Zoological Journalist - Richard Freeman, Considers the Question: Is Bigfoot A Man, Another Ape, An Unknown species of Bear, or All of the Above?

...And we're back!

During my long hiatus from updating this blog, I have become increasingly fascinated by accounts of the Himalayan Yeti and North American Sasquatch, often called Bigfoot because of the large humanlike footprints of these mystery animals or 'wild men' leave in the forests of North America, and the wild, remote mountains of Asia. 

Roger Patterson with Bigfoot print cast from 1967

  Yeti footprint taken by Himalayan mountaineer Eric Shipton in 1951

Yeti footprint taken by Himalayan mountaineer Steve Berry in 2016
(Lost Kingdom of the Yeti, 2018)

Although the name 'Bigfoot' was not coined by newspapers until the 1950s, the phenomenon of an ape-like wild man living in the forests and mountains had been recorded in the storytelling cultures of different Himalayan peoples and Native American tribes for centuries. How could it be possible that two almost identical legends could develop independently from one another, separated by vast oceans in complete isolation, with a traceable lineage that extends over centuries? 

Further, if there are no native ape species in America; how is it possible then that Native Americans seem to have appeared to have known what an ape looked like before contact with European-American settlers? 

At the very least this would suggest that something resembling an ape must have been known to the ancestors of modern Native Americans. Could this be a race memory from the time before the Native Americans arrived on the American continent, presumably from Asia where the Yeti dwells? 

After combing YouTube for every documentary I could find, and joining Kindle Unlimited to read up on what Arthur C. Clarke called in his popular 1970s series Mysterious  World, "The Missing Apemen", I had more questions than answers.

Back in 2009, I had the privilege of asking Zoological Journalist, Richard Freeman, a few questions about his Cryptozoology research into mystery animals not yet accepted to exist by the scientific establishment. This was Freeman's response when I asked him about the Yeti:

The yeti, possibly a surviving form of the giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki that lived in China and India 500,000 years ago. Hair has been analysed in the UK, USA and China. The results were the same: unknown primate.

The full Q&A text interview can still be found HERE. Over a decade on, I decided to get back in touch with Richard Freeman to see if he had any thoughts on some of the questions I had. It would take a book for anyone to answer all of my questions, so in our email correspondence we focused on the following topics for discussion:

Is Bigfoot an ape more closely related to known apes? Or is it an offshoot of earlier forms of humans that survived into modern times? Is it a bear, an ape, a man, or three different creatures including all of these?

What are the similarities and differences between the footprints found in Asia and North America? 

The Patterson-Gimlin film. What is the best evidence it is real?

The famous Yeti scalp that was was found to be a fake. Is it possible it could be a form of clothing worn by real Yetis? 

Below is Richard Freeman's full, informative and thoughtful reply to my questions.

Richard Freeman

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Orang Pendek drawing from the documentary The X Creatures
(BBC/Discovery, 1998)

There is more than one type of mystery primate around the world. Some of these, like the Orang pendek, seem to be undiscovered species of ape. Others like the Almasty seem to be relic hominins - relations of the ancestors of man. The long and short of it is that we do not know for sure until we get a type specimen. 

We found hair near Orang pendek tracks in Sumatra. These were analyzed by Lars Thomas, an expert in animal hair based at Copenhagen University. He concluded that they were similar too but distinct from the Sumatran orangutan. Lars concluded that there is a large, unknown species of primate on Sumatra. I think this is the fourth extant species of orangutan. 

Startling new evidence for the Yeti has emerged recently. TV vet and naturalist Mark Evens, formally a Yeti skeptic, took an expedition into the mountains of Bhutan to make a documentary called Lost Kingdom of the Yeti. Water was taken from a pool in the mountains where the Yeti had been reported. From this environmental DNA was taken. Known as eDNA for short, this consists of traces of DNA an organism leaves in the environment. It is a relatively new development and could prove an invaluable tool for cryptozoology as the techniques for extracting traces of eDNA improve. Back in the lab the eDNA from the water was tested and several known species were discovered but there was also anomalous DNA. It came from a primate that shared 99% of its DNA with humans. Chimps share 98%. Whatever left that eDNA at the drinking hole was something unknown to science and closely related to man.

Dr Eva Bellmaine and Mark Evans discuss eDNA testing (Lost Kingdom of the Yeti, 2018)

I contacted Dr Eva Bellmaine, the French geneticist involved in the project. She confirmed the details and said that the samples were being held by a French company called Spygen. I contacted Spygen in order to see if we could conduct further tests. Spygen said that they were not the legal owners of the sample and later claimed it had been destroyed.

Some have suggested that it is nothing more than a bear. Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed in his 2000 book My Search for The Yeti that the creature was nothing more than a brown bear. This is curious as on previous occasions he had claimed to have seen the Yeti and described it as a primate-type animal.

I once interviewed the actor Brian Blessed, a renowned explorer, and mountaineer himself, for a long-defunct and not very good magazine called Quest. Blessed, who is a friend of Messner, said that he had told him of his encounter with a Yeti. Blessed said that Messner had walked around some rocks and came "face to face" with the creature. He said it was not a bear, was 7 feet tall, man-like, and stood erect.

There are other occasions when Messner’s descriptions sound precious little like a bear. Julian Champkin of the Daily Mail wrote on August 16th, 1997, that Messner has:

…encountered the Yeti; and not once, but four times, once close enough to touch it. More importantly, he claims to have photographs of the creature, including a mother Yeti tending her child, and a Yeti skeleton.

 

Needless to say, none of his pictures have been forthcoming. Messner goes on to be quoted in the newspaper article to claim:

“...I searched for a week, 12 hours a day, in an area with no trees,” he says. “I didn't expect to find one so soon. First, we saw a mother with her child. I could only take a photograph from the back. The child had bright red fur, the older animal's fur was black. She was over two meters tall, with dark hair, just like the legend. When they saw us they disappeared.”

