Phantoms and Monsters - Real Eyewitness Cryptid Encounter Reports

Phantoms and Monsters - Real Eyewitness Cryptid Encounter Reports

House Fairy Strikes Again, Maybe . . .

 The other day, came in from grocery shopping. Hands full, purse slipping down, jacket in a tangle, bags of groceries. I didn't want to put everything down to move the exercise bike out of the way so I could put my glasses in the basket where I keep them. Basket was on other side of the bike. So I set the glasses down somewhere -- and said to myself "Hmm, better not, you'll forget." Then I said to myself "Oh you won't forget. Just get this stuff put away."

Of course, later that day, I couldn't find my glasses. I looked everywhere. And of course, Jim said to me every few minutes "Where did you put them last?" Yes dear, that helps. 

Three days go by, can't find my glasses. Jim looked, I looked. Nowhere. We both even checked the basket where I keep them, not there. 

I finally had it. I said to my guides, the angels, the house fairy/elf: "Please! This is your job! Help me find my glasses! Give me a clue, send me a nudge, come on!"

I don't know why, but today I looked once again in the basket, and yes. There they were. Just right there, on top. I swear they were laughing at me.

The "X Thought Experiment"

 Last night I was turning the radio dial and happened upon an interview with a scientist about "X." I don't remember the station, or know what program it was. Turned out the scientist was Michael Shermer. I only listened for about two minutes, but it went like the following, and of course, I am paraphrasing:

Shermer: (remember, I'm paraphrasing) For example, Bigfoot. If you hear a claim that Bigfoot exists, okay, you then have X. If there's Bigfoot, there has to be more than just one or two. If there's more than or two, X says there are thousands. If there are thousands, X then says there'd be bodies: road kill, etc. 

The problem with this X idea or process is that it is based on a lot of assumptions about a being that is allegedly non-existent. If we don't know Bigfoot exists how can we assume things about it? We don't know what Bigfoot is. So we can't assume Bigfoot is like other animals.

Shermer -- as well as many Bigfoot researchers -- assume that Bigfoot is just a flesh and blood animal. Nothing paranormal or supernatural about it. Simply a really big kind of bear or ape. Probably intelligent, but, not as smart as humans. Just a big old animal lumbering around out there. So of course the X game follows these assumptions as a given. Big animal, have to be a lot of them, needs a lot of food, we'd find their bodies as road kill or maybe bones off in the woods. Surely hunters would have found something by now. 

Another problem is that, while assuming all those things about Bigfoot (number, bodies, etc.) Shermer, etc. ignores the data that is there. Witness narratives about their Bigfoot encounters are entirely valid. Anecdotal evidence is not proof, but it is evidence. And if a scientist cannot sift through a very large data pile of reports and cannot discern a pattern to those witness accounts, then that scientist is being dishonest and disingenuous. 

When it comes to the paranormal and/or cryptids, going through the X process won't get you very far.

Sasquatch | Oregon Wild

Why we should protect Sasquatch. Found at Sasquatch | Oregon Wild.

Owl Symbolism, Gifting and Sasquatch

In the excellent Where theFootprints End (Cutchin, Renner) the authors write about Bigfoot gift giving. Which is strange enough, of course. Stranger still is the symbol of the owl drawn on rocks said to be left by Bigfoot as a gift to humans.

Gifting, by humans to Sasquatch, and from Sasquatch to humans. Sasquatch is not the only entity to leave gifts for humans. Fairies are known to leave gifts for humans. Some suggest that Sasquatch is a type of fairy. 

In the book, Cutchin and Renner tell the story of Samantha, who found rocks left  on her property from Bigfoot. Describing the rocks, Samantha says that “There’s stuff etched into them, especially owls.” (page 140) Why owls? It’s said that Sasquatch imitates owl calls. Owls are known to be an iconic symbol in high strangeness encounters. Giant owls, owls morphing into aliens, etc. appear in abduction, UFO and other supernatural tales. If Bigfoot is a supernatural entity the connection with owls seems fitting. Books about owls as messengers from other realms discuss the relationship of owls and strange experiences in detail. (see Mike Clelland); The Messengers; Owls, Synchronicity  and the UFO Abductee and  Hidden Experience: a Memoir of Owls, Synchronicity, and UFO Contact.) Where the Footprints End is the first mention that I recall of a relationship between owl imagery and Bigfoot.

As the Colonel said in Twin Peaks: “The owls are not what they seem.” 

