This replica of a footprint cast made in 1967 in Northern California, at the site where the most famous Bigfoot film was made, hangs on the basement wall at Scot Violette’s home in Baker City (Lisa Britton)

There’s a plaster cast of a footprint on the wall of Scott Violette’s basement and it’s the sort of thing that could give a kid nightmares for weeks.

Violette, who lives in Baker City, is wearing a camouflage cap emblazoned with the slogan “Squatch Hunter.”

He walks beneath a sign that welcomes visitors to the “Squatchers Lounge.”

Violette slides a volume titled “Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science” from a bookshelf crammed with similarly named works and topped by a vintage 1970s metal lunchbox emblazoned with the figure of a hairy bipedal beast.

The theme here is as obvious as an 18-inch-long track stamped in a patch of mud in the deep woods.

Yet Violette, whose T-shirt reads “Sasquatch Research Team,” says the heart of his operation — his “Sasquatch lair,” he puts it with a hearty chuckle — lies elsewhere in his labyrinthine basement.

That nook is where he stores his motion-sensing, sound-recording video cameras.

And his drone.

And the paintball gun he’s modifying so it’ll fire darts designed to extract a scrap of DNA that in theory could convince skeptical scientists — which is almost all of them — that Sasquatch, better known as Bigfoot — is a real creature.

“Just because it hasn’t been seen by the right professor from the U.S. doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” said Violette, 54, who grew up in Summerville, graduated from Imbler High School and moved to Baker City with his wife, Hannah, about four years ago.

“I do believe they exist. I think the proof is right there, but they’re not accepting it.”

Violette’s interest in this most famous of “cryptids” — animals whose existence has not been conclusively proved — dates to age 7 and an afternoon trip to watch a movie at the Elgin Opera House.

But his plans for this summer are more ambitious than any of his previous forays into forests where perhaps Bigfoot walks. Violette hopes to collect some compelling evidence while he hikes through the dense woods of the northern Blue Mountains near Tollgate.

His nearly lifelong fascination with the possibility that an unidentified primate roams the Pacific Northwest prompted Violette to recently start the Blue Mountain Bigfoot Research website (www.squatchoregon.com) and Facebook page.

Violette encourages people to visit the sites to share their Bigfoot sightings, track finds or other potential evidence, to offer to accompany him on evidence-gathering trips to the mountains, or just to order a piece of Bigfoot kitsch with which he hopes to bankroll his project.

“This is something that’s been on my mind since we moved back (to Northeastern Oregon),” Violette said. “I’ve always spent a lot of time out in the woods. I decided it’s time to take this seriously.”

Which is not to say that Violette can devote his life to pursuing what mainstream science long ago decided was merely a myth.

He performs as Professor Algernon, a magician in the Steampunk tradition, he works with the Eastern Oregon Regional Theatre in Baker City, and he’s the drama coach at Baker High School.

Besides which he works part time at Cashway Lumber Company in Baker City.

But as his wardrobe choices and his basement decor both announce without a shred of subtlety, Violette’s dedication to the pursuit of Bigfoot is considerable.

“It’s important to me that science eventually accepts this,” he said. “It’s not just a reason to go out into the woods.”

See complete story in Friday’s Observer