“No Animal Experts in North Texas Would Comment.”
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 30th, 2008
Do You Believe Bigfoot Exists?
North Texas (CBS 11 News) ― A local organization has been tracking Bigfoot sightings in North Texas for years. They work on proving the creature’s existence through video or photographic evidence.
Craig Woolheather is a member of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. He believes he came face to face with the creature in Louisiana.
“It was about 11:30 at night, and we noticed in the headlights of my vehicle a large, upright figure off to the right of the road,” said Woolheater. “As we approached, we noticed that it was covered in hair… I said we got to stop, and [my wife] refused.”
Woolheather said he regrets not stopping to investigate, but that regret turned into a passion. In 1994, the Texas Bigfoot Conservancy was born. The TBRC is 60 members strong.
Now he tracks Bigfoot sightings all over southern America and North Texas.
The most recent reported sighting in North Texas was in 2006 in Navarro County near Navarro Mills Lake. A husband and wife reported a creature darting across the road as if fleeing something.
The oldest incident documented by the conservancy was in 1971 in Bosque County near the Bosque River. The family said they heard growling and some sort of yelling. They reported seeing a large being outlined in the streetlamp over a bridge. They said it looked like an ape with long, dark hair.
In both cases the TBRC reported plenty of water and food in the area that could sustain a Bigfoot creature.
Once the organization proves Bigfoot exists they want to preserve its habitat.
No animal experts in North Texas would comment on this story.
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.
what, a cheap shot by the news channel reporting the story?
ya know, that’s just wrong. i mean, why not at least entertain the notion and publicly comment?
after all, they’re going to look pretty stupid if and when someone ever shoots a ‘squatch and/or collides with one in a vehicle, aren’t they?
when they could have prevented such a possibility and/or helped to prevent it simply by stating, more or less: ‘we don’t know whether these reportings are valid or not, but we urge all residents to take extreme precautions to avoid harming such an animal if they were ever to encounter one. and to report all sightings as soon as possible without fear of ridicule or repurcussionk, even anon if necessary.’
sheesh. it makes me realize that the TBRC should have a wing dedicated to specializing in contacting these knuckleheads and actually involving them in the research as opposed to simply waiting their inevitable dismissal. not that Craig and company probably haven’t tried!
i don’t know if readers herein know it, but at the meeting i recently attended of the TBRC, there were several folks who have to remain anon in reporting their encounters and evidence gathering re: bigfoot simply because if they report anything, they face reprisals. severe ones, at that.
not a few brownie point deductions from their merit records, but: employment termination, psychiatric evalutation with recorded results, etc. literal discrimination and unemployment, for reporting what they saw with their own eyes. is that just?
whether you believe or disbelieve, our very gov’t offices should keep an open but critical mindset. not, as one gentleman who literally faced job discrimination put it, when asked by his soon-to-be non-employer who uttered to him during the initial job interview, incredulously: ‘you saw bigfoot? yourself? personally?’
the potential employee/man answered with a question, to wit: ‘are you a Christian?’
the employer, of course, was flabbergasted. he stuttered, ‘yeah, but what’s that got to..?’
the discriminated-against man asked, ‘have you ever seen God? or ever met anyone else who has? personally?’
the employer flushed, shook his head, and muttered he hadn’t. and yet, by proudly wearing his cross lapel (no doubt), this government employee was well-respected and promoted from within. no questions asked about his sanity, as after all, EVERYBODY around him believes, right?
no questions asked. hey, there’s nothing wrong with believing in a God that may or may not exist. whose only proof is theological and philosophical, not scientific nor pragmatically demonstrable. there really isn’t.
think about it, though. folks will kill in the name of a God they’ve never met and been told exists, but won’t even consider the possibility of a cryptid that has at least some scientific basis for existence due to evidence, etc.
i’m NOT saying i’m an aetheist for those reading these words. far from it. but what i AM saying is: why does a man who professes a belief in a supranatural being disdain to even consider the possibility of another man who professes a belief in something he’s encountered and seen with his own eyes?
i don’t think a person who believes in God is a liar, or i’d be a liar! i don’t think Christians or Muslims or whatever are liars for believing in different versions of the same unseen God. but neither do i call a person who claims to have seen a cryptid a liar, either!
who is the bigger faith-taker? the one who believes what others tell him or the one who believes what he’s seen?
faith is the core of religion, but not cryptozoology.
i mean no offense to anyone who feels i am slighting religion. just the opposite: by keeping religion and cryptozoology unique and apart, we all stand to be seen as credible in the face of skeptics who profess belief in an invisible God and the like but who would use the apparatus of the state to discriminate against the science of cryptozoology.
it’s one thing to hope bigfoot exists. it’s quite another if you’ve claimed a sighting and/or encounter and are willing to go on record. why should you be discriminated against for telling what you saw? for no monetary gain? by those who are PAID to be objective and record the facts for the rest of us, you know?
