Oregon L.O.W.F.I

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Enoch, 2010, by Autumn Williams

The comments on Williams new book Enoch have come flying in since the OSS last weekend, where the book made its debut. Autumn Williams has been accused of outright lying, trying to make a buck, slopppy — or no — research, being gullible, and (in, sigh, I’ll say it, sexist attacks) being too emotional about her own Bigfoot sighting. Another reaction by critics of Williams work is the proudly stated comment they aren’t going to read the book (!) yet they offer opinions on the book anyway.

Throughout the book, Williams asks the reader to consider the witness in relation to researcher as well as motivations in searching for Bigfoot. Consider your personal agenda in looking for Bigfoot. Why do you want to find Bigfoot? Vindication? Confirmation? Proof? Williams points out (as I have regarding UFO research) if you’ve seen a Bigfoot, you know they exist. You know they are, what they are, is a different issue. In continuing to search for Bigfoot, the question becomes: why? Do you want another sighting for personal reasons? Or to prove it to science? If the latter, that agenda needs to be very carefully thought through. If the story of Mike turns out to be a “lie” (and I’m not saying it is) those points still stand.

There were several times while reading the book I said to myself “Wow, you can replace the words ‘bigfoot research’ with ‘UFO research.” Not that Autumn addressed UFOs in her book; I don’t want to imply that she did or put words in her mouth. She has enough trouble right now; she doesn’t some Bigfoot researcher going around saying that “Williams believes Bigfoot researchers need to study UFOs” or some other misinterpreted nonsense. The parallels I see in her work to UFO research are mine, and I think fellow saucer heads would see those parallels if they read the book.

Bigfoot or UFOs, whichever world you find yourself in — and some of us find ourselves in both — the reasons why we haven’t found “The Really Big Answer” has to do with a mindset, a world view, a philosophy of research that, ironically, so many researchers don’t get. Until that changes, nothing else will.

Except for the witnesses. If you’re a Bigfoot witness, you don’t need proof; you’ve seen a Sasquatch. Who are you going to prove it to, and why? Williams asks this question many times. We have to know ourselves before we go out there in the field. The same, in many ways, is true in UFO Land. I’m a witness, many times over. Since childhood. I know they exist. I know weird things happen related to them. I don’t know what they are. But they are. I don’t have proof of any UFO encounter I’ve had. None. No photos, no scrap of metal from a flying saucer, no artifact, no dead body of an alien. Nothing. “Just” my story. If that’s not good enough for some, that’s tough. I’m not going to go away or shut up. I’m going to continue to explore. Reasons for my writing and researching UFOs and related topics vary and are no doubt complicated at times, but I’m not out to prove anything. Part of my journey is to share, and have others feel safe and respected in sharing their stories with myself and others.

Of course, with UFOs we’re talking about machines and I don’t mean to compare the vitally important need to protect Bigfoot at all costs with a nuts and bolts flying saucer. As to aliens; whatever, whoever, those are… here we start to veer off into another area. The point is, witnesses are valuable and need to be treated not only with respect, but the power shift between researcher and witness needs to change.

These are the points both UFO and Bigfoot researchers need to understand if we’re to “get anywhere” or rather, to get somewhere different. Researchers need to understand their own agendas and intent. Witnesses need to be respected and listened to. Some researchers are also witnesses; how does that affect “research?”

As far as the relationship between witness and researcher and their roles, what Autumn is saying isn’t new or even radical. It is, apparently, for a lot Bigfoot researchers out there but in other fields, say Folklore, (my subject in college, including grad school,) this dynamic between the “informant” (witness) and the interviewer/researcher was an important part of our training; the issue couldn’t be discussed enough. Responsibility of researcher, responses to witnesses, response of the researcher to the witnesses responses to her, … it’s an ever deepening and growing relationship. Growing, morphing, shifting. “Research” doesn’t always have to start and stop with a plaster cast, or a UFO sighting report on paper.

(A few years ago, Lisa Shiel’s Backyard Bigfoot: The True Story of Stick Signs, UFOs and the Sasquatch came out. Shiel, also a researcher as well as a witness, has similar things to say, though in very different ways, as Williams. I’m not suggesting Williams and Shiel’s books are interchangeable, just that both books were written by researchers/authors, and both offer new perspectives on Bigfoot research.)

