Tuesday, August 20, 2013

HA-A-A!!! HO-O!! HO-O!! { Sasquatch for: You'll Never Track Me to my Home Sweet Home!!}.


You are probably doubting that I speak fluent Sasquatch. You are, once again, demonstrating your intuitive wisdom, as I haven't a clue. BUT, the critter pictured above [the dreaded powerful Dzoonokwa] IS claimed by the Kwakiutl people to utter exactly that "phase" as a challenge to intruders, and as a statement of power. {Dzoonokwa is, by the way, a very big red-headed female, showing that there is no gender bias in the Kwakiutl Spirit World.}

Dzoonokwa has reminded me of two things:

1]. I haven't spent much time on this blog talking about ABSMs whether Yeti or Sasquatch. I think that some of the reason for that is that I have a very difficult time focussing on a satisfactory hypothesis for them. Modern America, as a nation filled with hunters, mountain hikers, nature campers, races right into the idea that these things are small populations of perhaps dying ape species --- the proper subjects for biology textbooks. Yet......

2]. Most of the time, in detailed reports, they certainly don't act that way. As I peruse [occasionally ... I am NO expert] the literature on these entities, I read a "hunter-oriented" shelf of claims and commentary, which assiduously dodges anything which makes the Meat-and-Juices theory unpalatable.

Well, maybe our Bigfoot-hunting crowd is correct, but we should at least note that the Native Americans did not think of these entities this way.

I'm not going to do a review of the Bigfoot literature --- I'm not qualified and have not earned an opinion. Instead, let's just dive into this business somewhere and see if there's anything to be seen on a random probe "into the wilderness".


This is a map of a Bigfoot cluster area. Linn County, Oregon --- home of Sweet Home, Oregon around which many witnesses would want to claim that Sasquatch hangs out. { I made the map from the data quickly scoopable from the internet --- don't take the exact locations of the dots too seriously; I've just dotted them in next to the locations listed. --- nevertheless, I rather like the looks of the thing, and it will be very unkind of you to criticize my lack of artistry... so depressing.}

The cases arrayed are from the 1960s all the way to the present day, with an old outlier from 1885. The cases are a typical bigfoot type mix of sightings of animal-forms, tracks only, occasionally other "markings". Very little detail in these reports typically; several reports by hunters, mainly hunting elk; most sightings by men, but women and children also report; two cases describing "glowing eyes".

A case: a grade school teacher was driving home to Sweet Home, OR in the late 1960s. It was at night, as she was returning from an evening class at Oregon State University. The road was empty, lined by trees and the Santiam River's south branch. She saw what she thought was a bear, but as her car got nearer, the thing proved to be a large black-haired anthropoid about seven-foot tall. It grasped the railing with one of its hands and stepped over it to the woods on the river side. As her car passed, she slowed to get a better look, and it turned to stare back at her. Now thoroughly frightened, she sped off and arrived at her home in an upset state well remembered by her family.


But why am I, sort of out of nowhere, writing about Bigfoot today??

Because, as most of you know, I've just purchased a large house into which I and three others folks will move to create a cooperative housing entity, I've had a few "activities" here in my present home getting ready for those days. One of these was the presence of two guys helping a buddy of mine move my "old book collection" [about 50 boxes worth] to the new location. Everytime, well almost without fail, when someone visits here, they want to know about one or the other of the unusual things they're seeing. When I told the one fellow about Ivan Sanderson and the things Ivan was interested in, he said: "I've seen Bigfoot; more than once."

Really??? Tell me more.

This fellow is about 50, I'd guess. He's Mexican-American, somewhat crude-spoken but actually articulate and intelligent, and the son of a former "hard-rock miner" who did most of his mining in the Rockies. His dad taught him all about blowing up rocks to get at the rubble, hunting and fishing, and camping to the point where being in the woods is just "natural" to him.

The events that he told me about happened in about the 1980s --- this fellow enthusiastically told this story when he found that he had a listener who wouldn't laugh at him. That enthusiasm plus the fact that he was supposed to be finishing loading his pick-up at that moment, truncated my ability to turn this into some sort of "proper field interview". We'll have to satisfy ourselves with the spontaneous here.

