A Rose is a Rose and a Bigfoot is a Bigfoot
(The many "names of the Beast")
BIGFOOT - SASQUATCH
In the United States the creature is known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch and is most often seen in the wooded areas of the northwest. Eye-witnesses describe the creature as being 6 feet to 8 feet tall, walking upright on two legs (bipedal), weighing 500-800 pounds and being covered in hair.
THE FLORIDA SKUNK APE
The Florida Skunk Ape is supposedly a seven-foot-tall gorilla-like creature said to resemble the legendary Abominable Snowman. Witnesses in the Florida Everglades have claimed to have spotted the red-haired Big Foot, known locally as a Skunk Ape because of its appalling smell. The National Parks Service dismisses the stories as a hoax, but American tribes that live in the swamps insist it is real.
THE FAULK MONSTER
The Faulk Monster, made famous in the United States, in the 1970's, by the Charles B. Pierce film "Legend of Boggy Creek" is the "Arkansas Bigfoot". Allegedly sighted in the environs of the small town of Faulk, Arkansas, it supposedly bears a close resemblance to the Sasquatch and "Bigfoot" of farther North. Regardless of the standing of the Pierce film as a "cult classic", this creature is an absolute and undeniable hoax.
YOSER
In Australia the creature is known as Yoser. It has been reported in remote areas of the outback ever since the first colonists landed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The sightings of Yoser more or less correspond with those of other "Bigfoot" like creatures, in that it is always reported to be a large primate, between eight and nine feet in height, and approximately 300 pounds in weight. Yoser, apparently, is a close relative of Sasquach and Bigfoot, his fur being an overall brown to black in color. The sightings of Yoser have become more and more confined to Australia's interior as the continent has become more populous the original sightings were relatively close to Sydney.
MAPINGUARY - THE BIGFOOT OF BRAZIL
For over a hundred years, the existence of Mapinguary, the Bigfoot of Brazil, was folklore mostly confined to the Rio Araguaia valley in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. But all that changed one March night in 1937. "In March and April, 1937, strange stories came over the telegraph wire to Rio de Janeiro, then capital of Brazil and Sao Paulo. An immense, ape-like monster had come out of the unknown and started a real reign of terror round the country bordering the Rio Araguaia." In Barra do Garcas, 500 kilometers (300 miles) east of Cuiaba, "swooping down on cattle ranches and fazendas this mysterious monster roared in the blackness of the tropic night like the father of ten thousand demons come out of Hell for a lively holiday."
Fazendeiros, "who all the long night had remained indoors...crept out, shaking, to find dozens of yellow cattle, of old Spanish origin, lying dead on the pampas, their tongues torn out."
"Round the carcasses of several wild cattle which would charge a jaguar at night...there were great man-like footprints, some eighteen inches (about 45 centimeters) long."
Across the river in Aragarcas, "Night fell, and again came the horrible roaring from the dark. No nerves could stand it, and as soon as dawn was judged safe, a great trek of panic-stricken Brazilians headed for the nearest outpost of civilization."
There were other reports of slaughtered cattle, some as far south as Ponte Branca, 240 kilometers (150 miles) from Barra do Garcas. "None of the fierce cattle, lying dead, showed any signs of a struggle with what had leapt out at them out of the darkness of a Mato Grosso night."
The Mapinguary rampage lasted for three weeks and made the major newspapers in Rio and Sao Paulo.
YETI
THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN
In the Himalayas creature is called Yeti or the Abominable Snowman. It is described as having long white hair.
Yeti sightings are found in the Himalayn Mountains of Nepal. Yeti is a large primate. Approximately 8-9 feet tall. The body is covered in fur.
Sometimes confused with the abominable snowman, the Yeti is a distant cousin to the great carnivorous apes of warmer climates. An adult Yeti stands 8 feet tall and is covered in long, white fur. Their feet and hands are wide and flat, which helps to disperse their great weight (about 300 pounds) on treacherous snow fields.
They travel on all fours like the apes, but fight very comfortably standing erect. Unlike most apes and gorillas, the Yeti does not have an opposable toe on its feet. They wear no clothing or ornamentation. The spoor, or smell, of a Yeti is very subtle in cold climates, but in confined or warm areas, they have a strong, musky odor.
The eyes of a Yeti are icy blue or almost colorless. They have a transparent second eyelid, which allows the creature to see in blowing snow, and prevents its eyes from freezing in extreme temperatures. Their claws and flesh are ivory white. Unlike many arctic creatures, the Yeti does not have a thick layer of body fat to keep it warm. Instead, it relies upon the special properties of its thick, warm fur.
Other Articles:
Yeti Hair:
Most samples of yeti, or bigfoot hair, have turned out to be something more common (like goat) when its DNA is tested. However, in April of this year British scientists were given some long, black strands of hair found caught in the bark of cedar tree in the Kingdom of Bhutan, a small country on the eastern side of the Himalayas. According to the local people this tree was frequented by the "yeti" (sometimes referred to as the "abominable snowman") which, if he exists, might well be cousin of the American bigfoot (if that exists). The British scientists were baffled by the hair because it did not match other known creatures. This does not "prove" that it came from a yeti, but it certainly does seem that there is some kind of hairy creature out there that has not yet been classified by science. So far, a second specimen of hair that cannot be identified has not shown up, so a comparison between the two is not possible.
Nguoi Rung:
There is a report in 1947 from a colonist in Kontum Province, Jules Harrois recording a sighting of "L'Homme Sauvage" among the minority Jarrai, Banhar and Sedang people.
In 1982 Professor Tran Hong Viet, now at the Pedagogic University of Hanoi, found and made a cast of a footprint measuring 28 by 16 centimeters. The footprint is as long as that of many people but it is much wider. It is said that the toes of this footprint were much longer than those of a human. The footprint was found on the slopes of Chu Mo Ray (Mom Ray mountain) in the centre of the above picture. Chu Mo Ray is near the Cambodian Border in Sa Thay District of Kontum Province.