Enoch, aside from fascinating looks into the “Skunk ape” culture from Mike’s interactions with them, is also about the nature of research and the witness; a new paradigm in the search.

Autumn Williams has really put herself out there by publishing this book. Why would she do such a thing unless she had the courage of her convictions? Publishing Enoch was a brave thing for her to do, and I thank her for choosing to do so.

I started a new blog: Animal Forteana.

New York City is a long way from Eugene, Oregon, but this story has my interest for these reasons: it’s related to my earlier post about coyotes seen in residential areas in Newport, Oregon, on the coast (literally, coyotes on the beach), and I’m interested in stories of wild animals interfacing with humans, or, vice versa.

Also, it seems that in the past few years, stories of known animals — meaning, mundane, recognizable creatures as compared to unknown, anomalous, cryptid types — behaving more boldly as well as more strangely, have increased. I noticed this pattern about ten, twelve years ago. For some reason I started collecting news clippings and stories of strange animal behaviors. When I told one of my professors about this he agreed it was certainly interesting, but wanted to know so what; what was I going to do with these stories, why was I collecting them? “Because they’re cool and weird” wasn’t enough of a motivation. Well, I still don’t know what I want to do with these stories, except to share them, for now.

So, we have coyotes in New York city. Part of my fascination of stories like this is the juxtaposition of humans, especially in places so seemingly out of touch with “the wild,” even though “the wild,” may be less than fifty miles away. Well dressed people eating perfect food in lovely places, and two blocks away are coyotes. Or deer, or bear or wolverines or cougars or . . .

Even in places not so la de dah as New York City, like Newport, Oregon, the juxtaposition still fascinates. Newport is a funky yet somewhat large beach town, (not a criticism) where, however, “gentrification” is going on in some areas. Expensive condos and too too cute and over priced shops are shoved up against older and poorer homes, often in disrepair. And just a few miles away from the touristy beach spots are the rural areas; some poor, some with one way glass windows wrapping around beautiful homes atop hills, and some in between. Add to this the presence of animals coming down from the hills, or out of the forests, onto the boardwalks and surrounding neighborhoods seems like both poetic justice in some ways, as well as tragic for the animals. Obviously their presence is a sign of what’s happening to their environment and the effect that has on the animals.

Well that was gloomy. I didn’t intend it to turn out that way, it just did. Maybe it’s because right now it’s a dark, rainy, windy cold day here in Oregon. Not at all unusual for western Oregon, true. . .

So, back to the coyotes in New York. This recent news items tells about a captured coyote in the city: Not wily enough: Cops corral roving Tribeca coyote along West Side Highway.

New York’s runaway coyote has been corralled.

The elusive animal was finally nabbed in Tribeca on Thursday after cops found it in a parking lot near the West Side Highway.

“He didn’t seem too Wily by the time we found him,” said Detective James Coll, who collared the coyote with Detective Robert Mirfield.

Limo driver Ralph Rothstein, 63, who witnessed the capture, said the creature “had one ear up and one ear down, like a cartoon character, and didn’t know which way to go.

“I was reading about it earlier in the day then, all of a sudden, I see the coyote and I couldn’t believe it…It looked scared,” he added.

Naturally the poor thing was scared! Fortunately the coyote is in the hands of animal caretakers and will be released into the wild. Other coyotes have been seen — and captured — in New York City over the last five years or so.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/03/25/2010-03-25_not_wiley_enough_cops_corral_roving_tribeca_coyote_along_west_side_highway.html#ixzz0jIfHWU3N

Thanks go to the blog piglipstick, where I acknowledge lifting items from on a daily basis. (If you haven’t visited piglipstick be sure you do so.)

So, piglipstick alerts us to an item out of Medford, Oregon, courtesy of Information Liberation:

Oregon Officials Consult Precogs, Arrest Man for Bloody Shooting Spree That Killed Four Next Week

Yes, you read that right: “that killled four next week.” How could that happen, you ask? Have we discovered time travel? Not yet, but various law agencies got together and decided a “recently laid-off employee” from the Oregon Dept. of Transportation was “disgruntled” enough to cause suspicion. The man had bought three guns and this, combined with his termination and the “red flags” raised by co-workers, led authorities to arrest the man (on exactly what charges?) and send him off for a psych eval. As one law enforcement spokesperson said:

“Instead of being reactive, we took a proactive approach.”

