Oregon L.O.W.F.I

Posts Tagged ‘cryptozoology’

From the BFRO, (and Sharon Lee, via FB) a clip of a fishing/rapids trip on the beautiful McKenzie River from 2008. The person filming this, and the people fishing, were not invovled in any BF expedition at all; the BF — if it IS a BF — appears very briefly on the back for just a moment, and it’s clear its presence went unnoticed by everyone.

I’m not a photo image experty by an means, but it looks like a BF on the bank, until you crop and move in and then it looks like a backpacker. Maybe, heh…

This by way of Cliff Barackman,’s North American Bigfoot on Bigfoot author Thom Powell (The Locals.) Thom has written an article on offensive geographical place names in Oregon (a hot topic here) and a possible connection “between the word “squaw” and sasquatches.”  Both Cliff and Thom were speakers at the Oregon Sasquatch Symposium in June.

Jim and I will be guests on Future Theater, Nancy and Bill Birnes podcast, airs 6:00 pm EST.

I’ve been keeping an animal journal, which I posted about on Women Of Esoterica awhile back. My intent was to write about animals, but I soon realized that “animal” means a lot of things other than the expected. Last night I was writing in my journal about cryptids, shape shifters, mixed energies, inter-dimensional beings…I’m pretty sure this will turn into something. I had the following dream after writing in my journal last night:

I go see about some land for sale here in Oregon. “39.4″ acres for incredibly cheap. I go alone; arriving, there is a man who’s clearly some kind of guard to this little town, which is very odd. He lets me by. He’s not armed or even threatening, but it is … odd. I continue on, meeting up with a pleasant man in his early forties, maybe. Friendly person, telling me all about the property. We’re standing in the middle of a highway. No people around or cars, out in the country. What’s extremely weird is that, as soon as I passed the “guard” earlier, the landscape changed radically. Suddenly, I am surrounded by high, sharp, jutting mountains covered in snow, it’s cold, the water (ocean? lake?) on one side of the highway, surrounded by these very high and close mountains, is grey and choppy. I’m a little nervous, the water is almost up to the road. And on the other side of the highway, across from the water and mountains, the land just goes straight up, very steep. I’m told this is “Wyoming-Idaho” in Oregon. I say, in the dream, (a lucid moment?) that there’s no such thing, and what is Wyoming doing in Oregon?! The man thinks that’s funny.

He continues telling me bout the land, that’s it’s a great deal (it is), it’s all just land, but one thing to be aware: there are poachers that “encroach on the edges,” as he puts it. I’ll have to deal with them as I see fit, he says.

As we’re talking, suddenly a man in what is obviously a very bad, very cheap Bigfoot costume, (light grey in color) steps out onto the road. The man says, in a mock frightened tone, “Oh, look, look! It’s Bigfoot! Bigfoot is here!” and they both crack up. The guy in the BF suit goofs around, stomping and clowning, and then takes off.

All this time I am not amused, and am just looking at them. The man says to me,”You don’t think that’s funny?” and I’m thinking to myself, what a maroon, another joker, and a Bigfoot debunker. Great. But I’m not going to tell him about my opinions on Bigfoot, or anything else.

Then the man says to me, very seriously, “You know, around here, we all know Bigfoot exists. Anyone who’s ever spent any time in the country around here knows damn well Bigfoot exists. You can’t judge people on things like having fun.”

Well okay then, I think. Interesting. So back to the land issue, but I tell him that I don’t like the snow, or mountains, and I still don’t like this idea of “Wyoming” being in Idaho-Oregon, and on the west coast to boot. It’s all very suspicious. And why are all the townspeople, who I know are all around us, watching us, hidden? It’s not that they’re sinister or of ill intent but it is weird and I’m uncomfortable.

The man says to me, “You didn’t think the property was this place, did you? Oh no, it’s not like this at all, it’s back behind here,” and he waves his hands around, indicating that the land is even further, and not snowy or mountainous.

I tell him I’ll think about it, and tell him I have to leave. He stays there, I’m a little put out he’s letting me go off on my own, after all, I don’t know my way around. He stays put on the highway, as if he’s under some type of interdiction to stay in that place. I find my way though and back to the guard, who also seems amused that I’m here. He doesn’t help me with directions either, but I figure it out.

The Eugene Weekly is a free “alternative” paper that’s been around for many years. Eons ago it was called What’s Happening but they changed the name to get rid of that PNW hippie vibe.

