Old Debate, New Article: Kill Or No Kill

New article (To Kill or to Capture Bigfoot: The Great Cryptozoological Debate) on the old debate that rages on. Sad that it rages on, sad that some people think one has to kill themselves a Bigfoot just to prove to science it exists. Not enough for one's own experience to be the proof; Big Science has to know as well in order for those with the bloodlust to feel vindicated.

“You would need a heavy-duty rifle,” according Jim Lansdale, co-founder of the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO). “I would suggest a 30-aught-six or better; .458 or something like that. Maybe a seven-mag’. But it’s all shot placement and you’d have to shoot him in the head. You can’t body-shoot him. They’re too big.” [Jim Lansdale; Gizmodo]

Disgusting Lansdale has spent a lot of brain energy figuring out just what weapon will do the job.

Skeptic and debunker Benjamin Radford gives his reason why those, like myself, are against killing a Sasquatch:

"To them it’s not just like killing an armadillo or an elk—it is a symbol of purity.” [Benjamin Radford; Gizmodo]

I'd like Mr. Radford to know that I wouldn't kill an armadillo (who does that?) or an elk. While some do -- hunters who kill elk in order to provide food for their family -- I choose not to do so. It's not because I believe Sasquatch is "pure", I have no idea. It simply is not right to do so. In this I am very adamant.

I have not seen a Sasquatch, though I have had a couple of odd experiences related to Sasquatch. I know a lot of individuals who have seen Bigfoot. I believe it exists. To me it doesn't matter if it's "pure" or almost human, or human like, or even human, or, 'simply' an animal. No reason to kill it. None.

None.
Nope.
Not one good reason.
At. All.

Having said that, I will make a qualifier here. While I doubt Bigfoot are psycho-beings killing humans willy-nilly, as Lansdale believes, (because, after all, those of us who are NO KILL are "bleeding hearts", which tells you a lot about Lansdale's mindset and political values) if an animal -- human or non -- is coming at me to eat me for lunch, then yes, I'd defend myself.

But I'm not going out to look for a being with the single minded purpose of killing one.

Why is (almost) Everyone Giving Dr. Melba Ketchum a Hard Time?

Listened to some of last night's Coast to Coast with host George Knapp and guest Dr. Ketchum. And if what she says is true, as to her diligence with testing, then why is she getting so much flack from many in Bigfoot Land? Such flack from science, well, sadly that's no surprise. Sciences' blindness to the existence of Bigfoot and the data is horribly frustrating and a mystery but, to be expected.  Why, though, are some in the Bigfoot world attacking her? I think she's been coy in the past, a bit, but overall, look. She's trying to do something. She's sent samples out to several labs. She's looking at the DNA. She's used blind studies. She has a variety of samples, not just one strand of elk hair. All this costs money, a lot of money. Finding labs to do the work is a huge job. Scientists have turned her down once they get wind that her research is Bigfoot research. According to Ketchum, one scientist threatened to sue her and her team if they used his findings; that's how angry he was over the subject of her research -- and how afraid he remains of being associated in any way with Bigfoot research.


Knapp asked her about her insistence that those she's discussed her research with sign disclosure statements. (Knapp himself signed one.) Ketchum explained that it's important to keep the data as uncontaminated as possible.

Then there's the infamous "peer reviewed" journal citation that gives any researcher the cred they need to be accepted in mainstream science and academia. It's a crazy loop: you have to be accepted by the very types of individuals who think you're nuts to be doing this kind of research in the first place, so you're not going to be accepted. Not having been accepted, your research is nothing. If her research isn't accepted into an accepted scientific journal, she's out. So is the star of this thing: Bigfoot.

So, given all this, why is Dr. Melba Ketchum --despite her possible missteps involving communication or style -- being treated badly by some in cryptozoology?

One possible answer to that is the uneasiness among some researchers that Bigfoot might be human, or far more human like, than those researchers have presumed. Some Bigfoot researchers have no problem with promoting a kill -- "for science" they tell us -- or thinking of Bigfoot as a big ape. Or some kind of animal. (Forgetting that we, too are animals.) Bigfoot is intelligent, very cool, what a find! but in the end, "just" an animal.

Many witnesses who've encountered Bigfoot speak of the eerie human qualities of the "creature" and as we know, many have tales to tell of spiritual and paranormal events within those encounters. These aspects of Bigfoot encounters sometimes don't go over very well with the more pragmatic Bigfoot researcher. Are they afraid that somewhere along the line, Ketchum's research presents clues or evidence of "more" here?

