Teapot Hill Bigfoot Sighting Confirmed by Witness's Own Family

Posted Sunday, August 02, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

So there's this photo floating around the internet that's been making waves for years, and honestly, the more you dig into it, the harder it is to dismiss. It comes from a sighting at Teapot Hill in Cultus Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia, and the backstory behind it is almost as compelling as the image itself. The story goes like this: a young guy named Sel Hodzek was hiking up Teapot Hill, which is honestly one of the most popular trails in the area. We're not talking about some remote backcountry expedition here. This trail is right off the main road, close to the lake, and sees hikers pretty much every single day, even in December when this reportedly happened. But when Sel was making his way back down the trail, he came face to face with something that made him freeze. Whatever he saw, he managed to snap a photo of it before bolting back up the hill to wait for another hiker to pass by. Now here's where it gets interesting. A YouTuber named Michael 7 recently broke down why this particular case has stuck with him over the years, and it's not just because of the photo. Michael actually knows people who personally know Sel. We're talking about two separate connections here. First, his dad was with a woman whose son's best friend turned out to be Sel himself. That friend described Sel as a clean-cut, straightforward guy who insisted something genuinely happened to him. Then, years later, a friend of Michael's ended up working with Sel's older brother, who also confirmed the story and acknowledged that Sel had a photo of whatever he encountered. Think about that for a second. If this were some elaborate hoax, wouldn't the friends and family be in on it? The older brother, the best friend, the mom of the best friend, all independently confirming this was real years after the fact? That level of consistency from people who actually know the witness is rare in these cases. And then there's the photo itself. When you zoom in, there's clearly something there that doesn't look like a tree stump or a trick of the light. There's what appears to be a facial structure visible, and the figure has a distinctly hairy appearance. Could it be a homeless person? A guy in a suit? Sure, skeptics will throw those theories out there, but the Fraser Valley region of British Columbia has long been considered Sasquatch country. The area has a rich history of sightings, and Cultus Lake sits right at the edge of wilderness that backs into mountains where these creatures could easily roam. What's really sad about this case is what happened to Sel afterward. He was just a teenager when this went down, and his family was apparently new to Canada. The attention he received from the Sasquatch community turned negative fast. People accused him of all sorts of things, and eventually he just stopped talking about it entirely. Imagine being a young person who had a genuinely terrifying encounter, captured proof of it, and then got dragged through the mud for it. No wonder he went silent. The Fraser Valley has produced some of the most compelling Sasquatch encounters in North America. The combination of dense forest, mountainous terrain, and relative proximity to populated areas makes it a perfect hotspot. Teapot Hill itself sits in that weird zone where civilization meets wilderness, which actually makes sightings there more credible in some ways. If something can be seen in a well-trafficked area, imagine what's out there when nobody's watching. Michael 7 makes a solid point in his breakdown: either Sel lied to everyone he knew, including his own brother and his closest friends, or something genuinely happened. Occam's razor suggests that a teenager pulling off an elaborate hoax that fooled his own family for years is a lot more complicated than simply encountering something unknown in the woods. The photo remains one of the more intriguing pieces of potential evidence out there. It's not the clearest image, but the context surrounding it, the witness's character, the corroboration from multiple sources who knew him personally, and the location all add up to something worth paying attention to. Definitely worth checking out the full video for yourself. Michael 7 goes into more detail about his personal connections to the people involved and walks through the photo itself. Sometimes the best cases aren't the ones with the crispest footage, but the ones with the strongest human stories behind them.