Two days later, he claimed to have come across and filmed a sleeping Yeti. The film is just as noticeable as the photos by its absence.

In an article relating to the BBC’s Natural World documentary on the Yeti, Messner describes seeing one from a range of 30 meters in Southern Tibet. The article says Messner is sure it is some kind of primate. He describes it in the article thus:

It was bigger than me, quite hairy and strong, dark brown-black hair falling over his eyes. He stood on two legs and immediately I thought he corresponds to the descriptions I heard from Sherpas and Tibetans.

So why did Messner write a book trying to explain away the Yeti as a bear when this transparently was not the creature he claimed to have seen? Was it because of fear of ridicule? And what became of the photos and film? Was Messner trying to take the focus away from these or make them seem less important by saying the yeti was just a bear? Could this be because the film and photos did not exist?

Sherpas become angry when Westerners say that the Yeti is just a bear, and quite rightly. The animal they pick repeatedly as looking most like the yeti is the gorilla but walking on two legs rather than four. The Yeti has a flat, ape-like face. The Yeti walks almost constantly on two legs. The Yeti can manipulate things with its hands and hence must have opposable thumbs. It is said to sometimes hurl large rocks and swing clubs. Bears have none of the above features. The Yeti is clearly some kind of primate, most likely a great ape. Until he delivers the goods, I’m inclined to dismiss Messner’s claims.

The term ‘Yeti’ is applied to three different creatures. The Dzu-teh is a hulking biped eight to ten feet tall with dark hair. It leaves massive, manlike footprints. 

The Mi-teh is more man-sized and moves both bipedally and on all fours. It has reddish hair and leaves tracks that have a divergent big toe. 

The smallest type, around four feet tall is known as the Teh-lma and has light brown to yellowish hair. The creatures have many regional names and are reported from the Himalayas, Tibet, China, Malaysia, and India.

The Dzu-teh seems identical to the North American Sasquatch. It may have crossed over the land bridge between Asia and North America during the ice age. The prime candidate for this larger kind is a massive ape from the fossil record known as Gigantopithecus blacki. This creature is known only from its massive fossil teeth and jaws. The fossil teeth were first found in a Chinese apothecary shop in 1935 by Dutch paleontologist Gustav Heinrich Ralph von Koenigswald. They were being sold as 'dragon's teeth'. Koenigswald recognized them as the molars of a titanic ape. Post-cranial remains have never been found but extrapolating from the size of the teeth and jaws Gigantopithecus may have stood ten feet tall and weighed 1300lb. The flaring of the lower jaws made Grover Krantz and Jeff Meldrum conclude that the neck extended directly under the creature's head meaning that it walked upright on two legs.

Pitting and wear patterns on the teeth of Gigantopithecus suggest a fibrous diet similar to that of the giant panda. The creature probably fed on bamboo, but fossil seeds found lodged between the teeth prove that it also fed on fruit. Gigantopithecus fossils have been found in China, Vietnam, and India. It was a hugely successful primate species existing for over two million years before becoming extinct 100,000 years ago due to climate change. However, some think that the animal simply retreated into the mountain forests and still exists today.

Another theory holds that the Yeti is some huge relic hominin.

The Yeti is not white. Its hair ranges from reddish to brown to black. In all my years of research, I have only come across two reports that give the Yeti white hair. The confusion comes from a mistranslation of one of the beast's many names, Metoh-kangmi, Sino-Tibetan for 'abominable man of the rocks'. It was mistranslated as 'abominable man of the snows. This is where we get the western term ‘Abominable Snowman’ from. It is also where the false idea of a white, snow-dwelling beast comes from. Above the snowline, there is little for a large primate to eat. The lush forests in the lower valleys make much more sense for a Yeti habitat. The term ‘Yeti’ is Tibetan for 'rock beast'.

The witnesses I spoke to in the Garo Hills in Northern India described the Yeti, known there as 'Mande barung', described it as ten feet tall and looking like a huge, upright gorilla.

The wild men of the former USSR, Mongolia, and Central Asia sound much more man-like than the hulking Yetis of Tibet, the Himalayas, and north India. The Russians took them so seriously that they even had an official Snowman Commission to investigate the creatures. At the time it was thought that they may be a relic form of Neanderthal. Since then, however, we have discovered that Neanderthals looked very much like us. It has been said that if you washed and shaved a Neanderthal and put him in modern clothes, he could walk down the street in any major city without raising anybody's eyebrows. Sure, he may look somewhat ugly by our standards, but he would clearly be human. Neanderthals used fire, made sophisticated tools and clothes, and may have even had a concept of religion and an afterlife. They sometimes buried their dead with grave goods. This is clearly not what we are dealing with here.

It is more likely that the wild men reported today are an offshoot of a much more primitive species of hominin. In recent years both fossil, sub-fossil and genetic evidence has unearthed many new species of human relatives. We know that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans. The genomes of all non-African people contain 1.5-4 % Neanderthal DNA.

In March of 2010, a tiny fragment of finger bone was found in the Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains. The bone was so well preserved that the whole genome was intact within it. It turned out to be from a new species of archaic human that have since been named the Denisovans. Only fragments of this species have been discovered - the finger bone, a toe bone, and two teeth - so the appearance of the Denisovans is unknown. However, they interbred with both Neanderthals and modern humans. Between 4 and 6% of the genome of Melanesians (people from New Guinea and the surrounding islands) is inherited from the Denisovans.

Some hominins are suggested not by any fossil remains but by genetic markers on populations of modern man. As well as Denisovan DNA Melanesians appear to have inherited DNA from another hominin currently unknown from the fossil record. Yet another unknown archaic hominin appears to have left genetic material in the populations of sub-Saharan Africans.

