There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it. ~ old sherpa saying

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Bigfoot Thread at the JREF: 'Does the BFRO (and other BF researchers) talk people into seeing Bigfoot?'

As some readers of this blog and my other blogs -- like SkeptiWatch-- might know, I've been intrigued by the excess of Bigfoot threads on the James Randi forum. I've lost literal count ages ago, but it's something like 400 separate threads discussing Bigfoot. Okay, so it's not 400. But it's a flipping lot. At last count it was around 35. Here's the latest: Does the BFRO (and other BF researchers) talk people into seeing Bigfoot? - JREF Forum

I've never seen a Bigfoot, but if I were to see one, I'd be pretty damn sure that I did, indeed, see one, and that no one "talked me into it." Maybe it's because of my life long experiences with UFOs and other paranormal phenomena that keeps me so damn interested in witness accounts of their Bigfoot encounters. As with UFOs and ghosts, when you see something that is so absolutely there, and so absolutely not "normal", you damn well know it. No one has to talk me into anything.

The OP at the forum makes use of the expected debunker-skeptoid arsenal: accusations of BF witnesses feeling special because they've seen Bigfoot and you haven't. (The same tactic is used to marginalize UFO witnesses.) Leading the witness; as in:
"...say you heard a noise you couldn't ID out in the woods. You mention it to a friend, who says, dude, maybe it was a Bigfoot, you should contact the BFRO (or whatever Bigfoot org. is handiest). So you do, and they ask you all kinds of leading Qs until you start to feel really special, like you're one of the witnesses or whatevr they call them, that's it, the KNOWERS. You are now a KNOWER and think maybe that's really what it was. You now feel very special.

(Er, "...witnesses or whatever they call them" ???)

While it's true there are those that think every unusual sound is a "Squatch" or UFOs by definition mean "aliens from outer space" but really, let's move on from that given and get to the actual phenomena.

And that's the latest from the good ol' JREF.

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