There’s a breed of True Believerism that’s risen up to counterbalance the proponent fringe. It’s the one that says “it’s a guy in a hoodie!” or such rot, when nothing in the report lends any credence to that interpretation. It’s gotta be a fake, because it ain’t proof! It’s True Believerism in the Mundane.

Nature has thrown bigger surprises at us than an extant species of a kind of animal with many representatives in the fossil record that, if somebody saw one tomorrow, they’d say they saw a sasquatch. And lots of evidence – not just sightings – backs that interpretation up.

These girls could receive a follow-up interview and two questions in, start giggling uncontrollably and admitting the joke. So. Anyone going there to do that? (Not me. I think the pile is more than big enough to toss this one if that’s what one must do.) There is damn little detail. But based on what there is, there is no more basis to toss out than to toss on The Pile. When that happens, The Pile is where it goes, that pile that says, man a lot of people are seeing this. There are even scientists that vouch for it. But we don’t have proof yet.

Merry Christmas to all. Whatever holiday you substitute goes double. (There is a lot of Christmas out there, isn’t there.) And Happy New Year.

Of course we’d all love to have the holy grail of evidence fall into our laps and elevate one of the great cryptids from legend status to accepted truth…and we’ll get there, but in the meantime, we have to sift through what we’ve got. AND, that means looking over and through reports like this to decide if it’s valid as a plausible BF sighting or if it’s explainable by other means. You can’t say with certainty that any one report is 100% yea or nay…because it’s usually second hand accounts, someone else’s, or even third hand. Maybe one out of a hundred times you get a picture that’s most likely grainy or blobby, or maybe a video. You have to wade through all the hoaxsters because of all of the advanced technology available to the average imbecile, and then work it down from there.

The point is, that’s what this site IS all about. We go through the evidence presented to give our two cents on whether it has merit as a solid account or not. I’m all for being skeptical–you have to, to weed out the idiots who hoax stuff for their fifteen minutes of fame, and the just plain old fashioned misidentifications. However, sometimes it’s just as easy to look past the integrity of a sighting and just throw it into the “fake” pile because everything else up to that point has been blobsquatches and hoaxes. It’s easy to get disillusioned because this science is sparse on pay-off, AND because there’s little respect for cryptozoology, AND because we have to deal with all of the idiots who have nothing better to do on a Saturday night other than hoke up some fake BF evidence.

THAT’s why Craig and Loren and the others throw stuff out here on this site–to try to get the rest of us to really look at these encounters with a hard, but fair eye. They’re helping us train ourselves by evaluating the reports that come in. And here, we should be discussing the validity of a particular report based on the information we can glean from it to decide just that.

What we shouldn’t be doing, is making hip-shot judgement calls and then bashing everyone who doesn’t agree with us.

I’m all for listening to theories–provided you back it up with some sort of valid reasoning, and I may just go along with you if the reasoning is sound. But if you make crack statements and one liners without anything other than a smart comment to back it up, I’m not going to take you seriously, and I do believe that’s what has twisted this entire post around.

We started with two main premises here: they saw it at a distance (maybe less than a half mile), and that it appeared bigger than a human…or that it was so large that the two women couldn’t believe it was human. Those were the details that stood out. That’s good. It’s something tangible to start with, and then discuss that…without firing on each other.

We’re never going to know or be able to discern from the tiny amount of info we have on this whether they saw a BF or not. As has been said, throw it on the pile–to me that means there is enough doubt as to whether it was human or not that it goes into the growing list of sightings. IT doesn’t mean that by throwing it into that pile that it was automatically a Bigfoot sighting, but there’s enough unknowns to make this particular sighting possibly a BF sighting.

To me the purpose of all of these sightings is to try to build a database of sightings that we can draw patterns from over time. If we get enough concentrations of sightings in a region we may be able to start picking out patterns of movement and behavior to be able to anticipate where and when we could find these things. AND if in the end there really is no Bigfoot, then we should be able to figure that out too, because they won’t behave according to those patterns.

However, we should, as cryptos, take every sighting serious as a possible sighting–then see if we can find mundane answers. It’s when we can’t solve the sighting with mundane everyday answers that it gets thrown into that other “pile.” AND if we take these sightings seriously, more people may come forward that have had encounters, which will just increase our database over time and give us more to go on.

Alright, I’ve rattled on enough. Merry Xmas, Happy Hannukah, enjoy whatever holiday you do or don’t celebrate and I’ll check back in to my favorite online site in a couple of days. My best to Craig, Loren and the gang, and to all my other fellow Cryptomundians here…

It’s Christmas!

And you’ve got a problem for some reason.

And that’s funny.

You were just RIGHT.

I need to add one more thing, about this.

“Frankly, it’s insulting that you would characterize skeptical people as approaching the topic with the mindset of “everybody’s crazy.” It demonstrates a lack of understanding and contempt of scientific inquiry. To imply that my approach wasn’t curious is laughable.”

Actually, that’s laughable. Telling people what they saw, when you were not even there, is NOT A CURIOUS APPROACH! Unless you mean that it’s “curious” for its lack of curiosity. Then we agree. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT THEY SAW, and I have not shred one of confidence in your ability to tell me. what are your credentials for long-distance cyberdebunking? None? (Agreed.) Now. Were? YOU? THERE????

