"Bigfoot" Topic

Bigfoot is a hoax for the fantasy world of the credulous. In the real world, Batboy killed them all off years ago.

People believe in God yet won't believe in Aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie et al – why? There is no proof of any of them, yet one dominates people lives, and these same people will mock others or state catergorically they (whichever one) cannot nor do not exist. It's quite amusing really. Personally I am quite happy to believe any of them could exist or perhaps do, but there is not one single shred of proof to prove they do, nor is there enough proof to prove they don't. At least people haven't fought wars in the name of bigfoot against the unbelievers, or worse the heretics who believe in footbig! :-)

One had better marketing than the others?

If bigfoot is real, he's in violation of US census laws and subject to imprisonment for up to ten years. So, he'd better find himself a good lawyer.

One had better marketing than the others?

dammit. forgot about the marketing – doh! ;-)

TMP link

Hitchen's Razor covers this perfectly.

Evidence?

link

kentuckybigfoot.com/audio.htm

People believe in God yet won't believe in Aliens, Bigfoot, Nessie

God's got a book out. Nessie, Bigfoot and Space Aliens, not so much.

Evidence?

Sorry, Pyrate Captain, but no. Sightings in Illinois and sounds in Kentucky aren't evidence. Evidence is a body, dead or alive. Nothing else. Period.

There is far more evidence for 2-million-year-old hominids than there is for Bigfoot. That should tell you something.

'God's got a book out. Nessie, Bigfoot and Space Aliens, not so much.'

LOL – yeh sure, cos he wrote it didn't he! I do hope that you were not being serious! LMAO

He didn't write it. But He inspired those who did.

And God, other than during the Incarnation as Jesus Christ, is not a physical being, as these others supposedly are. Not being physical, it would be hard to find physical evidence of His existence.

Bigfoot, nessie, aliens, etc… all physical beings supposedly amongst us. Yet no physical evidence exists.

Leeeeet's not bring religion into this. No one will be happy with the results.

One word:

COELECANTH

Of course it really didn't survive extinction until one was found.

Sorry JPat. Not a very convincing defense.

No offense, of course.

Aliens ought to learn to fly those space ships. They keep crashing them in the desert. The insurance has to be out of this world!

What does a bigfoot big foot look like? TMP link
and the weird sounds attributed to bigfoot, could they be YouTube link

'And God, other than during the Incarnation as Jesus Christ, is not a physical being, as these others supposedly are. Not being physical, it would be hard to find physical evidence of His existence.'

It's hard to find ANY evidence of his (or any other mythical being's) existence – not just some rumours from a bygone age that are still clinging to as being real.
I'm just saying if people are happy to believe in one myth (God or gods) why do they question other people's beliefs – be it Nessie, bigfoot, aliens or the little house goblins that steal your socks. However, the former will irrationally argue their point and tell you it can be proved. I'm not having a dig at religion or people who believe in God, Allah, the great pumpkin or whatever, but for these people to ridicule or question other things is so hypocritical it beggars belief.

Oh, for the record, I pray and believe there is or may be a God. The rest of it (the religion) is just a way (or started as a way) of controlling people and making them do as you wish – IMO, and not something God would want but hey, the church (or mosque or whatever) makes themselves a lot of money so of course it has to continue….

Does Bigfoot believe in the Risen Elvis?

It's hard to find ANY evidence of his (or any other mythical being's) existence

I guess you can't believe in a multi-verse, an infinite number of universes. In each different laws of physics. Anything that is not impossible can happen in one, at least one time if not many. Space aliens, big foot, Nessie… or God?

mobius 'I guess you can't believe in a multi-verse, an infinite number of universes. In each different laws of physics. Anything that is not impossible can happen in one, at least one time if not many. Space aliens, big foot, Nessie… or God?'

not sure if you read my posts properly, but I have not said I do not believe in God, simply I cannot believe in one and discount the other(s) – as I stated two posts up from yours 'Oh, for the record, I pray and believe there is or may be a God'

as for a multivers – yup, I can believe that, in fact that would make sense and could explain a lot of the things people have seen since time began.

@ flooglestreet – no, bigfoot has pretty good music taste and thus doesn't believe in Elvis in any way,shape nor form :-)

One word: COELECANTH

Ah, the coelacanth argument.

