And keep in mind that in these cases, the person isn’t reporting just the phenomena, but also the sighting of an animal in direct conjunction with the other experiences, one that simply can’t be a known animal from the description given.

Those phenomena are a thread - nay, a cord, nay a triple-steel cable - through so very, very, very many encounter reports (just read yet another one that featured all of them) that they stand by themselves. They do so, in fact, so strongly that, despite Mr. Mathys’s rules and the respect one must have for not jumping to conclusions, they are darn close to being diagnostic, and may one day be regarded as being so on their own, the way so many known animals’ tracks are.

Once again, it’s something that’s happening way too often to simply use a mundane explanation to dismiss it out of hand. We know that it’s a possibility that can’t be utterly ruled out. It’s just that that possibility does not seem to be the way to bet for a significant percentage - much less all - sasquatch encounter reports.

Points well taken - but I’m not sure they changed mine.

Some Bigfoot sighters knew of the Patterson film - and made the link when they saw one. Nothing unusual about that; in fact you’d expect it. Happens all the time with known animals: Oh, I know what that is. But many describing the things that just happen to be in that film had never seen the film before they saw the animal. (Not hard to imagine at all: I saw the film, for the first time, two years ago. Before I saw it, I knew far more about the sasquatch, I believe I can say with confidence, than the average person knows.)

The many descriptions given for what is obviously a sagittal crest tell me that the way to bet is that the sighting - not memory of something else -triggered the description.

Or else they were lying. And I’m just not seeing that as a logical explanation for everything I’ve read.

It always comes back to this with me: it’s simpler just to presume that they’re seeing what they’re seeing. And it’s happening more than often enough to be worthy of investigation with the upfront presumption that what people are seeing is real, not faked.

No worries; I just wanted to clarify my position on hoaxes and the like. I definitely agree with you about investigating the area around a reported Bigfoot sighting to see if the evidence could point towards a hoax or not. Heh…it looks like our discussion has gone full circle and brought us back to some of the points brought up by Mr. Mathys.

And on a somewhat related note I once read something about some supposed samples of “Bigfoot hair” turning out to be synthetic hair/fur after analysis.

You can read some notes on this at this site and this site. Sadly, there’s not enough “meat” on those (at least for my liking) for me to do any independent research on the matter, but it’s interesting to think about. After all, what’s that material doing out in those areas?

Remember, there’s never been a successful man-in-suit Bigfoot hoax.

So “The Horror of Being Hoaxed” wasn’t good enough for ya? Well, to be fair, I suppose whoever submitted that could be lying. But you don’t seem to get what I’m saying: How would you know a successful (as in many people were fooled into thinking it was real) hoax from the real deal? It’s easy to pick out an obvious hoax, but what about a well-crafted one? Suit-based hoaxes aren’t just in videos.

I’d say that most of the reports I read are coming from people who didn’t know enough about the subject to even do this.

But how do you know this for a fact? For all you know, some of those could just be the cryptozoology equivalent to the “Letters to Penthouse.”

I’ve tried to fake reports in my head. I can write. It is HARD.

No offense, but saying that something is hard/unlikely since you can’t do it isn’t really the best way to show that something is unlikely.

It is a common misconception about the sasquatch that it’s such an improbable critter that we need to thoroughly research almost anything other possibility fiirst

Not quite. You’ve got to show that something isn’t likely to be known phenomenon before saying it’s something new. If a Bigfoot specimen could be obtained, we wouldn’t even be quibbling over this stuff since there’d be something to test against. But since there isn’t such a specimen, we have to test against stuff we know exists. It’s similar to why one is expected to test if the results of an experiment can be repeated. Why do this? To make sure that the result of the first experiment wasn’t just a fluke.

smooth effortless gait;…agility, and ability to cover frequently uneven ground, fast; no neck; turned its body along with its head to look to the side or behind;…hunched stance; long arms swinging rhythmically

Those sound an awful lot like people describing the P/G footage. If the reports were made prior to the film’s release, I could take them ore seriously than modern ones. They’d still be worth looking into, mind you, but the possibility that someone was merely recycling details from other accounts must also be considered. Failure to do so could result in winding up with egg on your face.

sagittal crest

Ah, but couldn’t they have heard of 1954 and 1960 investigations involving a pointed “Yeti scalp”? If that detail managed to pop up in a 60’s TinTin book, who knows where else it could pop up?

My 1970 copy of John Keel’s “Strange Creatures from Time and Space” mentions several of the other details you bring up in the chapters “The Hairy Ones”, “Meanwhile in the Soviet Union”, “Big Feet and Little Brains”, and “Creatures from the Black Lagoon”. While such details could lend credbility to older reports, their appearance in newer reports may or may not be the result of someone cribbing details from books or websites on Bigfoot sightings. One must rule out the possibility of such things to give credibility to claims that they are the truth. Sadly, it’s hard, if not impossible, to follow up many of the older sightings.

feeling of being watched; eerie silence before the encounter, unlike anything the obsever has noted in an area the observer has in most cases been to many times; extreme fear; even more extreme fear on behalf of livestock and pets

Several of those things occur when a predator is in the area and can be observed on hikes and hunting trips. They’re also used in horror movies, which make it even easier for hoaxers to have a reference point to base their “sightings” on. Some of the details you mention would be more credible in older sightings. However, “newer” ones are a bit iffy since people have material to base their own stories on.

