North American Bigfoot: Oregon Sasquatch Symposium

North American Bigfoot: Oregon Sasquatch Symposium

Sasquatch and The Government

I love articles like this; full of juicy Fortean conspiracy cryptid goodness, in my top three of esoteric areas. I'm talking about the following piece on Lon Strickland's Phantoms and Monsters blog:
Sasquatch and the U.S. Government. Reports of dead Sasquatch in the aftermath of Mt. St. Helens eruption, for example, the following story:

Cowlitz County, Washington - 1980 May - at one of Ray Crowe's Western Bigfoot Meetings, someone brought up the topic of corpses of sasquatch after the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State. The witness heard of two sasquatch the Army Corps of Engineers had taken out of the volcanic devistation...two months after the inital blast.

Terry Reams heard of a dredging operation of the Cowlitz River and two bodies were found in the sand (probably same case?). A chopper flew them off.

Joe Beelart offered that the crane doing the dredging was from the Manatowaka Company and that the bodies were found two weeks after the Mt. St. Helen's blast of May 18, 1980. He suggested that somebody might want to track down the company and find out who was working the shift that the bodies had been found on.

There's much more on the Phantoms and Monsters blog, including links and updates to these stories.

Speaking of government conspiracies and the capture/study of Bigfoot, or at least awareness of their existence and a cover-up, there's the Livermore story. Loren Coleman has blogged about this, as well as the now departed from the blog-0-sphere Blogsquatcher:
Bigfoot Captured on CBS? as posted by Craig Woolheater in 2007, also see Invisible Bigfoot?

Chupie Is Now a Marine Animal? (Updated)

Update: found a viable link with photo of the creature, on, of all places, the JREF! A report from Winnipeg, dated May 20th, about an odd creature pulled from a creek in a remote area:

Reports from the remote community a few hundred kilometres south of Hudson Bay say a strange creature was pulled from a local creek earlier this month — a creature some are calling a monster.


Photos of the furry, bald-faced creature were posted on the official website of the Big Trout Lake community and have since caused a flurry of speculation on the Internet.

The article offers possible explanations for the creature:

Its strange appearance has led to speculation it may be the mythical Ogopogo, the Chupacabra or some other marine monster, like the Loch Ness Monster. [bolding mine]

The chupacabra is morphing ... from alien entity, to canine with mange, to fresh water creature.

The article provided a link to the original news item but it doesn’t seem to be working; leads to a 404 error page.
 

Two High Strangeness Fests in Oregon

This weekend is the McMinnville UFO Fest, which honors the 1950 Trent UFO sighting. This year's speakers include Colin Andrews and Travis Walton.

In June, there will be the first annual Bigfoot conference in these parts in Eugene; the Annual Oregon Sasquatch Symposium. A great line-up of speakers; Autumn Williams, Sali Shepherd Wolford, and many more. Find out more here.

I'll be attending both of course!

A thoughtful piece by Texas Cryptid Hunter on the subject of researchers leaving the field. As he ends his article: please leave comments (keep them civil, which shoudld go without saying) --- I'm looking forward to more on this.

Hybrid Animals

Six types of hybrid animals; not common but they do occur. With photos.

Blogsquatcher Gone

I was sad to find that The Blogsquatcher, D.B. Donlon's Bigfoot blog, one of the best BF blogs around, has called it quits. The blog is no longer up which is too bad. There was a lot of fascinating articles and comments there, particularly concerning the high strangeness aspects of BF encounters. Not many researchers seriously look into this area of Bigfoot, but Blogsquatcher wasn't afraid to do so. And he did so with intelligence and openness.

The reasons he gave are odd; I'm not being judgemental, but I mean odd in a general sense. No one can speak for another, and his reasons are his own. I do hope he returns to the field, but I also wish him well. If he feels like coming back to BF research, at least openly, is not his path, then so be it. I'll miss his contributions.

Here's a brief comment at Cullan Hudson's Strange State on Donlon's departure.

Biggest Animals

Big animals are making the news stream for some reason; we seem to have a giant animal meme going on.

Biggest rabbit.

"Big Jake," tallest horse.

Really big worms.

Big jellfish.

All within the past couple of weeks or so.

Another "Chupacabra" Captured

The lore continues, of mange ridden animals such as dogs and other known domestic, feral and wild animals with mange being called "chupacabra." This one was captured in Oklahoma: Bizarre Animal Captured in Oklahoma...Blue Dog? on the Phantoms and Monsters blog, with thanks also to Strange State.

As I've commented here, and on my recent Trickster's Realm column for Binnall of America: A Chupie Meme what's considered a chupacabra has morphed from a truly high strangeness creature (possibly alien, entity from other realms/dimensions, government experiment gone awry, etc.) to any poor animal that is known that has mange.

Glitz and Deer

I saw my first episode of Destination Truth last night. The first half was about the Jersey Devil, the second half about the Chinese Bigfoot type creature.

Lots of money, lots of equipment, and lots of fast paced clips, along with rapid fire, loud voiced narration drove me crazy, and that frenetic tone never let up. Lots of jokes and goofing around, was I watching a comedy show or a program about unexplained mysteries? The first half ended with the conclusion that basically, what witnesses have been seeing in the woods of New Jersey are deer. Well, at least they didn't go the Joe Nickell route and say it was owls.

On to China. A beautiful country; but nothing said about that. You'd have thought they were in their home town local park, they way they responded to their surroundings. More joking, setting off fireworks, general disrespect. I can't tell you any more about their great expedition because I turned off the TV. And that's saying something because I'm a Fortean nerd; I'll watch anything that has to with Bigfoot, monsters, cryptids, weird creatures, --- if it's X-Files-ish, I'll watch it.