Most cryptologists (now *there's* a career for you) don't consider the coelacanth a cryptid (like Bigfoot) because it was considered extinct, not believed to be "out there somewhere." When living specimens were first shown to scientists back in the '30s, they were surprised, not because it was a cryptid, but because they hadn't been looking for coelacanths at all. Interestingly, native fishermen in the area *weren't* surprised; they often caught coelacanths, and promptly tossed them back into the sea, because they're really, really inedible: link

Unfortunately, now that the fishermen know that scientists will pay for coelacanth specimens, they no longer throw them back, resulting in declining populations. Ironically, the "living fossil" is rapidly becoming endangered and might one day become genuinely extinct – precisely because for so long it was thought to *already be* extinct.

At any rate, it's hardly a cryptid in the sense that Bigfoot is.

Sorry JPat. Not a very convincing defense.

I'm not sure what "defense" you're referring to. I'm guessing that you brought up the coelacanth to counter my argument that there is "far more evidence for 2-million-year-old hominids [in the fossil record] than there is for Bigfoot," thus leaving the door open for Bigfoot to exist. Let me know if that's not the case.

At any rate, I don't have to "defend" my lack of belief; the onus of defense is on believers. And I've dismantled every defense the believers have put forward on this thread so far, so . . .

Keep 'em comin'!

One additional point: For many reasons, many people have a desperate need to believe in Bigfoot, and many other people are more than willing to exploit that need and try to cash in.

How many men and women over the last 50 years have made careers out of talking about Bigfoot in books, in movies, on talk radio, in blogs, and on speaking tours? Some of them are simple hoaxers (and many of them have been "outed"). Others are guileless but have themselves been taken in by hoaxers. And others aren't exactly hoaxers, but they also aren't the most rigorous investigators when it comes to Bigfoot. They're more than willing to believe (and publish) every scrap of "evidence" that comes their way, if it means more people will buy their books, or see their movies, or tune into their radio shows, or visit their blogs, or attend their speeches. In other words, they're driven by money, not the scientific method.

Others are driven by a desire for notoriety: They've become big fish in the small pond of Bigfoot believers, and they like it that way.

Others just like hoaxing, whether to fool the gullible; or scare family, friends, and neighbors; or it just seemed like a fun idea at the time.

There's enough Bigfoot information out there that everyone knows what they look like, what their footprints look like, what they sound like, what foods they like, and so on. That makes it remarkable easy to provide a Bigfoot sighting that "ticks all the boxes."

To take just one example: Bigfoot "soundings" have really taken off in recent years. Every weird sound in the woods is now attributed to Bigfoot, even when experts point out that they sound *exactly* like the cries, howls, yowls, yips, and screeches of cougars, lynxes, bobcats, bears, owls, coyotes, wolves, foxes, raccoons, rabbits, deer, elks, moose, and other animals big and small. Distance, geography, and atmospheric conditions can also alter the sounds, making them even more other-worldly.

Sadly, many believers actually accept the experts' opinions, but then take it one step further and decide that it's still Bigfoot making those sounds, because he is able to *perfectly mimic* all of those other animals, in order to better fool us pesky humans. You just can't win with these people.

Add to that the fact that such sounds are incredibly easy for hoaxers to fake and broadcast at any volume they choose, and I place absolutely no credence whatsoever in recorded Bigfoot "vocalizations."

@Jpattern2 – Your last points are the obstacle that any serious research on such a subject will face too. I'm not saying they exist or ever did, but even if they do trying to get "clean" data on them would be nearly impossible at this point.

A great fun read on the topic is a fiction book called,"Dark Woods" in which Bigfoot is kept secret from the public by a conspiracy set off by Linden Johnson and perpetuated by the timber industry. The book features four main characters on a search for Bigfoot, each with their own separate motivation for doing so.

As for the coelacanth, I think they wanted a new argument they can use the recently discovered Congo gorillas. The recent discovery of and estimated 125,000 previously uncatalogued gorillas in the northern Republic of Congo region.

One could argue that if such a large population of large primates can go undiscovered until 2007 then there certainly MIGHT still be room for the likes of Bigfoot and his ilk. After all, gorillas and other primates are heavily monitored and tracked by conservationists. If the population of a modern city can go undiscovered…

-Eli

I agree, Eli, the Congo gorillas are a much more plausible argument for the existence of Bigfoot than the coelacanth is.