Writer Rick Levin wrote a fairly in depth article on the Oregon Sasquatch Symposium. It’s always good to see articles on fringe topics. At the same time, in my personal non-scientific observations, the liberal/left often mocks and rejects topics like this. Secular humanism, or who knows. There’s exceptions of course, in fact, a local UFO group that seems to be more concerned with energy and disclosure than UFOs and related topics — always bringing it back around to a political agenda I still haven’t figured out — are, for the most part, liberal leaning. It’s just something I’ve noticed; that usually, liberals just don’t take things like this seriously, make fun of New Age stuff, and so on. I know, I make fun of New Age stuff, (and yeah, I’m a left leaning hippie) but that’s my issue. I’m also a bit New Agey, so it’s my way of coping with my own crystal crunching nature.

Levin acknowledges listening to Coast to Coast every night, yet he’s a non-believer in esoteric and fringe subjects. And, he has a decidedly classist view of the Coast to Coast audience:

I’ve always pictured the generic caller as looking like a backcountry cross between Ted Nugent and Zippy the Pinhead, and paranoid to the point of psychosis. It’s a grossly unfair portrait, I know, but there it is.

When people say that however, after they’ve listened to several witness accounts, I always want to ask them: “But, what did you think of those stories?” Do you think the witness is a liar? A fool? Mistaking a bear for a Bigfoot? Been out in the woods too long? What? The same question can be asked of the UFO skeptic: okay, after hearing the stories of a dozen or more people, “What do you think of them?”

Not what do you think in general, or anything else, but what’s your direct response to the witness and his or her account?

I don’t think he can get to that point. He has, he writes, been given plenty of information on Bigfoot over the years, but he’s not buying. He didn’t believe in Santa Claus as a child, he says, and he doesn’t do Bigfoot today:

A lot of amateur sasquatch research employs a forced, mangled scientific jargon that sounds silly, and there are conclusions drawn that make a Swiss cheese of logic. And the more touchy-feely bigfoot writing heaps on the nativist hoo-haw and New Age fluff like so much whipped cream spooned atop the honky appropriation of indigenous myth.

He prefers to by-pass witness accounts, comparing Bigfoot encounters to Biblical accounts:

That said, it’s just as difficult to prove, scientifically speaking, the reality of burning bushes, parted seas, 40-day floods and a six-day work week where God cooked up heaven and earth, yet hoards of people continue to believe these things heart and soul. As both legend and contested reality, the real source of bigfoot’s appeal, like the source of the Bible’s appeal, is anecdotal — as a fable filled with wonder, suspense and local color, all ringed with a halo of otherworldliness.

“The real source of Bigfoot’s appeal…?” His opinion but speak for yourself. I’ve never seen a Bigfoot but I choose to believe the people I know and trust, who’ve chosen to share with me their stories of seeing a Sasquatch. Simple. Like most skeptics, whether it’s UFOs or what, they do this weird dance thing around the topic they reject. They don’t think much of it, often don’t know much about it, certainly aren’t of the opinion it exists, yet they have all kinds of ideas about what it is, means, represents, symbolizes, is capable of . . .

Levin gives a good account of Dave Rodriquez’s encounters, and yet, after describing those encounters, Levin doesn’t stop to think about those sightings. Did he think Rodriquez was lying? Mistaken? No, it seems Levin projects much; as with his comparison of the Bible and folklore to Bigfoot encounters, he offers his reasons why people tell stories about seeing Bigfoot:

At the Oregon Sasquatch Symposium, people told stories in order to prove that something else lives despite mountains of doubt and a lack of palpable proof, which is something akin to the religious impulse compelling converts to proselytize.

It’s just a loop; “mountains of doubt” disappear once you’ve seen a Bigfoot.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Levin. He does treat the speakers and the conference with respect, which is appreciated, and is honest in his feelings. And he ends by saying … well, read it for yourself.

Jaime Avalos, Bigfoot Tracker my latest Trickster’s Realm column for Binnall of America. (BoA). Avalos was one of the presenters at the Oregon Sasquatch Symposium in Eugene a couple of weekends ago.

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.

Oregon Sasquatch Symposium
Saturday, June 19 at 9:00 am
Sunday, June 20 at 5:00 pm
Eugene, Oregon –  Lane Community College Campus

Autumn Williams will be the keynote speaker. See here for Autumn’s excellent blog post about the symposium, her thoughts on witnesses and BF and her new book… (in fact, her whole site is the best in the field, I think, for it contains data, research, as well as an open minded approach to various Bigfoot theories…)

Toby Johnson is the one behind all this, and it seems like he’s doing a fantastic job!

Visit the Symposium site for more info.

See you there!

This weekend is the McMinnville UFO Fest, which honors the 1950 Trent UFO sighting. This year’s speakers include Colin Andrews and Travis Walton.

In June, there will be the first annual Bigfoot conference in these parts in Eugene; the Annual Oregon Sasquatch Symposium. A great line-up of speakers; Autumn Williams, Sali Shepherd Wolford, and many more. Find out more here.

I’ll be attending both of course!