Professor Viet and some other Vietnamese scientists believe that this region, the so called 'three borders' region where the borders of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos converge, is the centre of reports of the Vietnamese 'wildman'. So common were reports that in 1974, during the height of war, General Hoang Minh Thao commander of Northern forces in the Central Highlands, requested a scientific survey of the region north of Kontum for 'Nguoi Rung'. Scientists who were part of this dangerous expedition included Professors Vo Quy and Le Vu Khoi from Hanoi University and Professor Hoang Xuan Chinh from the Institute of Archaeology in Hanoi. No Nguoi Rung were found - though the expedition returned North with a couple new elephants for the circus.
Reports of 'wildman' vary from large to small, with body hair from grey to brown or black and may be alone or with others. But always they are said to walk bipedally. They go by many names among highlands minority people, most are terms of respect. The Vietnamese name is Nguoi Rung - "Forest People". This is the direct equivalent of the name for an ape we do know from Indonesia, the Orang Utan. The minority people of Kontum are certain that the forest people existed in their forests in the very recent past. They differentiate their forest people from forest spirits or genies, some of which they also describe as hairy bipeds. Mr Vu Ngoc Thanh visiting areas near the Laotian border, discovered another local term 'Khi Trau, literally 'buffalo monkey' or 'big monkey'.
Anthropologist, Professor Dang Nghiem Van, Director of Hanoi's Institute for Religious Studies, has collected many stories of Nguoi Rung from northern Vietnam to the central highlands. These include myths of small but very strong beings knowing the use of fire and eating forest molluscs. There are also stories of a different, much larger being.
Professor Van says that at night Nguoi Rung come to places where people have fires. They sit beside men but do not speak, or speak unintelligable words. There are stories of couples of Nguoi Rung moving rapidly, easily climbing trees, shaking trees for insects, sleeping in grottos on mountain slopes. Professor Van's detailed notes, some of them from locations in near Sa Thay, have yet to be published.
But if Nguoi Rung exist, are they really apes or hominids? Some scientists like Bernard Heuvelmans, a well-known cryptozoologist, and Dr Helmut Loofs-Wissowa of the Australian National University, think that at least some forms may be remnants of an early human population.
The figure to the right is from Bernard Heuvelmans' 1969 description of a controversial specimen called the 'ice man', which he calledHomo pongoides. The specimen was examined in a block of ice and has since disappeared. This has led some commentators to disbelieve the comprehensive study Heuvelmans published in 1974. Dr Loofs-Wissowa suggests that few detractors have studied Heuvelmans' original publications.
So there remain many questions. And so far no specimens have been recovered. There have been several reports in the last 15 years in the region of Kontum - Sa Thay alone.
But perhaps these questions go well-beyond the veracity of the 'Minnesota ice man' to the nature of scientific research. Some scientists are reticent even to consider the possibility of the existence of an undiscovered hominoid. It is an uncomfortable subject for us, since we lack incontrovertable evidence. We could be seen to have fallen in with the unscrupulous and gullible.
Zoologist John Mackinnon (in McNeely and Sochaezowski, 1995) once described finding short, broad, human-like but definitely non-human footprints of a creature locals call the batutut in the forests of Sabah. MacKinnon recounts seeing these footprints. "I was uneasy when I found them, and I didn't want to follow them and find out what was at the end of the trail. I knew that no animal we know about could make those tracks. Without deliberately avoiding the area I realize I never went back to that place in the following months of my studies."
Perhaps we are limited in the end by our own 'scientific mythologies'. Mackinnon went on to head expeditions into Vu Quang forest reserve in central Vietnam. He and his colleagues found two new species: a goat like animal, dubbed the saola from its long spindle-shaped horns and a robust muntjac deer. In early 1997, a new, small muntjac species was discovered in the forests of Quang Tri province, an region which suffered heavy bombing during the uears of war. These are the first new large mammals discovered by science since early this century. Learned opinion was that no new mammals could possibly have avoided detection so long. Yet, learned opinion was wrong. Science is about keeping an open mind, not about fitting the world into one's scientific or fantastic preconceptions.
Quang Tri is not far at all from Kontum Province and Chu Mo Ray.
Orang Kubu:
The Orang Kubu, a similar humanoid reported by US adventurer Walter M. Gibson in 1855. (There's an interesting account of his travels, which culminated in him being made special advisor to the king of Hawaii in 1882, in the DAB.) Gibson saw one of these in Palembang, Indonesia, kept as a slave and says natives told him "They were brutes, they had no worship, no marriage, no law, no clothing, no idea of its use; they were the accursed of Allah, companions of djins on earth; fit only to be beasts of burden." The one Gibson saw was man-sized, "covered with hair, that looked soft and flowing . . . the mouth was wide, lips protruding, and chin formed no part of the hairy face; yet it was pleasantly human in its expression." He concludes, "Was this then some lower grade of human being, some connecting link between man and beast, more human than orang utan, or chimpanze; and less so than Papuan or Hottentot? I could not say so from what I saw, nor from all the strange stories I heard. But that beings of well made human form, covered with hair, almost without speech, and living on raw food, dwell in the caves and tree tops of the forests of Sumatra, are facts that are well established."
[Reference: The Prison of Weltevreden (NY: 1855): pp. 181-82. Gibson also told these tales to the US Consul at Liverpool, a certain Nathaniel Hawthorne whose diplomatic credentials were somewhat limited, and they show up also in NH's English Notebooks.]