As the article comments, maybe this man was indeed ready to do something horrendous, and possibly lives were saved. The obvious shouldn’t have to be stated, but here it goes. As pointed out in the Information Liberation piece:

But there’s a phrase we use to describe the sort of society where the police can come into your home, arrest you, commit you to a mental facility, and confiscate your legally-obtained property on no more than a hunch that you might commit some crime in the near future.

Echoes of Hitchcock and owl-as-alien-guide-to-liminal-experiences, Strange Owl Groups & CWD Found In MO Deer Short-Eared Owls By The Hundreds,
by Larry Dablemont on Rense.com reports strange owl sightings in Greenfield, Mo. Dablemont hosts a local nature radio program and writes he’s never heard of owls congregating in large numbers, and in daylight. Very weird. Dablemont writes:

A couple of weeks ago a gentleman from Greenfield, Mo. called in, and identified himself as Faren Fite. I thought for a moment it was some kind of hoax call, because he said he had seen around 200 owls the day before in one small area between Greenfield and Lockwood. He said that on one corral fence there were more than thirty in a group!

Photos of the owls here.

It was a huge group of short-eared owls, a species a little bit like the barred owl in size and appearance. But in habit, they are much different than most of the owls we are accustomed to hearing and seeing in the Ozarks. They have a mean look to them, with ornery-looking bright yellow eyes rather than the brown eyes the barred owl has. And the face is much different, with a pronounced circle of feathers, contrasting white and dark brown, and two little feather patches referred to as “ears”, which are much like the horns on a horned owl.

Dablemort also reports on cases of Chronic Wasting Disease, which, sadly and spookily, is being found in deer and other wildlife in the U.S:

Finally, mad-deer disease, or Chronic Wasting Disease, has come to Missouri, right where I predicted it would first be found, in one of those deer pens where they try to raise giant antlers by feeding an herbivorous creature a diet that includes meat by-products

Authorities deny there is anything harmful in CWD (well, to humans anyway, apparently the animals don’t count.)

Strange Planet has a good post about the recent earthquakes, including yesterday’s 8.8 earthquake in Chile. As Strange Planet points out:

 An 8.8 compared to Japan’s 7.0 is not a quake 1.8 times the intensity, as many of you know. It’s exponentially horrific. A 7.1 is ten times the power of a 7.0, a 7.2 is ten times a 7.1, and so on.

When the sea lions left the San Fransico area, I posted that they left for a reason, and I said that they left because of soon to be witnesses earthquakes. Strange Planet also wonders, as I did last night when I heard the news, if the OCR attack on his trainer wasn’t in some ways due to the earthquakes. Giant squid washing up on beaches all up and down the coast, and other unusual marine life behaviors — we’ve been witnessing this recently. A combination of factors, including global warming/climate changes, which the earthquakes are a part of.

As to the orca Tilkumat and the death of his trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld and that tragedy, part of that tragedy is that whales and other creatures (big cats, elephants, etc.) are kept in captivity in the first place. Strange Planet comments:

 Several days ago, there’s the sad incident at Sea World in Orlando, Florida, where a trainer was killed by a 12,000lb. OCR. Reps for the park called it a deadly misstep on the trainer’s part, leaving her ponytail wagging in the water, signaling the animal to seize it as a ‘toy’. Could be. Could also be that he wants out of this bathtub and back into the wild, and that he also sensed something out there. Because if you remember, in the interviews that followed with the staff, they said all of the animals were behaving strangely, were agitated, and just weren’t performing as they know how. There’s something deeper there. [italics mine]

There certainly is “something deeper there.”

The tragic end of Keiko (the orca known as “Free Willy” and kept at the Newport, Oregon aquarium until his release into the ocean) is not something I want to see happen again. I don’t know if releasing Tilikum the orca (I will not use the exploitive and titillating term “killer whale”) back to the ocean is the right thing to do. Maybe it is, I honestly don’t know. A start to prevent these tragedies, and, to simply prevent the imprisonment of sentient beings like orcas in the first place, is to make it illegal to keep these creatures in captivity.