He and a buddy, who often hunted and camped together, were up in the woods of the Pacific Coast Rockies. Their alleged goal was hunting Elk, but as any hunters know, the main goal is to "get away" and rest in Nature. They set up their camp, and as usual for them, CREATED A DREAM CIRCLE, just up the slope from their location. Yes. That is exactly what he said.

A "Dream Circle???" Oh yes, he said. You always do that when you're deep in the woods. Uhh. Really?? He continued: it's a tradition. You build a Circle of Stones and other things. He made it sound as if it was for good luck... or maybe respect.

This made me think of the Native American Medicine Wheels [such as pictured above] and the now-culturally-popular "Dream Catchers", that many non-Native Americans own in hopes of catching a little Magickal good fortune. Again, I couldn't slow him down enough to ask him exactly why he did this --- just that it was a family tradition, and something "you just did".


In this series of Bigfoot encounters, the action began with many days where both he and his buddy could sense that the entity was right nearby, just on the other side of the bushes, but "wouldn't let me see him". This description reminded me so much of Diane Fossey's comments about not being able to contact the Mountain Gorillas, even though she could hear them rustling branches within feet of her, that I started to think: maybe this IS some "ordinary" biological ape afterall.

As the days went on, they began to catch glimpses of Sasquatch and things began to be left in their Dream Circle. They responded in kind by leaving things there themselves. As a climax to this "potlatch" give and take, one day a magnificent Eagle feather was found stuck standing straight up in the middle of the circle.

Subsequently, both my new-found informant and his friend both saw Sasquatch relatively nearby, but separately. The buddy once saw two together.

As the story wound down, my reporter grew a little more pensive. He finally said: I think [he was VERY hesitant going into this] that Bigfoot has some odd .... abilities.

Ummmm.... yes???

Well, he seems to be able to just disappear.

Really?

I was looking right at him once and then he just wasn't there anymore.

BOING goes the Brain.

This report at least is not Biology-textbook but rather Native American Legend. We're back to the Spirit World with that one. We're back to what the ancestors believed all along.



And it would give some meaning to the climactic gift of the Eagle Feather.

"In the beginning, the Creator gave to the animals and birds the wisdom and knowledge and the power to talk to men. He sent these creatures to tell man that He showed Himself through them. He would teach a chosen man sacred songs and dance, as well as much ritual and lore." 

..... sounds precisely Druidical. .... and harmonious with the Language of the Birds.

" In order to remember the lesson of life, look to the great Eagle, the favorite bird of the Creator.

The eagle feather is divided into two parts, part light, part dark. This represents daylight and darkness, summer and winter, peace and war, and life and death. So that you will always remember what I have told you, look well on the Eagle, for his feathers, too, tell the story of life." 

.... maybe "somebody" was acknowledging a couple of respectful hunters with a token of respect back.


As this fellow was turning away to get in his truck and go, I had to ask at least one field research-type question:

Where did all this happen?

"Sweet Home, Oregon".



Till next time, folks... when I can.

And may you receive the Eagle Feather of respect in all you do.





16 comments:

  1. Been a fan of your blogspot for a while now. You do very nice work. Thanks, too for the Sweet Home reference. I live in Oregon not too terribly far from Sweet Home, so your article brought the subject "home" to me :)

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  2. Prof, if i understand correctly , the american native indians see bigfoot as spiritual entity and not physical / biological entity ? wouldnt that put bigfoot in the realm of ghost / apparation / paranormal / UFO ?

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    1. Firstly, my opinions on such matters aren't much to take seriously, because I am no "shaman", and other than someone like that, who actually might have real experience in such matters, I don't know who could claim any expertise. {I'm not saying that shaman do either, but at least they make claims of certain ritually-induced first-hand knowledge that the rest of us probably cannot make}.

      But.... I do read both Cryptozoology to an extent, and folklore to an extent. When Cryptozoology goes decades and even centuries with quite a long list of encounters, and yet, in some of its areas of interest, never achieves any solid physical "of-the-body" evidence, then, rather than throwing away the encounters, or constructing more and more constricted unlikely physical scenarios, I turn to the folkloric and paranormal in my attempts to save both the phenomena and some simplicity of theory.