i was really upset when i heard this man’s story in person. you could see he was genuine in his telling of both his encounter and his later non-hiring for simply stating he believed what he’d seen with his own eyes!
a man who’d spent 25 years as a police officer recording faithfully for the state every nuance of every routine patrol incident — never questioned — but who is dismissed out of hand when he further records what he saw one night re: bigfoot.
the mind boggles. discrimination doesn’t exist merely between faiths, science and cryptozoology. it exists between what honest folks report and what official government sources will allow to be recorded for the rest of us to evaluate with our own critical thought processes.
it’s a free country. i’m not asking the county or state services to spend money on a quest they feel ‘foolish’ or ‘unworthy of comment.’ but is it so much to ask for them to simply tolerate what tax-paying citizens report to their offices, the same citizens who are at great risk to themselves and their reputations merely by doing so?
again, cryptozoology has been ‘in the closet’ for far too long. institutionalized discrimination against those who believe is the reason. it’s time for the science of cryptzoloogy to enter a new era wherein it’s regarded the same as the search for life on another planet, etc.
we have NO EVIDENCE life exists besides the most microbial in form and even that is far from indesputable.
yet we spend and have spent BILLIONS in building research vessels to go to the lengths of our solar system and beyond to see if MAYBE just MAYBE a germ lives on Mars, etc.
i am ALL FOR that, mind you. but i can’t see why we can believe in a hope of life on another planet when we outright dismiss the life that MAY very well exist right beneath our own cloud formations, you know? when there is evidence to the contrary, no less, you know?
sorry to vent, but as i know Craig and respect the TBRC, i feel that last comment i quote re: above was simply indicative of what it takes to even broach this subject with the press, let alone get anyone within government agencies to take it seriously.
that’s a shame, but i truly hope a new dawn will come wherein we can scientifically advance the cause of crytpos as much as we do SETI. i see no difference between the two goals; we seek to enlarge our viewpoints about our own delicate existance in both missions, so why hamper one with blind dismissal (cryptozoology) and the other with blind hope (search for alien life forms)?
Well said, CryptoHaus_Press…
WOW CryptoHaus_Press, now that was a comment. 🙂
I am pretty familiar with the TBRC web site, in my opinion a much more professional and intelligent sight than most BF sites. I find it very informative. Some of the eye witness encounters they have listed are far too credible to be ignored. Very fascinating and informative web site, I visit at least once a week to see what’s going on down in Texas. My thanks to Mr. Woolheather and the TBRC team for putting their research where we can all see it and study it.
CryptoHaus_Press, I agree with your well put statements. Thanks for not bashing religion but separating it from science. No matter what one thinks, believes, knows, etc., we can all get along.
think about it, though. folks will kill in the name of a God they’ve never met and been told exists, but won’t even consider the possibility of a cryptid that has at least some scientific basis for existence due to evidence, etc.
Beautiful statement.
Glad to see you took that out of your system CryptoHaus 😉
er, what he said.
Like others said here,
VERY well put.
Too many people have been needlesly ridiculed for their eywitness testinomy.
Sad.
The fact that no “animal experts” in North Texas were willing to comment does not necessarily mean that they entirely disbelieve the reports, or for that matter, never saw anything like that themselves – it is likely to be a strategic decision to express no opinions.
an interesting hypothesis. i’m not criticizing it, either, but am wondering: care to elaborate as to why? it would be interesting to read your thoughts since you have an opinion or theory, evidently.
“No animal experts in North Texas would comment on this story.”
The above statement is the only thing to me that could be construed as negative, though delivery of the line could convey quite a bit more than the written word.
The statement may mean there are no animal experts in North Texas. 🙂
It could also be construed that the locals think there is something and don’t want to be ridiculed for agreeing or be made a fool of later when proof positive becomes available.
Crypto Haus accurately makes the point there can be a downside to going on record as to what one has seen or believes.
Yeah, I think oft times the press doesn’t touch that stuff unless they don’t have any shootings or really negative stuff, and then occasionally they do a general interest piece for stuff like that.
As for the rest, honestly I do not believe most people want to get too involved in that kind of thing and their lives are just easier without complications like BF or Nessie or the like…cryptos, on the other hand, need a little more excitement than the mundane and so we hunt this stuff out to see what is really there.:)
good post CryptoHaus
hey craig wow you did a great new interview article about the tbrc & texas sasquatch with this newspaper indeed. i hope this article gets you more sightings footprints strange screams etc reported to you. thanks bill green 🙂
That is an interesting statement. They didn’t dismiss or poo-poo Woolheater. They wouldn’t comment.
Now recall, most places if someone reports an out-of-place cougar, they are immediately dismissed by the DNR equivalent in that State.
Being unwilling to comment is extraordinary.
Crypto_Haus: strength to your arm!
No better illustration of the fundamental irrationality of so much modern thinking could be offered.
Has anybody investigated the Faulk, Arkansas creature. Faulk is near the Arkansas and Louisiana state line. Some people call it the Creature from Boggie Creek….