Ketchum said in last night's interview that if she is rejected by peer reviewed journals she'll put it out to the public. That would be fantastic, but also a cruelly frustrating gift, since it will be ignored by science.

Robert McLuhan on Anecdotal Evidence | TDG - Science, Magick, Myth and History

The very excellent Daily Grail brings us the following, by Alan Borky:Robert McLuhan on Anecdotal Evidence. Borky comments on his reading of McLuhan's article on anecdotal evidence:

In his piece McLuhan makes the observation "the skeptic’s most popular arguments is that anecdotal evidence can’t be relied on".

The problem with that particular skeptical position is it misses the point ALL EVIDENCE IS ANECDOTAL.

There is much more that is insightful and powerful. In this brief review Borky really gets it.

From "Denying Science" to "Anomalist Historian."

Lesley at The Debris Field linked to, and commented on, Melisa Hovey's post about my post: The Search For Bigfoot: Denying the necessity of Science.....

Melisa wrote on her blog The Search For Bigfoot:

What do witnesses want?

I have to say, I disagree with Regan Lee. When witnesses contact a person they know is a “Bigfoot Researcher” they may believe with all their heart and soul they have seen a Bigfoot, but they, as much as any researcher, want proof.

Why do I think that?

Because witnesses contact people within the “Bigfoot Research Community.” They send emails to Bigfoot Organizations. They call the 1-800 numbers, asking us to come and take a look at their property, or an area where they had a sighting. They write in their emails, “I know I’m not crazy”. Witnesses think, if anyone can prove they seen a Bigfoot – it is someone within this community. Witnesses know we collect any possible evidence of what they are reporting. Witnesses allow us to stay on their properties and hold “night ops”. If they didn’t want proof as much as your average researcher, they wouldn’t contact us, or allow us on their property.

I actually agree with Melisa in many ways. Read her post for my comments.

I also commented at Lesley's blog. One thing I wrote at Lesley's blog that just came out and inspired me for more on this is what I said about the need for having a Fortean, or "anomalist junkie" etc. along on BF teams. That'll tick off some, I'm sure, but if we can have scientists, and nuts and bolts (to borrow a term from UFO research) kind of researchers, why not those kinds of investigators, researchers, and writers who come from a different perspective altogether? An "anomalist historian" along for the journey?

JREF Bigfoot Threads: Easy Handy Dandy Link

Here's a link that takes you right to the JREF's list of threads about Bigfoot. There are pages of threads; I stopped counting after 70. Yep, over, waaaaaaay over, 70 threads about Bigfoot, about a creature they don't believe exists.

MQ's Fear of Getting Real and Alfred Lehmberg: 'Sandbagged by Monster Quest'

Alfred Lehmberg writes about last week's Monster Quest episode about the Flatwoods Monster on our blog UFO Proletariat. It's reposted below.

It seems Monster Quest has always been timid around real cryptostuff; I don't mean Bigfoot -- of which Monster Quest has done many episodes of -- but the high strangeness and certainly esoteric angle in the cryptid realm. As I posted before, the Mothman episode wasn't all that much; and any conspiracy or so-called anti-government/infrastrucure perspective decidedly unwelcome (as made clear by a producer of the show I spoke with.) For more on that, see My Mothman Monster Quest Moment, on my blog Mothman Flutterings. Even the Bigfoot stories stays away from the weirder side of Bigfoot lore; high strangeness, UFOs, so much more.

As to the Flatwoods episode, what a shame MQ didn't use the opportunity to do an authentic story about one of both UFOlogy and cryptozoology's classic and fascinating cases. The Flatwoods story could take up several episodes on its own without doing something ridiculous like bringing in the 'Starchild' skull.

And why they need to trot out skekptics like Joe Nickell all the time -- well, at least he didn't say the Flatwoods creature was an owl. Or did he?  He did say several other ridiculous things however. Not unexpected, but terribly annoying and insulting nonetheless.

As to Alfred's piece below, I want to comment on the following by Al:

Feschino, who deserves better than this, was fit to be tied. See, he's telling the culture changing real story. Nickell and company shill for the guys insulting the reader's intelligence and obscuring real history. Case in point "Mass Hysteria" as touted by Dr. Nickell... is a clueless dodge.

