March 14, 2009
The northern tier of states in the USA are beginning to experience sunshine, warmer days, and perhaps that’s spring in the air.
Can Bigfoot activity be far behind?
Some of my all-time favorite “Eastern Bigfoot” cases come from Michigan.
You remember them, don’t you? One of them – known with the tag phrase “Sister Lakes” – was from Cass County, Michigan. In May and June 1964, Sister Lakes, Michigan, was the location for many reports of an 8 to 9 feet tall Bigfoot, seen by Mr. & Mrs. John Utrup, Gordon Brown, Joyce Smith, Patsy & Gail Clayton, and several others, who were berry-pickers or those who had hired them.
The other significant series I investigated back then was the Monroe incidents. The August 13, 1965 story of Monroe, Michigan, involved Christine van Acker and her mother Mrs. Ruth Owens, having a close encounter with a black 7-feet tall Bigfoot. The Bigfoot reached inside their car, giving van Acker a black eye. (I vividly remember the newspapers across the country publishing van Acker’s bruised face and an artist’s drawing of the hairy, faceless Bigfoot.)
In a 2006 discussion with Bigfoot researcher Roger Knights, he correctly pointed out to me that the event might not have been an “unprovoked assault” from the Bigfoot’s point of view, because the women’s car had “brushed past” the Bigfoot before coming to a stop.
The Sister Lakes and Monroe Monsters had the rather distinctive shaggy look often reported from these Midwestern accounts, such as with Cohomo (from Illinois) and Momo (from Missouri).
The media in Michigan appears to be fishing for new information, lately, doesn’t it? The same publication that in the past has been down this road before, have just printed a new story on this business:
That funky smell; that hairy, not-quite-human gait; that long, low call through the woods:
Bigfoot! In Michigan!
There’s a declaration that’ll have friends turning away and snickering into their hands.
Here in the Great Lakes State, as in most of the northland, if it hasn’t been shot and dragged by the foot back into town for all to see, it’s considered not quite real.
But sightings of Bigfoot persist to this day. Just last year, a hunter in Oscoda County got a whiff of something stinky, then came upon a sleeping Bigfoot. Jeez-o-Pete!
One was seen in Arenac County in 2003, another in Ogemaw in 2007 near Lupton.
The reports keep trickling in, stoking the legend of Bigfoot. For fear of ridicule, few people are willing to make those claims publicly.
Who’s to say, though, that there isn’t a 7- or 8-foot, apelike creature hiding out in our remote swamps?
A team of researchers tried to flush one out in the Upper Peninsula in recent years, to no avail. Kind of like those cable TV “reality” shows where they never manage to find a live specimen of the creature of the week.
That’s OK. If Bigfoot were common, they wouldn’t be legend, would they?
Keep that in mind the next time you’re deep in the woods and you see, smell or hear something that’s Not. Quite. Right.
Could it be Bigfoot?
Maybe.
Source for article: “Bigfoot sightings keep the legend alive in Michigan,” The Bay City Times.
Investigator Walt Andrus’ enhanced drawing of Momo.
Another image of Momo (originally from MoMo = Missouri Monster), which mirrors what the typical Michigan Monster (which I guess I’d have to coin as MiMo or Mimo, humm?) looks like.
Details about the Midwestern incidents, the Momo sighting and another drawing of Momo can be found on pages 50-51 of The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates.
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.
Filed under Bigfoot, Breaking News, Cryptotourism, CryptoZoo News, Sasquatch, Skunk Apes, Swamp Monsters, Windigo