Ashton Gerard/MDN Jena Grover, left, and founder Jen Kruse pose at their booth Saturday at the Sleep Inn & Suites. The duo held a “Banter” at 5 p.m. to share stories with fellow Bigfoot enthusiasts as well as a calling contest to see who could draw out Bigfoot the best.

Bigfoot is around and active, or at least that is what the women of SheSquatchers believe. The SheSquatchers visited Minot as a part of the BodyLabUSA convention Saturday at the Sleep Inn & Suites.

The SheSquatchers are located primarily in Minnesota and North Dakota and investigate Bigfoot sightings across the American Midwest, according to their website.

So, why all women?

“I sat down with Loren Coleman, he’s a cryptozoologist who has the Bigfoot museum in Maine,” Jen Kruse, of Minnesota, founder of the SheSquatchers, said. “He said ‘I think it’s going to be a woman that really develops that interaction and that relationship with Bigfoot.’ “ Cryptozoology is the study of Bigfoot and other unknown animals that people believe are out there.

Kruse said she could understand this kind of concept from all the studies with apes that are always working with women alone without protection. Men have a pheromone or scent that apes and Bigfoot alike either find threatening or they do not like, according to her. From this, Kruse concluded that she wanted to be that woman who had that encounter – that real first connection with Bigfoot.

“I thought, you know, I’ve always been intuitive and I actually do work as a psychic medium for missing persons cases and I work with paranormal teams with remote viewing,” Kruse said. With these skills, she feels she is equipped to hunt down and draw out Bigfoot.

Remote viewing, according to Kruse and fellow team member Jena Grover, also of Minnesota, has been the key to their success and to what they’ve found so far as “evidence.”

Kruse will look at a map with a word or a question in her mind, “Where is evidence of Bigfoot?” or just “Bigfoot.” Kruse says she will scan the map until something jumps out at her, not that the physical map has changed, but something appears only to her that points to where Bigfoot or Bigfoot evidence may be.

The team claims to have had a close encounter in Northern Minnesota and found what could possibly be a “shelter” or structure made by what could be Bigfoot.

“It definitely wasn’t natural,” Kruse said. “Trees don’t just fall that way.”

Grover says she was at the scene when the structure was found.

“I was blown away that it actually worked,” Grover said about the remote viewing. “I trusted her, I went out there with my eyes up and my heart open… We ended up parking within 75-feet of that structure.”

The structure, of course, was brought to the team by Kruse’s remote viewing abilities. Kruse says if the team had gone 100-feet in the other direction, they would have found Bigfoot.

“I was going to go right. I took one step and a rock fell in front of me,” Kruse said. “I’m standing there going ‘Where did that come from?’ Bigfoot is known to throw rocks for whatever he’s trying to communicate. It felt very much like ‘do not come this way.’ “

At this point, the small crew of three women – Kruse, Grover and Nikki Jourdain – happened upon the “structure” to their left.

Kruse says she saw what looked like two towers, some fencing, and a few rooms structured out of fallen trees and sticks woven together.

When Grover laid inside the structure, she noticed how nice and soft the ground was. The ground was “worked up and soft like a mattress” according to Grover.

“As a Bigfoot researcher, I’m going to say that I don’t know for sure that it’s from Bigfoot,” Kruse said. “I can say that as a remote viewer, it lit up when I said Bigfoot evidence, so as a remote viewer the answer is yes, it was showing me that as Bigfoot evidence.”

Currently, the women are not in North Dakota to search for Bigfoot, more for recruitment, though they are wanting to find more evidence and hear more stories from the Midwest.

“In the Midwest, there’s not a lot of people that come forth, but there are so many people that have stories,” Grover said about where Bigfoot is. “We get to go different places, we hold ‘Banters’ to share our stories and to hear other peoples’ stories as well.”

Grover says if you look at a map of Bigfoot sightings, the Midwest region is not very full. Bigfoot must not be fond of wide-open spaces.

To learn more about the Shesquatchers and their “outings,” visit their Facebook page at SheSquatchersOfficial or visit their website, shesqautchers.com.