Satanic Cult Goings On at Big Bear Lake, Calif.

On today's Boing Boing:

Signs posted around Southern California's Big Bear Lake read: ATTENTION CAMPERS: Due to increased Satanic Cult activity in this area, camping is not advised until further notice. SEVERAL PETS HAVE BEEN REPORTEDLY SACRIFICED IN SATANIC RITUALS.” (source: Boing Boing)

You guess it! The signs are fake. Well, they're real signs but they weren't posted by the US Forest Service.

I like this for the overall weirdness, of course, but also, I have spent time at Big Bear, being from Southern Cali. So, always interested in the latest devil in the woods stuff.

Timothy Renner & Joshua Cutchin | Paranormal Researchers and Authors | A...

Phantoms and Monsters - Real Eyewitness Cryptid Encounter Reports: Small Hairy Hominids Observed by Fossil Hunters in...

From Lon Strickler's Phantos and Monsters, this report of small hairy hominids:

Phantoms and Monsters - Real Eyewitness Cryptid Encounter Reports: Small Hairy Hominids Observed by Fossil Hunters in...: A man and his daughter were fossil hunting in the flatlands east of the Davis Mountains in west Texas, when they encountered 4 small hairy ...

By the way, reading the excellent Where the Footprints End, vol. 1 (Joshua Cutchin, Terry Renner) and small hairy beings are mentioned as well as the tall, Bigfoot type beings. And while some might think Texas is an odd place for Bigfoot type creatures (if they were young Bigfoot) Texas does have a lot of BF sightings.

On Lon Strickler's Investigation Team

I am honored to be a new member of Lon Strickler’s paranormal investigation team,representing Western Oregon/Willamette Valley, and the central coast.

Very exciting!

If you’re not familiar with Lon, check out his books on amazon.com, and his blog. Oh, and his podcast! 

Silly Bigfoot Retirement Dream

I retired this past spring. Feels odd, particularly during these times. There was closure, but it was different, and very strange. I've been having a lot of dreams about retirement. After thirty-five years in education, no wonder. Last night I dreamt:

My husband and I have a small RV camper, and our car. One of my sisters and her husband have the same. We're traveling around together. We come to a little touristy town with cute shops. My husband tells me I can go into one of the boutiques and buy myself whatever I want to celebrate my retirement. Money is no object. He doesn't go in with me though, he'll wait in the car. My sister and I go in.
We look at all kinds of things. My sister finds a rack full of Bigfoot themed clothing! I am surprised to see Bigfoot anything in an upscale place like this. The clothing is not your usual t-shirt kind of thing, but very fancy. I fall in love with a well made black t-shirt, tailored for women. Very nice and stylish, with an Art Nouveau style drawing of a Sasquatch. And, rhinestones. Tasteful, not tacky. Oh I want this shirt! It's also 30% off! Which then makes the price only ninety something dollars. I realize the shirt is way too much money. I know my husband said it's okay but I don't feel right spending so much on a piece of clothing. But, I must have it! I deserve it. I want to celebrate my retirement! So I buy it. I love my shirt, get lots of compliments. 

Book: Where the Footprints End

My copy of Where the Footprints End; High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon Volume 1 (Joshua Cutchin, Timothy Renner) arrived yesterday.

As you can see, I already very into it!

I am loving this book and am excited for Volume 2.

Among other things, the book is very well written, which I appreciate.

A bit of synchronicity: the introduction contains a report from 1973 about an orange orb and Bigfoot type encounter.  Interesting for many reasons one being, the orange orb is described as being very large and close to the witnesses, and, it occurred in 1973! It's unusual to find reports of large sized orange orbs from that time. My sighting in Oregon of a large orange orb was in the early 1980s.

Haven't finished the book yet but just had to give this book a plug. I really think that anyone serious about Bigfoot research -- honest research -- should read this book, as well as others, like Them Powell's books.

Not Much Happening But I'm Still Here

Well, there's always something happening in Bigfoot land! I just haven't been too active here lately. Been down with a very bad case of pneumonia, and busy with other projects.

Just a blog blurb to say I'm still here, and don't give up on my Bigfoot blog.

M K Davis asks Why are the Palms and Feet of the Patterson Bigfoot White?

Well duh, like I said: Dr. Meldrum on the FBI's Big Reveal

FBI released, billions of years later, its results of a sample sent to them by Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne. Turns out it was deer hair, not Sasquatch. As I, and other Bigfoot people no doubt have been saying about this: this doesn't prove anything. And: why now, why is the FBI's public relations department eager to make this little splash?

