughters in 2017, she told The Post in 2018.

They were at a trailhead near Lake Arrowhead, California, with their dogs when one of her daughters stopped dead in her tracks in fear. When Ackley ran to see what was wrong, she claims she saw an alpha-male Sasquatch, leering at her from behind a tree.

Terrified, they all fled, she said. Ackley later learned that one of her daughters filmed the encounter.

“I swear to God, on my life, we ran into a Sasquatch,” the mom can be heard saying in the clip, as the camera shows a shadow at best — or perhaps nothing at all — between some trees.

She called the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who, after reviewing the footage, told her she had just seen a bear.

In January 2018, she made national headlines when she sued the agency to get it to recognize Sasquatch as an actual species.

The case was dismissed months later.

“She wanted to protect people and she was doing something no one else was doing by speaking out about these creatures and listening to others,” Brown told the Sun.

“It’s no secret that our views were different on this subject but she truly believed in their existence,” he continued.

“Her lawsuit’s goal was to force the state of California and the fish and wildlife authority to take sightings seriously and investigate them properly, rather than just say, ‘It was a bear,’” he said. “The goal was to get them to do real investigation and research.

“Right up until the very end, she believed in what she saw and she wanted to help other people who had experienced something similar,” Brown said, adding, “The community — regardless of anyone’s views — has lost someone who was willing to stand up and fight for their beliefs. The Bigfoot community lost a soldier.”

The close “Bigfoot” encounter and lawsuit thrust Ackley into the national spotlight, which led to ridicule and harassment from critics who dismissed her as crazy, she told The Post.

All she wanted to do, she said at the time, is to let people know that Bigfoot is out there, and it isn’t friendly.

She’s had multiple encounters with Sasquatches over the years, the first being in Washington state during a Bigfoot trek arranged as a vacation with her then-husband in 2014. 

She saw what appeared to be a small, 5-foot-tall Bigfoot in the trees and locked eyes with it. She even made a plaster mold of an alleged footprint.

That moment, she said, was life-changing.

“I realized at that point, looking at the creature, that there’s so much of life that we don’t know. Life is so beautiful, and I’m wasting my years,” she told The Post.

“I lost 125 pounds and decided to get a divorce . . . It motivated me to chase my dreams and live my life.”