RUNNING WITH BIGFOOT

Many people know that I was born and grew up in the Rocky mountain region of the United States. Even though this Mountain range is heavily carpeted with trees and mammoth peaks there really are no legendary monsters that live this mountain range.

For years this mountain range has been a quiet and serene area for camping and fishing. There is nothing like these mountains and there have been several breathtaking views that I remember when I was out hiking near Millcreek and Cottonwood canyons.

It really hasn’t been a hot bed for Bigfoot or any other creature until recently a sighting of the creature was seen on the Alpine loop near Sundance in Provo Canyon. While the sighting is a rare nighttime sighting and the video that has been presenting appears to show a large shadow lurking in the woods off the road, there has been a lot of buzz about the alleged beasty and there has also been a few new scientific studies as of late that makes running with Bigfoot a staple of what I am calling Sasquatch Summer.

I really have not explored Bigfoot on my show, only that when I moved to the Northwest I ran into a Doctor who broke down when he told me that he saw a pack of these mountain apes near Grants pass Oregon in 1999.

I also had the opportunity to speak with the late Bigfoot investigator Lloyd Pie whose book “Everything you Know is Wrong” made a compelling argument as to the validity of Bigfoot. He was the investigator who basically sat me down and told me that perhaps we should stop putting some supernatural aspect to the creature and start looking into the possibility of the creature using scientific methods.

It was easier for me to accept that whatever is lurking out there in the swamps and forests were nothing more than a lost species of ape or monkey, with no real explanation as to why they are even here.

Most regions of the world have their legends of menacing but elusive monsters hulking, hairy beasts that investigators call “anomalous primates.”

Yeti, Momo, Skunk Ape, Almas, Yowie, Sasquatch, Bigfoot , whatever the name you call it, its making its presence known throughout the Northwest. Mystery Anthropoids, or Hominoid ape like creatures that roam the forests of the world have been downplayed by scientists and are usually treated as tall tales concocted by drunk hunters who mistake large bears for a more strange albeit odorous being that may or may not belong on this planet.

People take for granted that all species have been identified and so the idea of a great ape species living in North America is an absurdity until the “body of evidence” is exposed to the world. Even if it was exposed, the reality of such a creature could be as mundane as an endangered ape or gorilla that somehow found a way to cross continents and remain elusive from hunters and investigators, only to show up unexpectedly and witnessed by deep woods campers.

The whole idea of new and mysterious species being discovered and categorized is academic to serious researchers who realize that even in recent history animals that were once thought of as products of mythology have suddenly appeared and have been categorized by scientists.

Now that the proof of their existence can be caged up and put on display in a public zoo or laboratory it is common place.

The difficulty in capturing an undeniable picture, video, or even hair or scat samples of the Bigfoot has caused a number of people to dismiss outright the possibility of such a creature existing. However eyewitness testimony continues to pour in and recently the sightings of such a creature have increased.

Native American Indian tribes have talked about these creatures for centuries. White settlers have recorded their presence as well and the stories have continued throughout history. Even Teddy Roosevelt claimed to have seen one.

It wasn’t until the 1970’s when interest was sparked by several documentaries that were produced about the creature and where a grainy 16 mm film was showcased purporting absolute evidence of what appears to be a Female Sasquatch walking into the forest.

This famous piece of footage is known as the Patterson Gimlin film.

Reports began coming in from all over the country about sightings of a creature that was between 6 ½ to 8 feet tall, hirsute with large feet, glowing eyes and producing a horrible smell of sulfur or rotten eggs.

The combination of glowing eyes and terrible smell were similar to other crypto creatures that had been reported in other parts of the country, namely the Flatwoods monster, the Skunk ape, Mothman and most recently the Chupacabra of Puerto Rico.

There have been researchers who claim that the smell is similar to human body odor. It has also been said that the odor is like a dead animal.

These stories continued and later would end up in tabloids posted all over the country lessening its importance in the consensus reality. Journalists would ignore data from credible witnesses and most samples of stool and hair would go unreported in field studies because of the fear of ridicule.

The Bigfoot creature still, has that tabloid edge to him and he is always the topic of tall tales when all are snug in their sleeping bags listening to fireside ghost stories on family camping trips.

NBC recently did a series on what scientists find when they receive samples of Bigfoot hair. It was interesting to note that the science labs that receive specimens of hair usually report that what they have is nothing but hair samples taken from black bears, cows, a porcupine, horse, raccoon, sheep, deer, dogs and quite surprisingly and often rarely, coarse human hair that cannot be traced to anyone in any DNA data base.

