I’ve always loved cryptozoology, because I enjoy thinking about the unanswered questions. Why are Bigfoot sightings so fleeting, why are bodies never found, and why encounters tend to happen near remote forests, caves, and karst regions.
At the same time, I’m fascinated by fungi and mycology, especially how vast underground networks quietly support entire ecosystems, and by the hive behavior of ants and bees, where cooperation and restraint matter more than dominance.
When I started connecting those ideas, it made sense to imagine a hominid lineage that survived by avoiding humans entirely, living mostly underground, and remaining unseen rather than competing for the surface. That line of thinking became the foundation for this story.The Malakhov Journals: The Silent Lineage is a slow-burn speculative fiction story that treats Bigfoot as an evolutionary and anthropological what if, not a monster or myth.
The story begins in 1892, when a Russian naturalist records the existence of a hidden hominid lineage living deep underground, sustained by cooperative systems and bioluminescent fungal ecosystems. The discovery is sealed away and forgotten. In the present day, those journals resurface, leading to a modern investigation and the discovery of a living subterranean community in the Ozarks.
It’s completely free to read on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/139769/bigfoot-was-never-a-myth-the-malakhov-journals
This is a quiet, discovery-driven story focused on observation, ethics, and the consequences of knowledge rather than action or spectacle. It’s written for readers who enjoy grounded speculative science, hidden worlds, and the question of whether everything we find should be revealed.
Super interesting idea.
However.
If you tell me a subterranean fungal ecosystem avoided discovery until recently, my imagination can formulate ideas as to how and why. And the hypothesis doesn't need to be crazier than its subterranean. And a fundi. And in Russia.
If you tell me a large ape-like creature avoided discovery until now, in the USA, despite a community of people actively seeking it out, then my imagination will fail to come up with reasons as to why and how.
What can Bigfoot do, that every other large ape, no scratch that, large mammals, failed to do, to avoid discovery?
He has a wizard's cloak
This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for, so thanks for taking the time to think it through.
I agree with you. A big ape just wandering around on the surface in the U.S. wouldn’t be able to avoid discovery, especially with so many people actively looking. That never made sense to me either, and it’s why the idea didn’t click until I stopped thinking of it as surface-dwelling at all.
In the story, they live underground. They’re born there, they die there, and everything stays there. Humans barely explore those spaces, so that’s where staying hidden actually works. When they do show up on the surface, it’s rare and usually tied to some kind of disturbance underground, not casual roaming.
That also helped the global sightings make sense. Instead of one group somehow getting everywhere, it’s related underground populations that split a long time ago, following cave and karst systems rather than surface borders. So sightings in Russia, the U.S., and elsewhere are rare surface moments from different populations shaped by the same pressures.
Fungi are a big part of it too. Huge fungal networks already exist in places people never go, quietly recycling material and supporting life without sunlight. Once you factor that in, the lack of bones or surface evidence stops being a problem and becomes the reason the idea holds together.
So seriously, thanks for your comments and observations. Those questions are what made the idea interesting to me in the first place.
Could explain the wood knocking. Yes, that is most likely how they communicate with each other, but what if the way the knock sounds- tells them where they are in relation to hollowed out root/underground systems?
Can you describe wood knocking? I concentrated on the underground life, but not the surface of earth activities.
The tapping of large sticks on trees in forests. Apparently, they are known for this and people say it’s one of the ways they communicate amongst each other. I’m saying maybe there’s more to it than just communication. Maybe it’s a sound map.