Cryptomundo
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3 Responses to “Trail Runner Gets A Bigfoot Surprise In Neah Bay, Washington!”

1. RandyS responds: December 6th, 2016 at 1:23 am

   Having read several of the stories from PacWestBigfoot.com that have been posted here, I got a nagging feeling that, although they are presented as tales told by a variety of different people, there is a certain sameness to all of them — as if the stories all have the same author. One of the aspects that particularly bugged me is the fact that each story features a long, somewhat rambling introduction/explanation before finally arriving at the subject at hand — bigfoot.

   With a little searching, I found a site on Stylometry; the comparison of word and punctuation usage in various texts to determine if they were written by the same author. It’s not (yet) an exact science, and I’m sure the app on the website is not as powerful as those used professionally, but the results of comparisons were interesting.

   I compared three stories from pacwestbigfoot.com — “Oh Momma! That Bigfoot Capsized My Fishing Boat!”, “Trail Runner Gets A Bigfoot Surprise In Neah Bay, Washington!”, and “Hiker Shoved by Sasquatch.”

   The Stylometry site compares three aspects of each sample text:

   1. “Lexical analysis is based on the words used in the pieces of text. This includes measures such as average sentence lengths, word lengths, and lexical diversity.”

   2. “Punctuation analysis is based on the author’s use of punction marks, such as commas, dashes and colons.”

   3. “Function words are content independent, and authors tend to use them in a consistent manner in their writing. Functions words for the samples above have been automatically identified: ‘the,’ ‘and.'”

   According to the site, each of the three articles shows an extremely high degree of probability of having been written by the same author.

   I’m not saying that David Boozer, who runs the PWB site is making up the stories he posts. I had never met him or heard of him outside of the stories linked here on Cryptomundo. I have no axe to grind, only a desire to find the truth. The similarity in styles could simply be the result of him transcribing stories told to him verbally. But that’s not how the stories are presented. That, coupled with the obvious geographical errors in the “Bigfoot Capsized My Fishing Boat” story that prove the events could not have taken place either where, or how, they were described, is enough to make me suspicious of all future stories coming from the PWB site.

2. mandors responds: December 7th, 2016 at 7:40 am

   @RandyS Very nice analysis. I have suspected that quite a few of these “tales” are just that. We have a good crew on this site that contribute their observations and insights. This a great addition.

   The problem with first person accounts, ones not accompanied by visual or physical evidence, is that they obviously can be fabricated. That is by no means to say that the majority of sightings are just made up.

   On the contrary, the sheer number of eyewitness reports, I think, give some credence to the idea that something is out there. In any event, there are just too many people seeing something, which in itself is a phenomenon worth studying.

3. RandyS responds: December 7th, 2016 at 11:39 am

   Thanks, Mandors. I completely agree with your assessment — the number of eyewitness reports, their similarities in what is described, and the regions from where the majority of reports originate (see Sanderson and Green’s independent analyses of vegetation/rainfall in the areas from where reports come from) gives credence to the validity of many of the reports. But fabricated tales only muddy the waters, and suspicious reports should not be rewarded by being spread.

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