Bugs Bigfoot Legend Begun By Radio Freakazoid
Posted by: Loren Coleman on January 7th, 2009
The twelve-year running saga of “Bugs” and the claim that the guy killed two Bigfoot and buried them may, thankfully, be near its end. We have discussed “Bugs” on Cryptomundo before, here, here, and here.
For those that need a quick summary, one of the fastest can be found via the Art Bell entry at Wikipedia, where you’ll find this five-second story of “Bugs”:
“Bugs” – Aging farmer who has repeatedly told of his account of shooting and burying two Bigfoot creatures back in the 1970s in the Texas Panhandle, initially thinking they were bears. Bugs has mailed a map of the location of this “burial” to Art Bell, to be released to the public upon Bugs’ death. During his first appearance in 1996, Bugs said he had taken a dozen Polaroid photos of the creatures he would be willing to send to Art. None of the alleged photos have yet been made available.
Now, thanks to the blog The Regulator, the rather supposedly unbalanced soul behind “Bugs” has been outed. Ed Hale of Wellington, Texas, the alleged racist owner of Plains Radio, is the mysterious “Bugs.”
Here’s how The Regulator gives the run-up to their Eureka moment:
An astute Freeper posted a link to a very interesting YouTube video and wondered if the man called ‘Bugs’ that was being interviewed in the clip could possibly be the one and only Ed Hale.
Before I had even listened to the clip, the name ‘Bugs’ definitely sounded familiar. You see, Ed’s photobucket account name is ‘bugshale’ and a little more googling finds some comments about Hillary Clinton and oddly, an ad where Ed is selling some western wear.
After listening to about five minutes of the YouTube, I was convinced and shared with ZeN, and our two Ed Hale specialists neonzx and GreatGrey. They all agreed that it is definitely Ed.
Just as the field seemed to be moving on from the disaster of the Georgia Bigfoot hoax of last summer, this case broke this week. Now, the study of Bigfoot has to be de-bugged, all over again.
Since the “outing,” Ed Hale has semi-“confessed” on his radio program, saying that he was indeed the Art Bell call-in person who used the name “Bugs.” Besides admitting that he is “Bugs,” he has said the killing story is “true.” Evidence? Well, too bad, but it is gone. Hale says that federal agents showed up at his house, made him dig up the bodies, actually bones, and the remains were confiscated. They were spirited away and are being hidden by the government.
Okay. We’ve all been here before.
As the bloggers at The Regulator also noted, Hale’s listeners ate it up and believe every word of it. For more, listen to the Ed Hale mp3 here.
Unfortunately, for the Bigfoot field, Art Bell, and Robert Morgan, this “Bugs”/Hale guy is, by all accounts, one big time jerk.
I am not going to go into all that has been said about Ed Hale online, but an Internet search quickly reveals that he has been called many things, including a “racist freakazoid” by his critics, he is the guy who called Michelle Obama a “gorilla,” he delivered an infamous n-word rant against Barack Obama, and he is one of the people behind the Obama-wasn’t-born-in-the-USA movement. Supposedly, a one-time former Green party contributor, Hale claimed to be a Hillary Clinton supporter, then got a lot of attention for starting a Hillary Clinton Supporters for John McClain group, according to some sites.
This guy Ed Hale stirs up people and gets them to talk about all kinds of political topics, even whether “Obama is one of them lizard people!”
What “Bugs” said on Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell has been “heard” in many different ways by the listeners. It can even get people to state, “Ed Hale said in his own words on the Art Bell show that he thought he had killed a couple of ‘mentally retarded’ people that night. I have a feeling that someone got shot that night and I don’t think it was our North American Yeti.”
This all begins to take on some of the worst nightmare moments of the Georgia Bigfoot story, the Bluff Creek Massacre/”topknotch” Bigfoot tale, and the conspiracy theories that the US government black helicoptered out a Bigfoot from the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
By late Tuesday night, the Internet and Bigfoot forums were all abuzz with the “Bugs”/Ed Hale news.