      Biological reductionists will not include the folkloric [call it Faerieworld or Middle Kingdom or Nature Spiritworld if you want] as possible solutions to anything, so they're stuck with an emotional desire for things like Bigfoot or Loch Ness monsters to be real [and they then become lumbered with highly-stressed materialist models of how that could be], or they bail out on the "critters" entirely, consigning them to the derisive garbage heap.

      My "solution", humbly-held, is founded on respect for the olde people's experiences and less-cluttered/ constrained ways of experiencing these realities. If the general way that the olde folks dealt with these entities wasn't so similar, I'd have a harder time maintaining these sorts of theories. But I see, shockingly rather easily --- my Catholic spirituality has trumped my reductionist science training --- , a nice continuity between the way the olde people experienced these realities and the cruder way we moderns brush up against them today.

      Having said that: NO, I don't see something like Bigfoot as a "ghost", "apparition", or "UFO" {Lord, where'd that last come from?}. These "important" crypto-denizens are parts of the spiritworld and somehow connected with Nature, but not the wandering souls of dead humans, nor the machines of technological ETs. One should read the classic beliefs of Native Americans on what Raven, Coyote, et al are all about, and then the memories of modern folks who encounter some of them on vision-quests.

      This is my take. Please don't mindlessly make it yours. Each of us needs to dwell in these possibilities and let their own understanding flower.

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  3. The Professor wrote: "Having said that: NO, I don't see something like Bigfoot as a "ghost", "apparition", or "UFO" {Lord, where'd that last come " - - -

    If I could just interject here. There have been a few ufo/paranormal/crypto investigators & writers (that fall more into the Keel & Vallee philosophies of the phenomenon) who've noted the 'outlier' reports of witnesses claiming to have seen a ufo just prior to or after a bigfoot sighting (and in close proximity). It makes some people wonder if this is a sleight-of-hand tactic used by the intelligence/s behind ufos to throw off/confuse people. (Assuming the witnesses are being honest and assuming they're correctly reporting what they saw)

    Cheers and enjoy your weekend, Prof!

    ~ Susan

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    1. Hi, Brownie.

      What you're saying is correct of course. My response to the commenter was because the contextual meaning seemed to hypothesize that UFOs in general were paranormal rather than physical, or secondly that Bigfoot was a UFO somehow. The comment would have been more useful for discussion had it been something like:

      " Could the Bigfoot creatures seen be associated with UFOs, perhaps even UFO occupants? Or perhaps could they be some sort of projections by ET technology for whatever unknown agenda? Because the Bigfoot-like creature incidents collected by researchers like Stan Gordon and Don Worley and Mark Moravec seem to imply a relationship, what might that relationship be?"

      THAT could be a question we could get our teeth into.

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  4. one example of UFO and 'bigfoot' case documented in MUFON investigation :

    UFO-RELATED BIGFOOT ENCOUNTER IN PENNSYLVANIA By Stan Gordon(MUFON State Director)

    In 1973 the largest documented wave of Bigfoot sightings on record occurred in Pennsylvania. The sightings began in June and continued sporadically through November of that year. My colleagues and I began to find that it was more than coincidence that some of these creatures would appear within a shorttime in the same area where UFO sightings were being reported by locals. As we began to look more seriously into these incidents there still were no conclusive indications that the two types of phenomena were directly related.But then it happened.

    Around 9p.m. on October 25, 1973 nearUniontown, Pa., Stephen Pulaski and 15 residents who live near his father's farm observed a large red ball descen-ding from the sky towards the field.Stephen and two neighbor boys gotinto a truck and started towards the area to take a closer look. As they ap-proached the hill, the headlights started to dim, as if the power was be-ing drained, so they got out and walk-ed up over the crest of the hill.

    Resting on the ground was a huge dome shaped object estimated to be 100 feet in diameter. It was making a sound like a lawnmower, and was very bright and illuminating the field.The group heard strange whining sounds coming from the direction ofthe object.

    A short time later one ofthe boys noticed two figures ap-proaching along the fence line, which crosses the field. At first the group tried to rationalize that they were see-ing bears, but when Stephen fired a tracer round over their heads it was evident that they were looking at a form of life unlike anything they had seen before. One creature was over 7 feet tall the other over 8 feet.