However . . .

The Congo Basin contains more virgin forest than any other area on Earth, followed by the Amazon Basin. The Congo Basin covers more than 1 million square miles, much of it unexplored, uninhabited, virgin, contiguous tropical forest.

In contrast, before Europeans arrived, virgin forest covered approximately 70,000 square miles of North America. That is, the Congo Basin holds about *14 times* as much virgin old-growth tree cover as *ever existed* in North America.

And the actual amount of virgin forest in the US today, including the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, covers only about 4,000 *non-contiguous* square miles, or 1/250th of the Congo Basin. The largest area of virgin contiguous forest in the continental US today is Ouachita National Forest in Arkansas; at only 1,250 square miles, it's 1/800th the size of the Congo Basin.

For that and other reasons, I find it *exponentially* more likely that a previously unknown large mammal would be found in the Congo than in the continental US.

True enough. If Bigfoot ever existed, it may have even been the case that there was a North American primate until the last couple of centuries or within "recent" memory of Native Americans who spread their legends to later explorers and settlers who then perpetuated the myth into modern times.

My own sister swears she had a Bigfoot encounter, even though all of her recounting of the story sounds like she was being watched by a bear in very close quarters. No more settling a prospect but definitely not paranormal or cryptozoological.

One of the biggest problems is that so many people insist that primal legends and myths HAVE to have some foundation in real creatures just because, being primal, they are found so widely among early peoples. Such beasties as little people, animal kin, AND Hairy Men in the woods are often used as "proof" that such creatures do exist because these fundamental beliefs are found in so many different cultures all over the world.

-Eli

Exactly.

My own sister swears she had a Bigfoot encounter, even though all of her recounting of the story sounds like she was being watched by a bear in very close quarters. No more settling a prospect but definitely not paranormal or cryptozoological

Seeing something is mostly done with the brain. It takes in stimulus from the eyes and puts it together to find something meaningful. So seeing a big bear, along with shadows, foliage and imperfect lighting the brain may interpret as something different. Something it hopes it sees.

When I was a little kid of about 3 or 4 I saw a big green multi-engine plane crashing – nosing in behind some tall pine trees next to my grandfathers house. There was no noise or smoke or flame. I swear I saw it but it didn't really happen as it was near LA. I had my family check the papers the next few days about news of a plane crash (I was too young to read.).
Years later I remember in a store I saw a picture of a Soviet Bear bomber on a model kit. A big green multi-engine bomber. The same one I saw. I wonder if I had seen that model kit when I was 3 or 4 before I saw the ‘plane crash‘ and my brain just pulled it up and put it to the images of the trees moving in the wind?

jpattern2 once again wields the stick of scientific scrutiny to bash down the Goblins of half truth, myth and supposition. I, for one, salute you sir!

You might do well to write a book debunking the Bigfoot myth, but I guess that sales will not match any pro-Bigfoot publication…

but no one has solved the problem of the sock stealing house goblins! :-( They MUST be real – how else do I keep ending up with so many odd socks in there?? ;-p

I think he's out there just waiting to be discovered and given a Latin name.

The reason he hasn't been found yet is that in actuality he takes a size 8 1/2. He just keeps slipping through the roadblocks.

Jpattern2 has it exactly right.

That's cryptozoologist Jpat, the other folks work on codes.

And COELECANTH is a fact, not an argument.

Still I respect you for your opinion.

Stupid spellchecker! Stupid me for clicking the wrong word! Although I don't think many cryptologists *or* cryptozoologists consider the coelacanth a cryptid. Yeah, that's what I meant.

Coelacanth is a fact, but your use of the poor fella was as an argument for the possibility of Bigfoot or other cryptids.

And I respect your opinion, too, Pyrate. No, I mean, wait, all I see is a gray box! Hah!

Whatever.

I think he's out there just waiting to be discovered and given a Latin name.

In the spirit of Road Runner cartoons: Homo misidentifius, Homo hoaxus, Homo hallucinatus, and Homo whateverensis.

Well, how nice.

Sorry if I struck a nerve, PC, but there are plenty of other sites out there that provide only pro-cryptid viewpoints, if that's what you're after.

Me, I'd rather look at the evidence with open eyes and draw my own conclusions.