Feschino is Frank Feschino of course, author of the well researched and excellent book Shoot Them Down! - The Flying Saucer Air Wars Of 1952
As Alfred points out, there is a real story that goes beyond a "monster" in the Flatwoods case, but sincerely exploring that story would indeed be "culture changing" as Al puts it, and we can't have that.

Flatwoods, Sandbagged By MonsterQuest (by Alfred Lehmberg)

Folks, regarding the recent History Channel MonsterQuest episode of March 10th featuring Fred May, Frank Feschino, Stanton Friedman, and other witnesses from the town of Flatwoods, West Virginia: I was the bearded fellow, the only one, I think, associated with the Flatwoods segment exclusively. I wore the UFO Magazine hat. I was working with the Helium Balloon and assisting Feschino vis a vis the sighting at the hunter's camp in deep forest beside the spring fed stream. My one spoken line, used apart from where I actually said it was, "Frank, there's a hot spot up there...," or some such... all that said:

Folks? You can quote me!

I have no idea what that program was about! Why, apart from Joe Nickell who was decidedly true to form, I didn't even recognize who was involved in it!

This is _real_ irony, reader, given I was at Flatwoods for a week during the shooting —and I do mean shooting— of the MQ program. Moreover, I have an appropriate intimacy with all the principals shown on the Flatwoods segment and have better than a layman's understanding of just what occurred in and around Flatwoods that Indian summer night in 1952.


Ladies and Gentleman, let me digress to say that, entirely apart from what the Reader saw on a "flawed" MonsterQuest, THIS is what occurred on that one night in Flatwoods in Flatwoods: http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/


I remind the HONEST reader that this referenced map data is supported by Project Bluebook, named Newspaper reportage, and first person witnesses in that order of numeracy.


The History Channel, one finds, had the time, opportunity, and all the requisite data to produce a stunning program about the infamous Flatwoods affair. What the History channel did instead, reader, was to contrive to manufacture a senseless "mash-up" of two entirely unrelated cases from what could be most easily be "faux-discredited" in either of them. Suggesting this bogus relationship, one not even remotely tenuous, is the program's kiss of less-than-mediocre death.


Sincerely, none but those entirely honest with themselves dare call this very poor, contrived, and inauspicious telling of the Flatwoods story a blithering incompetence, a fatuous cluelessness, or a distorted propaganda! More irony is revealed given Feschino, Friedman, and I had to sign sworn statements indicating our contribution to the program was true as we knew it to be true. The History Channel reportage of same, paradoxically, was not.


See? Flatwoods was the tail end of the biggest UFO Flap in US History: The 1952 "Summer Of Saucers" chronicled by Frank Feschino, Wendy Connors, various other authors, and an un-sifted Project Bluebook. Reader! It was _not_ about "Lizard Monsters" allegedly lurking the woods for 60 plus years, and to this day. This is the distortion prosecuted by the History Channel.

And this! The intrepid MonsterQuest documentarians wrongly called the more honest Stanton Friedman a "doctor" and made the dissembling (to be kind) Dr. (degree immaterial) Nickell look "reasonable" in contrived comparison! Glowing eyes? Not before or since. Ground miasma? Not before or since! Mass hysteria? Not before or since! Noxious weeds? Not before or since! Roc sized barn owls? Not before or since! How could they have got things so canted and wrong!

I'm sick at heart and really ticked off... Feschino, who deserves better than this, was fit to be tied. See, he's telling the culture changing real story. Nickell and company shill for the guys insulting the reader's intelligence and obscuring real history. Case in point "Mass Hysteria" as touted by Dr. Nickell... is a clueless dodge.


Why? The witnesses at Flatwoods, a gang of playing children and a couple of young adults, presupposed a meteor, predominantly, on the Fisher farm in the hills above the school that evening. They'd heard about them recently in school. Nickell _dissembled_ when he reported they expected "monsters"... They did not run up a hill armed with only with a flashlight to look for "monsters," Reader! That only happens in the movies and Joe Nickell's facile imagination! They went up the hill to pick up pieces of a meteorite!


No, the Flatwoods story was not remotely told. The historical facts regarding the "Flatwoods Monster" incident are distorted, once again, by a soap-selling TV show.