In 2003, some sub-fossil remains were found in the Liang Bua cave on the island of Flores in Indonesia. The remains were of a tiny species of hominin that were named Homo floresiensis. The remains were dated to around 50,000 years ago. The creatures would have stood no more than three feet, seven inches tall. The remains were found with stone tools and weapons as well as evidence of fire making. They seemed to have hunted giant rodents and pygmy elephants that lived on the island.

Homo floresiensis was thought to be a dwarf island form of Homo Erectus, the hominin that was the ancestor of not only modern humans but Neanderthals, Denisovians, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo antecessor. More recent examination of the remains however showed that they were more closely related to Homo habilis a more primitive hominin that has never been recorded outside of Africa and died out some 1,5 million years ago. So, Homo floresiensis not only half a world away from where it should have been but also nearly one and a half million years out of time. It also begs the question “what else is out there?”

TV Naturalist Mark Evens compared with the height of Homo floresiensis (Yeti: Myth, Man or Beast, 2016)

More recently, two, as yet un-named species of hominin dating to only ten thousand years ago (an eye blink in evolutionary terms) have been unearthed at Red Deer Cave in southwest China. They seem also to have affinities to Homo habilis. It seems that Homo habilis may have had its own lineage outside of Africa alongside Homo erectus.

As for the Patterson-Gimlin film, I will share my own thoughts, looking at the film through the eyes of a natural historian.

Firstly, the creature is a female, with visible breasts. If you were going to fake a film of bigfoot by using a tall man in an ape suit, where in the equation would you think of adding large hairy breasts? Such an artifact would make the costume more expensive and harder to create. In known ape species, the females have fairly flat breasts. Human females have rounded breasts as a counterbalance to the large buttocks. Humans are bipeds and walk upright. The gluteal muscles keep the body level when the legs are lifted. Human female pelvic girdles are broad in order to accommodate the birth canal. Hence the buttocks of human females are larger and more rounded than males. Great apes are knuckle walkers and move on all fours, ergo they lack developed buttock muscles and the pendulous breasts that counterbalance them. A hypothetical upright walking female ape would have rounded buttocks and breasts. The creature in the Patterson-Gimlin film possesses both of these. 

Secondly, the creature turns its head sideways and the viewer can clearly see a thick brow ridge and a forehead that slopes away at an angle to make a cone-shaped head somewhat like that of a gorilla. Fossil hominins display this same acutely sloping forehead above a thick brow ridge. The human forehead rises up directly above the brow. If the creature in the film was a man in a suit his human head would not fit into a mask with such a sloping forehead, there simply would not be enough room unless the mask was very oversized like some kind of carnival headpiece which it is clearly not.

Thirdly, the limb and body proportions of the creature are non-human. The torso is longer than a human's and the hip proportionately lower. The arms are 10% longer than a human's. The upper legs are longer than a human’s and the lower part is shorter. Even if you could make such a convincing costume, you could not get a human to fit into it. The arm and leg joints cannot be made to line up. Muscles can clearly be seen moving under the hair. In short, the subject in the film is not a man in a costume. 

 

And then we have the footprints. Jimmy Chillcutt a crime scene investigator and latent fingerprint examiner from the Conroe, Texas Police Department has taken fingerprints of many primates in zoos. He has examined many of the sasquatch print casts in the collection of Jeff Meldrum. He has found dermal ridges that lay parallel to the edge of the feet. 

The ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything I've ever seen. It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined. The print ridges flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicated that this animal has a real thick skin.

The Yeti scalp from Nepal was an artifact made from the skin of a serow, a type of wild goat. However, it is thought that the monks used it in rituals where they dressed up as the Yeti. 

Khumjung's famous Yeti scalp (The X Creatures, 1998)

There are no reports of yeti wearing clothes. Their thick fur would give them ample protection and they are forest dwellers and not creatures of the eternal snows of the mountain peaks.

The sasquatch has on rare occasions been seen wearing human clothes. It seems they had stolen the clothes and put them on for amusement. Known apes and monkeys have been recorded as doing this. The Russian Almasty is said to sometimes do the same thing.

Big thanks to Richard Freeman for doing this!

Please visit his Amazon Author Page where you can find all of his books.

Visit The Centre for Fortean Zoology to find out more about Richard Freeman's Cryptozoology work: cfz.org.uk

Adam Davies (Monster Quest) answers some questions about the similarities 

between the Himalayan Yeti and North American Bigfoot.

Nigel Kneale - Richard's Room 101

Born on the Isle of Man, Nigel Kneale was a writer active in television, film, radio drama, and prose fiction. He wrote professionally for over fifty years and was, in many ways, the father of serious science-fiction drama on television. Kneale’s most famous creation is the legendary Professor Bernard Quatermass, a heroic rocket scientist who saved humanity from a range of very different alien menaces in a trilogy of stories written by the Manx writer in the 1950s. 

   

The trilogy began with The Quatermass Experiment, in which the first-ever manned space rocket returns to Earth with two of the three astronauts on board missing and the third possessed by some kind of hostile alien organism. In time, this organism consumes and changes the last astronaut into something horrific: a creature that threatens to possess and consume all other life on Earth. However, Quatermass confronts the monster and, with a moving speech, reaches what is left of his friend's humanity, persuading him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of mankind.

   

In the next story, Quatermass II, the professor is asked to examine strange meteorite showers falling in rural England. His investigations lead to him discovering a vast conspiracy involving alien infiltration at the highest levels of the British Government. Somehow these aliens, who have a group consciousness similar to the Borg in Star Trek, can control the minds of people exposed to an alien parasite concealed in their meteorite-like projectiles. The aliens plan to colonise the Earth, but Quatermass manages to stop them by destroying their asteroid base in orbit, very sadly losing his close friend and colleague Dr. Pugh in the process. 