NO!

Good. I’m done.

What did they see? Why would they go doing this? Why have thousands of others? That I can tell, no one has gotten rich off it; no one has gotten the 15 minutes they wanted (although some have gotten 15 minutes, they all pretty much want to have them back); and no one has gotten credit for anything but coming forward (from the proponents) and being loony (from the skeptics).

That’s why it’s:

on the pile.

Now, the SERIOUS question for SERIOUS people:

WHAT IS CAUSING THE PILE?

(I see a distressing tendency not to read on this board. So you see LOTS of caps from me. Do what I do, gang. READ.)

Have a merry Christmas.

Your approach isn’t serious. Here’s why.

Once again, the scientific issue in the case of the sasquatch is a massive, broad and deep PILE of evidence, of just about every kind that we find for animals we know about. At least that is what’s alleged. What everyone who is actually curious wants to know is: what’s generating that pile? Why, when it points to something guidebook-consistent being described by sane people, conforming to biogeographical rules and living in just the places a biologist postulating such a species would expect, would it make sense to toss it all off to illusions and misidentifications? Do those follow biogeographical rules?

(If you’re not sure where I’m getting that, a serious approach requires close acquaintance with the evidence.)

So.

How is your approach moving the needle? Answer: it isn’t. A serious approach needs to.

What you need to do is to show, for every single sighting report ever, not what it could be based on your armchair guess-so. You need to show WHAT IT IS. Every one of them. Or at least enough of them – you know, several hundred or so – to serve notice that the remainder are, how shall we say, problematical. Even then, as George Schaller says, only one of them has to be authentic for the animal to be real. You know who he is, right?

Scientists don’t pick around the edges of the pile. They assault the pile, either by showing – conclusively – what the pile represents, or by searching for the putative cause of the pile, to describe and catalog it.

So. Let’s see a serious approach here. Sitting in an armchair and saying, you know that could be a bear, right? isn’t serious. I’m taking their opinion over yours, if I had to bet money. Serious bets on who was there, not who wasn’t. Unless there is a serious reason – you offer none, nor does anyone else, and I have been on enough WV roads fumbling with a cellphone to tell you that – to doubt them. On this one, there isn’t.

On the pile. Now what’s causing the PILE? That’s the serious approach. Addressing the pile moves the needle. This, not so much.

(Mine? Educating and informing budding young cryptos – the ones who will solve the mysteries – on the pitfalls of the field, including scattershot skepticism in ignorance of the mass of evidence. Count on it: moving the needle.)

Too many people here seem “hung up” on debunking individual reports. That’s not my problem. It’s theirs. When your house is on fire, do you yell at the firemen: hey, the patch where I’m standing is fine? No. All attention is on the blaze. Including yours.

Almost all the skeptical attention when it comes to this topic, however, is on the spot where the individual reporter is standing. Meanwhile, the blaze goes on. Smell that smoke?

There is no basis for debunking this report. One of the basic building blocks of a serious approach to this topic is understanding that. Period. Say what you want. There is no more basis to say they didn’t see this than to say they did. Period. As Jerry Coleman and I say: it goes on the pile that all that smoke is rising from, the smoke that indicates there might be a fire there. Why would these women say this? Do you run around yelling bigfoot? Is most of the population – many of them out there driving vehicles and bearing weapons when they had their sightings – unhinged? THAT is what you should be worrying about.

The things you toss out there have no substantiation. Is it conceivable you could be right? Well, who cares? Can you prove you are? No.

THAT is a serious approach, knowing which battles to fight, and knowing when to, as Jerry says, note, log and file. That’s the only way to deal with this one. Deal with it.

I can see it now…Bigfoot drops in to the local Cryptid/Alien/Paranormal Nightclub (Hang-OVER 18, they call it—it’s just North of Chillicothe, Ohio) and he’s there having a Bloody Mary (of course, you have to ask for it THREE times to get it) and about the time his drink arrives who should come in but MOTHMAN!!!

Well, Mothman takes one look at Bigfoot and says “Hey, man, you look like HELL!”

Bigfoot gulps his drink and says “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Mothman.

Meanwhile, the Bartender…who used to go by the name of the Flatwoods Monster….chimes in with a “I noticed that too but I didn’t want to say anything. What’s the matter BF?”

Bigfoot shakes his head. “I dunno. I’m just tired all the time. I got that damn Moneymaker guy chasing me all over with his TV cameras and it’s wearin’ me out. I’m gettin’ too OLD for this.”

Mothman pats him gently on the back, “Ever been to West Virginia?” he says.

“No.”

“Well, you simply MUST go…it’s a beautiful state and there’s no more restful woodland glades anywhere in the US.”

“Really?” says Bigfoot.

“It’s true,” says the Flatwoods Monster. “I passed through there once when the Jersey Devil and I were on our way to Rio for the Carnival. It’s BEAUTIFUL there!”

“And don’t forget,” says Chuck Chupacabra who had been listening in. “Moneymaker won’t be looking for you THERE!”

“That’s RIGHT!” says Bigfoot, a big toothy grin spreading across his features. “I’ll GO!” he says.

And he did. And that’s when the two women saw him.

I kid you not.