November 2, 2005
I will add to what Rick addressed in his post: You say it’s all a hoax?
What causes people to make outrageous, unsubtantiated claims regarding sightings of Bigfoot? There are 2 distinct personality types that indulge in this: the fantasy-prone type and the attention-seeking type.
Fantasy-prone types have more sensitivity to non-ordinary realities and having a higher tendency towards dissociation. This is a holdover from childhood, people who can’t make a clear distinction between what is imagined or would make a good story and what is actually true.
Attention-seeking types crave to be the center of attention and/or seek the approval of others. They may try to fulfill the wants or needs of others and what they are seeking, by trying to provide evidence, even if it is hoaxed.
Definition: Psychologists Sheryl Wilson & Theodore Barber have identified what they call a "fantasy prone personality." According to them, this small percentage of the population has retained from childhood a great deal of their ability to "live" their fantasies. What they fantasize is much more vivid and real than for most other people.
Characteristics of a "fantasy prone personality" include vivid waking dreams, susceptibility for hypnosis, possessing imaginary friends as a child, having psychic experiences, having out-of-body or floating experiences, encountering apparitions, visions or hallucinations and receipt of special messages. Many believe that reports of paranormal events or experiences are more likely from such individuals.
Source: Wilson, Sheryl C. and Theodore X. Barber: "The fantasy-prone personality: Implications for understanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsycholigical phenomena". In: Imagery, Current Theory, Research and Applications, 1983, New York: Wiley, 340-390.
John Green addressed this issue in his keynote presentation given at the International Bigfoot Symposium last month at Willow Creek. He has given me permission to quote him.
"There is nothing new about people claiming that they have been able to make detailed observations of sasquatches and know all about their appearance and behavior. People with stories like that have turned up numerous times in the past 45 years, and so far the end result has always been disappointment. If you are involved with such a person, be cautious. I have watched former colleagues get so deeply committed and then so sharply disillusioned that it soured them on the whole subject and they dropped out."
"Similarly there is nothing new about people believing they see or hear or smell evidence of sasquatch presence almost every time they go out in the woods."
"But unidentified sounds and smells are just that, unidentified sounds and smells, and shapes found in photographs that could be sasquatches could also not be. There are other agencies besides sasquatch that can take food, make beds of vegetation, break trees and branches, move rocks, pound on things or make interesting depressions in the ground."
"There have been cases where people have gone far beyond any reasonable extreme to fool someone with manufactured evidence of sasquatch presence, and also cases where people have gone pretty far to fool themselves. Try not to add to that list."
"All of us surely hope that some day some such story will be proved to be true, and at my age I tend to wish very hard that it will happen soon, but my experience offers no reason for optimism. Many years ago I decided that people who saw so much and knew so much were a long way ahead of me, so they had no need of my help and I would just await definite results. I am still waiting."
"For anyone hoping to persuade mainstream science to take on this quest and provide the expertise and resources to bring it to a conclusion, episodes of this sort do real harm. Those who take them seriously end up looking foolish, and the prospect of looking foolish is surely one of the main reasons why few of the scientists that we know have an interest in this subject do anything about it, and why there is no financial or institutional support for those that do take it up."
In the 6 1/2 years that I have been involved with Bigfoot research, I have run across many of these types. They always have incredible stories, always lacking evidence and other substantiation. The encounters that they experience, the things that they see or that happen to them, suddenly go away whenever anyone else is around to witness it. Their tales escalate, becoming more and more incredible. One thing that they all have in common is that they never pan out.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Conferences, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Hoaxes, Sasquatch