    

Finally, in the best and last story of the 1950s trilogy, Quatermass and the Pit, Quatermass becomes involved in the discovery of a strange object near some apemen remains that are millions of years old, at an archaeological dig in Knightsbridge, London. The odd object is first thought to be an unexploded World War II bomb, but then more apemen remains are found mysteriously inside the back of the object and later, more disturbingly, the decaying bodies of dead insect-like creatures are found inside the front. The object turns out to be a nuclear-powered spaceship, five million years old, the creatures: Martians and the apemen: their creations … us … the human race.

  

In the story, we learn that when Mars was dying, the ancient Martians had tried to create a colony on Earth by proxy. They altered mankind’s early ancestors, giving them minds and abilities like their own, but with a body adapted to Earth. More worryingly, they also passed on to mankind their genocidal instincts to destroy anyone different from themselves. In effect, making us the Martians now. Fortunately, the Martians died out before completing their plan, and, as humankind bred and further evolved, most outgrew their darker Martian inheritance.

  

Unfortunately, somehow the spaceship reawakens the old Martian instincts, transforming more and more people into genocidal Martians on a race purge, destroying anyone unaffected by the ship’s evil influence. However, Quatermass finds a way to stop the ethnic cleansing before the Martians turn the Earth into a second dead planet. He also tragically loses another friend in doing so.

  

   

  

In each of the three Quatermass stories, Kneale managed to tap into the popular interests and, more importantly, anxieties of the time. In The Quatermass Experiment, he played on the mass interest in the early space race and the new threat of nuclear war. The UK conducted the earliest post-war tests of captured Nazi V-2 rockets in Operation Backfire, less than six months after the war in Europe ended, and the development of a British launch system to carry a nuclear device started in 1950. So there was a real fear that one of these rockets could come falling out of the sky bringing with it destruction, as one does in The Quatermass Experiment. Then, in Quatermass II, before Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Kneale exploited the popular paranoia about the threat of communist infiltration and subversion of the West. Like nuclear war, this was a real fear at the time. For instance, in 1951, two members of the British establishment, Burgess and Maclean, had made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. And, finally, with the Notting Hill race riots of 1958 still very much fresh in peoples' minds, Kneale wrote Quatermass and the Pit admittedly as a fable about race hate.

  

Kneale’s Quatermass trilogy clearly had a huge impact that continues to be felt even today, influencing everyone from Chris Carter to Gene Roddenberry. The Quatermass Experiment (1953) was the very first science fiction production to be written especially for an adult television audience and cleared the way for the many others that followed it. Also, the three basic alien invasion storylines were first pioneered on television by Kneale in the Quatermass stories. In The Quatermass Experiment, we go to the aliens and bring them back, in Quatermass II the aliens come to us, and in Quatermass and the Pit, we discover that the aliens were here all along.

  

But it would be a mistake to think that Nigel Kneale only wrote stories involving alien possession and invasion. An excellent example of this is The Abominable Snowman, a 1957 Hammer horror film based on Kneale’s own BBC television play The Creature. Again tapping into popular interest at the time, the film follows the exploits of an English anthropologist with an American expedition as they search the Himalayas for the legendary Yeti, the apemen of Tibet. In the real world, speculation about the existence of an unidentified creature living in the Himalayas had been sparked off in November 1951, when Eric Shipton and Michael Ward of the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition found several large footprints as they traversed the Menlung Glacier, and, two years later, Edmund Hillary made a similar discovery during his historic conquest of Mount Everest.

   

In the film, Kneale turns perceptions on their head by suggesting that the so-called Abominable Snowman is not so abominable at all and, perhaps, even a great deal better than mankind who turn out to be the real monsters. The central idea being that the Yeti are our collateral descendants from the apes and are patiently and peacefully waiting for mankind to destroy himself, either quickly through war or slowly through pollution, before descending from the mountains to inherit the Earth. 

  

Another excellent example is The Stone Tape, a Christmas ghost story from 1972 and Kneale’s last major original work for the BBC. Like Quatermass and the Pit before it (which suggested that poltergeist activity could be explained by the psychic abilities left to us by the Martians), The Stone Tape combined science fiction with the supernatural. The television play revolves around a group of scientists who move into a new research facility: an allegedly haunted Victorian mansion. Curious, they investigate the alleged ghost but soon determine that it is really just some kind of recording of a past event somehow stored by stone in one of the rooms (the stone tape of the title). Believing that this discovery may lead to the development of a whole new recording medium, which they were originally brought together to find in the first place, they throw all their knowledge and high-tech equipment into trying to find a means of playing back the stone tape recording at will. However, their investigations only serve to unleash a far older and more malevolent force, with tragic consequences. Of course, The Stone Tape is where “the stone tape theory” familiar to many paranormal researchers today originates. 

   

Kneale also wrote three excellent dystopian texts, a fourth Quatermass story The Quatermass Conclusion, a 1954 television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four for the BBC, and The Year of the Sex Olympics. It is the last of these that proved to be the most prophetic. Broadcast in 1968 The Year of the Sex Olympics seemed to accurately predict the creation of reality TV in the 1990s.

 

Set “sooner than you think” in the TV play society is divided between “low-drives” that receive no education and “hi-drives” who control the government and media. The low drives are controlled by a constant broadcast of pornography that the hi-drives believe will pacify them. But after the accidental death of a protester during the Sex Olympics gets a massive audience response, the authorities create a new TV programme, The Live Life Show. In the new show, a family is moved to a remote Scottish island while the low-drive audience watches. 

   

Hopefully, this goes some way to answering the question of who Nigel Kneale was. Of all the great science fiction writers to emerge from these islands since World War II, including the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, perhaps only Nigel Kneale comes anywhere close to matching H G. Wells in terms of lasting public impact and sheer brilliance. Both successfully tapped into the mass anxieties of their time and placed them at the centre of their stories, making science fiction accessible to the general public. In short, what Wells did for science fiction in print, Kneale did on television, clearing the way for intelligent science fiction drama on the small screen.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

A Room 101 Interview with Regan Lee

Regan Lee is a prolific writer, penning columns for UFO Magazine and Binnall of America as well as writing and publishing a book on the Oregon Bigfoot legend. Bigfoot and UFOs might sound like an unlikely combination, researchers in both fields sometimes dismiss each other, but there are some parallels.

