Anniversary Reaction Deaths and Bigfoot’s 40th
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 21st, 2007
One final day-after thought about the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film anniversary that I did not want to talk about before the event: I’m glad no one in Bigfoot studies or hominology died in the days leading up to October 20th, or on the date yesterday, or today.
As many of you know, an area of academic research I’ve conducted involves the sociological and historical impact and mystery of death and dying among humans. I’ve done work and written books on suicide prevention, murder-suicide timing, and school shootings. I have penned obituaries to celebrate life, to avoid dwelling on the type or moment of death, but instead to reinforce the remembering of a person’s entire legacy.
There are well-known but little-discussed syndromes that involve “when” people die that have always intrigued me: the “Anniversary Reaction” and the “Birthday Syndrome.”
It is a matter of native folk knowledge that some people appear to wait until their birthdays to die on that date or immediately afterward.
Also, people seem to wait for holidays or anniversaries that are important to them, and pass away near those dates.
As with most research passions, this study touches me personally and my sense of it began long ago. Sometimes one learns best by taking to heart lessons taught early on, even before the research and reasoning for “why” was there. For me, it began with a story my mother told me about something that happened to her during her own childhood and was brought home when I was a man.
My Cherokee grandmother Nellie was killed by her second husband, my mother’s stepfather, in a murder-suicide on Valentine’s Day, 1940. Besides it being Valentine’s Day, it was in 1929 that the Valentine’s Day Massacre, like this event, happened in Illinois, and it remained a big media anniversary back then.
My father, a veteran of World War II, died after suffering with lung cancer for three years on December 8, 1985 in the Midwest, shortly after Pearl Harbor Day dawned in Hawaii. December 8, that year, was also the 5th anniversary of John Lennon’s assassination.
Yes, it is true that you can find memorable events that have happened on any date on the calendar, but it’s a different matter when the historic incidents are especially significant to the people dying.
Mark Stibich, Ph.D., has this to say about this topic, as it relates to traumatic memories:
There is a commonly held belief that people die more around dates that they associate with loved ones passing or near certain holidays. Some of the statistics prove true - there are more deaths around Christmas (for Westerns) and just after Chinese New Year’s (for Chinese). People seem to be able to time their deaths - extending them slightly to make it to a holiday, birthday or other event.
A recent report in Reuters told of a case in which a woman had a heart attack exactly one week (to the hour) after her father had died. The strangest part is - she was standing at the grave of her sister who had died when she heard the news of her father’s death. Researchers have called this the “anniversary reaction.”
Researchers don’t exactly know what the “anniversary reaction” is or how it might work. What we do know is that thinking positively about the future can add years to your life. So find something to look forward to and be positive about, especially near sad anniversaries.“Anniversary Reaction - Can Memory Trigger Death?”
If this is related to birthdays, where people actually are able to stem the tide of death until they reach their birthdays or important dates, you can see how it interrelates with the “anniversary reaction.” I was naturally worried for some older Bigfooters around the Patterson-Gimlin film’s 40th anniversary.
I wondered if anyone tied to the Bigfoot field would key in, psychologically, to October 20th, and wait to die near this milestone date. Thankfully, in this case, no news is good news, and we can move on. (I don’t associate the death of Joey Bishop in the week leading up to the P-G anniversary as a “Bigfoot death,” although the story about his moment with the film is a footnote that needed mentioning.)
It appears October 20th came and went, and in line with what has been a relatively quiet year of Bigfooters’ and cryptozoologists’ passings, I’m glad to report everyone is still around to keep up the search.
- Similar Phenomena:
hey loren, very informative new article about the p/g anniversary among other stuff. thanks bill green
Yeah, all but Juan Antonio Cebrián. Maybe spoke too soon?
Interesting Loren. My father died of cancer in 1979 on December 2nd. We brought him home from the hospital on Saturday morning around 8am. He died Sunday at about 2am. I know he just wanted to die at home with his family around him. That’s why he hung on as long as he did. That was a bummer Christmas. My mom died 2 years ago on May 5th. That was a bummer cinco day and another bummer Christmas.