The most interesting thing about reading them - and you bet I’m still doing it, there are a LOT of these, people, and many of them bear reading several times - is the number of times I mutter to myself, as i’m reading, something like “yep. Frequently reported.” I would say I do that, on average, four times per report. And no, I do not do it with “big, black and hairy” or “bipedal” or “definitely not a bear.” I do it with nuances - smooth effortless gait; amazing speed, agility, and ability to cover frequently uneven ground, fast; no neck; turned its body along with its head to look to the side or behind; sagittal crest (witnesses have many ways to convey this, mind they’re not primatologists); flat, but humanlike, nose; consistent reports of hair location, thickness. length and other features including color (which doesn’t seem to be black too often, BTW); hunched stance; long arms swinging rhythmically when the animal walks or runs; feeling of being watched; eerie silence before the encounter, unlike anything the obsever has noted in an area the observer has in most cases been to many times; extreme fear; even more extreme fear on behalf of livestock and pets, especially dogs…you get the picture.

Almost every report I read, I get the same picture in my head of what the observer is describing. Try that with Nessie.

Now to set up that hot key. (I actually need to have two, for when I type it all caps.)

Remember, there’s never been a successful man-in-suit Bigfoot hoax. Really. Yep, there’s been lots of video and lots of guys in suits. But never has anyone been fooled by one, not anyone it would take substantial effort to fool. Unless, of course, P/G is one. And if it is, it’s the only one.

If a similar film showed up tomorrow, I would consider it an illogical response to go to a ton of trouble to try to disprove that was a guy in a suit. P/G has never been shown to be such. In fact - and I’ve said it here - it was illogical to jump to the pseudo-conclusion that it was one, as so many did, 40 years ago. It doesn’t look like one; too many of its measurements are…oh stop me.

All that has to be done is this: look at the video. How does it move? Are there any suits like that? Let’s do a quickie search of the Internet and whatever other resources are out there. That should take a day or two at most. If it’s good video that shows something that sure doesn’t look human, wrong proportions, too big, too everything to seem human, and it appears to be moving naturally - in other words, like the P/G subject - it’s time to get in there and start confirming.

Our reaction to P/G was crippling. We need to get off the crutches of blind belief that we’re the only mammal that can run on two legs. Please let us not do that again if we ever get a second chance to do it right.

And as to witnesses:

“But how do you know they aren’t reading up on Bigfoot sightings before making up their own (and in the internet age, this gets more and more likely due to the ease of looking up websites, especially with sightings databases)? Does the BFRO investigate all reports in their database, or do they just take submissions? Please tell me; I really do want to know.”

I’d say that most of the reports I read are coming from people who didn’t know enough about the subject to even do this. (This is why I keep on saying: READ SIGHTING REPORTS.) And you’d be surprised how hard it is to make a faked report sound real. Look at the blurbs that accompany the stuff you see on Youtube. They invariably scream “faked” before you even take a look. I’ve tried to fake reports in my head. I can write. It is HARD. It’s just not a logical thing to expect this many people - many of whom submit their names - to do.

But now, your question about investigations. This is where things get, let us say, a bit sloppy. From what I can see, the BFRO does not seem to research many of the reports they put up. Numerous reports get excellent followup, and are much more compelling after you read the followup report. (Many people cannot write their way out of a paper bag, or are shellshocked, or something; the followup research has the potential to bring lots of important detail out that wasn’t in the original report.)

I’d love to hear myself why so many of the reports I’ve read there don’t have followup, yet are posted, something I understood the BFRO doesn’t do. BTW, this kind of thing is pretty par for the course. All cryptid research, by any scientific standard, is quite shoestring. After all, everyone working on it has a real day job.

That being said: research or no, the reports - and most certainly many of the ones with no posted followup - are impressive testimony. A report doesn’t get more true or more false with followup. It either is or isn’t. Followup or no, I still want to know what these people saw.

“If someone proves or or at least shows that it’s unlikely for this to happen, great.”

It is a common misconception about the sasquatch that it’s such an improbable critter that we need to thoroughly research almost anything other possibility fiirst - like people conducting history’s most elaborate and improbable hoax, or every witness concocting vivid, damn-difficult-to concoct stories, that don’t break down when they are followed up (and while many of them don’t seem to be followed up, many, many of them are). I know you’re not trying to tar all of them with that brush. But too many people do. I think we need to move away from the hoax-first presumption - or at least be cautious enough about it that we don’t pollute the next P/G - really, pollute our own minds about it - beyond recovery the way we did the first one.

This ain’t no lake monster. Read sighting reports.

A scientific approach would be to look into what there is in any given sighting to support the man in the suit hypothesis and if that does not check out, test another hypothesis. I won’t jump to conclusions that a hairy hominid is the cause of the sighting and neither will I assume that it is a man in a suit without weighing the possibilities and surrounding circumstances, including witness reliability and any evidence found in the area. i think it is very important to check out what supports any given hypothesis. Like I said before, I feel it would be immensely important to investigate the area where footage or a sighting was made to look for clues, whether those point to a guy in a suit, an unknown animal, or a figment of the witnesses imagination.