Orang Pendek:
Oona Riley reports a former journalist leaves London today to try to prove the existence of an elusive species of ape. In an expedition backed by the Flora and Fauna Preservation Society, Debbie Martyr, aged 38, aims to bring back photographic and other evidence, including hair and faecal samples, of an ape that walks upright. Ms Martyr, former editor of a south London newspaper, has already spent two years in search of orang pendek - literally "short man". At first, Ms Martyr collated information from tales about the 4ft primate told by the local population on the jungle-clad mountain that dominates Kerinci Sadlat national park on the western side of the island, which until recently was isolated. Her journalist's nose told her she was on to something. In November, after stalking ÐÐthe ape and seeing it three times, she returned with plaster casts of the footprints of what is believed tobe a new species.
Experts were impressed. "Our scientists have reported back to us and they think there is something in this," said Dougal Muller, of FFPS. "We believe there is something there or we would not be funding this trip. If it's what we think, it could be a very significant find." Ms Martyr, whose expedition is being carried out with the help of the Indonesian government, will be accompanied by a photographer. She is in awe of the beast and the task ahead of her. "The first time I saw it I was so shocked I didn't take a picture," she said. "I saw something I didn't expect to see and something so totally new contrary to what I expected. Here was a generally bi-pedal erect primate." Its colours correspond to those of the forest floor. "It's beige, tawny, rust red, yellow tan and dark chocolate brown.If he freezes, you can't see him." She is also aware of her responsibilities.
Orang pendek have been getting along quite nicely for millennia. Local people have known about them. They don't hunt them and they respect them because they don't have a monetary significance. "We are about to produce substantive evidence for a new great ape in one of the most important national parks in South-east Asia. We have got a job now, and I have a responsibility now as I have opened the door. "We all have a responsibility to ensure that the animal's future is not threatened as a result of its discovery. She added: "We have an opportunity with the orang pendek to put the records right. We have exploitedthe other great apes, our nearest relatives. It would be a dreadful indictment on us to see that continuing with theorang pendek." The FFPS is also keen to ensure orang pendek is left alone, safe in its own habitat. It wants to prevent a repetition of what happened in the case of the last great ape to be discovered, the mountain gorillas in Rwanda, which now have television camera crews in their territory. "If there's a new species out there - which the experts think there is - there's a much bigger question, which is how to protect and recognise the whole area," said Mr Muller.
The Alaskan Bigfoot:
San Francisco Chronicle - 1993 - Article with Citation
Headline: Alaska Papers Join the Hunt For Hairy Man
Date: February 3, 1993
Section: NEWS
Page: A9
Edition: THREE STAR
Dateline: Anchorage
Length: M, 486 words
Author: Rosanne Pagano Associated Press
Text:
He's as big as Bigfoot, not so abominable as the Snowman and elusive as Sasquatch. He's Alaska's Hairy Man, and a statewide group of newspapers is on his legendary tracks.
``I think there are very few people who've actually sighted Hairy Man, but there are plenty of stories,'' said Chris Casati, editor of Anchorage-based Alaska Newspapers.
The group operates seven rural weeklies from Cordova to Bethel to Kotzebue with a combined circulation of 17,000. The papers have started asking readers to send in stories about Hairy Man, a folk creature who inhabits the vast tundra around southwest Alaska.
``People here really do believe it and I respect that,'' said James MacPherson, editor of Bethel's weekly newspaper, the Tundra Drums.
Three schoolteachers recently raised havoc in remote Quinhagak by tramping around in the snow with foot-shaped pieces of plywood to make fake Hairy Man tracks.
Worried calls poured in to police. One officer called it ``a bad joke.'' The teachers apologized and visited classrooms to show off the wooden feet and assure children there was nothing to fear.
Days later, some parents were still asking for a police escort when their children went from house to house.
Bethel storyteller John Active, a Yupik Eskimo, says he knows all about Hairy Man.
``He's very tall, taller than a 9- or 10-foot-tall spruce tree. When he was standing, his hands could touch the ground next to his feet. He grew hair to keep warm,'' Active said.
Hairy Man is more curious than predatory but so horrendous-looking, Active says, that people run off afraid.
Active says Hairy Man's Eskimo name, ``arulataq,'' means a creature who makes a bellowing cry.
``Years ago,'' he said, ``during World War II, there was an air raid siren in the middle of town. When it would go off, the old natives would say that is the sound the creature made.
``It was scary.''
Alaska anthropologists say the theme of the big-footed hermit is universal -- a regional equivalent of urban tales such as the vanishing hitchhiker.
Phyllis Morrow, a Fairbanks cultural anthropologist who has studied the indigenous people of southwest Alaska for 15 years, says other village legends deal with people who get lost and become wild. One story talks about a boy who ran away long ago and is glimpsed today, through his shaggy hair.
``These are sightings of the supernatural. That's what folklore is all about,'' Morrow said.
Active says he has never seen Hairy Man. But he knows he lives.
``He's just as alive in our legends as if he's standing right in front of me,'' Active said. ``He's out there because we talk about him.''
Bigfoot & The Indians:
Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many North American Cultures
By Gayle Highpine
"Here in the Northwest, and west of the Rockies generally, Indian people regard Bigfoot with great respect. He is seen as a special kind of being, because of his obvious close relationship with humans. Some elders regard him as standing on the "border" between animal-style consciousness and human-style consciousness, which gives him a special kind of power. (It is not that Bigfoot's relationship to make him "superior" to other animals; in Indian culture, unlike western culture, animals are not regarded as "inferior" to humans but rather as "elder brothers" and "teachers" of humans. But tribal cultures everywhere are based on relationship and kinship; the closer the kinship, the stronger the bond. Man Indian elders in the Northwest refuse to eat bear meat because of the bear's similarity to humans, and Bigfoot is obviously much more similar to humans than is the bear. As beings who blend the "natural knowledge" of animals with something of the distinctive type of consciousness called "intelligence" that humans have, Bigfoot is regarded as a special type of being."
