Sex and Bigfoot in Texas
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 30th, 2008
I recall that several years ago, I was almost burned at the stake for trying to shake up the Bigfoot establishment when I gave a talk about Sasquatch sexuality. What I simply was proposing was that if Bigfoot was an actual animal, it needed to reproduce and thus we should be as willing to research the sexual biology of Bigfoot as much as we study masturbation and homosexuality among the bonobo.
Shockingly, in today’s issue of Vanity Fair, a reporter who was at the Texas Bigfoot conference reports on a lecture that appears to have gone way beyond what I said even in my chapter, “Sex and the Single Sasquatch,” in Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (NY: Paraview Pocket – Simon and Schuster, 2003).
“Everything’s Bigfoot in Texas” by Eric Spitznagel has this to say about Dr. Henner Fahrenbach’s October 18th lecture (pictured above):
Drawing on interviews with dozens of eye-witnesses, Fahrenbach…insisted that Bigfoots enjoy wrestling, tickle fights, and, most surprisingly, gangbangs. He assured us that even a horny Sasquatch has an impeccable sense of orgy etiquette.
“When an especially large male came onto the scene,” Fahrenbach said, describing a sexual pileup involving one willing female and lots of dudes, “he didn’t try to buck the line but simply stood there and took his turn in good time.”
In the beginning of his lecture, there was some nervous giggling from those in the audience. After a while, they just stared at Fahrenbach, a few with jaws agape. Somewhere in the back row, a woman turned to her husband and whispered, “I can’t tell if he’s kidding.”
It is highly doubtful that Fahrenbach was kidding, and I’m happy to hear the serious Bigfoot researchers like Fahrenbach are being challenged enough by this issue to detail their findings and thoughts, however misunderstood by the media. Is there a change happening within hominology? I applaud Fahrenbach for swimming these shark-filled waters with me, even if reporter Spitznagel may have been unprepared to hear what was being said.
In general, the account in Vanity Fair appears to be a good, down-to-earth sharing of what happened at the Texas conference. To read more about what Spitznagel gathered from Fahrenbach, Daryl Colyer, Alton Higgins, Brian Brown, Michael Cathey, David Paulides, Jeff Meldrum, Henry Gee, Robert Swain, Craig Woolheater and Kathy Strain, please click here.
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.
“Good down-to-earth sharing of what happened”? Struck me as more of a thinly-veiled lampooning by a person with an agenda.
One inaccuracy that I feel I should address has to do with this comment: “Perhaps the most telling moment of the conference occurred during the panel discussion. Asked if they thought it was ethical to shoot and kill a Bigfoot—if only to collect DNA samples for research—every speaker, without hesitation, said no.”
As I recall, the question was not framed in terms of ethics. In my response I indicated that I was not opposed to collecting a specimen, but I said that the effort should be undertaken by a person or persons with scientific collecting permits working under the auspices of an appropriate institution.
There are other errors as well, not to mention the condescending tone of the article, which I found objectionable. Dr. Fahrenbach’s presentation certainly did not focus on bigfoot’s sex life. I’d rather see this whole cryptomundo post expunged than to draw more attention to the Vanity Fair blog.
Loren,
I do not believe the writer offered a “down-to-earth” sharing of the event. To me, it’s an example of how someone can make anything look looney if they want, especially if their agenda is to do so in the first place. Granted, bigfoot research is nowhere near being in the mainstream, but it’s quite obvious that the writer had no intention of honoring his pledge to us to cover the event in an even-handed manner and with an open mind. I suppose while he was telling us that, he was thinking: “pffft – yeah right…”
Clearly, if a person goes to a conference thinking it’s akin to a tooth-fairy conference, well, everyone there will be seen with disdain and everything said will be interpreted as being inane, thus his comment about my delivery of so-called minutiae: “grave monotone.” I’ve been described many ways, but never as speaking in a manner that is with “grave monotone.” Nevermind that his description is incorrect. But hey, it helped to convey his message that a bunch of loons are serious about something that is silly. There were quite a number of other things which he distorted and got wrong.
Oh well, I guess it makes us even, because my level of respect for most journalists, particularly snaky ones, is probably as low as the ground on which this dude apparently slithers.
While I see and may agree with your insights about how the Vanity Fair article, overall, was written, especially since the writer is discussing your presentations, with all due respect, I am not going to engage in censorship and remove this posting. Such a reaction speaks exactly to what I have experienced for a long time, every time I have brought up this subject.
BTW, I was employing the Urban Dictionary’s definition #3 of down to earth: “A grossly overused, idiotic phrase which technically means ‘one who has no imagination.'”
I’m curious about who these witnesses to the gangbang are..