I've read half-a-dozen books about Bigfoot; viewed the Patterson-Gimlin film in all its incarnations dozens of times; read hundreds of accounts of sightings; listened to hundreds of alleged vocalizations; and even tried to give various supernatural and parapsychological explanations a fair hearing.

And I honestly haven't seen *any* persuasive evidence for the existence of Bigfoot. Not any.

Show me a body and I'll eat my words, but until then I remain an absolute non-believer.

@Jpattern2 – I wouldn't worry about it. I don't see that you ever made anything a personal issue so if PC decides to take it personally, there's no helping that.

As much as I might like to provide possible what-ifs, I'm not holding my breath for the North American ape.

-Eli

No worries, Eli. I'm not personally invested in Bigfoot disbelief, and I'm not trying to convert anyone. I'm just pointing out where I stand on various theories and pieces of "evidence." If someone still wants to believe, that's cool, no skin off my nose.

Just for fun, a few points.

1) For the "Where are they hiding" people: When I was living in Colorado, in the 70's, I heard about an area between Grand Junction and Four Corners, similar to Arches National Monument. It was pristine, because to see it, one had to hike into the area from Utah, swim a river, and hike some more. It was impossible to visit the site overland. And this is in the Rockies, far more accessible than the Cascades. Whether the place really exists or not, I do not know, but I had no reason to doubt the story.

2) A few years ago a noted millionaire adventurer (Foster?) crashed his plane in the Sierra Nevadas. It took a year before a crash site was found. This for an uncamouflaged airplane. Why is it so difficult to believe that a moving, camouflaged creature wouldn't be spotted?

3) During the Yakima wars, soldiers surrounded an Indian fort, and laid siege for a few days. Eventually they stormed the fort, and discovered that the defenders had simply walked out through the extensive cave system, with the soldiers being none the wiser. If you can misplace a whole band of Indians in this same area, how can you suppose that a couple of big apes can't do the same thing?

Finally, just to present an argument: Re corpses: Why not the Lovelock giants?

Huh. Pyrate Captain, do you remember WHERE in Central Illinois they searched?

That has me genuinely curious.

@Midas – There are plenty of good examples of things that can allow room for the existence of Bigfoot. I've discussed many of them myself. I'd love to see Bigfoot revealed. I've gone into some areas in the Pacific Northwest that, despite being close to civilization, are still trafficked so little that the big hairy dude could be hanging out there all the time and not get spotted.

Pretty nice looking vista, eh? About 6 miles from a well-traveled road and National Forest camp grounds.

-Eli

Midas:

1) Yes, there are some pretty remote areas in North America. No argument. But that only proves that some areas are hard to get to.

2) *One* plane crash site stayed lost, for a year or so. So, yeah, *one* semi-intelligent Bigfoot could probably stay hidden for a year or more if he wanted to. But one or more breeding populations of 300-plus Bigfoots, that don't seem to be particularly concerned about hiding (based on all the sightings, noises, rock-throwing, pie-stealing, and so on) remaining undiscovered for more than two centuries? Nope.

3) Were the Indians from the fort ever found? Because Bigfoot hasn't been.

Lovelock Giants) Here's Stan Nielsen's summary of the legend, for those who care: link CAVE OF THE RED HAIRED GIANTS

And here's his photo of what's supposed to be the jawbone of one of the two "giants" with a plaster cast of an adult human's jaw:

A few things to note:

1. The plaster cast is of teeth, not an entire jaw. Without the mandible, it appears much smaller than it really is, and much smaller than the giant's jaw.

2. We have to take Nielsen's word that the plaster cast is of a set of average adult human teeth. The cast could be from a small human or even a child – I count 16 teeth, which means the wisdom teeth are missing, which could mean it's a juvenile's set of chompers.

3. There is no ruler, coin, or anything else in the photo to give scale or the angle of perspective. Based on the incisors, it looks like the photo was taken from slightly in front of the jaw, which would also make the human teeth appear smaller than they actually are.

4. If you superimpose the human teeth on the giant's jaw, they don't look significantly smaller.

5. The photograph also takes advantage of a common optical illusion, sometimes called the railroad track illusion:



The two short lines are the same length, but the "spreading" of the two long lines makes the lower line look shorter. In the same way, the human tooth cast inside the giant's jaw looks even smaller than it really is.

