A Jeer for Sasquatch Believers

In Jeers: Why do the Sasquatch believers keep on keeping on?

Last week, according to The Associated Press, about 45 members of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization spent two days in the Uintah Mountains of Utah searching for the legendary apelike critter, emphasis on "legendary."

They used sophisticated equipment such as parabolic microphones and night-vision goggles.

Here's a shocker: A Forest Service District Ranger there said he was not aware of any sighting and that campers should be more worried about bears. Nevertheless, there are apparent true believers, including Scott Taylor of Tacoma, who said he saw Bigfoot in 2005 while deer hunting on the Washington coast.

Funny, that despite the occasional "sightings" and despite all the digital and cell-phone cameras everyone seems to carry these days, no one ever gets a bona fide picture or video of Sasquatch.

First saw the link for this item in the Clark County, Washington’s The Columbian by way of Cryptomundo.

As with UFO investigations, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, when it comes to skeptwoos. If BF researchers didn’t use equipment of any kind, they’d be chided for not being “scientific,” or serious, etc. When they do use equipment, they’re mocked. (well, either way, they’re mocked.)

Just the usual knee jerk skeptoid stuff, but I always wonder at the mindset that won’t allow for a witnesses’s experience; in this case, Scott Taylor. Does the reporter think Taylor is lying? Mentally ill? Simply mistaken? It’d be refreshing to see someone take responsibility for what they say; in this case, the reporter’s glib dismissal of the experience is an example. Say why you think it’s worth mocking.

There’s also the flawed reasoning that, since a ranger hasn’t heard any reports of a BF, then there aren’t any BF.

By the way, the Uintah region is well known for its history of UFO sightings, as well as Bigfoot type or “shape shifting” type creatures. Read Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science: Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah,
by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp, and The Utah UFO Display, by F.B. Salisbury. I believe the latter is out of print but you can find it on amazon.com, ebay, etc. That’s where I found my used copy. There’s also interesting material on Utah’s UFO Ranch.