Apropos other threads I’ve gone through with scoffers lately, I should note something really interesting that happened with Fhqwgds up there.

He tells me not to point him to the literature (the depth and breadth of which is the primary evidence for the reality of sasquatch). Then, when he’s asked to prove relativity, he points us to the literature.

Interesting? Oh I’d think so.

Evidence is evidence. That for the sasquatch is more compelling than that for relativity. And if you don’t understand why….you are a physicist.

So, if anyone is reading this, The BC Provicil Museum apparently has a jaw bone of a “Big Indian” in storage somewhere just waiting to be seen. I plan going there next summer and convince the curator to bring it out, if it can be found, and have scientists, anthropolgists, and the like study it. Will keep all posted…

Lifelong Washingtonian. Sheesh. It’s the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of NATURAL History (NMNH).

I feel better already. In my defense, we do use “national” around here a lot, particularly for museums.

Don’t know whether that was a crack or not (or whether she’s a closet crypto; if she is, she’s way closet). But I wonder how many museums have taken a serious look at all that stuff they have that the public never sees?

I’ve talked about that here before, that difference between scientific proof and personal proof. If I saw a sasquatch tomorrow, I would not care a fig who else ever knew; I’d know now. And then you have the John Greens and Grover Krantzes who have been on this case like bulldogs despite never seeing one themselves.

I don’t have my proof yet. But your experience is part of the “big pile” that, far from being a pejorative, tells me we should be looking for it.

Some people do think there are thousands of Sasquatch and others think not and the ubiquity of the reports a reason for scepticism about the existence of Sasquatch altogether. I think there may be local concentrations related to food resources or freedom from interference and increasingly important being isolated thus avoiding human diseases. Otherwise I think Sasquatch are widespread if thin on the ground and we had better take advantage of eyewitness accounts (such a CBF’s), as a valuable resource while we can before and thank those who share their experience with us.

Through most of mans history the moon was just an eyewitness report, then a piece of cheese, then much more based on a matrix of evidence and finally total proof when science got its body part! With Sasquatch we are at the matrix of evidence stage and unless only one side of a case can be appreciated, its a good stage to be at.

There seems to be a lot of dialog since I last signed on. Some good points as well. Let me assure you, I saw what I saw. Not a hallucination, not a BEAR, and not a man in a suit. I am a very experienced outdoorsman and have routinely ran into almost every species of wildlife in NW Canada, except a badger, and I would love to see one in the wild one day.

I agree that my sighting goes into yet the big pile of sightings, that being said, it’s still evidence. This was the first time I have ever printed it anywhere. Maybe I now wish I didn’t as the usual ridicule by non-outdoors people rears up.

I have to also let you know that my brother, a very avid hunter calls my sighting BS. He says they don’t exist cause he has not seen one. The best part is, he has recently moved to a location in British Columbia on Vancouver Island where he is now, as we speak, hunting in a location that is very well known for sightings and contact with the animal. I suspect in the next few years he will eventually get lucky, and scared to death like I was, when he sees the animal for himself. He will call me and with his tail between his legs, will admit I was right all along.

As for the doubters that Bigfoot exists, I suggest you spend a little time (or lots of it as I do) in the forest, hiking, hunting, fishing, or guiding. You may have that surprise sighting. These sightings are rarely planned and come as a complete shock to the system when they happen. This is attested by virtually all people who report the sightings.

Saying all that, I guess the courts should now let all those people out of prison who were incarcerated based on eye witness reports of a crime committed. As someone said in an earlier comment above, “a lie or hallucination” or a case of “mistaken identity”.

That about sums it up. I guess I’ll just keep the track photos I took at a place where 9 loggers watched one for 20 minutes near Whiteswan Lake BC a few years ago. It would be pretty pointless at this time to bring them out. The whole story of their sighting can be read at the bfro under the type A sightings in BC.

By the way, I am enjoying the many comments by all, very insightful by both sides of the skeptics and believers.

Cheers

“CBFResearcher’s sighting may be “authentic.” Also true, it may be based on “deliberate lies” or even “big-time hallucinations.” Personally, I would not rule out “an innocent mistake” as an explanation. However, we really know nothing more than what we find here: words on a computer screen. My question is: can we presume CBF’s sighting statement is evidential? Or would it be irrelevant, as it stands, to a case based on real evidence?”

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Everything in the statement portion of that passage I’d agree with. (It’s hard for me to imagine what CBF saw that you could make an innocent mistake on, given what’s being described. But I suppose it’s conceivable. Give me time.)

As to the questions: I presume, as I said, that this encounter goes in a very big pile. We can’t disprove it (or them); we have no reason off the top of our heads, absent evidence, to presume it’s a lie, a hallucination or a mistake; and we can’t make similar judgments about most all of the many other such reports out there. They are what they are. What we can look at is the number of them, and their sheer consistency. How could that consistency be happening, with how many there are? Why would so many people be picking this to bother with? Are they all consistently crazy, and so consistently crazy about the exact same thing? Are they all mistaking known animals of various sorts for the exact same kind of consistently described animal, which is also leaving tracks that are consistent with one another, and displaying behaviors that are so consistently reported that the biology of a species is emerging from the reports? (THIS is why I say immersion in the reports is utterly essential to the most basic understanding of the evidence.)

The easiest thing to do that doesn’t involve dismissing the entire pile, entirely, out of hand, which no scientist being true to science could do in good conscience, is to simply say: there’s the evidence, and boy it sure looks, acts and graphs like a natural source, external to the observers, is producing it.

So, science, what does information like that say to you?

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“Is it truly amiss to entertain various possible explanations for CBF’s sighting (and by extention, other sightings) and not simply settle (almost as dogma) on a “Bigfoot Is Real” interpretation?”

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Entertaining various possible explanations is one thing. But when no evidence can be shown that any of those possibilities is indeed correct, or even likely, why not entertain the possibility that the individual might have seen just what they say they did, and then note how many people are saying they are seeing the same thing? Nothing even remotely dogmatic about that. It seems more like common sense to me.

It does not seem to be common sense, at all, to presume that we “would know by now” ANYTHING about an animal that can’t even be reported without the observer being presumed incorrect. I think a million of them could be roaming my home state of Maryland, and science wouldn’t know. Not until someone seeing one got taken seriously (and scientists seeing one could report it without fearing for their careers).

I’m intrigued by your comment that a “nationwide population of thousands” of bigfoot “seems so unlikely” that you “have to presume people are mistaken” when they report continent wide sightings. I agree with you here, and then you say such reports “may be every bit as good from all these areas as from the PNW.” If that is the case, what basis do you have to presume PNW sightings are not “mistaken?” Is you view based solely on innate plausibility, or on other evidence you find more valid relating to a PNW population of bigfoot?

DWA,

CBFResearcher’s sighting may be “authentic.” Also true, it may be based on “deliberate lies” or even “big-time hallucinations.” Personally, I would not rule out “an innocent mistake” as an explanation. However, we really know nothing more than what we find here: words on a computer screen. My question is: can we presume CBF’s sighting statement is evidential? Or would it be irrelevant, as it stands, to a case based on real evidence?

Is it truly amiss to entertain various possible explanations for CBF’s sighting (and by extention, other sightings) and not simply settle (almost as dogma) on a “Bigfoot Is Real” interpretation?