More points about the Lovelock Giants:

The Paiute told stories about Bigfoot, and knew them by many names, such as Oulux, Qualuck, Howlark, Howlash, and Nampuh. They also told stories about the Si-Te-Cah, a red-haired, warlike, cannibalistic tribe that lived in the area of Lovelock Cave, Nevada, and that the Paiute wiped out. But the Paiute never equated the Si-Te-Cah with Bigfoots, and they never called the Si-Te-Cah by any of the many names they had for Bigfoots (that I've been able to determine).

In addition, from Wikipedia: "Adrienne Mayor writes about the Si-Te-Cah in her book 'Fossil Legends of the First Americans.' She suggests that the 'giant' interpretation of the skeletons from Lovelock Cave and other dry caves in Nevada was started by entrepreneurs setting up tourist displays and that the skeletons themselves were of normal size. However, about a hundred miles north of Lovelock there are plentiful fossils of mammoths and cave bears, and their large limb bones could easily be thought to be those of giants by an untrained observer."

For "entrepreneurs" read "hoaxers" and we're right back where we started from.

Thanks for the replies gang. Seriously, on a number of fora I've seen "NEWBIE ALERT!" and nobody touches the thread from there on. ;)

Quick note: Sorry for not making this clearer. In another forum a debunker took the "There can't be a population of North American Apes, because the planet is over run with hikers who should have found their dens". My examples were directed at people who don't realize just how wild the Pacific Northwest is. I should have prefaced my post with this.

@emu: Thank you, very pretty pic supporting my argument.

@JPattern. Thank you for your quick and well reasoned answer.

Re the Lovelock giants: I just put them in for a lark. It is interesting that legends of giants are found in the desert near where forest legends of Bigfoot are found. I think it was probably a hoax, but I am not surprised to find that anthropologists sat on their dead butts refusing to find time to investigate the site until it was destroyed. Also interesting that the Pi-utes make distinctions between the two legends.

Re the plane crash: One plane crash stayed lost for a year. The plane of a famous millionaire. With a whole army of searchers using the latest technology, looking for a plane sized disturbance in the local geography – and they couldn't find it. It was found a year later by routine exploration. Interesting however that the searchers did find another plane crash: "Oh, that's not his plane, that must be that missing plane from the fifties." My point, that it's hard to find something just waiting to be found, not to mention something that is trying very hard *not* to be found, still stands.

Re the Indian fort: Had the troops reported that they had been mistaken, that there were never any Indians there, then of course they would never have been found – never having existed in the first place. :D

Let me add, emphatically not directing this at anyone in particular, that a lot of debunkers come across as suffering from the logic flaw of Argument from Conclusion: "The subject is a hoax, therefore any evidence presented to the contrary is, by definition, spurious." When that is the tack taken, it is very hard not to wonder if the cranks don't have a point.

It's fun to believe. We as children believe in Santa and the Easter Bunny. It adds a bit of excitement to our otherwise black and white lives. I think as a society we've lost our identity. We have to be PC in our every action, we think we are owed the truth and an explanation for everything. Why can't we live in a world where not all is explained? We push little toy soldiers around the table believing we're some famous general or king. We can believe in Bigfoot, aliens and God…

Why do Bigfoot proponents keep trying to claim Bigfoot is "trying hard not to be found" when the vast majority of their "evidence" for his existence consist of behaviors inconsistent with "trying hard not to be found". Further more if Bigfoot is naturally predisposed to trying not to be found then it is hard to explain the native american legends through actual contact with a Bigfoot. In other words with far fewer people looking, using no advanced technology, searching an immensely vaster area one wouldn't expect much in the way of contact and observation. It makes the legends sound much more likely to be err well umm legends. Kinda like the boogie man. He's been described. His behaviors catalogued. Some children could even swear they've glimpsed him in his native habitat of the Pacific Northwest closet or under an Illinois bed. So far no definitive proof that he exists. I'm not holding my breath.

On the plane crash issue, that one plane crash is a particularly noteworthy one. There have been, over the last half century, dozens upon dozens of plane crashes in the northern woods that have remained hidden.

It is NOT just a single plane crash, though the plane crash of a millionaire is certainly one that would get more investigation.

Even IF there was a Bigfoot, the case is so muddy it'd never pass beyond physical remains.

-Eli