One of the many categories of alleged alien beings associated with close encounters is known as the "Animal" type. These are large furry humanoid creatures which closely resemble the famous ape-man. More generally, though, like UFOs far from there just being one definitive answer to the Bigfoot mystery there are probably many explanations.

Some Bigfoot sightings might be explained by the traditional hypothesis that there may still be a species of undisclosed primate roaming the forests and mountains of the world, but other sightings might have more exotic explanations, including extraterrestrial visitors and even beings from other dimensions. In my interview with Regan we discussed all of these possibilities.

Richard Thomas: Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions Regan, I want to focus on your Bigfoot research in this interview. I think I first became interested in Bigfoot because of my interest in Doctor Who, the Yeti or Tibetan Bigfoot are in two classic stories from the series, The Abominable Snowmen and the Web of Fear. How did your own interest in Bigfoot begin?

Regan Lee: I've always been interested in anything Fortean or unusual, in mysteries "of the weird..." I don't remember a time when I wasn't curious about all these things. But probably my interest with Bigfoot really took off when I moved to Oregon, and I came across Bigfoot encounters connected with UFO sightings. Stan Johnson's story, an Oregon LTW (long-term witness), and other similar tales in Oregon, had me go from "this is ridiculous! --Bigfoot and UFOs all in one tale -- to "this is really juicy Fortean stuff!" I think I'm open to the stranger aspects of Bigfoot encounters because of my own lifelong experiences with UFOs and the paranormal in general.

  

Richard Thomas: Have you ever had a Bigfoot sighting yourself, or are there any sightings that particularly impressed you?

  

Regan Lee: I haven't had a Bigfoot sighting myself. I did have one odd experience while discussing Stan Johnson's experiences with someone who knew him. Now, Johnson's story involves psychic communications with the Sasquatch, travels in UFOs, spiritual and religious epiphanies, healings... a sort of UFO contactee-Bigfoot combo. I met Johnson at a UFO conference; he was very charismatic. I literally felt "buzzy" as he was talking; he exuded an energy, that was for sure.

  

So there I am, talking about Johnson with this person, when a cone of light comes down from the ceiling and completely surrounds us. I was seeing coloured lights and everything, feeling very "buzzy" as I call these psychic connections of mine. Sound was muffled, as if cotton balls were stuffed in my ears. I thought I was going to vibrate up towards through the ceiling! When our conversation ended, the cone lifted up, back through the ceiling, and everything was back to normal. I've had a couple of other things like that happen -- not directly related to Sasquatch, but connected in a roundabout way.

I told this story to a woman I met at the first OSS (Oregon Sasquatch Symposium) in Eugene. She told me that it was "spirit" that had manifested, responding to being called, in a sense. Or responding to the energy generated while talking about Sasquatch in that context. Come to think of it, it was a lot like a very intense ghostly apparition -- a mist or ectoplasm -- I had once experienced in a haunted house.

Richard Thomas: Probably the most famous Bigfoot sighting was captured on the Paterson film. What do you think of the footage?

  

Regan Lee: I saw that film in the theatre the first time in, I think, the late 60s, maybe early 70s. I think it was the Pickfair theatre in L.A. Well, it's one of those things where I keep going back and forth, but I lean towards it's a real film of a real Sasquatch. I have days when I'm not so sure, but I then I go back the other way and say, "Yeah, it's real." Despite the hundreds of attempts to debunk the film, in my opinion no one has been successful in that. Something about the way the creature moves... not so easy to reject as fake. I also believe Bob Gimlin, who I saw at the OSS and just following him through the years. He's either a very good lair or actor or, he's telling the truth. I think he's telling the truth.

Richard Thomas: My own belief is that like UFOs there is no single explanation for Bigfoot sightings, some might be undiscovered animals and others might have some more esoteric explanations. In Doctor Who the Yeti are robots created by an alien intelligence to conquer the earth. You also write about UFOs, do you think there might be an alien connection or something equally strange with Bigfoot?

Regan Lee: I agree with your take Richard. There is a connection with UFOs, what we call aliens, and all kinds of weirdness and Bigfoot. There are plenty of stories of encounters involving Bigfoot and other strange things that forces us to consider them seriously. When I say "there's a connection" I mean that there are stories out there fro witnesses that we have to consider. What that means, is another story. Unfortunately, there are those in Bigfoot research that stick strictly to the flesh and blood angle and ignore or reject there weirder accounts. I have no idea what it all means. Like UFOs, it's tangled, complicated, and no one has the answer. I do think Bigfoot is a lot more than ust flesh and blood -- it's certainly not a simple "giant ape" -- there's a lot more going on here than that.

  

Richard Thomas: I think Mac Tonnies might have been on to something with his Crypto-terrestrial hypothesis to explain UFO sightings. His idea was that instead of beings from outer space, UFOs were really the work of a parallel civilization right here on the earth, possibly another species of human. Have you seen any evidence that far from being lower on the evolutionary ladder, or, a missing link, Bigfoot might be a parallel species to man and might be a lot more advanced than we think? For instance, do you think stories about Bigfoot being able to go invisible might be proof of them possessing superior technology like a Star Trek cloaking device or something similar?

  

Regan Lee: It is tragic that Mac died so young. He was really on to something with his theory. I still hang to an ET explanation for some of the UFO stuff -- but I have been thinking the past few years that it's much more than that, or, more specifically, not only that. Call them Djinn, or whatever, but entities do exist right alongside of us. I think they are more aware of us all the time than we are of them. Sometimes we get glimpses of them, experience them, much to their amusement. I don't know if they control that or if it's just the way it is. I base this opinion on the research and experiences of others but also, on my own direct experiences with entities.