Dr. Meldrum doesn't think much of this either:

“It’s a tempest in a teapot,” said Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy and anthropology professor at ISU. “Just from that poor quality black-and-white image, you can tell it’s not primate hair. I could have told you on the basis of that photo alone that it was almost certainly ungulate.”
News like this is a disservice to the bountiful evidence that does exist, Meldrum said. [source: Spokesman Review ]

We all know this, but the FBI accomplished what it meant to accomplish, and that is feed the dormant seed in the popular culture concerning Bigfoot's existence. Like other government entities concerning the reality of UFOs (and other things bumping in the night) that put out little items, it's all distraction.

FBI and Bigfoot

Well, forty years later, FBI gets around to a Big Reveal about Bigfoot. Which is really a deer. All right, maybe not entirely fair, but the hair sample submitted by researcher Peter Byrne decades ago proved to be not of Sasquatch, but a deer.

I'd love to know what FBI files exist concerning Bigfoot -- I mean, really exist. Like UFOs and entities, we'll never know. Only what information is eeked out to the mainstream.

It's always interesting when little bits of weirdness make it to the morning paper.

Lane County, Oregon sightings

A list of encounters and sightings in Lane county, Oregon from Squatchable.com.  The reports are a hodgepodge of Bigfoot encounters from all over the area, and go back many years. It's amazing to know that many of these sightings are so close to where I live. Surrounded by Sasquatch, indeed.

Squatchable has sightings for all over the U.S. Find your area and check it out.

Lost Boy in Woods Found Safe; Hung Out with Bear

Three year old boy found safe after being lost in the woods for two days. The boy says he was kept safe by "a bear."

The 3-year-old boy who spent two days lost in the woods of eastern North Carolina tells his family he “hung out with a bear” for companionship while hundreds of people searched frantically in cold and rainy weather to find him.
His aunt, Breanna Hathaway, shared that revelation on Facebook Friday morning, adding that Casey “is healthy, smiling, and talking” after being found late Thursday night. The post has gotten more than 500 comments and 2,100 shares through the day.
Read more here: 

David Paulides, of the Missing 411 books, has written that missing people, including children, often happen when it rains, or has been raining. I remember a couple of survivors Paulides writes about that mention a bear or ape like creature who helped them. Bigfoot? Paulides is coy about that, but it's possible. Or, angel, spirit, who knows. Bears are hibernating this time of year. Not to mention a bear might well attack, rather than protect. But, again, who knows?

Talking Bigfoot with Lon Strickler on Arcane Radio

Earlier tonight, was a guest on Lon Stickler's (Phantoms and Monsters) Arcane Radio podcast. Very nice conversation; had fun. Take a listen: Arcane Radio.

Wapiti (Elk) and Sasquatch: A Memory

(cross posted at my Orange Orb blog on Word Press)

[Preparing for my interview on Lon Stricker's Arcane Radio podcast this coming Friday, I've been putting together my Bigfoot material. Here's one of those things:]

This isn’t a particularly Fortean or cryptid sort of experience, but it was a profound one, and one I find revisiting more than forty-five years later. However, there is a piece of this experience that does fit in with Bigfoot and other crypto phenomena in a small way as we’ll see.

When I was a Girl Scout (Troop 1534, the Robin was our crest)  we went camping in Northern California. It was a great trip, and my first experience camping. We slept in tents, we hiked in the forests, ... the whole real life camping thing. New to me but I loved it. The first night, I remember laying awake in awe at the strangeness of listening to the screams of a woman, or maybe it was a baby. On and on it went, and I couldn’t understand why none of the adults seemed to care. Finally, I came out of my tent, scared but also intensely curious, to find out what was going on. I was very surprised when the camp leaders assured me those “screams” were not the pleas for help from a human in trouble, but wild peacocks. It took some convincing. I simply had never heard such a sound before. I’d seen peacocks in the zoo, but they never cried out like that, just walked around, their brilliant green and emerald tails bursting into jeweled colors every few moments. It was hard for me to put that pretty image together with the sounds I was hearing that night. Of course, since then, I’ve heard peacocks call like that many times. In fact, in the hills surrounding the city where I live, the wild peacocks can be a nuisance. 