Tune in to the actual story, cited above, to tune _up_, sincerely. See, it's not a story about a giant lizard in a "hover round" "attacking" a group of Flatwoods residents with a harmful gas. The gas, remember, was actually an exhaust emitted from pipes surrounding the lower torso of the body. The lower torso was part of the propulsion system of this giant "metallic" structure propelling it and causing it to hover. Moreover, apart from the gas, the "Flatwoods Monster" never made any aggressive or threatening maneuvers towards the witnesses during the encounter!


More crass inaccuracies?


The nearly 60-years of "sightings" reported by the MQ show were not all "monster" sightings, as the over-edited Feschino and Friedman footage seemed to intimate, but were UFO sightings! This is what the two researchers reported on. _UFOs_, reader! Not _monsters_!


The "Flatwoods Monster" incident, the Snitowsky "Frametown Monster" incident and the Frametown Hunter incident are the documented entity sightings, reader. These, and other "monster" sightings... never occurred again! It's UFO sightings that are ongoing! This was the actual report and testimony of Friedman and Feschino!


Other "real" entities documented on record in the Flatwoods area are as follows:


Dec. 30, 1960. Hickory Flats, WV, Located in Webster County and just across the southern Braxton County border - Witness Charles Slover, 35 years-old, was driving a delivery truck and sighted a 6-foot tall hairy biped, man-like creature near the road. This was _unreported_ by the History Channel.


Dec. 7, 2005. Braxton County, 7-8 miles from Flatwoods. A wildlife trap camera took a photograph of an unknown entity that has been called the "Braxton Beast." This was _unreported_ by the History Channel. Meager and unrepeated stuff!


UFO sightings _abound_, reader, on the other hand... not "monster" sightings! A UFO sighting that occurred in Holly, Braxton County on Nov. 8, 1957 was documented by Jacques Vallee in his book "Passport To Magonia."


Holly is located near Flatwoods. In Case #437, Vallee reports that Hank Mollohan and eight other local witnesses saw an elongated object that was 12-metres long.


More UFOs! Frametown Area, 1990: A Frametown couple saw several UFOs over the area of the Middle Ridge area southeast of Frametown. When one of the witnesses walked outside of the house to get a closer look, one of the UFOs flew into the back-yard and shot a bright beam of light down towards the witness. This Frametown incident was documented and broadcast in 1990 by a national TV show of the time, Current Affair With Maury Povich.


In 1991, Feschino documented crop circle rings in Frametown, WV., which were recorded by Colin Andrews. Throughout the early 1990s, Feschino also photographed and videotaped UFOs in the same area of Middle Ridge southeast of James Knob.


OTHER MONSTERQUEST DEGLECTED POINTS


The Sept. 12, 1952 "Master Map" of UFO locations was not shown. The flight-path trajectory of the "Flatwoods Monster" UFO was not shown or mentioned. This was the Washington DC. to Flatwoods, WV UFO flight-path. Check the included link for same.


The Colonel Leavitt Interview was not shown or mentioned, nor was there any mention of the sizable West Virginia National Guard involvement in and around Flatwoods.


There was no reference that the USAF had heavily documented the Flatwoods incident.


The First person witness-journalist John Barker interview was not mentioned.


Well respected reporter and first person responder A. Lee Stewart, Jr., who broke the national story, was not mentioned. The drawings of the metal piece that he found on the farm were not shown.


There was no mention or reference that there were strange metal and black plastic-like pieces found on the Fisher Farm by the locals, shortly after the incident.


The five known drawings made by five of the boy witnesses who saw the "Flatwoods Monster" were not shown." Despite being separated by Stewart the drawings are astonishingly similar!


The "Flatwoods Monster" color illustrations painted by Feschino from eyewitness descriptions were not shown.


The 1996 Fred May pencil drawing of the "Monster" was not shown. It depicted the figure as "mechanical." This was a point errantly avoided by MonsterQuest!


The Flatwoods reenactment segment did not show the actual "mechanical" figure as described by Mrs. May and Fred May. The incorrect 1952 "We The People" mock-up, which depicted the arms and claws was shown instead... and then senselessly compared to the "Frametown Monster."


Finally, the Star child skull and the entities in Flatwoods/Frametown were errantly compared. These cases have no relationship to each other, what so ever, all respect to Lloyd Pye! I'm sure he would agree.


I'd hoped for the best regarding the History Channel. What happened?