 

I don't think Bigfoot posses literal technology -- like they have machines underground or off in some hidden forest laboratory. Although, Peter Guttilla, in his book Bigfoot Files, relates some very strange stories of Bigfoot, or Bigfoot type creatures, wearing a sort of tool belt with all kinds of electronic gadgets. Lots of other weird stories like that.

I think that, very possibly, Sasquatch posses abilities that allows them to manipulate energy, that causes us to experience things on some level we interpret as, say, paranormal.

Richard Thomas: In 2010 there were reports that Bigfoot had been shot. What was your reaction to this news and do you think we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot? (I know a Russian expedition made some claims we'll ever have definitive proof of the existence of Bigfoot?

  

Regan Lee: I didn't believe the story, and I hoped it wasn't true. I am a NO KILL/NO CAPTURE person: very adamant about that. I've offended some in the Bigfoot community by being so... opinionated, I guess, about this, but when it comes to killing another being, I am opinionated. Whatever Bigfoot is, it's clearly highly intelligent, and no doubt as intelligent as us humans. Maybe more so. But the NO KILL stance isn't based solely on intelligence -- as if that's the only criteria. It's a living being, clearly wants to be left alone in the sense it hasn't come out and camped out on the local wildlife management steps-- who are we to go out and kill it, just because we want to? I know all the arguments about doing it for science, and I say: I don't care. It's not justification enough.

 

Okay, I went off on a tangent there. Back to topic. Like UFOs, I don't know if we'll ever get definitive proof that will satisfy everyone within all the infrastructures that Bigfoot exists. Both have remained maddeningly elusive for a very long time. That elusiveness is part of the phenomena. It's supposed to be forever elusive. I'm okay with that but it frustrates others, and some refuse to accept that. It's not hopeless; within that elusiveness answers can be found. It's difficult to explain. It's sort of a state of being.

I just don't think definitive proof will ever be produced because Sasquatch isn't "definitive."

Richard Thomas: For readers who want to begin their own research are there any books you would suggest they read, magazines they should subscribe to, or groups they should join?

  

Regan Lee: I come from a kind of folklore, Fortean perspective, so I'd recommend books that discuss the stranger side of Sasquatch encounters. Researchers like Stan Gordon,Henry Franzoni, Peter Guttilla, Lisa Shiel, Nick Redfern. Lee Harper wrote a book with Ida Kannenberg, My Brother is a Hairy Man. Sali Sheppherd- Wolford's Valley of the Skookum about her experiences with Bigfoot years ago; she's the mother of Bigfoot researcher Autumn Williams. Williams isn't specially about the paranormal or UFOs, she does solid field researcher, but she's open and sympathetic to the kinds of accounts that some others may reject or scoff at. There's Jack Jack Lapserits and Henry Franzoni. I'd also suggest writers like Patrick Harpur, Colin Bennett, George Hansen, who don't write about Bigfoot necessarily, but their views on the paranormal in general and a sort of Gestalt perspective.

  

There are a lot of blogs out there that I like but among the Bigfoot blogs that address the stranger side of things: Nick Redfern has something like, four hundred blogs or so; I like Thom Powell's thomsquatch,Lisa Shiel's blogs , Autumn Willaims at Oregon Bigfoot.com and Melissa Hovey's The Search for Bigfoot, Lon Strickler's Phantoms and Monsters. there are a lot more I can't think of but there are so many dedicated people out there sharing their experiences about Sasquatch and related subjects, it's just amazing.

See if there's a state or local Bigfoot group in your area and join up, depending on their policies. Some are very vocal in their insistence that no discussion of anything paranormal or weird take place. Even if you're not intending to do field research, or believe in a strictly flesh and blood creature, ti's good to take part. I belong to a local Bigfoot research organization that is definitely primary flesh and blood, field research but they're open to other theories; and I joined a few others that aren't local, but good people and again, there's a diversity of members regarding all kinds of experiences. So find the one that fits who you are.

No matter what anyone says about all this; Bigfoot, UFOs, ghosts... no one knows everything and no one has a magic key to unlock the mystery. You are entitled to follow your own truths in all this and make up your own mind. For myself, I change my ideas about things as I continue to both experience events as well as where my studies take me.

Richard Thomas: Thanks Regan, where can readers find your columns and blogs?

  

Regan Lee: I contribute online to UFO Digest, UFO Mystic, Monster Track, Tim Binnall's Binnall of America, Skylaire Alfvegren's League of Western Fortean Intermediates and I run several blogs of my own; Frame 352 is my Bigfoot blog, Mothman Flutterings, Animal Forteana are others. And of course, there's The Orange Orb, Vintage U.F.O. and Saucer Sightings, which deals with UFOs. I've written articles for some of Tim Beckley's books and I write a column for UFO Magazine.

  

Thank you, Richard! You do great work and it's an honour.

READ RICHARD'S ROOM 101 COLUMN FOR BINNALL OF AMERICA

Early Bigfoot Tales

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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Early Bigfoot Tales
By Rupert Matthews

The oldest contemporary account of a sighting that seems to be of a Sasquatch so far traced comes from the Watchman newspaper of New York state on 22 September 1818. This report states that a few days earlier, near Ellisburgh, a “gentleman of unquestionable veracity” saw “an animal resembling the Wild Man of the Woods”. This would seem to indicate that the supposed Wild Man of the Woods was already a well known figure of legend or rumour. The creature was described as being like a large man, but covered in hair. It walked out of the woods on to a road a few yards in front of the witness. Seeing the human, the creature turned and ran off, leaning forwards as it did so. The creature left behind footsteps that were human-like but very wide at the toes.