Metafilter had to even label it with silliness as the “Obama-Bigfoot Connection.” This is apparently because Ed Hale’s “current cause is uncovering documentary evidence that President-Elect Barack Obama is not a ‘natural born citizen’ and therefore is ineligible for office. Currently Ed claims to be in possession of Obama’s parents’ divorce decree.” Of course, Hale’s evidence of a birth certificate evaporated into merely a claim of a “log notation,” which seems to have vanished or proves nothing.
Actually, it’s not Obama’s or Bigfoot’s faults that Ed Hale is in their lives. Or even Art Bell’s and Bob Morgan’s.
I’m afraid all of us who were dubious of the “Bugs” story from the beginning will have to weather this storm too.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
The whole bugs killing bigfoot story was not even remotely believable (it was mildly entertaining). It sounds like this guy is a real crack pot moron. I seriously don’t understand why some people with no lives do these types of hoaxes. I don’t understand other people who are so gullible to fall for these hoaxsters and hold out hope and some small chance it could be real. One has to wonder why a subject like bigfoot is clouded with liars, and hoaxers. It’s inspiring to know that legitimate people like Meldrum and Loren are involved with the subject, but after awhile and blobsquatch after blobsquatch and hoax after hoax, one has to wonder. In my opinion there isn’t much light to the bigfoot tunnel anymore. One can only hold onto the PGF for so long before that gets thrown into the hoax category as well as unfortunate as that sounds.
I was dubious of this story from the very beginning, and am glad to see this fiasco over. The whole rigamorole with the map and it being supposedly in Art Bell’s possession and poor Robert W. Morgan chasing down Art Bell via e-mail and telephone to get the map. I imagine Morgan is quite ticked off, as is Art Bell. Good to see this whole fiasco is over so we can move on and concentrate on credible research.
whether he’s a lyer or not, i do believe the government is up to something..
like i stated before.. don’t know if on here.
but i believe the government is hiding something.. maybe not aliens but cryptids and bizarre unknown creatures.
it could be true about the Bigfoot being held by the government’s orders.
that may explain, why most evidence are not good enough for us.. like let’s say someone found one, but it disappeared (the body). It could very well be cause of the government.
Now why certain animals? cause they look bizarre, large, supposedly extinct, legends and myths.
Even if Area 51 isn’t just a Aire base, it may hold some truths about it being secret.
maybe those chupacabras, and mothman specimens are being held by the government while others are lose, and wild.
as for the sea creatures like nessie..etc.
i wouldn’t really be shocked to see them being held in an underground very large and deep pond..etc.
what if the government is holding captive a T-rex??? a Dragon at that?
Governments around the world share similar projects to capture Animals Unknown to the Modern World.
DPN and Ed Hale appear to be in the minority regarding realistically thinking the government is actually “holding” onto cryptid bodies.
Perhaps there are some conspiracy theories that have some basis in reality, but they are more likely to be of the “cover story” variety, as per in Tom Slick’s days.
Just when you think there’s finally a calm in the hoax department all Hale breaks loose
There’ll always be that Patterson-Gimlin film footage, which can’t be dismissed as a hoax.
well it’s possible that the government is holding those cryptids bodies. 🙂
i can’t just rule that out. 🙂
only soon we will find out.
Other than That. 🙂
we just here thinking. Whether were right or wrong.
Those Cryptids are out there.
i wouldn’t be to shocked to see if most of them are domesticated.
heck I wouldn’t be that shocked to find out some people like us were actually having them as pets in the secret from the public.
Some Families and Friends are Good Secret holders.
Can’t rule that out too. There’s too many theories.
some must be right.. even if all the theories are wrong… But non the less. SOme has to be right. 🙂
like i said.. Soon we would know..
As i’ll say this now like i said before.. Cryptozoologist who do searching must try harder and harder Untill He/She gets it.. We can not give up. There must be a flaw in Our (humans) Search.