"But, special being as he is, I have never heard anyone from a Northwestern tribe suggest that Bigfoot is anything other than a physical being, living in the same physical dimensions as humans and other animals. He eats, he sleeps, he poops, he cares for his family members. However, among many Indians elsewhere in North America... as widely separated at the Hopi, the Sioux, the Iroquois, and the Northern Athabascan -- Bigfoot is seen more as a sort of supernatural or spirit being, whose appearance to humans is always meant to convey some kind of message."
"The Lakota, or western Sioux, call Bigfoot Chiye-tanka (Chiha-tanka in Dakota or eastern Sioux); "chiye" means "elder brother" and "tanka" means "great" or "big". In English, though, the Sioux usually call him "the big man". In his book "The spirit of Crazy Horse," (Viking, 1980), a non-fiction account of the events dramatized by the excellent recent movie "Thunderheart", author Peter Mathiessen recorded some comments about Bigfoot made by traditional Sioux people and some members of other Indian nations. Joe Flying By, a Hunkpapa Lakota, told Mathiessen, "I think the Big Man is a kind of husband of Unk-ksa, the earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is a kind of reptile from the ancient times who can take a big hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, and they are already gone."
"There is your Big man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day," Oglala Lakota Medicine Man Pete Catches told Mathiessen. "He is both spirit and real being, but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as though the trees weren't there... I know him as my brother... I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me."
Ray Owen, son of a Dakota spiritual leader from Prairie Island Reservation in Minnesota, told a reporter from (the) Red Wing (Minnesota) Republican Eagle, "They exist in another dimension from us, but can appear in this dimension whenever they have a reason to. See, it's like there are many levels, many dimensions. When our time in this one is finished, we move on to the next, but the Big Man can go between. The Big Man comes from God. He's our big brother, kind of looks out for us. Two years ago, we were going downhill, really self-destructive. We needed a sign to put us back on track, and that's why the Big Man appeared".
Ralph Gray Wolf, a visiting Athapaskan Indian from Alaska, told the reporter, "In our way of beliefs, they make appearances at troubled times", to help troubled Indian communities "get more in tune with Mother Earth". Bigfoot brings "signs or messages that there is a need to change, a need to cleanse," (Minn. news article, "Giant Footprint Signals a Time to Seek Change," July 23,1988).
Mathiessen reported similar views among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway in North Dakota, that Bigfoot --- whom they call Rugaru -- "appears in symptoms of danger or psychic disruption to the community." When I read this, I wondered if it contradicted my hypothesis that the Ojibways had identified Bigfoot with Windago, the sinister cannibal-giant of their legends (see Track Record #14); I had surmised that because I had never heard of any other names for, or references to Bigfoot in Ojibway culture, even though there must have been sightings in woodlands around the Great lakes, and indeed sightings in that region have been reported by non-Indians. But the Turtle Mountain band is one of the few Ojibway bands to have moved much farther west than most of their nation; and Rugaru is not a native Ojibway word. Nor does it come from the languages of neighboring Indian peoples. However, it has a striking sound similarity to the French word for werewolf, loup- garou, and there is quite a bit of French influence among the Turtle Mountain Ojibway. (French-Canadian trappers and missionaries were the first whites that they dealt with extensively, and many tribal members today bear French surnames), so it doesn't seem far-fetched that the Turtle Mountain Ojibway picked up the French name for hairy human- like being, while at the same time taking on their neighbors positive, reverent, attitude toward Bigfoot. After all, the Plains Cree -- even though they retain a memory of their eastern cousins tradition of the Wetiko (as the Windigo is called in Cree) -- have seemed similarly to take on the western tribes view of Bigfoot as they moved west.
The Hopi elders say that the increasing appearances of Bigfoot are not only a message or warning to the individuals or communities to whom he appears, but to humankind at large. As Mathiessen puts it, they see Bigfoot as "a messenger who appears in evil times as a warning from the Creator that man's disrespect for His sacred instructions has upset the harmony and balance of existence." To the Hopi, the "big hairy man" is just one form that the messenger can take.
The Iroquois (Six Nations Confederacy) of the Northeast -- although they live in close proximity to the eastern Algonkian tribes with their Windigo legends -- view Bigfoot much in the same way the Hopi do, as a messenger from the Creator trying to warn humans to change their ways or face disaster. However, mentioned among Iroquois much more often than Bigfoot are the "little people" who are said to inhabit the Adirondacks mountains. I never heard any first-hand stories among the Iroqouis about encounters with these "little people" -- for that matter, I never heard and first- hand stories in that region about Bigfoot, either -- but the Iroquois pass down stories about hunters who occasionally saw small human-like beings in the Adirondacks (which are not all that far from the Catskills, where Rip Van Winkle was alleged to have met some little bowlers) (and slept for 100 years -HF). Some present-day Iroquois assert that the "little people" are still there, just not seen as often because the Iroquois don't spend as much time hunting up in the mountains as they used to. many Iroquois seem to regard both Bigfoot and the "little people" as spiritual or interdimensional beings who can enter or leave our physical dimension as they please, and choose to whom they present themselves, always for a reason.
Stories about small, humanoids who inhabit wild places are found in many areas of the world, especially Europe. (The Kiowa tell a story about several young men who decide to go exploring south from their Texas home for many days, seeing many new things, until they came to a strange forest [obviously the jungles of southern Mexico] whose trees were home to small, furred humanoids with tails! This they found to be too weird, so they immediately headed back for home). I never thought to connect the stories about the "little people" with the Sasquatch until Ray Crowe brought up the possible connection. After all, if there may be large relatives of humans living in remote areas, would it be so impossible for there to be small ones? Details that stretch credibility, such as pots of gold, pointed and belled caps, games of ninepins, etc., could conceivably be embellishments added over generations to some genuine accounts of sightings.
