June 7, 2011

Nick Redfern on Monsters and Proof

Nick Redfern, blogger on our sister site UFOMystic, shares the following at his Lair of the Beasts blog.

People often ask me: When will we finally have proof for the existence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra and the absolute menagerie of additional strange beasts alleged to lurk in the darker and wilder parts of our world? But when people ask that question, what many of them they really want to know is this: When will we have proof that Bigfoot is a giant ape, and the creatures of Loch Ness represent a surviving, relic population of plesiosaurs?

And that’s the problem we have when it comes to securing proof: If Bigfoot is just a large, unclassified ape then we would surely have secured the evidence in support of such a scenario by now. It’s the same with Nessie: where are the bodies?

If there’s one thing that all of the many and varied creatures that fall under the banner of Cryptozoology have in common – whether it’s Sasquatch, lake-monsters, the aforementioned Chupacabra, werewolves, sea-serpents, Mothman, the Yeti, the Jersey Devil and countless more – it’s their overwhelming, eerie elusiveness.

Bigfoot never, ever gets hit by a car and expires on the road, smashed to a bloody pulp. There are countless reports on record where people claim to have shot at Bigfoot, only for the bullets to have no effect whatsoever. Footprints vanish in the snow, as if the creature itself has vanished too – and I do mean literally vanished.

As for the beasts of Scotland’s most famous loch: a number of significant reports exist where people have tried to photograph the beasts, only for their cameras to malfunction or for the photographs to come out fogged.

It is issues like this that, probably 15 or more years ago now, made me utterly give up on the idea that the monsters of our world are simply animals that science has yet to identify, classify, and confirm in terms of their existence. The stark reality of the situation is that there is something very strange about all the sundry strange beasts out there. Their elusiveness is taken to ridiculous levels. No other animal on the planet has the ability to remain hidden from society – and never captured or identified – in the way that Bigfoot does.

In other words, no matter whether the location is the huge forests of the Pacific Northwest, the wild waters of Scotland, the Himalayas, the El Yunque rain-forest of Puerto Rico, or the depths of the oceans, history has demonstrated that each and every single attempt to secure physical evidence of the monsters in question has ended in nothing but complete failure. Or, if some form of evidence is found, it’s never, ever proven to be 100 percent conclusive. It always languishes in a drawer marked “Maybe.”

Of course, the skeptic might state that the reason why we have demonstrably failed to find even one Bigfoot corpse, a bit of Nessie DNA, or the claw of a Chupacabra is because these entities and the rest of their motley ilk are merely borne out of folklore, mythology, camp-fire tales, hoaxing and misidentification.

I most certainly don’t dispute the fact that there are cases out there that do indeed fall into the very categories I describe directly above. But, there is also a solid body of very strong and highly credible eyewitness testimony relative to encounters with unknown animals – from just about every part of our planet.

But, I have come to believe that none of these “things” are what they appear to be. They look real. They appear flesh-and-blood-like. Yet, everything about them practically screams out: “Apparition! Phantom! Ghostly!”

One theory that I have a great deal of time for is that which suggests the majority of crypto-creatures are Tulpas. In essence, Tulpas – for those like me who believe in them, of course – are entities borne out of the depths of the human imagination. Their creation goes something like this: Tonight, when the skies are dark and the wind howls, lie down, and focus your mind on the image of a monstrous, glowing-eyed wolf. Nurture that image in your mind for days, for weeks even. Imagine the animal surfacing from the heart of your mind, and then striding right out into the real world.

The something extraordinary happens. A few weeks later, your local newspaper reports an astonishing story: In the nearby woods, someone has seen a huge wolf-like animal with blazing red eyes. The beast – the Tulpa – that you have worked so hard to create in your mind now has a semblance of quasi-reality. You have given birth to a mind-monster. And it’s on the loose, very happy that it now has a foothold – albeit a somewhat precarious and ethereal one – in our world.

And how do Tulpas sustain their existence? They feed on high-states of human emotion. Perhaps that’s why people see Bigfoot. If Bigfoot doesn’t ensure people see it – and those people are not rendered into a high state of shock, fear, anxiety or excitement – then it has nothing to mentally feed upon. The result: Its strange existence begins to unravel and it becomes less and less physical, more and more phantom-like, until it finally winks out into nothingness.

Until, that is, the unconscious, ancient affinity that we all have – and that we have all had since the first ancient humanoid called a cave his home – with spooky woods, sinister and dark lakes and lochs, mysterious jungles, and the monsters we like to think lurk within, causes us to provoke the creation of yet more such monsters. Thus, the cycle continues and a new Bigfoot, Yeti, or Chupacabra, appears.

So, back to the first paragraph of this article: How do we secure proof that crypto-creatures do exist? The stark reality of the situation is that proof may be impossible to obtain – because there may be nothing tangible to find. That doesn’t mean people aren’t seeing anything. They most assuredly are. But, I will leave you with this question: How do we secure evidence for the existence of something that may, essentially, be an externalized, ethereal life-form created by one of the strangest mysteries of all time, the human brain?Nick Redfern

Filed under Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Chupacabras, Cryptid Canids, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Jersey Devil, Lair of the Beasts, Lake Monsters, Men in Cryptozoology, Mothman, Paranormal Investigators, Sasquatch, Sea Serpents, Yeti