It was during this camping trip that I saw my first elk. I’m not sure what I was doing off by myself; I only have the memory of the elk sighting, and not what I was doing before or after.  But I think I was just . . . walking around, which is a bit odd, since we were all about the buddy system and checking in with the adult staff and basically just not doing stupid things like being twelve years old and walking around in the forests by yourself on your first camping trip.

I come out on the side of the road; a highway or something. Everything is very still, and very beautiful. I’m surprised the road is here, I didn't know there was one close by. We came in another way, that involved dusty dirt roads and turns. I just stand there, looking. It seems I’m waiting for something, and suddenly I hear a loud crashing sound coming from  across the road. I watch, and hear a snort, a kind of chuffing sound, and almost magically (or so it seemed to me) there was an elk. He came rushing out of the thick foliage and then stopped right at the edge of the road. We were no more than fifty feet from each other. I was amazed; what a beautiful animal! I wasn't scared, but I was in awe. True awe. There he stood, looking straight ahead. He must have known I was there, but he didn’t look at me or come towards me. He seemed to be allowing me to look him over. (I’ve wondered, years later, if the elk wasn’t afraid of me, how did he know I wasn’t a hunter? Or was the elk unaware of me  --- but I am sure he was absolutely aware of me.)

He just stood there -- he had antlers and huge black eyes, and was very large. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at at first; I had never seen an elk outside of books before. At first I thought it was a very large deer, but realized this was no deer, but an elk. (verified later when I looked it up.)  And here we were, standing at opposite sides of a road. After a few moments the elk seemed to fly across the road; just bounded in what seemed like one long graceful leap, and into the dark green of the other side.

I remember thinking that this was a secret thing that had just happened, a glorious strange private thing. I walked back to our camp (I assume I did) and that was that.

Bigfoot and cryptid debunkers and skeptics often say that people mistake the usual for the unusual. A bear, elk or some other animal is mistaken for a Sasquatch. The wild calls of a cougar, coyote, etc. is believed to be Bigfoot cries, or possibly something even more preternatural: the Beast of Bray road, or some such. All mundane sounds of animals mistaken to be something paranormal by nervous humans. 

It’s a disingenuous and insulting explanation, which is applied to all witnesses who find themselves out in the woods, regardless of their experience. The person who’s grown up with camping and hunting or who’s lived their entire lives in rural areas is considered in the same group with those unfamiliar with flora and fauna. Myself, at that time long ago. I had never heard the peacock’s eerie calls, or seen an elk in its natural habitat. Yet I didn’t jump to supernatural conclusions. At twelve, I was only vaguely aware of things like UFOs and strange creatures, but I did have an open mind, and in fact, assumed that things like ghosts existed. I don't know where this trust in the “other” came from, just the way Im wired I guess. Even so, I investigated the call of the peacock, and simply accepted the gift of seeing wapiti. I didn’t assume those things were banshees or Bigfoot or anything strange. 

I know too many people that I trust who have shared with me their Bigfoot encounters. To varying degrees, all of those people are familiar with the outdoors, having lived in the country, or hunted, fished and camped all their lives. To suggest they “mistook” a bear, or something else of a mundane nature for a Sasquatch is ridiculous. In fact, it is irrational to suggest that. 

The debunker’s dismissal that “people see what they want to see” is also ridiculous. I didn’t, even in my twelve year old mind, believe I saw a fairy, or Bigfoot -- I knew I saw an elk, even though I’d never seen one before. (Believe me, as wonderful and magical in its way seeing that elk was, it would have been much cooler to have seen a fairy.)

Another tactic used by uber-skeptics is the “life itself is magical enough, only the bored or disturbed need to create something --Bigfoot, ghosts, etc. -- instead of seeing the natural beauty around them.” What these skeptics don’t understand is that both exist; it’s not a contest.  That elk was magical indeed. 

And so is Sasquatch, (and that’s with or without the high strangeness aspects of the phenomena, another topic for another day) which, so far anyway, I have not been blessed to encounter. At least not in a literal, flesh and blood way.

"My Name is Flix" cover

Many years ago, when I first started out in the paranormal bloggingverse, I self published a booklet on a Bigfoot type encounter in Oregon. Cut and paste, comb bound. I'm sure the thing is full of typos -- I didn't keep a copy. I managed to sell a few on eBay. Found an image of the cover while looking around the internet:

The photograph is of Conser Lake, although it isn't called that anymore. I know the new name but, while it is a matter of public record, (I assume) I won't share it since the lake is on private property and I think the owners got tired of people going down there.