Bigfoot Media Mania Continues
Posted by: Loren Coleman on November 13th, 2006
It is not your imagination. Bigfoot news is all over the map.
New sightings and stories are popping up about them. Old cases discussed in recent newspaper items are being published about 1970s’ Illinois reports and Missouri flaps. Exhibition news is coming out of Kansas City, and plans for Jefferson, Texas, Bigfoot museum continues onward. A Skunk Ape is allegedly photographed in Florida, maybe a “chimpanzee” one too (above), and now debates are getting new fire under them. The pot is heating up in Malaysia again. Yowies now come into play too.
Then, of course, there’s that Idaho professor friend of ours getting lots of attention.
What’s going on? You can’t turn around without bumping into the stuff. Perhaps people are tired of reading about the election and Iraq? Or maybe this is one of those infrequent Sasquatch seasons?
Just look at some of the news popping up..today.
Boing Boing buddy David Pescovitz has posted over there about Dr. Jeff Meldrum’s tome, in “Scientist’s new book about Sasquatch”. Pescovitz also notes the link to Meldrum’s guest appearance on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation.
CNN broadcast a story on the Wisconsin “non-Bigfoot” Bigfoot story. Now they’ve put it online, at least for a few days, via a link here to the video.
Meanwhile, documentary filmmaker Peter von Puttkamer, the producer/director of Sasquatch Odyssey: The Hunt for Bigfoot, is making news with his new film, The Real Lost World. It will be broadcast on Discovery HD Theater on December 14th, and on Animal Planet, December 10th and 17th, 2006.
Word now comes that on Monday, November 20, the National Geographic Channel will broadcast their new documentary on the Almas (off-production photo above), calling it, perhaps misleadingly, “Russian Bigfoot”. It was back on March 16, 2006, when I first wrote about this documentary here at Cryptomundo.
What’s next?
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.
Initially I suspected the Lance Henriksen ‘Abominable’ movie was the culprit for raising Bigfoot’s general media and newsworthiness profile, but then that begged the question why Bigfoot was suddenly deemed worthy of a new movie in the first place. Afterall, to the best of my knowledge, even if you cast aside all the technical considerations and take every Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, and Sasquatch movie ever made as all being basically about the same creature, there’s been very few movies dedicated to ‘It’, especially in relation to all the other more supernaturally ‘normal’ creatures movies’ve been made about.
Hello everyone. This is my first comment on this web site, I have a queston that is driving me crazy! What ever happened on November the 9th? that was the day this whole “sylvanic” film was supposed to be let loose no? I honestly was waiting to hear on this site that it was a marketing strategy, however, i havent seen anything at all. Any one know?
I think the recent programs and media attention to cryptids is a positive influence to the subject. Perhaps this will encourage other witnesses who have remained silent for fear of ridicule to come forward and tell their stories.
I noticed this too, as I wrote about this latest round of Bigfoot items yesterday on Orange Orb.
BF, and or BHMs, are out in force lately!
So, what would you rather read or report about, sasquatch sightings or seven more soldiers killed in Iraq. I think the flurry of reports and interest in all things cryptid is partially a sociological response to the unrelenting horrors of the world we inhabit; frankly my mind needs a break from 9/11, and contemplating cryptids helps.
I really believe that some of this is escapism, remember the frenzy of Bigfoot reporting in the 60’s and 70’s was better than dwelling on Vietnam, JFK, RFK, MLK and Nixon. Ol’ Sasquatch draws us back to the wonder and mystery of life and leaves us less calloused, and in a strange way comforted.
hey loren, i useally notice that sasquatch is mentioned more in media between october-december almost every year. bill
That episode of Is it Real? was about as good as the episode on hauntings that followed.
Man, that Joppa is deeeep!
I agree!
Is It Real? is nothing but a debunking show. Would you expect anything less from National Geographic? I hate that show lol
I know somebody at Nat Geo must have the answer to this one:
Why even run the piece if you aren’t serious about getting to the bottom of it? Isn’t Square One that Bigfoot is some kind of hoax/illusion/New Age fantasy/reason for hillbillies to buy guns?
At least the two recent NPR pieces (part of the Jane Goodall interviev and the one with Meldrum) attempted to push the discussion forward.
Nobody talked to Meldrum?
I love Nat Geo. And they dropped the ball big time on this one. (They seem to be backing the orang pendek horse, though…)
John Bindernagel talks about the intense aversion, bordering on denial, among scientists on Bigfoot. It’s really funny how many other outlets want to help the scientific establishment stay asleep.
Not to be too cynical, but entertainment media zeroes in on particular buzz words or subjects to capture the audience. Discovery Channel has ‘Shark Week’, History Channel ‘World War 2 week’ and so therefore it’s not a real stretch to see National Geographic touch upon sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster or any other biological mystery. And Bill Green is absolutely right in his observation: if it seems like the fall, it’s most likely that these are show premieres for the new season. While I’d like to think they’re seriously trying to get to the truth, I think it’s got more to do with what audiences want to see.
And everyone loves a mystery.
I guess I have too much respect for Nat’l Geo to accept such tripe from them.
There was no discussion about the hundreds of credible witnesses, such as law enforcement, wildlife officials or hunters, or interviews with any of them. No one explained how these faked footprints were made at the same time someone saw a guy in a monkey suit.