"Hollywood" happened, reader... corporate manipulations apart from, and not interested in, telling the real story... These contrive a mash-up between two unrelated cases and, "highlighting" what was "explainable," work to "faux-discredit" both... actually. We were sand-bagged, imo.


The only good thing... the Flatwoods story was broached, at all, in a no-nonsense manner by Frank Feschino, Freddy May, John Barker, and Stanton Friedman! People are eventually going to wonder where the "lizard monster" (sheesh!) came from and how it came to be in Flatwoods at all. That story? Again, right here: http://paratopiary.blogspot.com/


I personally apologize to the people of Braxton County, Frametown, and the town of Flatwoods specifically, that the story was not portrayed as it was related to the production company. We regret their time was wasted. It's not Frank Feschino's fault that the creative control was well out of his capable hands... as it will be on _all_ these programs. You pays yer money and takes yer chances. We all got burned. All the credible stuff went to the cutting room floor.


Rest assured, though, MonsterQuest at least showed enough to get interest kindled in _other_ quarters. There's a lot of life left to tell the story, still! You can bet Frank Feschino will be banging the Flatwoods drum, verily!


I remain firmly in his corner! There are many rounds left in this fight. Frank is strong and as focused as he ever was!


Closing, Flatwoods and Frametown residents write to tell me that the James Knob site east of Frametown is still ufologically active. Right _now_ reader.


Well, I suspect that if ET had swooped in and landed on the pasture that night while Friedman, Feschino, and myself were all up there on James Knob - and the Monster Quest people had shot miles of film of it? THAT footage would have languished on the cutting room floor with all the other pertinent material, too.


Tha MonsterQuest program regarding Flatwoods was a dissembling hypocrisy... and a shame!

One last point, in the dodgy MonsterQuest "cooked" portrayal, Fred May, Stanton Friedman, and Frank Feschino seem to indicate that Big Lizards in "hover-rounds," plus other monsters, still lurk dangerously in the West Virginia mountains around Flatwoods. No reader. They are not. Nothing these men actually reported to the film crew made that indication.


Sincerely, be disabused of the notion that dangerous monsters haunt your hills and forests! Fred, Frank, and Stan made _no_ such intimation. I was _there_. I _know_.

Bigfoot Thread Warning

As I've posted here many times, the James Randi message forum has dozens of separate threads on Bigfoot. At last count I think it was around forty. That's forty individual threads devoted to a creature they "know" doesn't exist. Adding to the surreal nature of this fact is a recent warning on the JREF site admonishing those who enter to behave or they'll be suspended. Apparently all these threads have driven the mods mad and due to " the numerous, egregious, and repeated breaches of the Membership Agreement that this topic seems to generate" the warning has been issued.

Discussion needs to be "friendly and lively" when dealing with "the creature called Bigfoot." So behave!

Nick Redfern Responds: Burn, Nick, Burn!

Recently Nick Redfern shared his thoughts about paranormal Bigfoot; specifically, about a case from 1985 involving a Ouija board and the subsequent apparition of a Bigfoot like creature in his article A Paranormal Bigfoot. In Bigfoot Fundamentalists: Burn Nick Burn! Redfern writes on the Mania.com site about the comments he received about that article. Redfern received more e-mails than usual in response to that article, some o which bordered, as he writes, on the psychotic:

But what angers me more than anything else, are those who champion the “Bigfoot is just a giant ape” scenario with a definitively rabid (and, at time, vaguely threatening) zeal of a type that would make any, and all, religious fundamentalists (whether from the Deep South or the Middle East) glowingly proud.

But, what interests me most of all is the rabid (and, indeed, almost psychotic) approach that such commentators occasionally display in their e-mails.

It’s not that one may disagree about the nature of Bigfoot; debate is a given, disagreement on what BF is, or is not, is to be expected. But it’s the shrill, over the top, fanatical and downright hateful reaction to the idea that some consider Bigfoot a paranormal creature.

As Nick asks:

So what if I proclaim that Bigfoot may be paranormal? So what if I don’t accept the notion that Bigfoot is just an ape of unknown origins and/or type?

Should that result in vitriolic e-mails to me from a variety of Bigfoot researchers displaying a self-righteous zeal that any stance beyond that of “Bigfoot is an ape,” is somehow dangerous and wrong?

The same can be said of many UFO researchers who have similar reactions when it comes to different theories. And these often nasty responses come from within; we expect them from the uber-skeptic fundie-debunker faux-skeptic crowd, but from fellow explorers of the Fortean realms?