In 1851 two hunters out in Greene County, Arkansas, watched a Sasquatch apparently trying to catch calf from a herd of domestic cattle. They described the creature as being “an animal bearing the unmistakable likeness of humanity. He was of gigantic stature, the body being covered with hair and the head with long locks that fairly enveloped the neck and shoulders.” As soon as the creature realised that humans were in the vicinity it stopped chasing the cattle and instead stared at the hunters, then turned and ran off at high speed. It left behind human-like footprints that were 13 inches long.

The newspaper that reported the incident speculated that the creature was a human survivor of an earthquake that had taken place in 1811. It was thought that he had taken to an animal-like existence to survive and so had acquired animal-like hair and appearance. It was a not uncommon theory in the 19th century.

In the 1860s similar creatures were reported in Michigan newspapers as having been seen several times around the Lake Saint Claire region. In 1869 “wild men” were reported being seen in Iowa. In 1874 Pennsylvania newspapers carry similar stories, and Indiana newspapers carried reports in 1895 and 1897.

One of the most detailed and interesting of these mid-19th century reports was made by a hunter who had been out near Antioch, California, in 1869. He found a good area and pitched his camp. He soon noticed that while he was out hunting during the day something had come into his camp, scattered the ashes of his fire about and left footprints that looked like those of a man, except for their immense size. Curious, the man decided to secret himself in a patch of brush which gave him a good view of his camp from a distance of about 70 feet. After two hours of waiting he was rewarded when the mysterious intruder arrived.

“The creatures, whatever it was, stood five feet high and disproportionately broad and square at the shoulders, with arms of great length. The legs were very short and the body long. The head was small compared with the rest of the creature and appeared to be set upon his shoulders without a neck. The whole was covered with dark brown and cinnamon coloured hair, quite long on some parts, that on the head standing in a shock and growing close down to the eyes.”

After looking around carefully, the creature kicked the embers of the camp fire. It bent down and picked up a stick which it whirled around its head producing a circle of smoke. After the glowing end of the stick had gone out, the beast threw its head back and whistled. Then it picked up a second stick and again swung it around. After about fifteen minutes the creature “was joined by another – a female unmistakably – when both turned and walked past me, within 20 yards of where I sat, and disappeared into the brush.” Given the date of the encounter, the writer’s reference to the second creature being unmistakably female would probably mean that it had breasts.

The hunter concluded by saying that he had met one other hunter who had seen the creatures, and about a dozen more who had seen mysterious gigantic human-like footprints. This acceptance of the reality of the creatures by those who spent a lot of time in the forested hills is a feature of theses early cases that surfaces again and again. The educated townsfolk who wrote and read the newspapers were amazed by the stories of wild men, the hunters and trappers were not.

In 1895 a man named of Riley Smith was picking berries near Winsted, Connecticut, when his bulldog came dashing out of a patch of woodland whimpering and trying to hide behind Smith. Wondering what had caused this, Smith stood up to see “a large man, stark naked and covered with hair all over his body” emerge from the trees. The instant the “wild man” saw Smith it gave a terrifying yell, then turned and fled back into the woods. Smith later admitted that he had been paralysed with fear.

Meanwhile, newspaper reports were beginning to term these unusual creatures “gorillas” in deference to the newly discovered great apes of the African forests. The idea that the sightings were of men gone wild was gradually dropped in favour of the idea that they were gorillas or similar apes escaped from zoos or travelling shows. A newspaper report from Arkansas ended with the words “If this meets the eye of any showman who has lost one of his collection of beasts, he may know where to find it. At present it is the terror of all women and children in the valley. It cannot be caught and nobody is willing to shoot it. ”

This last comment is interesting as it is the first appearance in print of a feature of many later Sasquatch sightings. Several hunters have had a Sasquatch square in the sights of their rifle, only to find themselves unwilling to shoot. There is something about the Sasquatch that seems to be very human, which would make killing one something like murder. Others have been less squeamish and have blasted away at a Sasquatch without compunction but also, at least to date, without much effect.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

The Eastern Bigfoot

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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The Eastern Bigfoot
By Rupert Matthews

Some researchers draw a clear distinction between sightings of the classic Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, and those of the Eastern Bigfoot. While the classic Bigfoot looks and behaves like a real wild animal, its eastern counterpart behaves in a very different fashion. It frequents heavily populated areas, has a rather different appearance and - most disturbingly - is prone to attack humans.

A few sightings of the Eastern Bigfoot give a flavour of the odd behaviour of this cryptid - if that is what it is.

Lew Lister had been driving home the 18 year old girl who would later become his wife. The young couple pulled over at the side of the road that led to the girl’s farmhouse home near Point Isabel in Ohio. They saw an unnaturally tall human-like figure approaching over a field. The thing moved with a series of bounding leaps. Lew switched on the car’s headlights to get a better look at the creature. It was revealed to be tall, two-legged, covered with yellowish blonde hair and possessing enormous eyes that glowed a blazing orange.

As soon as the headlights came on the creature began running toward the car. It passed through a wire fence, rather than jumping over it and then began to attack. It reached in through the open window trying to grab at Lister, but he managed to duck aside and wind up the window. The girl, meanwhile, felt mesmerized by the creature’s orange eyes. The creature curled back its lips to reveal hideous fangs. Then it dropped down on to all fours, snarled and vanished into thin air.

Another apparent Eastern Bigfoot attack took place on 13 September 1965. Christine van Acker, aged 17, and her mother were driving through woods near Monroe in Michigan. It was a balmy night and the pair had the car windows down. Suddenly a hulking great figure stepped out of the trees to stand in the road. It was about 7 feet tall and covered in dark hair. Christine, a novice driver, tried to swerve past it and accelerate, but succeeded only in stalling the car. Seconds later the creature was beside the car and reached in. The smell was overpowering. It put a hairy hand on Christine’s head and banged her head against the steering wheel. Then it turned and walked off as another vehicle approached.