Unless we just there at the wrong time.. But i do know Equipment will fail us.. We only Need our Eyes most of all. and a Camera. Other than That.. Equipment will work at least 90% cause most of the time, we don’t even catch cryptids on camera and such.. so.. that being said… try harder and never give up.. heck even if it takes weeks.. or a month…
Now i’m not going to lie to ya… If i ever had a chance to search, and enough money and Faith. I know better to try my best… If i really had enough money for months or a month or weeks, id stay and continue my search… even if i have days or a day.. i still wouldn’t waste time.. i’d continue and search…
regardless we can not give up..
WE CAN NOT GIVE UP..!!!!!!!
if we do.. we won’t get things done and we won’t reach our goals.
I don’t know if this been said before in cryptozoology, but i said it now.. we can’t give up… it’s time that we get off of our feets and not worry about the public of what they will get out of our investigation…. they get what we can give… if we can give enough proof that.s all that matters. cause were only human and bigfoot and others do walk alot, so chances are that us humans may only find what we can find… now if we had X-Ray equipment maybe we can see trough plans and trees only to find skeletons of living animals and dead animals… if that’s the case than whenever we find a moving animal and it’s ridiculously big.. then you caught a living dinosaur or megafauna…
even if the skeleton of the moving animal looks odd, then maybe you caught a unknown animal, could be a cryptid, living fossil or unkown….
Love this story.
Odd, and amusing, that you started it with one of the “infamous” Warner Bros still images…the “Bugs Bunny ‘xxxxx’ Image”. Priceless. A true “crypid” of cartoonism.
Still, love this article.
LOL! Fantastic comment Lightning Orb 🙂
I think that when you think the government has cryptid bodies and are hiding them, you’re just making a field that is already under a lot of scrutiny seem ridiculous. It’s just a convenient exit strategy when a hoax is being outed.
I think someone needs to start a support group called “Hugs For Hoaxers”. clearly they do this because they want attention (or in Biscardi’s case money *cough*cough*…) but perhaps if we can give give attention to these poor numbskulls before they create a hoax, we can nip this problem in the butt.
well i do believe the government has something.. so why not. 😉
as for me, i’m not going to accuse them of being hoaxer…. regardless if they admit it or not…
one day a hoaxer will find a live Cryptid.. and who will believe him/her?
well somebody has too. 🙂
so that being said.. i can not jump to conclusion and accuse..
sure biscardi did hoaxed us.. but what if one day he really finds a cryptid..????
Haha! I just linked my girlfriend. You might remember her asking you about Bugs a few years ago at the Mass Monster Mash, Loren.
I don’t want to see his story get nixed just because he’s a bigot. It was a great story and one of my favorite CTC shows. If bigfoots are real then it remains possible that a couple of rednecks blasted a pair and buried them in the Texas panhandle decades ago. The involvement of government agents is admittedly a little hard to swallow.
While I don’t put anything past the government, especially the goofs who have been in charge for the past 8 years, I don’t believe this idiots story in the least. It does make sense that some government officials and corporations (logging, drilling companies and such) MIGHT do something to make sure that our hairy friends are never proven so that they can hang on to their flow of cash and continue to destroy whats left of our wilderness areas.
I just think that conspiracy theories have gone totally overboard of late. I am a very open minded person and I think that there have been some conspiracy theories that have legit claims and should be looked into, like JFK, 9-11 (too many unanswered questions) and obviously some of the UFO stories have enough evidence that warrant further investigation. Still, some of the outrageous theories that seem to abound these days (reptilian beings disguised as government officials is one that comes to mind) are just idiotic and some can be very dangerous.
I think that one of the lowest forms of life on the earth is a racist. Ed Hale is just that and his unfair and outrageous lies and attacks on Obama and family are just insane! The guy makes me cringe just reading some of the garbage that this man has put out there. People like Ed Hale and his followers are just taking up good oxygen. UGH.