June 19, 2007
Have you noticed how routine news items on straightforward Sasquatch sightings in the Pacific Northwest and the West have decreased in the last few years?
Have such stories suffered with the increase in articles on the profiles and misadventures of Bigfoot personalities?
Have regular media reports about Bigfoot and Sasquatch encounters become endangered in the wake of more articles on hairy hominoid hunters, fakers, scammers, scientists, searchers, authors, skeptics, debunkers, and other Bigfooters?
Just look back five years ago this week:
There has been a sighting of the legendary Bigfoot in Washington State. A man spotted the hairy, human-like creature near his house in Forks.
An animal-control officer and Forks police carried out a search but found no trace of the Sasquatch.
“We were unable to locate, identify or capture the Sasquatch,” said Forks Police Chief Mike Powell. He said it was a relief because he wouldn’t know how to deal with a Bigfoot.
Mr Powell said: “I don’t know why we would impound him or where we would keep him.”
Sightings of the creature, reputed to lurk in Northwest forests, are rare.Ananova Wire Service, Monday 17th June 2002.
Or at this sighting of June 16, 1980, noted without any celebrity distractions, in a news item from 27 years ago:
Two men reported seeing a “Big Foot-like creature” on Snow King Mountain near Jackson, Wyo., early Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the Jackson Police Department said.
Robert Goodrich and Glenn Towner, no hometown or ages listed, reported to police that they were chased off Snow King Mountain by a “Big Foot-like creature” 12 feet tall with long, dark hair and arms, which hung almost to the ground. The two men said that they were going to visit a friend who had built a lean-to on the mountain when they encountered the creature, the spokesman said. The men told police the creature breathed heavily and made a moaning growl-type noise. They described the creature as having a simian-like face as big as a stop sign and that the creature was hunchbacked, the spokesman said. Goodrich and Towner told police that they ran when they spotted the creature, and that it followed them. The last time they saw the creature, it was standing under a street light near the Ramada Snow King Inn in Jackson, the spokesman said. The two men said they were going back Tuesday to take pictures of any possible tracks and to see if they could find their friend.
The police reported that the two men had not been drinking.Idaho Falls Post-Register, June 18,1980.
To put this in context, see also in the new introduction to my book, The Field Guide to Bigfoot (2006), the section, “The Hunt for Unknown Hominoids,” and in the Afterword, “Science and the Sasquatch.”
For further reading, please see Chapter 14, “The Changing Image of Bigfoot,” and Chapter 15, “The Bigfooters” in my other 2003 Bigfoot! book.
What do you think? Are the times a’changin’?
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.
Filed under Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, Breaking News, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Media Appearances, Pop Culture, Sasquatch