Throughout Native North America, Bigfoot is seen as a kind of "brother" to humans. Even among those eastern Algonkian tribes to whom Bigfoot represents the incarnation of the Windigo -- the human who is transformed into a cannibalistic monster by tasting human flesh in time of starvation -- his fearsomeness comes from his very closeness to humans. The Windigo is the embodiment of the hidden, terrifying temptation within them to turn to eating other humans when no other food is to be had. he was still their "elder brother", but a brother who represented a human potential they feared. As such, the Windigo's appearance was sort of a constant warning to them, a reminder that a community whose members turn to eating each other is doomed much more surely than a community that simply has no food. So the figure of the Windigo is not so far removed from the figure of the "messenger" coming to warn humankind of impending disaster if it doesn't cease its destruction of nature.
The existence of Bigfoot is taken for granted throughout Native North America, and so are his powerful psychic abilities. I can't count the number of times that I have heard elder Indian people say that Bigfoot knows when humans are searching for him and that he chooses when and to whom to make an appearance, and that his psychic powers account for his ability to elude the white man's efforts to capture him or hunt him down. In Indian culture, the entire natural world -- the animals, the plants, the rivers, the stars -- is seen as a family. And Bigfoot is seen as one of our close relatives, the "great elder brother"1
1 Gayle Highpine, writing in "The Track Record", #18, Copyright July, 1992
Fingerprint Expert Tries To Debunk Bigfoot - Reaches Opposite Conclusion:
(Houston Chronicle, Houston Texas, 21 February, 2000) Jimmy Chilcutt is not someone most people would associate with the kind of wild, unsubstantiated stories that show up in supermarket tabloids. Chilcutt, 54, is skeptical by nature. His job as a fingerprint technician at the Conroe Police Department requires hard-nosed judgments and painstaking attention to detail. He is highly regarded by agents of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and state and local law enforcement agencies because of his innovative techniques and ability to find fingerprints where others fail.
But in doing what comes naturally -- being careful and thorough -- he ended up rocking his own skepticism about one of the most sensational tales that routinely show up in the tabloids. Chilcutt's quest to squeeze more information out of fingerprints led him to develop a rare expertise in nonhuman primate prints. He tried to use his special knowledge to debunk alleged evidence of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch. But his examination of alleged Bigfoot footprint castings didn't lead to the conclusion he had expected. He now believes that -- while some of them are fakes -- some are the genuine prints of a reclusive animal that has yet to be documented and studied.
The path to Chilcutt's unusual investigation began with an idea he had in 1995. "If I could look at fingerprints and could tell the sex, gender and race, I'd be way ahead," he recalled. He began examining fingerprints to determine whether there were differences based on race or sex. It finally occurred to him that the key to understanding human fingerprints could lie in nonhuman primates. Primates are members of the order of mammals that includes humans, great apes, monkeys and lemurs.
Chilcutt said he hoped to find primordial characteristics that would unlock hidden information in human fingerprints. First, he had to convince a zoo or a research center to allow him to take fingerprints. "It was hard to find somebody who would let you fingerprint their monkey," he said. After being rebuffed about 25 times over three months, he called Ken Glander, director of the Duke University Primate Center in Durham, N.C.
Impressed by Chilcutt's expertise, Glander offered prints from his collection of lemurs. But Chilcutt was primarily interested in apes, so Glander steered him to the Yerkes Regional Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta. Kaylee Summerville, occupational health program coordinator at Yerkes, said Chilcutt's request was received with caution. After checking Chilcutt's credentials, the center arranged for him to take prints of apes at the Atlanta zoo during an annual medical checkup, while the apes were anesthetized. Since then, Chilcutt has amassed a collection of about 1,000 nonhuman primate prints. He has 350 prints. He said there are only about four or five researchers working with nonhuman fingerprints. "All are biologists," Glander said. "We don't have fingerprint expertise."
Chilcutt studied the primate prints and discovered characteristics that distinguish different species and traits within species. He said he has become an expert on primate prints through long study of his samples, although he is not yet able to decipher human fingerprints.
But an opportunity arose in December 1998 to put his rare knowledge to use. He was at his home in Montgomery reading a book one evening, barely paying attention to a TV program about Bigfoot. His interest was piqued, however, when he heard the term "dermal ridges," a reference to fingerprints.
He listened closely as Jeff Meldren, associate professor of anatomy at Idaho State University, held a casting of a supposed Bigfoot footprint and pointed to what appeared to be the loops and whorls of prints. Believing he could determine the authenticity of the prints, Chilcutt phoned Meldren, a specialist in primate anatomy and locomotion. "If there is a Sasquatch, only a handful of people in the world know the difference between a primate and a human print," Chilcutt said.
Meldren said he was delighted to find someone who could help authenticate his collection of about 100 castings of supposed Bigfoot footprints.
Searching for Bigfoot
A skeptical Chilcutt arrived in Pocatello, Idaho, last April and began studying the collection. He first examined the casting Meldren had shown on TV and quickly determined it to be a fake. The toeprints were actually human fingerprints. Meldren turned him loose on the entire collection. The print ridges on the bottoms of five castings -- which were taken at different times and locations -- flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow from side to side, he said.
"No way do human footprints do that -- never, ever. The skeptic in me had to believe that (all of the prints were from) the same species of animal," Chilcutt said. "I believe that this is an animal in the Pacific Northwest that we have never documented." Meldren, for whom the study of Bigfoot prints is a sideline, believes it's a legitimate, scientific inquiry.
"A misconception is often perpetrated that this should be relegated to the tabloids," he said. "The question is, what made the tracks? They are there; that is indisputable. It's either a hoax or the track of a living animal.
"Officer Chilcutt has brought his expertise to that question. We will never know for sure until a specimen is collected. Until then, it's unscientific, in my opinion, to dismiss this evidence without giving it an airing."
Glander, who was casually acquainted with Meldren when Meldren taught briefly at Duke, said: "Do I believe in Bigfoot? I don't know, but I think it's one of those things that is interesting and intriguing."
