Longest Running Thread? Bigfoot Debate on JREF

I long ago quit "debating" with pathological skeptics and the like, but I do lurk. The thread on Bigfoot over at JREF (James Randi's message board) -- Patterson-Gimlin footage in particular -- is still going! I wonder what the record is for longest thread arguing about something no one agrees on? Whatever is the point dahlings?

Bigfoot Attacks!?

Speaking of guns and charging/attacking Bigfoots, Cryptomundo blog has a link to a YouTube video that's priceless: Bigfoot Attack Video?

Lots of comments over there about the video; I'd post a comment myself but forgot my sign in name. Just going to comment to a few who found posting such videos a waste of time. Come on guys, it's funny! Clearly not a real BF -- you know, with all going on the world today, the last thing we need to do is take ourselves so damn seriously.

Monkeys Use Baby Talk with Infants

I found this link on UFO Review; very interesting, but not surprising. Monkeys Use Baby Talk to Interact with Infants

Shooting Sasquatch: A Gun Mindset?

Someone emailed me the other day about my Finding Sasquatch item for Trickster’s Realm on BoA. He had nice things to say, thank you. In that piece I said how I was adamantly “no kill” and, while the e-mailer agreed, he did point out that shooting one in self-defense is understandable. If one finds themselves being charged or attacked, what are you going to do? I admit I hadn’t thought of that, it just never occurred to me. This possibility might seem obvious to some field researchers, but as I said in the article, I’m not a field researcher. I’m also not a ‘gun person’ in the sense I don’t own one, and am not used to going out in the woods (or anywhere) with a gun, or thinking along those lines. I don’t have that gun mindset.

I’m not anti-gun; I think that if (er, when) we move to the country we might end up getting a gun. Rifle. Shotgun. I dunno, those are all different, right? LOL. Quite obviously, I’ll need to be better educated about it when the time comes.

But this point about going out in the woods with a gun in the first place when going Bigfoot searching, is an interesting one. Why go out with a gun at all? Does going out with a gun create a potential situation for disaster? (ie, Bigfoot being shot or killed.) Would having a gun prove to be a temptation, if one finds oneself faced with a Bigfoot?


I don’t know the answer to these questions, just something to think about.

For Trickster's Realm: Finding Sasquatch

My new Trickster's Realm column for Tim Binnall's site, BoA is up now. Entitled Finding Sasquatch, I talk about "belief" in the existence of Bigfoot, as well as looking for Bigfoot.

As always, be sure to read all the other great columns over there. Lesley of the Debris Field blog and Beyond the Dial in UFO magazine has a very good piece on the critics who find fault with "making money" from UFO research in her current Grey Matters column.

There are also audio interviews you can download for free with all kinds of interesting people in UFO and Fortean research.

Aquatic Ape Theory

Wikipedia’s entry on Aquatic Ape Theory, or AAT.

AAT is the theory that our ancestors (humans) lived in aquatic settings.

“The aquatic ape hypothesis (AAH), sometimes referred to as the aquatic ape theory (AAT), proposes that the ancestors of humans went through one or more periods of time living in more aquatic settings than modern non-human apes and that this history accounts for many of the characteristics of species in the Homo genus that are not seen in other primates, such as chimpanzees or gorillas. “
Not a new theory at all, been around for a very long time.

Interesting however. Read more here.

"Another Synchronicity for Bigfoot and UFOs"

Lisa Shiel's Bigfoot Quest blog has:"http://bigfootquest.blogspot.com/2007/08/another-synchronicity-for-bigfoot-and.html">Another Synchronicity for Bigfoot and UFOs

Manitoba Mounties nab Whiteshell 'sasquatch'

Don’t get excited; turns out some bozo thought it’d be funny to
scare campers, wearing a “gorilla mask.” He’d been doing this for two years.

Among other things, seems pretty careless; a lot of trigger happy hunter types out there who love to shoot at anything that moves. I had to laugh at one woman, scared by the mask wearing clown, who “The woman who complained gave the man quite a tongue-lashing,”

This story does bring up questions and reminders about research and investigation. Have there been stories of Sasquatch sightings in that area the past two years? If so, have field researchers gone out there? It would seem that after the first couple of moments of being scared/startle, you’d quickly realize it wasn’t Bigfoot or some OOP creature at all.

Lisa Shiel: Bigfoot and UFOs: Parts Two and Three

Whoever pilots the UFOs enjoys toying with us. The trickster element of UFOs has been well documented. A similar type of trickster element exists within the Bigfoot phenomenon. ~ Lisa Shiel

Lisa’s posted Parts Two and Three of her series The Bigfoot-UFO Connection: An Explanation. In
Part Two, Lisa discusses the “Prime Directive” -- intent of aliens (or us, if were we the visiting entities) in relation to involvement with other beings.In Part Three,Shiel discusses the Trickster element in both UFO events and Bigfoot phenomena.