One expert went into great detail how he can make a cast of his own foot and show the dermal ridges. Then he showed how he could enlarge the footprint. He didn’t actually do it to BF size, just showed how it could be done. No one bothered to ask him how he would make a cast that big and keep the dermal ridges normal sized. And he never addressed why some BF prints have dermal ridges travelling in the opposite direction of human ridges.
Points like that were conveniently ignored. It was as if they could explain how it COULD BE done, then that must have been how it WAS done.
It’s as if the debunkers reasoning was automatically accepted. The same veracity of questioning posed at the BF supporters is not extended to those offering an explanation.
If it’s so easy, I’d like to challenge any of them to recreate the Patterson film, plus a few choice footprints that have been made using technology from the 1960’s.
It’s as if they want to say, “Here, we solved this pesky little mystery in 48 minutes. Here’s the guy who wore the suit.”
Okay, so if this guy did claim to wear the suit in the Patterson film, why not ask him how it was constructed? How were the arms that long? Or better yet, take him back to the spot and have him walk across the same place without the suit on and compare it to the original film? Can he recreate the stride? That would convince me.
It’s just sloppy entertainment trying to pose as journalism. There is no integrity.
I wish a credible news source would treat this topic seriously.
Bill Green’s comment has good merit, as these are the months America’s farmers harvest their crops AND many hunting seasons begin across the nation. There are thousands of armed men wandering through the fields and forests as I type. I’ve had a couple of contacts who claim that a tall cornfield, cut down to ankle length suddenly over a day, apparently angered or upset their local population of tall neighbors. Lots of howling, vocalizations, and banging on various objects gives them this opinion.
As for the cryptid that snatched the deer out of the highway worker’s pickup truck, it seems to be one of the “non-typical” creatures that may well NOT be bigfoot. I got a telephone call yesterday from a local contact who wondered if I had heard the news reports. I told her I had. Her sister lives in Wisconsin and called her to talk about all the buzz up that way going on about this report.
It seems that a bigfoot-like creature has been seen in Wisconsin many times, except it’s no bigfoot I’d want to track. It has a long, canine snout like a dog and long, pointed ears. It has a reputation for hating humans and/or any common farm or domestic animal. It has charged humans while in their vehicles. One area with many sightings of this creature is known as Bray Road and the animal has taken the name of “The Beast of Bray Road”. A Google search on this will take you to many sources of information.
There have been several similar reports of such a canine-like giant creature in Kentucky. As in Wisconsin, these types of creatures do not behave like your typical bigfoot. For one thing, they attack humans on sight and gunfire will run them off but not drop them. For a long and VERY interesting look into such creatures, visit Bart Nunnely’s excellent website Kentucky Bigfoot.
More than one hunter or driver has returned from a trip through the wild places with terrified reports–not of bigfoot–but of werewolves. While no one believes these are your everyday Lon Chaney type werewolves, they use that description as it’s the closest and best they can describe what they encountered.
They have a very nasty reputation. The highway worker in Wisconsin might have been much more lucky than he realizes.
Well, Bonehead (…heh heh…ok, I’ll get used to it), Nat Geo’s treatment is SOP for Staid Rational Level-Headed Science in the face of the evidence for the sasquatch.
i.e., run around screaming like chickens that it ain’t so; dredge up anything that will discredit the other side, researched or not; don’t deal with any solid evidence except to put it up on the screen and laugh; take anything with more than a 0.000001% chance of explaining that it ain’t so, and make that the Case Against…I could go on, but why?
When it comes to the sas, Staid Rational Level-Headed Science starts looking like the loony conspiracy theorists. No attempt to explain how every single one of the pieces of evidence could somehow be fake, or how people who have lived in the woods all their lives have no idea what the local wildlife looks like, how a bipedal ape is kind of hard to confuse with anything else….and not even the barest attempt to explain how, if all these prints are hoaxed, just the prints alone now, it’s one of the largest, best-coordinated projects in human history.
You know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see where ONE piece of sas evidence has been conclusively debunked by a skeptic. All debunking of sasquatch fakes has been done by people who believe the species exists! Makes sense; who else would know a fake when they saw one?
Thanks for these update posts like this Loren. When I just get too overwhelmed with work I occasionally miss out on a post or two over here (ok, sometimes for an entire week). But your updates and continuing coverage on any breaking events (complete with links to the original posts) always help keep me up to date.
Thanks again.
Two more recent mentions of Bigfoot in the media (both comedic):
1 – On the November 11th episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Alec Baldwin starred in a skit about two co-workers who decide to carpool but end up saying things that upset the other. One mentions that promised Christmas bonuses were “like Bigfoot; they don’t exist.” Baldwin’s character gets offended and says “Bigfoot does exist. I’ve seen him..twice.”
2 – The November issue of “Southwest Spirit,” published by Southwest Airlines, contains a number of articles by Joseph Guinto about the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. One article in particular focuses on Galatoires, the famous NO restaurant. Like the SNL skit, the article features a similiar line: “Unlike Bigfoot or a good Jessica Simpson movie, menus do exist at Galatoires.”
The Almas or Russian Wildman could turn out to be a relic group of Neanderthals. We need to solve the link between the various cryptid apes and the extinct Sivapithecus and Dryopithecus.