Comments on: Bigfoot Contactees

By: DWA

DWA — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:56:52 +0000

“Whether you call them Sasquatch contactees, Bigfoot magnets, Forest Giant abductees, or Wild People habituators, it is clear a new collection of people are to be reckoned with in hominology. What do you think of this modern trend?”

I think that here is how a scientist worthy of the name would “reckon with” these people (I speak especially of the habituator crowd): Let me see your evidence, or all we have here is another tall tale. Stop trying to obstruct a scientific investigation by discrediting it with hooey.

I believe the anecdotal evidence for the sasquatch to be compelling. I put all habituation tales, however, in the “hooey” category.

The anecdotal evidence appears to put together a picture of an animal generally indifferent to, and frequently curious about, human presence. The people making reports seem genuinely careful not to put anything in there other than what they experienced, frequently regretting their inability to supplement their account with additional evidence.

This stands in stark contrast to this new-class-to-be-reckoned-with. They trumpet their experience; write books about it…then say they are guarding the animals’ …what? Privacy? Oh yeah, the book …with nothing in there of the sort one would expect to put in there if one were, you know, WRITING A BOOK…should protect that privacy just dandy there!

Oh yeah. Reckon with this new “collection” of oddballs. The way one reckons with M.K. Davis should work.

HAHA.

NEXT!

By: terry the censor

terry the censor — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 06:37:36 +0000

Some reactions:
I think it is fair and accurate to refer to these people as contactees. It fits, therefore it is fair, it is just. “Contactee” is a well-deserved smear in ufology and we have the same problems here: unusually longterm and involved contact but without a sliver of physical evidence, reports inherently impossible to verify independently, a smattering of mystical significance. For instance: “I’m closer to nature than you…blah, blah, blah.” That’s analagous to the cosmic brotherhood angle that the contactees gave to their experiences (and which David Jacobs in particular despises in his _Secret Life_, going so far as to define abduction in such as way that contactees are no longer considered abductees but just pathetic new agers. Jacobs has a point, but he uses dishonest and circular reasoning to achieve his result).
DNA: scientists have been taking human DNA samples far and wide for some time now, and using m-DNA have a pretty good idea of our relatedness to each other, and our migration patters over the last 50,000 years or so. The science is so precise, Bryan Sykes was able to find a living Irish woman who had an identical m-DNA sequence as Ötzi, the famous “man in the ice” who died about 5300 years ago in the Alps. My point being, if allegedly anomalous alien or Sasquatch DNA were found, it would be fairly easy to definitely identify it as non-human and anomalous, as opposed to the “we can’t match it with human” but maybe it’s sweater fibres junk we heard from Tom Biscardi and the like.
> “The Big Man, a guardian of the wilderness, a guardian of the threshhold between worlds.”
You mean Gamera?
For the person who corrected us about Autumn Williams: You had me until, “It bothers me that she never met the witness.” That is deeply disturbing. The book is hearsay about hearsay. Autumn Williams is not worthy of your well-meaning defence.

By: jodie

jodie — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:47:08 +0000

I read the book and didn’t get the spiritual, supernatural, etc….aspect that some are criticizing. It was pretty bland and straightforward. Nothing truly fantastic in the book is revealed if you lean towards the theory of bigfoot being close to human. There were a couple of incidents that might border on extra sensory perception but that was just an impression that “Mike” had, assuming he exists. It would not have been a book had Autumn not filled it in with her thoughts and perceptions. She spends a good bit of the book saying the same things everyone else has said about not providing proof. I’m not quite sure where the forest friend stuff came from, Enoch as described by “Mike” was anything but that in my opinion. I am not clear on why this hurts cryptozoology. If you don’t believe it, don’t try the techniques. If you do believe or have an open mind about some of the approaches used in this book go for it and see if you come up with anything. It’s as simple as that to me. No one is going to put money into funding looking for bigfoot anyway regardless of whether Autumn wrote a fiction or non-fiction book. It bothers me that she never met the witness, and I might have chosen a different format in which to present the information, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the story.

By: korollocke

korollocke — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:52:49 +0000

I was under the impression Pan was the spirit gaurdian of the forest. At Least that what Mr. Badger said in the Wind in the Willows. I still hold that if Bigfoot and company are for real that they are North American Moutain Gorillas. That in itself would be cool as hell.