That is what makes the Bigfoot story so interesting. There are many witnesses to Bigfoot that state that when they gaze upon the creature that it looks like a giant human, unshaved and smelling of horrible body odor.

Even though the hair samples are analyzed and most come up being easily explained it is those rare times when scientists and most cryptozoologists use the scientific method to track and possibly provide evidence that such a creature exists and that perhaps the species of this creature are rare and perhaps deserve a second look.

Cryptozoologists have been treated badly for the past 50 years, however now we live in times where cable TV networks desperate for new and compelling programming provide all kinds of Bigfoot adventures that the public can participate in right in their living rooms.

Most people scoff at Bigfoot reports and I must admit that as I pick through ideas for shows that I do Bigfoot is always looked over, not because I don’t love a good bigfoot story, but because there have been so many hoaxers and enormous stories being told that I always think to myself that is the three hours of entertainment worth the burning of a hoaxer and my credibility in the same conflagration?

However just because I don’t always do Bigfoot shows does not mean that the believer in me has not been nurtured by a fiancé that lived in Bigfoot territory, namely Kelso and Longview Washington and an experience that I had while scaling the south side of Mt. St. Helens near Cougar Washington.

I have also collected some pretty compelling Bigfoot reports, 911 calls and exchanges between police and forest rangers as they speak over their radios discussing eerie shadows near Skamania Washington and parts of Stevenson Washington as well.

My first real Bigfoot investigation happened in 2011 when I received a report that seemed a bit out of the ordinary. I filed it as “Bigfoot Crossing” because it just fit the story that was reported out of Madras Oregon. Now keep in mind that I had no proof that Bigfoot was haunting the area just some circumstantial scariness that had me compelled to investigate the possibility.

Railroad officials and central Oregon sheriff’s detectives were trying to figure out who or what may have pushed large 300 pound boulders onto the railroad tracks. It happened at least two weeks in a row.

Sherriff’s and local investigators were thinking kids were to blame as one train hit a boulder almost derailing the train and the other was spotted early enough to avoid a collision.

I received a number of e-mails from residents in the region that stated that they had heard all kinds of strange screams, whistles and barks that at first sounded like coyotes. However many were also claiming that the sounds they were hearing sounded like unnatural grunts and screams that they felt sounded a bit unnatural or at least unfamiliar.

Some of the e-mails I received spoke of the possibility that humans are not responsible for the boulders there. Some were speculating that it may have been Bigfoot and that there is something definitely wrong with the eco system in the area. At the time there seemed to be reports of bird deaths and dogs and cats running away from home.

There were no Bigfoot sightings confirmed not even one sighting, just strange happenings in the environment there.

We are all told that there are no monsters, that there are no real monsters; however a monster is also a matter of how you think, what you observe. A predator can be just about anything from a mountain lion to a wolf. Their hunger is overwhelming and their need to feed in the winter months is also something to consider.

The next year I was also alerted to another possible Bigfoot event that was happening in November of 2012. Melba Ketchum claimed that she had proof of the creature being a human relative, her study was rejected by the peer review board. Meanwhile a howling beast was recorded on the Umatilla Indian Reservation east of Pendleton, Oregon.

We attempted to conduct an investigation with Northwest Ghost Recon, but were told to stay away from the area where the screams were heard. We were also advised that there were 18 inch long footprints that were found near the swampy area where the screams were heard.

If Science is not embarrassed to study the so called Bigfoot perhaps they will try to determine if some upright walking species of Mountain apes have slipped through the cracks. After all, many of today’s animals got their start as improbable creatures that are believed to be made up in the minds of opportunists and charlatans.

Take a look at some of the animals that exist on this earth and contemplate their looks. An elephant seems so peculiar, a giraffe is just as unusual. Rumors flew about a huge pig-eating lizard and there were many who laughed until the Komodo Dragon was discovered in 1912.

The Panda, at first was a hallucination and a myth told amongst the Chinese people’s before it was found. Its legend had been around for 100 years or so before it was revealed to the western world in 1937.

Bigfoot of course or even the yeti still has not been placed in a Zoo or has been placed in captivity. Until then we will always term it a mythological beast. The question is whether the legend is far more intriguing than any proof that would show the creature to be more mundane and less supernatural.

This way of anything winds up in a science lab, we can all keep our opinions down to earth and try not to make the old ape, some extra terrestrial pet, or some human ape hybrid that proves some missing link or something else.

I know that takes the fun out of it… but maybe it’s time to seriously rethink about what Bigfoot truly is and not what we have outrageously speculated about.