March 14, 2004
Thoughts on the Patterson-Gimlin Footage
By John Green
Almost thirty-seven years ago two young men from Yakima, Washington, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, emerged from a remote forest in the northwest corner of California with a brief 16-millimeter film showing a hairy creature walking along a sand bar on its hind legs, and the debate on whether their film shows an unknown animal or a man wearing a fur suit has gone on ever since.
Now, thanks to a new book on the subject, that debate should be at an end. The answer has been in plain view all along, the creature on the film holding it, quite literally, in its arms. And that answer, ironically, is the opposite of the one in the book.
The creature can not be a man in a suit.
The writer of the book, of which only review copies are so far
available, claims to have cracked the case by finding two key
witnesses, the man who wore the suit, a Yakima acquaintance of
Patterson and Gimlin named Bob Heironimus, and the man who
sold a gorilla suit to Patterson and told him how to modify it,
Philip Morris, a costume maker from Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Heironimus story is not new. It surfaced several years ago
one of the many unsubstantiated claims to have been "the man
in the suit" that crop up from time to time. Phillip Morris appears
to be a real find, a man who actually was making gorilla costumes
in 1967 and who says he remembers selling one to Roger Patterson.
One of the things that Morris is quoted as saying is that the way
to make the arms in the suit look longer than human arms is to
extend the gloves of the suit on sticks. Many people have noted that the arms of the creature in the film look unusually long, almost as long as its legs. Some, including myself in 1968, have published estimates of their length. No one went on to deal with the question of how human arms could be extended to match the extra length and what such an extension would look like.
There is no way to establish for certain if any of the dimensions
estimated for the creature in the film are accurate, but what can
be established with reasonably accuracy is the length of the
creature's legs and arms in relation to one another. From that ratio, which anatomists call the "intermembral index," it is simple to calculate how many inches must be added to the arms of a man of known size in order to make his arms long enough to fit the supposed suit. In my own case the answer turns out to be about 10 inches.
But in order for the arms to bend at the elbow, which they plainly
do in the movie, all of that extra length has to be added to the
lower arm. The result, in my case, is about 12 inches of arm above the elbow and 29 inches below it?almost as much of a monstrosity as Edward Scissorhands. The creature in the movie has normal-looking arms. It cannot be a man in a suit.
Many issues in the long debate about the movie remain unresolved - what the film speed was, whether a man could duplicate the creature's unusual bent-kneed walk, whether its behavior was normal for an animal, whether the tracks left on the sandbar could have been faked, and so on - but all of them turn out to have been irrelevant to the main issue.
My measurements of the film, made 36 years ago, gave the creature arms that were 30 inches from the shoulder to the wrist and legs that were 35 inches from the hip to the ground. My own measurements are about 24 inches from shoulder to wrist and 40 inches from hip to ground. Only the ratios of the measurements matter, the actual size of either the human or the creature makes no difference, and the ratios for creature and human are so much different that precise accuracy of the measurements is not significant either. The much ridiculed Patterson-Gimlin film does not show a man in a suit.
What about Roger Patterson buying a gorilla suit? Philip Morris
does not claim to have records, only a memory, and neither Mrs.
Patterson nor Bob Gimlin remember Roger having any such suit.
But Roger was trying to make a Bigfoot documentary at that time
and most such documentaries contain re-enactments by someone
wearing a fur suit. If he did buy one it has little more significance
than an apprentice carpenter buying a hammer.
And the descriptions of the suit by the two key witnesses are
totally contradictory. Morris is quoted as having described his
suit in precise detail, and how he made it. The suit had six
separate pieces: a head a body (arms, torso and legs), two hands
and two feet. A knitted cloth material served as a backing to
thousands of synthetic nylon strands called dynel, which were
driven by a powerful knitting machine with needles through the
knitted cloth material and then pulled back through to the other
side. It had a 36-inch zipper up the back.
Bob Heironimus is also quoted, saying that Patterson made the
suit himself by skinning a dead horse and gluing fur from an
old fur coat on the horsehide. It was in three parts, head, torso and legs that felt like bigger rubber boots and that went to his waist. He thought the feet were made of old house slippers.
The suit weighted 20 or 25 pounds and he needed help to get in
and out of it. It also smelled bad. "It stunk. Roger skinned out a
dead, red horse."
=============================================
A comment by Jeff Meldrum
"It has been obvious to even the casual viewer that the film subject possesses arms that are disproportionately long for its stature. John Green is a veteran researcher into the question of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. He was among the first to view the film captured by Patterson and Gimlin and has studied it intensely in the intervening years. His recognition of the significance of the unhumanly long arms of the film subject is point that has not previously been articulated in such a straightforward manner. It is such a fundamental observation that it is considered a breakthrough in assessing the validity of this extraordinary film. Anthropologists typically express limb proportions as an intermembral index (IM), which is the ratio of combined arm and
forearm skeletal length (humerus + radius) to combined thigh and leg skeletal length (femur + tibia) x 100. The human IM averages 72. The intermembral index is a significant measure of a primate's locomotor adapatation. The forelimb-dominated movements of the chimp and gorilla are reflected in their high IM indices of 106 and 117 respectively. Identifying the positions of the joints on the film subject can only be approximate and the limbs are frequently oriented obliquely to the plane of the film, rendering them foreshortened to varying degrees. However, in some frames the limbs are nearly vertical, hence parallel to the filmplane, and indicate an IM index somewhere between 80 and 90, intermediate between humans and African apes. In spite of the imprecision of this preliminary estimate, it is well beyond the mean for humans and effectively rules out a man-in-a-suit explanation for the Patterson-Gimlin film without invoking an elaborate, if not
inconceivable, prosthetic contrivance to account for the appropriate positions and actions of wrist and elbow and finger flexion visible on the film. This point deserves further examination and may well rule out the probability of hoaxing."