As to the events occurring now, local news (Eugene, Oregon, about 50 miles inland) tells us of tsunami warnings on the Oregon coast because of the earthquakes in Chile and Japan. According to the KEZI news website:

The National Weather Service has issued a tsunami advisory for the Oregon coastal area.  Coastal residents are advised to stay out of the water, off the beach, and away from harbors and marinas.

This is not a watch or warning. No significant coastal flooding is expected to  be produced by this wave.  However, some areas of the coast could experience dangerous currents and surges in harbors and bays due to this tsunami. [a href=”http://kezi.com/news/local/164262”> Massive Quake Prompts Tsunami Advisory For Oregon Coast

I heard about the earthquake in Chile from Ian Punnett on C2C. He said there weren’t any details but that the news was, an 8.5 (at the time, that’s what was reported; today’s paper said it was 8.8) earthquake in Chile. So I turned on the TV, with our roughly 250 channels, and I couldn’t find one news program. 11:30ish pm, and not one news program. I mean news, like the old CNN, where you had simple, straight forward information coming in about what was going on in the world. What I found were “news” shows having to do with entertainment, news shows, of a sort, with a host or two but clearly the show was about them, and what they wanted to focus on, which seemed mostly to be the tragedy at SeaWorld. The most news I got was from the Weather Channel.

In an odd bit of juxtapositioning, the following item was in today’s local news about Oregon’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport: State OKs money for Oregon marine mammal center:

Assuming Gov. Ted Kulongoski signs the bill, researchers at Hatfield hope that amount will be enough to win $16 million in federal funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, also called NIST. Combined, that would be $25 million, enough to build the new center.

“This would establish a unique center, a university-based center for the study of marine mammals,” said Scott Baker, associate director of the Marine Mammal Institute. “It would be the largest in the U.S.

“It will give us the unique capacity to advance technology for the study of and protection of marine mammals, including satellite tagging, advanced studies of life history and analyses of genetics diversity.”

As with the people of Haiti, my prayers and thoughts go to those in Chile as well.

Bob Welch is a columnist for the Register-Guard, Eugene-Springfield area’s local newspaper. It’s a mainstream column; Welch likes sports a whole lot, and writes about so-called human interest type stories in the area. He isn’t out there at all, (I remember a column he wrote some years ago where he made insipid fun of Bigfoot witnesses, yuck yuck) so it’s that kind of thing.

He had an little moment of synchronicty the other day which inspired him to ask readers to share their interesting odd moments involving synchronicty.(Mysterious, magical or just weird? ) In his recent column Mysterious, eerie events remembered
he shares some of those responses. My favorites: the story about feral cats in Hawaii, and the coach in Harrisburg who had a ghostly encounter with his mother.

Not to pick on Welch (though I’m not a fan particularly) but in another column, as well as a very different kind of column, he writes about a wild game feast in Potluck’s food is, well, a little wild At no point during the article does he address the ethical issues; it’s simply a golly gee kind of piece about, in a surreal juxtaposition, a local country church’s annual game meat fest:

The setting is beautiful, quintessential Americana, a white church steeple rising into the sky amid trees, fields and rolling hills about five miles northwest of Monroe.

The dress is primarily, well, camouflage.

And the décor is what I’d call country fish & game: guns, pelts, poles, antlers, traps, duck decoys and two giant elk mounts, including emcee Scott Ballard’s world-record “8 by 9” Roosevelt elk — eight points on one side of the rack, nine on the other.

After the prayer, we head through the kitchen to go through the potluck line.

The whole scene is bizarre; prayer, camouflage, dead animals on the walls as well as on plates, and the contrast between the country and the gun toting hunters.

Among the food offered: bear, bison, wild cow soup, Nutria, elk, and lemon pepper cougar. And among the door prizes for the event: waterproof Bibles.

Kym Pokorny, for the Oregonian, makes it clear in her article Mix of gardens and guns is, well, just wrong she isn’t against guns, exactly, but finds the combination of guns and gardens bizarre. I concur.

