February 21, 2007

Bigfoot and High Strangeness

Cryptomundo reader r.lee has given me permission to repost this article concerning the Bigfoot/UFO enigma. This topic spawned quite the discussion here on Cryptomundo:

Of course, there are those who say Bigfoot is high strangeness, all on its own, that to say “Bigfoot and High Strangeness” is redundant.

When it comes to encounters of Bigfoot and UFOs, or telepathic communications with Bigfoot, or stories of Bigfoot appearing and disappearing — and bi-locating, even — the majority of UFO and Bigfoot researchers don’t want anything to do with it.

The combination causes great gnashing of teeth, at the very least. Serious, flesh and blood Bigfoot researchers don’t have any patience with the subject. Many a Bigfoot on-line forum has kicked off members who even bring up the topic.

When I first came upon these tales, of Bigfoot having some connection with UFOs, and more, I thought it was a joke. Literally. The first thing I came across was an article in, I think, UFO Magazine many many years ago. I have it somewhere in my files but no idea where. But I kept coming across these stories, and as wild, weird, and bizarre as they seemed, there was a consistency, and there were enough of them, by enough people, to support a pattern.

There are two stories of this type right here in my state of Oregon. (Shameless plug, my book on this topic will be out in e-book form very soon.)

This is a fascinating topic, and there are standard legends that have been written about by researchers. One theory is that these ‘Bigfoot’ are not the flesh and blood Bigfoot, but OOP (out of place) creatures; Hairy Bipeds, phantom creatures, not to be confused with “real” Bigfoot. Others say they’re one and the same.

And while there are individuals who write about their personal experiences with these creatures, there still isn’t much research going on regarding this phenomena. On the one hand, it seems too tired, too old. Tales of weird, high strangeness Hairy Biped encounters, like the Lake Worth Monster, MoMo, and others are decades old. They’ve become a part of the paranormal/anomalous lore, but they also seem quaint to some, and no longer a viable subject. (Indeed, my own book focuses on two events going back over 40 years.)

UFO researchers have enough on their hands. In many ways UFOlogy is decompartmentalized. It has to be; there is so much out there, so many aspects to the phenomena, that to do good research each individual usually has to choose a few areas (if that many) to focus on. Bigfoot researchers already have points against them before they’ve even started out; after all, they’re after Bigfoot. Maintaining credibility is tough enough. Why strain the acceptance factor by seriously considering UFOs, telepathy and other weirdness? And look at the recent news concerning Dr. Jeff Meldrum at Idaho State University. His own academic and scientific community wants him ousted (nice work there Big Science Guys.) Can you imagine what things would be like if Meldrum started in about UFOs, esp, and materializing Bigfoot?

And then too, not all Bigfoot researchers believe in any of the other stuff anyway.

But there is evidence to suggest that there is something else occurring in many Bigfoot cases. It has been for a long time, and continues.

There are many accounts of Bigfoot (and similar creatures in other countries, such as the Yowie in Australia, etc.) with red glowing eyes, white haired (or furred) Bigfoot, apparitional Bigfoot, UFOs and Bigfoot, etc. in Janet and Colin Bord’s Bigfoot Casebook.

Mary Green, Jack Lapseritis, Lisa Shiel to name just a few have written about their experiences with this “high strangeness” type of Bigfoot that go beyond merely a flesh and blood “animal.” Researcher Joe Fex has done a lot of work in this subject, an area where “mainstream cryptozoology” won’t go. That includes many “mainstream” cryptid-ologists. (sorry for the clumsy word coining.) Fex’s accounts are definitely on the bizarre side, and yet…that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And Kelli, from the White Wolf website, has told me she and her husband frequently see Sasquatch in relation to UFOs and many other odd things and entities on their remote Eastern Washington property.

One theory that explains these strange Bigfoot-UFO-High Strangeness events is the idea of vortexes. Many remote (and some not so remote) areas are full of events like this; some without Bigfoot but leaning more to UFO and other weird activity, others with less UFO but more Bigfoot and OOP creatures, some with both. In any case, it’s clear that some sort of opening, some sort of portal, vortex, some way exists that either causes these beings and objects to move from one place to another, or possibility, creates these things. I’m not sure what I think of this yet myself, but it’s a start.

Whatever these weird things are; phantoms, faeries, inter-dimensional beings, aliens, Ultra terrestrials, human shape shifters, or even ‘flesh and blood” Bigfoot, these events occur, as a rich body of lore tells us.

Clearly there is a rich and wonderfully weird area here to be researched, and discussed openly. But like the topic of “alien” abductions in its early days, it’s a cause of embarrassment for many within the field, let alone outside it.

It’s too bad, because a lot can be learned from these events. I understand the difficulty in accepting these encounters as literally occurring, but occur they do.— r.lee

Lake Worth Monster image used with the permission of Sallie Ann Clarke.

Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptozoology, Eyewitness Accounts, Out of Place, Sasquatch