It's too bad that with all the money the show has and the opportunity to travel, as they did to China, they wasted that gift on behaving like frat rats. Clearly the show is designed to entertain, any "truth" is not at all in the design. The program is also geared to younger audiences, as demonstrated by that jokey, quick paced tone that never let up.

Chupie in China

Another odd animal put into the chupacabra category, this time in China. With photo.

JREF Bigfoot Thread Watch

This topic almost deserves a blog of its own.

Anyway, in the "What was that again, cognitive dissonance, irony calling" statement of the day, comes this comment from a BF thread over there titled 'Calling All Skeptics! Help Kitakaze End PGF Controversy - Pitch to Discovery Channel' certainly a long winded title. Thread starts off with the somberly serious self-congratulatory and yet endearingly naive plan to make a BF documentary that will forever silence BF believers and gratify skeptics. Then the thread devolves into fights amongst the debunkers themselves, namely William Parcher. But anyway, on the issue of why so many damn BF threads about something that doesn't exist by people who don't think it exists, this statement by "Blackdog":

I think people are wasting their time in the woods chasing BF but I don't think it's a waste of time to discuss it.

I love it. Just a delicious example of debunkers and their evil ways of moving goal posts, contradicting themselves, general dishonesty, and utterly oblivious to their own surreal exhibitions of humor.

So; going out and actually doing physical research and investigation in hopes of finding physical evidence, proof even, hopefully vs. staying at home and typing on your computer endless non-productive arguments about how something you don't believe exists, doesn't' t exist.

Sounds rational to me!

Bill Munns Responds to Pathological Bigfoot Skepticism

The JREF is still creating new Bigfoot threads; I have no idea how many there are now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were 50, at least. Close to.

One of the threads was started in March 2008: Bigfoot PG Film The Munns report The thread is very active, with the latest on Munns' analysis of the PG film. And Munn responds to the pathological response to his analysis, as well as BF in general, here.

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_.

Follow the Mystic Orb on UFO Mystic . . .

I am so jazzed and honored to announce that I'm now blogging at UFO Mystic, along with two other newer bloggers over there -- Lesley Gunter and Scott Corrales -- and of course, Greg Bishop and Nick Redfern and Craig Woolheater.

My first post over there is on those strange beams of light being reported: Beams of Light.




Regan Lee Oregon

Frank Feschino's Flatwoods Monster on Monster Quest!

Check Your TV Listings for the MonsterQuest Program On The History Channel March 10, 2010 at 9:00 PM EST (21:00 Hrs)! At Long, Long Last Frank Feschino's Flatwoods Monster Story Is Told And A Whole Town of Good People Are Vindicated!

Regan Lee Oregon

Another Creature With Mange As Chupie Report

Another report, this time from Oklahoma, of a hairless animal interpretated as the Chupacabra. I still find it fascinating how the meme/lore (which is not to suggest the chupacabras is not real) has transformed from the almost alien like, true cryptid type creature to a familiar animal like the dog, fox, racoon, etc.

Ian Punnett is host tonight at C2C, and the show is: Bigfoot and Folklore. I am so wanting to listen to this! I'll do my best, but unfortunately, the day job is still a reality, and I have to get up at 6:00 a.m. (For some reason, my attempts at getting in sync with C2C's "Streamlink" have been negative.) Tonight's guests include Kathy Strain, who will discuss Bigfoot in terms of Native American mythology.

UFO Mystic on Blogsquatcher (and a personal weird BF related event)

UFO Mystic's Greg Bishop has a good post on Blogsquatcher's weird bigfoot piece: Bigfoot and UFOs and the Electromagnetic Spectrum As with the comments on Blogsquatcher, UFO Mystic's comments left by researcher Chris O'Brien, red pill junkie, etc. add to the discussion with considered input. Here's what I commented on Greg's post:

I can't add anything to the previous thoughtful and articulate comments (and posts) except to say, that Blogsquatcher has done an excellent job of presenting these ideas for thought, and discussion. As some of the comments on his blog show, the very act of talking about these weirder aspects of Bigfoot encounters causes some people to go crazy ... so it's always good to see when researchers brave the inevitable criticism and put their ideas out there.

On a personal level, I always wonder: "well, something weird happened, what the hell was it?" And since I refuse to think I'm just nuts (which is possible) something is going on! I'm intrigued by the contrast between the fact of individuals having high strangeness experiences, and the rejection by some researchers of those experiences.

Speaking of "the fact of individuals having high strangeness" I was thinking of not only those I've come across who insist they've had odd things happen in relation to Bigfoot (Stan Johnson, the Conser Lake "monster") but my own little bit of weirdness, that I recently talked a bit about with Mike Clelland. I don't know if the answer lies in a "unified theory" that Chris O'Brien mentions in his comment on UFO Mystic, or what. . . but I do think that, because of the volume of data we have on high strangeness BF encounters (and Yowie, and Yeti, and . . .) it's simply ignorant to ignore that data.

Comments on Blogsquatcher 'When Bigfoot Gets In Your Head. . ."

The comments left by readers on The Blosquatcher's postWhen Bigoot Gets In Your Head . . ." are, mostly, thoughtful and interesting; people sharing their own experiences, and so on. If you haven't read the article yet do so; the issue of so-called paranormal Bigfoot is still a controversy in BF research, as the comments left on Blogsquatcher demonstrate.

And I'll steal this old Sherpa quote left by "Anonymous": There is a Yeti in the back of everyone’s mind; only the blessed are not haunted by it I like that.