It feels surreal to peruse the magazine’s Web site. The “About Us” section says, “Garden & Gun” is a Southern lifestyle magazine that’s all about the magic of the new South – the sporting culture, the food, the music, the art, the literature, the people, and the ideas. It espouses a strong conservation ethic that grows out of its connection to the land, and it reveals the beauty of the South.”


Well, hmmm. I guess the gun part comes with the sporting culture. I can’t really see bloody carcasses as part of the beauty of anything, but, then, that’s me. And I don’t really think they run photos of any dead things.

The mix of stories is weird: a guy in Atlanta who grows 43 different varieties of boxwood; letting your wife choose your “hard-core gun dog” (that’s wrong on so many levels); farmers and environmentalists joining forces to bring back the bison; a company that rebuilds shotguns.

More here.

Local columnist Bob Welch, who writes for the Eugene, Oregon paper The Register-Guard has an article in today’s paper about “Lawrence of Florence,” actually two camels,  in the coastal town of Florence, Oregon. (Florence is roughly fifty miles from where I live in Eugene.)

Welch often answers queries from people in the area about local history; recently someone  asked about camel rides on the coast back in the 1970s though Welch writes that there were two camels  there from 1983 to 1985.

A California couple bought over a hundred acres on the coast, some of it just sand, and that was their inspiration for the camel.  Welch reports that there were camel rides hired for entertainment from a California animal for hire entity: Movieland Animals, complete with “caretakers.”  For under $2.00 people could ride a camel on the beach.The following comment by a woman who remembers the camel rides captures the whole flavor of the coastal side show:

The size of the space was a bit disappointing; it was rather small and just off the highway. The camel looked exhausted. A guide walked the camel with a child on top around maybe a 30-foot-wide circle. I recall feeling the experience was anti-climactic.”

What ended the camel rides didn’t seem to be concern for the exploitive  nature of the coastal offering, but a neighbor who was upset with the amount of traffic caused by the camel attraction.

I wonder what happened to those camels. . .

About two weeks ago news items appeared about mysterious cattle and chicken killings in Virginiashowed up in the on-line Fortean realm.

Out west, in the remote area of eastern Oregon, cattle rustling is a major problem for ranchers and law enforcement. These cattle rustlers know what they’re doing; really quite an endevour given the remote and inhospitable area. See
Modern-day cattle rustlers hit ranches in southeast Oregon for article. Really something to know that the area they’re talking about is the size of Conneticut and Rhode Island combined, with a human population of 600. The article says that the rustlers know the area well; outsiders could never navigate, and so quickly.

Cattle mutilations have made the mainstream news the other day: Creepy string of calf mutilations mystify Colorado rancher, police This item seems to be making all the rounds; it appeared in our local paper, Eugene’s Register Guard, Friday.

The dead calves had their skins peeled back and organs cleared from the rib cage. One calf had its tongue removed.

But rancher Manuel Sanchez has found no signs of human attackers, such as footprints or ATV tracks. And there are no signs of an animal attack by a coyote or mountain lion. Usually predators leave pools or blood or drag marks from carrying away the livestock.

“There’s nothing really to go by,” said Sanchez, who’s ranched for nearly 50 years. “I can’t figure it out.”

Colorado’s San Luis Valley has been the home of supreme high strangeness for literally hundreds of years. Cattle mutilations, UFOs, even Bigfoot, and a whole lot of other Fortean and weird events. Paranormal researcher Chris O’Brien has written three books on the strange happenings in the area in his “Haunted Valley” series: Secrets of the Mysterious Valley, Mysterious Valley, and Enter the Valley. (O’Brien’s Stalking the Tricksters: Shapeshifters, Skinwalkers, Dark Adepts and 2012 is his recent work, released about a month or so back.)

O’Brien isn’t mentioned in the news item but Chuck Zukowski of UFOnut.com is. On Zukowski’s site there is a report, along with graphic photos, of the Colorado mutilations.

In the news item references are made to UFOs and aliens and the odd history of the place:

When something like this happens, there’s always talk of UFO’s and alien visits. Neither believe in that, either.

But some may look upward for an explanation. The San Luis Valley is a place where an unexplained horse mutilation maintains celebrity status 40 years after its death because of mysterious circumstances. It also has a UFO watchtower sitting on the roadside near Hooper.

Interesting this item made it into the national news stream, along with references to UFOs.