1895 Encounter: Sasquatch on Mt. Rainier

In an eariler post,
Sasquatch Inside Mt. Shasta, I mentioned that I remembered reading about an explorer in the 1800s who had an encounter with Bigfoot in Mt. Shasta. I also remember posting about it on my other blog,
The OrangeOrb, but I couldn't find the item.

I found the original article, from the 2001 issue of FATE Magazine. I was wrong; it wasn't Mt. Shasta, it was on Mt. Rainier. The article, by Preston Dennett (UFOs Over California, and UFOs Over Topanga Canyon) entitled Early American Mountain Bigfoot, tells the tale of explorer Major E.S. Ingraham and his meeting of a Sasquatch.

Like Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier has its share of odd occurrences. Dennett writes that the first white men to summit the mountain, Stevens and Von Trump (in 1870) were intentionally led in the wrong direction by their Native American mountain guide in order to keep them away from the mountain. Kenneth Arnold's UFOs were seen over Mt. Rainier. There are numerous stories of Bigfoot type creatures seen on the mountain.

Major Ingraham had credentials: well known explorer, founder of the Washington Alpine Club; various parts of Mt. Rainier were named after him. He climbed Mt. Rainier several times during his career. Given his reputation and credibility, it must have been quite a risk for Ingraham to write The Old Man of the Crater, in which he writes about his encounters with a Bigfoot that includes, among other things, mysterious glows and telepathic communications with Sasquatch.

The Major encountered Sasquatch inside a cave in the mountain. This lends support to the theory that Bigfoot (and other cryptids and entities) live underground, using caverns and tunnels as routes to get from one place to another. He describes the creature:

The crown of its head was pointed, with bristled hair pointing in every direction."

Very close to the creature now, Ingrahm imitated the Bigfoots movements, which apparently resulted in telepathic communications between the two:

We were in communication. There, in that icy passage connecting the unknown interior of this earth with the exterior, by means of anew medium, or rather an old medium newly applied, tow intelligent beings of different races were enabled to communicate, imperfect at first of course, with each other.

He continued to have "impressions" from what he called The Old Man of the Crater. The creature tried to have Ingraham follow him, but he resisted; when Sasquatch turned to "descend to the hot interior of the earth," Ingraham turned and went back to his companions, who were sleeping all this time.

Ingraham insisted his encounter was true. Dennett wonders if Ingraham's motivations could have been "fanciful," or that he was "trying to perpetuate some of the Native American legends about evil sprits, or perhaps, as he insists, he really did encounter a Bigfoot creature."

We'll never know, and it could be that Ingraham was being merely "fanciful." But, as Dennett points out, Ingraham's encounter does jibe with other encounters of Bigfoot that contain strange lights, telepathy, meeting the creature on mountains (Mt. Shasta, Mt. Rainier,) and inside caverns.

There's another possibility that Dennett doesn't mention; that of the astral plane. Is it possible these kinds of encounters occur, not in concrete "reality" but within some other dimension, like the astral plane? This makes the experience no less real, not at all. It can be argued many UFO-alien encounters take place in this realm as well. Other Bigfoot witnesses have reported encountering Sasquatch in this way: Jack Kewaunee Lapseritis,
The Psychic Sasquatch and their UFO Connection Stan Johnson, Lisa Shiel, Backyard Bigfoot:The True Story of
Stick Signs, UFOs, and the Sasquatch,Sali Sheppard-Wolford, Valley of the Skookum to name a few. Possibly this is what happened on Mr. Rainier that day in 1895.


Source: Dennett, Preston, FATE Magazine May 2001, Early American Mountain Bigfoot: An Explorer's Account of Sasquatch on Mount Rainier.

Lisa Shiel: The Bigfoot-UFO Connection; An Explanation

Lisa Shiel has some interesting thoughts on the UFO-Bigfoot connection on her blog Bigfoot Quest. This is Part I; check her blog for the arrival of Part II .

Two things I liked about her item: 1), the comparison she makes seems so damn obvious, and yet it's escaped many, including myself. 2) She acknowledges that we don't know; we can only offer our own thoughts based on data.

Footage: Gimlin on 'Mysterious Wolrd'

Remember the telelvision program Mysterious World, with host science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke? Here's a bit of footage from that show with Gimlin talking about his footage of Bigfoot.

Sasquatch Inside Mt. Shasta

Taking I-5 down to California, I had the joy of passing Mt. Shasta; even just viewing it from the car, it was magnificant. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to stop; it was just a sightseeing event, seeing Mt. Shasta from the interstate, and at rest stops. But that was pretty cool, even that. A trip to Mt. Shasta is definitely in my future.