Even more terrifying was the Bigfoot encountered by James Crabtree when out squirrel hunting near Fouke, Arkansas, in 1965. He saw some horses bolting across a field and heard what he thought was a dog howling in pain. Going to investigate, 14 year old Crabtree found himself suddenly confronted by something 8 foot tall, human-shaped and was covered with reddish hair. The beast’s face was completely featureless, apart from a broad nose and masses of cascading hair. This hairy being began moving toward Crabtree with solid, lumbering steps. Crabtree raised his shotgun and blasted the creature at a range of about 25 feet. The shot had no effect, so Crabtree shot again. Again, it had no effect. This time the boy lifted the gun so that its barrel was pointing at the Bigfoot’s head at a range of under 10 feet and pulled the trigger. Still the beast came lumbering forward. Crabtree fled, and got away uninjured.

Equally odd, though reported in all good faith, was the 7 foot tall Bigfoot covered in glossy black fur that was reported to be strolling through a park in Morristown, New Jersey, on 21 May 1966.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.

The Bluff Creek Bigfoot case

The following guest article is by Rupert Matthews, author of the book Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.

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Bigfoot Hits the Headlines

By Rupert Matthews

The Bigfoot or Sasquatch is a cryptid (allegedly real animal as yet unrecognised by science) that lives in the densely forested wilderness areas of northwestern North America. Reports about this gigantic upright walking ape had been filtering out of the area for decades, but nobody really took any notice of it until events at Bluff Creek in 1958. The fact that the stories got such wide coverage was partly due to the fact that reports about the Yeti had been filling the international news media for some years. Cryptozoology – though the word had not yet really caught on – was an acceptable topic for coverage. It was also due to the dramatic and very photogenic evidence that was produced. Any reporter will confirm that a good photo will “give legs” to a story and ensure that it continues to run, while the same story without a photo would soon die down and lose public interest.

The trail of events actually began in 1957 when work began on building a road through the Bluff Creek area of northern California that was designed to aid the logging industry by opening the region up to heavy machinery. The head of the firm hired to do the job was Ray Wallace, who had his brother Wilbur as one of the team foremen handling the actual workteam tasked with clearing a flat roadbed through the rugged and densely forested terrain. The Wallace company was an established construction outfit in the area and was running more than one project.

With hindsight workmen at a Wallace site near Mad River remembered that in March 1958 they found some strange tracks. Nobody could recall exactly what they looked like, and at least one man said that they were bear tracks while another said that they were faked by some unidentified prankster who wanted to spook the workmen. At this distance in time it is impossible to state anything definitive about this event, except that it was odd but quickly dismissed at the time. It is only later events that have given it any importance.

On 3 August the workmen on the Bluff Creek Road turned up for work to find some of their equipment disturbed. A spare tire weighing around 700lb had been rolled about, causing the men to wonder who or what had been interfering. On 27 August the workmen found that the site had again been visited by something odd overnight, but this time it had left footprints.

It was Gerald Crew, known as Jerry, who found the footprints. They were impressed into the soft soil around his bulldozer. The footprints were later described as being exactly like those of a naked human foot, but much larger. At first Crew thought that they must be some sort of practical joke, but after following the tracks about and studying them move closely he became convinced that they had really been left by some huge man of some kind. He went to see his foreman, Wilbur Wallace, who came to look at the tracks. The other workmen also studied the prints. After some discussion it was decided to ignore the strange nocturnal intruder – so long as he did not turn up during daylight hours when the workcrew were on site.

On 21 September the local newspaper, the Humboldt Times, printed a letter from Mrs Jess Bemis about the events up at Bluff Creek. Jess Bemis was the wife of one of the workmen on the site. The letter was printed, and prompted the editor Andrew Genzoli to dig out some old stories along similar lines. Reporter Betty Allen then made the link between the mysterious giant footprints and the stories that had been circulating for years about a hairy man-ape that the white settlers and farmers called “Big Foot”. Allen went out to talk to people who had seen either the tracks of the man-ape itself. On 28 September she had a piece published about the creature she called “Bigfoot”, summarising the evidence known to that date. She also suggested that next time somebody found any footprints they should take a cast using plaster of paris.

Then, on 1 October, Jerry Crew and the work gang at Bluff Creek found more footprints that had been left overnight around their worksite. Two of the workers promptly quit. Wilbur Wallace sent for his brother, and boss, Ray Wallace to come up to Bluff Creek to inspect the situation and talk to the workmen. Meanwhile Jerry Crew had called an old friend of his, Bob Titmus, who went to see Betty Allen to get some plaster of paris and instructions on how to use it. On 3 October Titmus arrived at the worksite and, with Crew, poured the plaster into the clearest of the footprints.

The cast was taken down to the offices of the Humboldt Times by Crew. The man and the cast were photographed and the amazing photo used to illustrate an article by Andrew Genzoli. It was that combination of a stunning photo, solid evidence and well researched writing that propelled the “Bigfoot” into the national media. The story was taken up and reprinted across the USA and Canada, then filtered out to media in other countries.

Back at Bluff Creek, the excitement mounted when on 12 October two workers – Ray Kerr and Bob Breaezle – actually sighted the mysterious footprint maker. Driving along a local dirt road after dark, they momentarily caught a gigantic upright figure in their headlights. The creature ran off into the woods very quickly, but the two men described a hairy human figure well over 6 feet tall. Within 48 hours another 13 men had left their jobs on the road construction project.

Bob Titmus was meanwhile out in the forests looking for signs of the mysterious creature. So far as is known he was the first man ever to go out into the forests looking for Sasquatch. He found some more footprints, and took casts.

For more informaiton on the Bigfoot see the book written by Rupert Matthews “Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures.” The book is available from Amazon. 
 

You can find Rupert’s website at www.rupertmatthews.com. He maintains a blog about the unexplained at www.ghosthunteratlarge.blogspot.com.