By: skeptik

skeptik — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:51:55 +0000

Everybody wants to feel special.

Some people are so in need of this that they convince others and themselves of improbable stories in order to get the appropriate attention. This is not to call anyone liars, just human beings being human. I personally know people like this and I sympathize. But I don’t believe their ridiculous stories whether it be UFO abductions or so-called spiritual experiences. They have no problem with my “scepticism” as long as I treat them as fellow humans.

Today it’s bigfoot, yesterday it was intergalactic messengers, and before that we had visiting angels and deities. What does Occam’s razor yield? Human needs.

I do believe in bigfoot as a physical animal, though, without feeling that I’m stretching it. I’m also willing to see that statistically it’s possible (even likely) that one really weird person may have regular contact with such a being. But I wouldn’t count anything intangible from this person as evidence of anything but their need for attention.

By: gavinf

gavinf — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:39:39 +0000

It has taken decades of serious research by serious men and women to elevate cryptozoology above the UFO/Supernatural crowd to what it really is: Scientifically sound study and research of undiscovered ANIMALS.
Now, is habituation/habitation possible? Yes. Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall prove that.
But they shared with the world what they found. They fought (and Dian Fossey died) to protect what they learned.
But this is a joke. If you have Bigfoot in your backyard: prove it or go away.
It is hard enough to begin to convince persons that there is a possibility of an unknown animal out there, without fairy tales/lies/hallucinations.
Cryptozoology has really received better than expected treatment over the past 5-10 years. The hard work of Loren Coleman, Karl Shuker, Matt Bille, and many others made it possible.
These Spirit Guardian of the Forest crowd are going to be the undoing of all this work.
Sorry if it seems I am ranting.

By: JungleHusky

JungleHusky — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:29:30 +0000

When you consider the substantial increase in human population in conjunction with the advancement of communication technology, sighting and reporting a previously unknown creature becomes all the more likely.

By: LanceFoster

LanceFoster — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:26:06 +0000

Sure, why not. Something is going on. This blonde lady looks like an elf, like someone Dion Fortune would say had a direct contact with the elemental world.

I think Sasquatch (and his various related forms) is quasi-biological, a semi-spirit Being. He is seen as an omen and harbinger among most us natives. The Big Man, a guardian of the wilderness, a guardian of the threshhold between worlds. As Patrick Harpur said, he is part of Daimonic Reality, part of the fabric of reality. An expression of Hansen’s Trickster. A child of the great god Pan (notice in twilight language “coincidence” that the chimp is Pan troglodytes?)

Yes, biological in many ways, but not like a chimp or okapi. His “evidence” is real..but the same evidence is always shifting in the very act of seeing and witnessing into ambivalence. And these people who are contacted, well, most are marginal themselves. Like Trickster, a little shady and/or a little loopy, walkers on the threshhold meeting a guardian of the threshhold.

It’s like water. The tighter you squeeze it, the more it squirts from between your fingers.

By: graybear

graybear — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 06:16:18 +0000

On an aside, a couple of people have mentioned DNA on this post; I’m one of them. To be fair about it, since there is no recognized Bigfoot DNA sample in existence, it would be really tough to provide a match for it. There is no nucleotide sequence which has “Hey, I’m a Bigfoot sample! Were you lookin’ for me?” written on it. There are, however, nucleotide sequences which are known to be of primate origin. If one or more of the habituators should come up with a hair or scat sample (which often contains DNA) that tests out as “Primate, unidentified species,” and it has been tested against human, gorilla, chimp, bonobo, orang, as a good laboratory should do, I would accept that as strong evidence. Especially in Tennessee or in Texas, neither of which is exactly prime primate habitat (except for us hairless apes).

By: red_pill_junkie

red_pill_junkie — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 01:40:18 +0000

From a strictly sociological POV, it seems that these stories about Bigfoot contactees have the potential to significantly alter the field of cryptozoology, the same way Ufology was altered by the tales of alien abduction that began to surface in the 70s and 80s.

In those years the ‘serious’ UFO groups avoided those tales like the plague; and the outcome was disastrous.

That doesn’t mean the tales of Bigfoot habituators or alien abductees are necessarily true; what I’m trying to point out is that pretending those stories don’t exist and/or pleading folks not to pay attention to them is not the greatest of policies.