I picked up some maps and did some surfing on the internet, and one thing that struck me as interesting are the caverns inside Mt. Shasta. Certainly those caverns are home to Bigfoot and all kinds of entities, as a large body of lore suggests.

There are a lot of stories out there about UFOs, Bigfoot, and other anomalous events on Mt. Shasta; too many to repost here. A Goolge, etc. search will give you lots of links to follow on the subject.

However, here is an interesting account by a psychic on Sasquatch within Mt. Shasta from the Hollow Earth Insider website, here’s a snippet:

In April 1974, psychic Joyce Partise of Southern California held a sealed envelope in her hands. Unknown to her, that envelope contained a photograph of a Sasquatch footprint … [Ms Partise gave her feeling] “These things are coming from outer space – it’s an outer space war! The first area will be Portland, Oregon. There’s a mountain with a hole in it. Someone should investigate this mountain because they’re down in there already. You know those hairy things that run around, the ape-man? He’s not an ape. They’re underground in contact with outer space and their intentions toward mankind is total destruction!” . . .
“This gorilla man … their eyes are extremely light sensitive from being underground. These tunnels I’m seeing is part of their habitation. They’ve dug them. I think it may even go into California…” ~
Big Foot, the Abominable Sandman, Nessie and The People who live Under Mt. Shasta”; Hollow Earth Insider website)

And of course, Oregon resident Stan Johnson (deceased) one of the subjects in my book Two Oregon Tales: Bigfoot and UFOs in Oregon, (not yet released) visisted the inner world of Mt. Shasta with the Sasquatch:

My Star friends came for me last night. I was teleported to Mt. Shasta. I was taken to a big rock. Behind that big rock was a door. There was an arch over the door that was rainbow-colored. The door was an etheric door, opening the way into the inside of the mountain to those of higher consciousness. I believe the star people close that door after they enter, and to our third dimensional iyes, it becomes just another side of a cliff of the mountain.

Above the arch was a large eye. This eye was "looking" at me. It was approximately two feet long and it ws a beautiful blue color. I don't know what that eye was, but it seemed like it was alive. As we passed under it, I fel the eye following me. I wondered if this beautiful, blue eye might be symbolic of the third eye, the one eye of the unified vision of the soul, the seat of the inner vision of the higher consciousness. ~
Sasquatch and the Star People, on the White Wolf Gallery website)

On the Argonaut-Greywolf alienUFOart.com website, is a drawing of a Bigfoot and UFO, as seen by a witness who lived in the area, although the site makes clear the UFO and Bigfoot sighting did not occur at the same time. Scroll down a bit and it’s on the right.

Bigfoot Site: Friends of Sasquatch

Just found this website: Friends of Sasquatch. They're here in Oregon, down south in the Klamath area. Here's a bit from their introduction on their site:

What we’re doing deals with broadening our abilities to contact Sasquatch telepathically. The reason for this is that we live in the center of the Klamath National Forest, an area known for frequent Sasquatch sightings, yet it is hard to get people here to talk about what they’ve seen. Therefore we’ve realized that if we’re going to have a chance of finding Sasquatch in this huge forest, we need a competitive edge.

Developing psychic abilities is a way of making contact, and improving our chances of finding that needle in a haystack known as Sasquatch, in the middle of the Klamath National Forest. So most of our Sasquatch research activities this past year included attempts at perceptive communication, some of which were more successful than others.

A Jeer for Sasquatch Believers

In Jeers: Why do the Sasquatch believers keep on keeping on?

Last week, according to The Associated Press, about 45 members of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization spent two days in the Uintah Mountains of Utah searching for the legendary apelike critter, emphasis on "legendary."

They used sophisticated equipment such as parabolic microphones and night-vision goggles.

Here's a shocker: A Forest Service District Ranger there said he was not aware of any sighting and that campers should be more worried about bears. Nevertheless, there are apparent true believers, including Scott Taylor of Tacoma, who said he saw Bigfoot in 2005 while deer hunting on the Washington coast.

Funny, that despite the occasional "sightings" and despite all the digital and cell-phone cameras everyone seems to carry these days, no one ever gets a bona fide picture or video of Sasquatch.

First saw the link for this item in the Clark County, Washington’s The Columbian by way of Cryptomundo.

As with UFO investigations, you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t, when it comes to skeptwoos. If BF researchers didn’t use equipment of any kind, they’d be chided for not being “scientific,” or serious, etc. When they do use equipment, they’re mocked. (well, either way, they’re mocked.)

Just the usual knee jerk skeptoid stuff, but I always wonder at the mindset that won’t allow for a witnesses’s experience; in this case, Scott Taylor. Does the reporter think Taylor is lying? Mentally ill? Simply mistaken? It’d be refreshing to see someone take responsibility for what they say; in this case, the reporter’s glib dismissal of the experience is an example. Say why you think it’s worth mocking.

