Animal Planet’s four-person film crew didn’t exactly have its bearings when it produced “The Maine Event, Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot,” a segment in the series, “Finding Bigfoot,” which aired Jan. 10. Bradbury Mountain is in Pownal, after all – not Durham, as the Animal Planet crew said.

And while Durham resident Tia Nadeau says she believes in the existence of the man/beast also known as “Bigfoot,” and says her sister actually saw one a few years back in nearby Lisbon Falls, Nadeau just couldn’t take the Animal Planet show seriously.

“They were over on Bradbury Mountain,” Nadeau said. “They kept saying that they were in Durham. The whole show was such a joke. It was such a crock. It was horrible. I had to shut if off at the end. They didn’t even know where they were.”

Jared Albert, a publicist for Animal Planet, did not return calls asking for comment on the crew’s experience in Maine.

Last April – with snow still on the ground – the crew started off its Maine journey in Portland, home to Loren Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum. Cryptozoology is the study of hidden animals, such as Sasquatch. Coleman has written 17 books and more than 300 articles, has appeared frequently on radio and television programs, and has lectured throughout North America, as well as in London and at Loch Ness in Scotland.

The Animal Planet team viewed some of Coleman’s artifacts, declaring some of them fake and another, of a Sasquatch footprint cast, as believable. Coleman showed them a big map of Maine dotted with stick pins where Sasquatch sightings have been claimed. Many of the pins were in the Durham-Brunswick area.

Coleman said that the words “Sasquatch” and “Bigfoot” refer to the same creature. “Yetti” and “Abominable Snowman” are the same name for a creature that lives in the Himalayas, and has a smaller footprint, he said.

Regarding his map, dotted with report sightings in the Brunswick-Durham area, Coleman said that it makes sense.

“It’s a hotbed for humans, but you can’t have Bigfoot sightings without humans around,” he said. “The Brunswick-Durham sightings are on river roads, and the furthest from human habitation. It’s really more about the roads that lead to Brunswick than Brunswick itself.”

Coleman said there was a famous sighting of the “Durham gorilla” in 1973, near the Durham-Brunswick town line.

Nadeau, however, said it was a hoax.

“There was a small zoo out there at the time, and one of their apes got loose,” she said.

The Animal Planet crew went from Portland to Bradbury Mountain State Park – in Pownal.

“I’m alone near Bradbury Mountain and I just heard a Sasquatch howling in the distance,” one of them said.

The man returned the howl, and looked into the foggy distance with his binoculars.

Nadeau was not impressed.

“They drove down Route 9, and showed a farmhouse across from Brown Road just across the town line in Durham,” she said. “They caught sounds in the forest and knocked on a tree and heard something knocking back. I’m watching with my husband and we were just laughing.”

Coleman had a different take on the Animal Planet show.

“‘The Maine Event’ was a positive, interesting overview of the work of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland to track Bigfoot in Maine, the sincere nature of Mainers who have reported Sasquatch in the state, and gave a panorama of the glory of the vast treed landscape here,” he said. “They had positive results, and that’s something that is rare on the program.”

Fritz Appleby, the park ranger, did not return calls seeking comment by the Tri-Town Weekly’s deadline Monday.

Nadeau is a believer. She said that her sister, Taryn Hall of Lisbon, saw Sasquatch on Route 125 in Lisbon Falls about five years ago, not far from the Sabattus town line. There was a sighting in nearby Litchfield at about the same time, she said.

“The thing ran across the road and into the woods,” Nadeau said. “It was like 7 feet tall. I believe her. It was kind of a remote area. We call it ‘Sasquatch Corner.’”

Hall said she still gets chills every time she crossed that section of Route 125, near a big red farmhouse, at night.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” she said. “It was in November, just before Thanksgiving. It was right near a cow pasture. I was heading from Sabattus into Lisbon Falls around 4 or so. It was getting dark. There was a car in front of me with its bright lights on. It crossed the road in front of that car.”

Hall said that the creature had a long stride, and was swinging its arms.

“It looked like a human watching, but it was alarmingly large,” she said. “It looked like it was covered in hair, very dark hair.”

Hall said she got “very nervous.” The person driving the car in front of her pulled into a turnout nearby, and shined its lights onto a field the creature was walking toward.

“He appeared to be getting out of his car, but I kept driving because I was terrified,” she said.

She called her mother and her sister and her husband Chris, who to this day doesn’t believe her story. A week later, she read in the newspaper of a similar sighting in Turner.

“I am a very normal person,” Hall said. “I’ll never forget it.”

Loren Coleman poses with visitors at his International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland.An Animal Planet crew filmed last April at Bradbury Mountain State Park in Pownal, for a Sasquatch story that aired on Jan. 10.