Shows like this…well, read this blog. They lampoon the field and lend aid and comfort (Smugness: The Death Of Science) to those who want to dismiss it.

The best thing to happen to this field would be: absolutely nothing. No one who isn’t looking, or isn’t really interested in the search, knows anything about it for five years. Ten. However long, until there’s confirmation.

OK, but it would be better than *this.* Because? THAT’S HOW SCIENCE WORKS, PEOPLE.

How often do you ever hear about a new discovery (if you’re not of all-African descent, you have Neanderthal DNA. Did you know that?) before it’s confirmed?

EXACTLY.

How could ‘reality’ tv – the fakest thing of my lifetime – do anything good for any field?

*sigh*

The show screamed shenanigans almost out of the gate sadly. I really wished it was going to be good, now its a laughing stock. Least MonsterQuest is making an effort to not be the proverbial turds in the punchbowl.

As far as the ghost shows, I still like Ghost Hunters, but certain things I gotta question. They always in most shows, get hits at something. I will applaud them for exposing things like noisy plumbing, bad wiring , cracks that allow outside noises in and such. But having been an active ghost hunter, especially in a known actively haunted building. in 16 years of ghost hunting in the old Hotel San Diego. Only a handful of times did I get a solid ‘hit’, most of the time it was hours and hours of nothing.

Least that British show Most Haunted, while great to see the settings, 99% were so damn fake it was painful. You could make a drinking game from it. “Evette screams”, take a slug, James reads psychically that the house was “once haunted by a man named Thomas who like to dress up as a Fox and died brutally by hoards of angry midgets.” And was wrong all the time. Take a drink. Plus the “Please knock twice if you are here!” and get an instant reply within feet. Or the “I’m going to toss this rock, can you throw one back?” and always get a pebble pitched back immediately.

In regards to GH, I’ve attended two of their events (one at Mt Washington, where I had the honor of meeting none other than Loren Coleman, and another at The Stanley Hotel).

Having met all the cast members, I found them all fun to hang out with and had a great time at the events. This however, doesn’t cause me to be star struck enough to ignore the evidence of their fakery or evaluate without prejudice the evidence as presented.

Their Halloween 2008 live event has more than abundant proof for me. Grant’s coat tug, the voice “you’re not supposed to be here”, etc. Some great debunking can be found on Youtube btw. Grant and Jason were actually asked about these two instances at the Mt. Washington Q & A. Their explanation was one of wanting to “move past” it and that the coat tug may have been his earpiece wire (laughable) and the voice may have been the Coast Guard…yes, the Coast guard,,lol

Anyways, I picked up some very good insights from various people including Steve Gonsalves (who personally told me that he believes the phantom from Eastern State was faked and not a ghost – he did not say they faked it, just to be clear).

Donna who used to be on the show also has been on a radio show discussing how she cried when she found out that they started staging things.

The basic concensus I was getting, and pretty much agree with, is that they started off legit and began the ratings push (ie: staging things) somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd season.

It was interesting to note the producers of Finding Bigfoot telling the BFRO crew that everyone is doing it. Since there isn’t a plethora of BF shows, or even cryptid shows, I have to wonder who “everyone” might be? Perhaps the paranormal umbrella as a whole?

Believe me, GH isn’t the only one, nor even the worst but I have a bit of personal ire as I vested real time and money into believing what they were selling. If you ask me, it’s outright fraud to sell tickets and profit off something you built off fakery, but sold as real.

Atleast I met some great people along the way.

My one problem i have had through this whole show and the BFRO is that, they all believe Bigfoot/sasquatch all behave the same way, there is never any doubt that it was not a sasquatch if it did not act in the way that they think it should have. In my encounter that i had, the bigfoot did not in anyway act how Matt thinks it should have, it was not standing behind a tree, or sneaking around or shaking bushes or limbs and trying to hide, it came right out in the open and let me see it. I do think it did this to let me know it was there. It was an experience i will never forget.

So MATT if you read this, don’t let your one sided belief that Bigfoots are prone to do only one thing, expand your thoughts and listen to what others have experienced and do not brush them off, collecting more and more data from what you already know or think you know, might be the ticket for you to actually catch one on tape for conclusive evidence.

Ah, what could have been…

Several of us, myself included, have offered simple, easily implemented changes and we were verbally slapped by MM for our efforts, so while we will discuss the issues with each other here we will not discuss them other places.

As for AP cancelling or not cancelling the show? Could care less either way. Sure the show brings some attention to the search for Bigfoot, but it also makes the researchers and witnesses look like idiots as often as not.

Maybe you are of the ‘no such thing as bad press’ school of thought, if so, fine. But the internet is forever, so whatever is lingering on the ether and cloud, good and bad, is going to be there until no one cares enough to look it up anymore. So perhaps the better suggestion would be for AP and PingPong Productions (I think that’s the name of the editors) to clean up their acts a bit and be more forthcoming with the truth about enhancements and re-enactments and for MM and BFRO to either be extremely careful what they say from now on or to hire a PR person/firm to at least put a decent spin on things so they don’t end up looking like dullards and liars.

How about offering some CREATIVE suggestions that might help improve the program’s quality? Redrose999 mentioned above that they should “type ‘re-creation’ or ‘enhanced audio’ on the screen…” so viewers would be aware, f’rinstance, that the hand sliding out near the bunny’s cage was an illustration, not real.

This is not rocket surgery, gang – it’s just a show about the rigors of research – LEARN from it, and participate positively!