There’s also the flawed reasoning that, since a ranger hasn’t heard any reports of a BF, then there aren’t any BF.

By the way, the Uintah region is well known for its history of UFO sightings, as well as Bigfoot type or “shape shifting” type creatures. Read Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science: Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah,
by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp, and The Utah UFO Display, by F.B. Salisbury. I believe the latter is out of print but you can find it on amazon.com, ebay, etc. That’s where I found my used copy. There’s also interesting material on Utah’s UFO Ranch.

Bigfoot Friendly Tom Synder Dies

Cryptomundo has an item about broadcast icon Tom Synder, who died yesterday at his home. Why does Cryptomundo have a story on Synder, you may wonder? Turns out Synder was "Bigfoot friendly."

I was a fan of Synder's and of course, many of us remember Dan Ackroyd's classic parody of Synder, with that laugh of his. I watched Snyder all the time in Los Angeles. I had an interesting experience watching Synder with guest Uri Geller; all about a watch and a clock, but that's for another time.

Here's to Tom Synder, a broadcast icon. Rest in peace.

On Cryptomundo: To Kill or Not to Kill?

Cryptomundo blog once again brings up the question of kill or no kill.

Agreed that only a dead body will satisfy science. The issue is, for myself, is one whether "cares" if science gets it or not. For those who have seen Bigfoot, they have proof. For others, it will have to remain a mystery, a question, and that's all right. I haven't seen a Bigfoot myself, so I can't say for a fact it exists. I don't have proof. I am of the opinion it exists, based on the data. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. If I'm right -- that being determined by my either seeing a Bigfoot with my own eyes, or, sadly, a dead body - then I'm right. (there is a third option; that of a witness very close to me, who had a Bigfoot encounter. Do you believe that person or not?)

As always, this discussion is interesting.

One Long Thread

It goes without saying that skeptwoos don't "believe" in Bigfoot; that BF doesn't exist. Paranormal or flesh and blood. So why has there been an active thread since July, 2005, about BF on the JREF (James Randi) forum? It boggles the mind. I don't have the patience or desire to get involved, but if you're so inclined, you can join the fray here.

Stick to Basics

Brian Gaugler has an article on UFO Digest: Bigfoot Research Shoiuld Stick to Basics.

Gaugler begins by agreeing with UFO and Fortean writer Nick Redfern that we shouldn't toss out data that seem at odds with our comfort zones. All those “cross over cases” are part of the data. He also says that a paranormal explanation isn’t the answer either; that we can’t give up on the idea that Bigfoot is a flesh and blood creature. And, of course, cryptozoology is a science. No room for orbs, UFOs and telepathy there.

While ultimately I disagree with Gaugler on his views regarding "paranormal" Bigfoot, he does make good points. For example, he writes that:

the number of cases in Bigfoot appears to be nothing more than a flesh and blood species completely outweigh the ones with a more paranormal bent. All of the major Bigfoot cases that are commonly cited in the literature, such as the Albert Ostman case and the Ape Canyon siege, both from 1924, contain no traces of any paranormal elements, but instead portray the Bigfoot as behaving more like regular animals. In addition, many of the paranormal Bigfoot cases don't hold up well to scrutiny, failing to provide any empirical evidence and appearing to be more likely hoaxes or just simple coincidences or misidentifications.

In cases where Bigfoot behaves more “animal” than supernatural, this is a good point. It’s also possible what we know of Bigfoot are two or more different types of creatures. And, or, that Bigfoot shifts between two worlds; flesh and blood, "paranormal."

I do question his assertion that the paranormal cases “don’t hold up to scrutiny” -- really, what paranormal event does? And I wouldn’t go so far as to say that those cases are hoaxes, “simple coincidences or misidentifications.”

There's just too much of that weird data out there concerning Bigfoot to warrant including it in our approach.

Lisa Shiel, of Bigfoot Quest blog and author of Backyard Bigfoot, has a good post on “Top 5 Best and Worst Ways to Hunt for Bigfoot.” As Lisa says, you don’t need a big expedition to look for Bigfoot:

If you want to look for Bigfoot, you need no expedition. You need no Bigfoot researcher to guide you. You need only your brain, your eyes, your ears, and your common sense.

Watching a lot of Bigfoot documentaries, with lots of people making all kinds of noise with all kinds of equipment seems self defeating, to me. Similar to ghost hunting; all those ghost hunters who insist on bringing in tons of equipment. Personally, I don’t think this is the way to go about finding Bigfoot, regardless if you think Bigfoot is more than merely “flesh and blood” or not. Anyway, good advice Lisa!