Jaime Avalos, Bigfoot Tracker

My new Trickster's Realm column for BoA is ready; it's about one of the presenters, Jaime Avalos: Jaime Avalos, Bigfoot Tracker.

I attended Oregon's first Sasquatch Symposium in Eugene this past weekend, and it was fantastic. All the speakers I saw were great, including of course, Autumn Williams. On her very excellent and important presentation, more to come at a later time, as well as many of the other presenters.


I got to meet Craig Woolheater and Sharon Lee, both very nice and real people. I was disappointed I couldn't attend all the events but hopefully next year! And I do hope there's a "next year" -- Toby Johnson, the coordinator, did a fantastic job putting all this together. Planning events like this is not easy, as anyone knows who's been involved in such things.


One of the presenters I want to discuss is Jaime Avalos. Avalos has an amazing and varied background, which is posted on his YouTube channel. He's an emergency room RN, ex-Marine, taught water safety in the military, and much more.


Jaime came up on the stage dressed in gear; all black, complete with backpack, walking staff, goggles. He looked a little intimidating. But it was a good way of getting his point across to field researchers -- experienced and newbies alike. Jaime explained his points: wear black, so you're consistent. You're not wearing red one day, blue the next, but black, which makes it easy to blend in the shadows. Wearing black consistently serves the purpose of having the wildlife get used to your presence.

 Visit BoA for the rest!

The Bigfoot Field Reporter

Sharon Lee at Bigfoot Field Reporter has updates on the OSS --
check out her blog now and then for good stuff!

North America Bigfoot Reports: Friday at the 2010 Oregon Sasquatch Symposium

Oregon Bigfoot researcher Cliff Barackman reports on his arrival for last weekend's Oregon Sasquatch Symposium, where he was a presenter, at North American Bigfoot.

Bigfoot is the topic tonight on C2C

Coast to Coast tonight with Steve Quale:

Researcher Steve Quayle will discuss a recent Bigfoot report in North Carolina, as well as the precarious world economic situation, and hot spots for conflict and bioterror.

News: Local | "BIGFOOT BELIEVERS" | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

News: Local | "BIGFOOT BELIEVERS" | The Register-Guard | Eugene, Oregon

On Untamed Dimensions: Chicks Dig Bigfoot

Chicks Dig Bigfoot, on Adam Gorightly's Untamed Dimensions.

Have You Seen Big Foot? | KVAL CBS 13 - News, Weather and Sports - Eugene, OR - Eugene, Oregon | News

Local news picks up Bigfoot Sasquatch Symposium story:

Have You Seen Big Foot? | KVAL CBS 13 - News, Weather and Sports - Eugene, OR - Eugene, Oregon | News

Bigfoot From Space, Volume 1

I'm putting together the first Bigfoot From Space complilation, (Volume 1) -- most likely e-book, more to come!

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!