Jeff Meldrum Ph.D. Associate professor of Anatomy & Anthropology Idaho State University Pocatello, Idaho, 83209-8007. Dr. Meldrum is an expert in primate anatomy and locomotion. He recently coedited, From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. He became interested in the Sasquatch question eight years ago after witnessing 15-inch tracks in southeastern Washington state. He has examined numerous footprints, including those associated with the Patterson-Gimlin footage.
Cougars: Our own version of Sasquatch
June 14, 2004
These days, cougars appear to be Iowa's version of Bigfoot. Indeed, people are seeing more cougars than there actually are.
During the past three years, there have been more than 500 sightings of cougars - also known as mountain lions or pumas - in the state, most recently in the Iowa City metro area. During the past two years, there have been 294 sightings of Bigfoot - also known as Sasquatch or Bung-A-Dingo - in Washington state.
The problem with virtually all of the Iowa cougar sightings is lack of hard evidence, such as a paw print, photo or carcass. It's much like the lack of evidence for Bigfoot: paw prints that could be explained by a bear stepping into melting snow, a fuzzy photo of what could be a guy in a gorilla suit, no seven-foot tall carcass. In short, good tales don't count.
This is not to say there aren't cougars in Iowa. Indeed, two were shot - one in southern and the other in northwest portion of the state, while a car struck a third in a western county. Based on those incidences and the little hard evidence that exists, there are maybe 10 cougars in all of Iowa. And those cougars likely spend a good amount of time in South Dakota and Missouri (but there's no accounting for taste).
The Bigfoot evidence is less scant, though scientists have found hairs for which the DNA does not match any known primate. Why, there may be up to 6,000 Bigfoots stomping across North America, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization estimates. But some believers say Bigfoot actually comes from another dimension and so spends only some of his time here (but there's no accounting for wierdness).
Despite the skimpy cougar evidence, the Iowa DNR hosted a town meeting last winter in Chariton to educate the public about the creature's status in the state; follow-up town meetings are planned later this month in Solon. Meanwhile, the International Bigfoot Symposium was held last autumn in Willow Creek, Calif.; Washington state's Peninsula Mounted Search and Rescue plans to hold a mock Bigfoot search later this month on a day to be announced.
Fortunately, there's a lot of good advice out there about what to do if you see a cougar (and Bigfoot, for that matter). Consider these points from the British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection (as well as the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization):
Never approach a cougar, especially if it's feeding on a kill (In case of a Bigfoot, a bright flashlight or spotlight is the most effective way to make it back off.).
Stay calm and talk to the cougar in a confident voice (Please note that firing warning shots from rifles have not proven effective in making Bigfoot go away.).
Pick all children up off the ground immediately (So far, Bigfoot only has observed children until they themselves were noticed by someone; then they walked or ran away.).
Do not run from a cougar but do back away slowly (Bigfoots are not known to physically attack people, so feel free to run.).
Do not turn your back on a cougar (Don't turn your back on Bigfoot, either: Occasionally they throw rocks at people.).
One final note: There have been 31 Bigfoot sightings in Iowa since summer of 1997. Washington state, meanwhile, estimates a cougar population of up to 4,000.
Woman tells her story of being married to Bigfoot
2004-10-13 11:24:00
A fantastic love story has been recently unveiled in St.Petersburg. Psychiatrist Nikolai Boyarchuk said that he had copied the text of the story from the file of a female patient. The doctor said that the story that happened to Oksana Terletskaya was absolutely real. He added that it would not be immoral to write about it in press, because the woman either died or she would never return to live with humans again.
The 19-year-old girl was "married" to the Bigfoot for almost a year. The girl lost her way in the woods one day, after she had been hurt by her boyfriend. She went to wander in the woods just because she could stay there alone with her feelings. Oksana completely ignored the fact that she had lost her way home. She sat down underneath a tree and cried, trying to get over the pain in her heart. She realized that she had gone astray when it was too late. She came across raspberry bushes and decided to eat some berries before she could start looking for a path home. When she was picking raspberries, she heard a strange noise nearby, as if someone was champing. When the girl moved the branches aside, she saw a big hairy creature that looked like an orang-outang. The girl screamed and lost her conscience. "I came to my senses in a cave. I could hear a stream nearby and there were rays of light coming down on me from a hole in the ceiling. Tang - that's how I called the creature afterwards - was sitting opposite me. He was baring his teeth, as if he was infuriated. I realized later that it was just his smile. The hairy animal came up to me and started sniffing my clothes. Then he roared and tore my clothes to pieces. My heart was about to explode with horror, but he continued sniffing me until his nose stopped near my groin. He roared again and threw himself over me."
When Oksana woke up the next morning, she realized that she had become the prisoner and the wife of the hairy creature. When Tang was going out, he would cover the entrance to the cave with a big boulder, leaving was no way for the girl to escape. Tang would always bring something to eat - berries, nuts, mushrooms, eggs or raw meat. The terrible sex with the animal became a daily torture for Oksana.
There was a spring in a corner of the cave - the water was running somewhere outside the cave. Tang strongly refused to let the girl out. The 'beauty and the beast' started developing a relationship. Tang showed interest in the girl's CD player. Oksana had only one CD with her - best hits of the band Kino. When the girl carefully showed the monster how to listen to the music in the headphones, the Bigfoot was horrified. He got used to the music later, though, and even liked one of the songs on the CD. Tang was very upset, when the music stopped playing because of low batteries. He would spend hours shaking the device in his hands. "I took the batteries out and gestured him that it would not work without them. The next morning Tang took one battery and left. When he returned to the cave in the evening, he brought a pack of batteries with him." Yeti undoubtedly broke into a little shop somewhere in the town. Oksana concluded that the cave, in which she was staying, was not too far from a settlement, where people lived.
Yeti's prisoner could not see how days turned into nights, and how summer turned into autumn. When Tang started stocking food for winter, Oksana figured that it was already autumn outside. She tried to explain to the beast that she was cold. Tang listened to his "wife" and left. The hairy monster turned out to be rather bright than Oksana thought he would be: in the evening Tang brought a warm padded jacket and pants. It became known afterwards that the girl's story coincided with the story of a tractor driver, who said that a monster attacked him in the beginning of October, shook him out of his clothes and disappeared. Oksana was happy to find a lighter in a pocket of the jacket.