I have studied over the years much about animals and one thing I can say for sure that Apes, monkeys, Chimps and Gorillas are wild animals. I would say that a Bigfoot would fall in this group as wild animal. Sex to them is not as best as I can tell like humans it is purely survival. Nature telling them to reproduce at a given time. So when a female is in heat some male animals fight to see who is top dog and others just jump in when the chance presents it’s self. I doubt that there is a line of male Bigfoot waiting there turn as it was put a “gangbang”.
You know, I’ve read/heard about Bigfoots having orgies, sex with bovines, two males having a fight to the death, several males having ‘branch breaking contests’ in order to blow off steam/establish dominance, female squatches giving birth, a group of Biggies working together to take down an elk – heck, I’d be thrilled to see one strolling past me in a state or national park!
Good evening Cryptos….
I’m saddened by the Vanity Fair article. I know many of the folks referenced or ridiculed…the author is woefully wrong…JMHO
I suspect the fine folks at TBRC will be more circumspect with their media invitations in the future.
Sorry I missed this year’s TBRC conference, I look forward to attending and greeting the folks at the next TBRC event.
live and let live…
ole bub and the dawgs
First, It is OBVIOUS that if any creature exists, it MUST engage in sexual activity. Fact, full stop, end of discussion. However, I find it ludicrous, if not scientifically irresponsible, to affirm that SPECIFIC sexual activity is engaged in without actually witnessing such behavior first hand. And by “first hand”, yes, in this instance I demand photographic proof before someone attempts to mindlessly pander to the purient interests of the baser regions of the observer’s/reader’s/listener’s brain. Why is it so difficult to keep this discussion on a sensible level? We are already dealing with a borderline-accepted cryptid here. Why muddy the waters (with the scientists we are hoping to sway to our logic and level of thinking) with such details that we have NO PROOF OF??? Interesting, yes, meaningful to our research (at THIS juncture) NO!
Did you think it would be taken as serious? Theres an old horror flick about Bigfoots sexual preferences(“He mates with anything!” was the tag line on the poster. God I miss the grindhouse days…). Thats bit of a reach seeing as how we don’t have any reliable evidence of the north american apes existance or it’s off shoots. Yes I said ape, I firmly beleave if there is a Bigfoot it’s a Woodland/Mountain Gorilla native to North America and on it’s last legs as it’s nearly extinct down to about 300- 400 population left. Then again perhaps there are more, they did find 250,000 once thought almost extinct Mountain Gorillas in Africa, if they can go unnoticed for so long so can the object of our interest. Case in point the the Wood Land Bison showing up again.
Agreed, Tropicalwolf. First things first. And we are nowhere near talking about such things.
250,000 mountain gorillas? Uh, no.
That was western lowland gorillas. 125,000. Maybe. And populations of great apes are still plummeting or critically endangered.
Bob K.,
I’ve read tons of material on bigfoot and I can’t recollect reading anything of the nature in which you describe.
Further, I agree that this gentlemen seems to speak of bigfoot orgies as if he sat in an easy chair on his back porch while the animals paraded through his yard putting on a show for him. If he’s such a good researcher, where are the pictures of this matter-o-factious bigfoot sex party?
All I know is this:
That is a photo.
It appears not to be retouched, and also appears to show what may be nesting behavior, something not too likely to have been hoaxed.
We’ve already talked about why hoaxers would be most unlikely to do breasts; and those look very unlikely to have been hoaxed.
I can’t see feet. But the animal’s pose may be the reason.
Whatever this may be, my preliminary verdict is that the hairy hominoid called “Amy Adams” deserves serious attention.
OK, raisonsofwrath, I’ll try to break it down for you.
I, like you, have [until fairly recently] voraciously devoured all I could read-in print or on the web-or view on the telly about the Big Fella.
The orgy story was something that I just learned of here. The branch breaking ‘contest’ was something that I saw on a TV special some years ago, reported by a man who lives in a trailer in an otherwise pretty undeveloped, wooded area where there is a lot of Bigfoot activity [no, I cant remember which channel was showing it, and I haven’t owned a TV for several years now, so there various networks etc. don’t readily come to mind].
The Biggie that had sex with a bovine involved a fairly long term period of sightings by an academic who had in a cabin in an isolated area. As I recall, efforts to pin down the veracity of this story have not been entirely successful, though I THINK I read that story in one of Lorens books some years ago.
The rest of what I referred to, I’ve read on the more popular Internet Bigfoot/Crypto sites or in books over the years.
In other words, while all these reports are anecdotal, they nonetheless have been gleaned from the web, books, or made for TV specials; I haven’t made any of them up.
This little sample here almost sets the tone for the whole article. A pure waste of pulp IMHO.
And yes, obviously Sasquatch, considering the most likely scenario that we’re dealing with a large primate, must use other means of reproduction OTHER than parthenogenesis, which would be rather dull come to think of it 😉
Now, taking the liberty of speculation, I assume that the birth rate of the Sasquatch population might be surprisingly low. And the gestation period is probably longer than in Homo Sapiens.
I don’t know much about “big foot”
I mostly know about the loch ness monster.