    They were covered with long, dark hair and their arms hung down past the knees. As the creatures approached closer Stephen became alarmed and fired three rounds directly into the larger creature which responded by making a whining sound and raising its righthand up toward the other beast. At that very instant the huge UFO in the field suddenly disappeared and the sound stopped.

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    1. Yes. This cluster of encounters is one of the more puzzling things anywhere in the UFO file cabinets.

      As noted above, this is a Stan Gordon case-investigation cluster. I mention this, because if one is of a "they know who you are" type of theorist, one might wonder if "they" knew that Stan was equally interested in UFOs and ABSMs and so provided him a cluster of odd-ball events containing both anomalies. Plus, just to throw a hard-breaking curveball, they left behind abnormal footprints [Three-toed] to mess with us a bit more. There are other things about the critters that seem a bit different than classic Bigfoot too.

      Stan Gordon let PURSUIT's Allen Noe in on this early, and, if you have copies of PURSUIT you can read Noe's report in the October 1973 number. Gordon and Noe also notified Berthold Schwarz about this, and he went on field interviews in November. If you have copies of FSR, you can read his report in their Volume 20, #1, 1974 number.

      Gordon told Schwarz that he and his crew had approximately ONE HUNDRED bizarre creature cases in western Pennsylvania as a localized flap. Mind-boggler.

      This series of events deserves an independent study and review, but I don't think I'm up to it. Maybe one of the readers is. The whole affair has a very strong instinct of stageplay about it to my gut reaction.

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  5. "The Psychic Sasquatch and Their UFO Connection" by Jack Lapseritis. A provocative work on the subject.

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  6. Hey Professor, nice blog you got here :). I personally am very skeptical of allegations regarding Sasquatch having paranormal abilities and, although this may just be my admittedly closed mind, I think that such reports of the animals quickly disappearing could be easily due to their agility and stealth. I've had deer seemingly disappear into the surrounding brush while I was hunting, and I can't help but wonder if these animals are just excellent at remaining hidden. A lot of people think their bodies are like natural ghillie suits. Also, I've read of plenty of Native American traditions which do not ascribe paranormal abilities to these animals but simply view them as masters of stealth. But, that's just my opinion also, and this is a good article. Have a nice week.

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    1. .......... and the above two responses indicate how differently any of us might think about this mystery. Thank you both, gentlemen, for setting the "conservative" and "liberal" border philosophies for this subject.

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  7. your comment "The whole affair has a very strong instinct of stageplay about it to my gut reaction." , is this refering to the 'theaterics' that was done on for the benefit of the UFO investigator (S.Gordon & team) ?

    I dont know if this have any correlation with it but when i read documented cases of UFO encounters , many of them feels like staged event done for the benefit of the witness.

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    1. I do not of course know how much of this blog you've read, but the idea that the UFO phenomenon is largely a massively staged display to be individually-overt while maintaining low-cultural-impacting covertness is rather a constant theme running through here.

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  8. Great post, Professor. Your mover's story gave me the chills...

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  9. great post professor!! i moved to sweet home a year ago, i am a researcher, but i really just want to find out for myself what they are, in all actuallity they not be caught at all!! since being here i get sighting reports from people, and have had my own experiences, i can feel the presence,one friend i was with had an actual sighting, had vocalizations at around 3 am after camping in the same area for most of the summer last summer. i also have had rocks thrown in the water, not at me but near me, while agate hunting in creeks and rivers near by, i was alone. i have had sightings since childhood, in another state in the south central part of the country. i will continue enjoying nature and the creatures of the forest, and maybe run into you sometime!!!

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    1. The way that you could best help truthseekers in their various quests would be to SHARE the details of your experiences with them. Don't keep things to yourself. Find a way to make your experiences come alive for other folks than just those you actually run into and talk around the campfire. It's good to be an explorer, but it can be selfish if you don't watch out. It's far better to be open-handed sharer of all facets of what we know. Only in that way can ALL of us move a little closer to the mysteries. There are lots of Bigfoot sites and clubs which would be happy to hear in detail what you feel you've experienced. Bring something to their table and they'll bring something to yours.

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