"I picked some dry branches and leaves from the ground and decided to make a fire. When he saw the fire, he became very excited. It seemed to me that anger and horror was tearing him apart from inside. He became very quiet: he sat down in a corner and did not make a sound. I felt sorry for him. I managed to overcome my own fear, though. I came up to Tang and stroke him on the head. He put his big arm around me and whined. A week later he was happy to join me near the fire. We started frying chestnuts and meat. Tang was thrilled, when he tasted fried meat. I also hoped that hunters would notice the smoke coming from the hole in the ceiling of the cave, but people did not find Tang's shelter. I caught cold in the beginning of winter. Tang understood that I was ill and he tried to feed me with some roots and plants. He would hug me tight at night to make me warmer."
Oksana managed to escape from her prison only in spring. Her relationship with Yeti had become almost perfect by that time. Tang would take her out in the mornings to see the sunshine, but he would never leave the girl alone. One day he sensed something dangerous in the air. Before leaving, he covered the entrance to the cave with the boulder as usual, but did not notice a small gap that the boulder left. It took the girl great efforts to sneak outside, but when he finally succeeded to get out of the cave, she started running without making a stop. When she saw people in the woods, she realized that she was finally free.
"Her parents took Oksana to our hospital, - Dr. Boyarchuk said. - The girl was mentally incompetent; all I could hear from her was that she had been married to a Bigfoot for a year. She never managed to get used to home conditions. She was afraid of going out even during the day, she was terribly afraid of the dark. In addition, Oksana could not eat normal food," the doctor said.
The girl recovered a little at a mental hospital. She told her story to her doctor and he put everything down in Oksana's file, having considered it the description of the patient's delirium. When the girl realized that nobody believed her story, she gave way to despair. She did not show any reaction to her parents, when they visited her, she did not want to eat or drink. One day Oksana started recovering very fast. She started eating, talking and even laughing. When doctors told her that she was getting better, Oksana laughed and said that she had never been sick. She added that "he" knew where she was and that "he" would come to rescue her. Doctors considered such behavior the new stage of Oksana's illness and decided to isolate her in a special room. However, the girl disappeared from her ward at night in the middle of November. Someone very strong pulled steel bars out of the brick wall. Oksana's ward mates all said that a huge hairy monster had kidnapped the girl. Cynologists never managed to trace the Bigfoot because of the heavy snowfall.
Bigfoot documentary to celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2007
12/13/2005 15:38
The most famous eyewitness of the gigantic ape-like creature held the US citizenship: it was President Theodore Roosevelt
The World Wide Fund for Nature has recently made a sensational announcement about the discovery of a previously unknown mammal. The cat-sized animal was found on Indonesia's Borneo Island. In spite of the fact that humans have explored the length and breadth of land, scientists still discover new species of mammals. A dwarf elephant, a mountainous lion, a dwarf rhinoceros, a giant panda, and many other animals have made brand-new entries on the zoological list of planet Earth.
The biggest, most mysterious and controversial mammals of all, the Bigfoot, remains undiscovered, though. Countless scientific expeditions, crafty tricks and traps to catch the mysterious creature have brought no results. But people will continue searching.
The world-known documentary showing the Bigfoot walking in California will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2007. Millions of people have seen this film worldwide. One may say that it is as popular and famous as Disney cartoons. Experts of all titles and ranks have analyzed every slightest detail of the footage. The USSR's KGB officers were extremely interested in the US-made film as well: they concluded the tape was not fabricated. US specialists used laser equipment, radar probes and robotic stations to analyze the controversial material and came to a similar conclusion. Specialists, including Russian scientists, believe that the film shows an unknown animal, not a human being. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to conduct a genetic analysis, which would clarify all points on the matter.
There is nothing surprising about the fact that it was the USA, which obtained the most famous Bigfoot. The most famous eyewitness of the gigantic ape-like creature held the US citizenship too. President Theodore Roosevelt saw a Bigfoot in the beginning of the 20th century.
Bigfoot has been spotted on Russia's territory too. The last expedition took place in August of the current year, when a group of Russian researchers went to Bashkiria Republic. As usual, the scientists found a great deal of footprints and witnesses who saw the creature, but they failed to catch the sight of the animal. There was a special committee at the Russian Academy of Sciences to study the Bigfoot phenomenon.
The expedition organized by Japanese scientist Yonutseru Takahashi in the Himalayas ended with a sensation. The researchers saw Yeti walking at a large distance. They found 13 footprints of the animal, each of them measured 35 centimeters long and 20 centimeters wide. Takahashi said afterwards that he was certain of Yeti's existence.
Mountaineer Makoto Nebuka, who devoted 12 years of his life to the Bigfoot phenomenon, concluded that the legendary Yeti was a brown Himalayan bear. The word "Yeti," the scientist said, was a twisted version of the word "meti," which means "bear" in a local dialect. The bear is considered a supernatural creature in Tibet, that is why the myth about the Bigfoot was distributed so fast in the world, Nebuka believes.
Carl Linnaeus, one of the founding fathers of modern biology, believed that there was an intermediate species of troglodytes, or cave-dwellers, between modern humans and apes. Could Bigfoot could be that troglodyte, a lost link of the evolution?
Russian professor Boris Porshnev believes that Yeti descended from Neanderthal men that were ousted from Europe and then exterminated by organized Cro-Magnon men about 50,000 years ago. A remarkable discovery made headlines of all newspapers several years ago. Scientists discovered a frozen mummy of a human being that lived on the planet over 5,000 years ago. Following Porshnev's theory, it looks strange that that the relic human is taller than 160 cm Neanderthal men.
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