I’ll end with what Nick says about BF being paranormal, or, not:

And here’s the thing I find most baffling of all: why should it even matter if Bigfoot is flesh-and-blood or paranormal? The answer is: it shouldn’t. Only the facts and a determination to get to the truth – whatever that may be - should ultimately matter. But, it does apparently matter – to some, at least.

Exactly. IF the truth is the goal, then we go where the data takes us. And a lot of that data, like it or not, includes encounters that clearly go beyond the “flesh and blood big ape” idea.

JREF BF Thread No. 30 Something or Other. . .

"Tianca's Starship Bigfoot Thread" yep, on the James Randi Forum. We're up to 32, 33, 35, I don't know, something like that -- over 30 threads about Bigfoot, which doesn't exist, on the good old JREF.

Bigfoot in a Freezer: Don't Get So Excited

I have this posted as my Rant of the Day at Snarly Skepticism, thought I'd repost it here. . .


Bigfoot in a Freezer: Don't Get So Excited;
A Word to the Skeptoid Crowd

Uber sketpics are currently undergoing a false series of euphoric episodes. Elated at the idea the Bigfoot community has been duped, fooled, and shown to be the nutjobs and gullible morons they believe them (us, sure, I'll throw myself in there) to be, they're pontificating en mass about the latest Bigfoot hoax.

Namely, Biscardi and company. Rickmat. The Geogia hunters. The cop with the bandaged hand. Those guys. As if we didn't know.

So calm down mega-skepties, it's not the joyful day you think it is. No one that counts in Bigfoot research believed this for a second, though some held out hope -- an extremely thin, almost invisible slice of hope -- that it could be for real. How about that; reserving judgement until the results are in? What a concept.

I admit I clung for a few hours to that nebulous bit of hope myself, only because someone I trust -- Micah Hanks -- has a personal relationship with Biscardi.

Even if some Bigfoot researchers naively held out for a bit that, well, it could be the real thing, could be, maybe, couldn't it? --- that doesn't mean Bigfoot researchers are dumb, stupid, lame, idiots, or any of the other insults you can't resist flinging.

And it certainly doesn't mean Bigfoot doesn't exist. All this has done is make it harder for everyone genuine, everyone sincere and honest, to get back to work.

The good thing about this is a reminder that Trickster is alive and well in all that is Forteana (something uber storage skeptoids don't get -- at all) and we should have expected this. Even me, who was, and is, disgusted. The whole thing put me in a bad mood; I'm still not over it. (Meaning the whole sordid thing to begin with, not that "Bigfoot isn't real." Calm down.)

It's also a little reminder that skepticism is a good thing. Don't fall down in a fainting fit yet; I mean real skepticism, not the brand the klassturian pathological skeptics wear so proudly on their little dried beans they call hearts.

Get over it. No one got fooled, Bigfoot isn't "dead," -- nothing to see here. You can put the keg and tiki lights away; there's no party tonight.

New BF Thread On JREF: "Did The Skeptics Kill Bigfoot?"

This makes 19, or maybe 20, threads on the James Randi forum (JREF) about Bigfoot. This time they think the perceived lack of Bigfoot interest and reports is due to their hard work in skepticism. Oy.

Bigfoot Threads and Skeptics

Persistent, chronic, pathological skeptics can’t help themselves. I suppose they just love to hear themselves talk. After all, over on the JREF (James Randi “Educational” Forum) it’s their turf; if they base all of their beliefs on the creed that there’s no such thing as Sasquatch, no way, end- of -discussion -and -don’t -even -bring -up -ufo- paranormal- psychic-bigfoot, then why do they have four separate threads going about Bigfoot? One is something like over 200 pages long!

I have no desire to post over there, none, you can be assured of that. There are a few brave souls who give it a try. But I do lurk, and I tell you, it’s a study in human behavior all right.

There’s “Bigfoot is real, I have the proof.” at 38 pages.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=96467

“Bigfoot - The Patterson-Gimlin Film” at 241 pages.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=42523


“Bigfoot: The Invisible Variety,” at 35 pages
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=94981

“Simple Challenge for Bigfoot Supporters”, at 130 pages.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=70782

That’s all a hell of a lot of discussion over something you’re convinced doesn’t exist.

Run, Bigfoot, Run!

