Windigo Encounter? John Reed’s Winnebago
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 31st, 2012
John Reed 39, of Lykens, says a Bigfoot is responsible for damage to his Winnebago, located on state game lands in Jefferson Twp., upper Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. Reed is a member of Lykens Valley Sasquatch Hunters.
These photographs are by Dan Geiter of The Patriot-News. They have been posted for commentary reasons and investigative insights.
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.
who knows.
i mean say we believe the guy…. okay… then what?
Is there an accompanying story? Did the bigfoot in question get tired of sleeping on leaves and want a mattress? Inquiring minds want to know!
Well, belief, or non-belief, is never the issue for me when assessing evidence of this kind. It is only about the quality of that evidence, and if it rises to a level for serious consideration. Just some photos of a broken window don’t. An audio or written account of the incident, with a f/u by an experienced and independent (i.e., doesn’t know the subject, but does have knowledge of other similar incidents and other local information) is pretty much my minimum requirement for serious consideration for inclusion in the pantheon of credible Sasquatch evidence. If that is brought here for consideration, I’d be interested in reviewing it. Until then, no.
I’d like to see some evidence that it wasn’t just a vandal at night. Nothing in the photos screams bigfoot.
I always find it a little dubious when a “sasquatch hunter” posts these close encounters.
How do any of the comment makers here calling for details on the incident expect to earn your stripes when you apparently (1) missed the previous posting uploaded by Craig on CM about this case, and absent that reading, (2) didn’t notice the link to that posting at the bottom of my posting of these photos???
Loren: right.
Furthermore.
Nobody earns any stripes thinking that anything will come of this case, at all, unless:
1. A follow-up investigation is conducted; and…
2. …the follow-up yields evidence interesting enough to…
3. ….bring researchers to the site for a long-term stay during which…
4. …other evidence is brought to light that piques the interest of the mainstream.
(Or, sure, a bigfoot trips over a researcher on Night One of stakeout, and breaks its neck right there and then. Go on. Hope for that.)
None of the cases that come up here ever go anywhere because nothing beyond some rudimentary 1. ever happens. As Ploughboy says, follow-up sufficient to rule out, or show as extremely unlikely, an alternative explanation is the absolute minimum required for this incident to make a ripple of any kind at all.
Were I a researcher, with an unlimited budget,
(if you know of one of these and haven’t gotten him on the case, I don’t know what we’re going to do with you)
I don’t think I have seen but two or three cases, and I’m being generous, in the entire six or so years I’ve been looking at Cryptomundo that, by themselves, would get me personally interested in running out there for a personal look. (That’s mainly because I’d be running around TX and OK on full-time retainer to the TBRC, but still.)
(Oh. No bigfoot organization even has a ‘budget.’ Never mind.)
Not sure in how many languages this needs to be repeated until people get it.
But:
Nothing to see here, until 1 through 4 get done, and done well.
(This one’s likely to stop at 1. But hey, no one knows ’til they try.)
And right, Ploughboy. I don’t “believe” anybody until evidence surfaces that makes the story extremely likely – if not certain – to be as that person told it.
Snap judgments based on a cursory scan contribute nothing but hot-stove-league level entertainment. (And what’s wrong with that.) Science historian William Glen put it best: “It is as if the community of scholars, like the individual mind….is virtually incapable of holding a suspended judgment.”
In this field, that ability is absolutely essential. If one is serious, one cultivates it.
DWA is funny person. I think he is a genius. He is just what this blog needs. Wow.
Lonzo:
Actually it’s Ploughboy and me. Toss in Loren. We’re a partnership of genius.
But look what’s being offered as the alternative.
[crickets]
What, exactly, are you coming here to do? It’s indecipherable.
Wouldn’t a basic police investigation (and I believe the police were called in) at least give the height, and weight of the vandal? Foot prints alone can give you a lot of information but so can the damage on the Winnebago. It is amazing what they can do these days (ignoring the fantasy BS given by CSI and other sci-fi police forensics programs). If the police come up with the idea that the assailant is a 8 foot 710lb mountain of muscle with inhuman strength it should raise some eye brows and draw in some investigators.
…but, in the view of the prevailing information vacuum, let me note that lonzo’s take, or absence of same, is very similar to that of authorities and scientists as described in encounter reports.
They say the witness saw nothing. They say the witness saw this, although they weren’t there and that’s not what the witness says they saw. From the followup to one OK report, and this is typical: “The reports were investigated by local law enforcement and wildlife officials who concluded that the subject was likely a bear, despite the fact that the descriptive profile was not of a bear.”
Or they come on with something that could be a snark, had it the zing and verve of a snark but it doesn’t. It adds nothing to the conversation, but that seems to be OK with them, because they seem to think that it is a position to have no position but wha? Just sayin’.
(Dunno, guys. Contribute something and there might not be this constant commentary on the reasons people waste their time so.)
OK, young cryptos.
Have you ever heard anyone like lonzo cite anything worth listening to from any scientist who agrees with him?
(I just want to have this in as many places as I can. It’s kinda like a camera trap that way.)
Well if he says Bigfoot did it then it must be true right? Wrong, this is without a doubt the work of the sinister and illusive black and tan Unicorn.
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
just sayin’
dconstrukt:
Well, it is a pretty extraordinary claim that the largest and most consistent body of evidence we have for anything that hasn’t been proven is the result of a random series of hallucinations, lies. misidentifications and wildcat hoaxes.
And we’ve seen NO evidence that that’s what’s happening.
Lies and myths and mistakes have a very, well, nonexistent history of behaving like biodata.
DWA.
extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
you’re twisting it up dude, and sorry… no matter what spin you put on it, it doesn’t pass the test.
This is an extraordinary claim.
So is everyone else claiming bigfoot is real. (I hope it is and tend to believe something is there)
However, there is NO extraordinary proof.
footprints? eeh. thats proof, but of what? could easily be hoaxed.
patterson/gimlin film? as amazing as that film is to watch, even to this day we are split over if its real or hoaxed.
we need EXTRAORDINARY PROOF.
we dont have it… yet. 🙂
dconstrukt:
My point is that the skeptical assertion that none of this is authentic has to be backed by a coherent theorem of how it’s all happening, which they don’t have.
And if you are entering that as your thesis, science requires you to back it up.
The proponents are doing their job.
As to this guy? Who knows what happened here? Unless somebody seriously follows up and finds something, doesn’t matter.
What makes people think that it was the Wendigo? If it really was that particular creature, they would never find him.