Here's hoping Bigfoot stays hidden . . .

I’m conflicted. I enjoy watching television shows about Bigfoot. I’m right there with the field researchers, making plaster casts of prints, setting up game cameras, and tromping through the crunchy woods at night with night vision goggles strapped to my face. I’m interested in the evidence collected, and the conclusions on the analysis.

At the same time, I cringe when I see investigators coming up with twists on how to attract Bigfoot. Hanging CDs in the trees or wind chimes, playing recordings of animal sounds, pheromone traps, and so on. At some point, the idea of actively looking for Bigfoot changes from interesting to intrusive, as well as pointless.

I always have the feeling that Bigfoot is well aware of the team about to descend on its territory long before the team gets any whiff of Bigfoot. For that reason alone, the chances of Bigfoot being found seem slight.

For the people who’ve seen Bigfoot, no proof is needed. After all, they’ve seen it! (Although, for some of them -- naturally I can’t speak for any witness -- proof might be welcome, if only to prove to family, friends and community they’re not lying or crazy.)

What of the aftermath? Bigfoot is found to exist; now what? There are laws already in place in some areas protecting Bigfoot. For some unfathomable reason, this irks many a scofftoid. If we waited until after Bigfoot is found to create and implement such laws, there’s a window where harm to Bigfoot could be done, with no legal consequences to the one doing the harm.

Then there’s the issue of habitat; varied, it seems, since Bigfoot has been reported in many diverse areas all over the U.S. The time, money and creaky process of law will be a circus, while Bigfoot remains vulnerable and the less ethical and moral will be out in droves hunting down the creature.

So, I’m conflicted. I love the search even while hoping Bigfoot is never finally found. I like the elusive photos that are tantizling; just enough but not quite enough to satisfy. I like the continued debate over footprints (for example, see the JREF forum for endless debates over the usefullness of prints) and the weight it gives to Bigfoots existence. I like the personal experiences of researchers and witnesses; they remain elusive and “just” anecdotal eveidence which all too often is not valid for skeptics and others alike.

These kinds of things keeps Bigfoot in the shadows, which is where I hope it stays. Some may get glimpses, but never enough to bring out into the harsh light of “discovery.”

The Blogsquatcher on Skepticism

Or, as he titled his blog entry: Skepticism and the skeptical skeptics who skeptify us . . .

Like The Blogsquatcher, I'm also intrigued (and baffled) by what makes "skeptics" tick, most particularly the pathological-chronic types, bless their little Pelicanist heads.

Blogsquatcher directs us to Micheal Prescott's blog, who also wonders at the mindset of the "skeptic" and does it very well. I've followed Prescott's blog for awhile now; he writes very well and insightfully about this peculair breed.

Part of what makes skeptics what they are may be the need to be in control, according to Prescott. I agree.

Take a look at the Blogsquatcher's blog, as well as Prescott's; you'll find a lot of good things on both.

Peter Guttilla’s Bigfoot Files

A must have book for any true esoteric or Bigfoot researcher.

I just finished this book, and enjoyed it very much. It’s full of accounts of Bigfoot sightings (and a few other weird beings) of the stranger kind. UFOs, orbs, and much more high strangeness encounters in connection with Bigfoot are related in this book.

I’ll share some of the sightings from this book, as well as others, later on; these encounters include the three toed tracks, webbed prints, and creatures with red or orange glowing eyes.

Aside from the juicy collection of really weird things, is Peter Guttilla himself. I love his attitude. These accounts exist, and he has no patience with those researchers who continue to ignore, dismiss, or mock such encounters. Guttilla doesn’t have any patience with the skeptical camp either. Good for him. Enough is enough; now let’s get on with the investigations, and stop debating if there’s anything to investigate. (The same can be said of UFOs.)

Beware the Squirrel!

Squirrels of Doom

Who knew. Squirrels, like mating hedgehogs and owls, are up to no good.

We all know mating hedgehogs are responsible for crop circles.

And that owls are behind the Mothman sightings, the Flatwoods Monster encounter, and the Kelly Hopkinsville entities. (It’s true, and we know it’s true, because pathological skeptic Joe Nickell has told us so.)

Turns out squirrels are behind Bigfoot sightings; at least the ones in Florida. Big squirrel, not Big Foot, in north Florida

This isn’t at all comforting you know. Do you realize how many squirrels there are just in my backyard?!