Reliability in old reports?

I don't have a well thought out post here, just a few thoughts that are going through my mind.  As you know, I've been looking at some old reports that combine bigfoot with UFOs.  I have quite a few to sort through, but one problem I have is assessing how reliable these reports are.  I'm not even sure how to go about figuring that reliability, but these are some ideas I've had.

1.  Multiple attestation -- it's good to get those reports that more than one investigator had a hand in.  There are not many like this, but when you find them, it seems to me the chance that the investigation was good goes up.  It's even better when you can find a newspaper report of the events, with multiple witnesses.  You know at least something happened, and the writer of the account you are reading isn't making it up.

2.  If witnesses continue to speak about the events without inconsistencies, give the story serious consideration.  Once again, there aren't many like this.  People assume that there is some kind of payoff in talking about the weird things that happen to people, but there really isn't, except the rather human need to share our experiences.  As an experiencer of some weird stuff, I know that there is often a desire to tell others because the experience is so hard to process by oneself.  But it's also true that some die-hard hoaxers just get a kick out of fooling people, and they may keep up their shenanigans for as long as they live.  However, over time these folks have trouble keeping their stories straight, since they essentially live to make things up.

3.  Rule out investigators with (deserved) bad reputations, especially if they are the only source.  If certain investigators have shown that they are not serious, or cannot be trusted to sort out the facts, throw out any cases that they reported (unless someone you think you can trust also reported the events).

4.  Watch for signs of invention.  You may remember that I have invented a category called "Literary hoax", which I defined this way in a previous post:

The literary hoax. I distinguish this from other forms because the writer spends enough time on his writing to create a work of art, with all the features and markers that go with fiction writing. The motive must partly be artistic, then, but it's also one of the others here -- to make money, to fool people, for fame and notoriety.

So, let's have a couple of examples, why don't we?  First, let's look at what I consider to be an unreliable report.  This one is reported in Peter Guttila's book The Bigfoot Files, and so far as I can determine, that's the only source (though the entire episode is available here, it comes straight out of his book).  This is not in itself an indicator that the story is no good, but it doesn't encourage us to believe in it.  Many of the stories that I have come across are not only investigated by more than one person, they are reported in many different places, indicating that many other researchers considered the report reliable enough to use it.

What really sets me off about this report is a double layer of literary invention, which we are going to go into in a moment, but there is also some trouble with the witness telling the story which is important and should be highlighted.  Her name is Adele Childress, and her name appears nowhere else, that I can find anyway, in relation to a story like this one.  It may be that this is a pseudonym, but if it is, Guttilla does not say so in this case, while he does in the case of other reports covered in his book.  So where is Adele Childress, and what would she say about the story today?  That she doesn't come forward to defend her tale does not give us any extra confidence in it, either.

Now, what do I mean by double layer of literary invention?  First, there is the story that Mrs. Childress tells, then there is the way that Guttilla retells that story, which in the English classes you all avoided would have been called "the frame narrative."  Let's take a look at the frame narrative first.  Guttilla begins his narrative in this way:

     A ray of morning sunlight sparkled through the window as 44-year-old, Adele Childress, sat back in the sofa. Her attractive face looked gaunt as she recalled the eerie events of the past few months. She flashed through the commonplace aspects of her life her children, neighbors, the family pets, and the harried routine of a homemaker, mother, and manager of a busy home nestled in the suburbs of Saugus, California. She remembered how simple life was prior to the bizarre circumstances of her encounter with the unknown.
     "What reason, would he have for scaring me like that," she said, wringing her hands nervously. "I've known him and his wife for two years. He wouldn't have told me such a story unless there was some truth to it..." Adele Childress turned toward the window and began her story as if her worries lay suspended somewhere beyond it. She slowly retraced the events, which led to a strange and frightening warning.

I'm sure you will note the way these two paragraphs set the tone for the rest of the piece with words and symbols that provoke anxiety in the reader.  If you missed them, here are a few to get you going in the right direction: "Her attractive face looked gaunt", "She flashed through the commonplace aspects of her life", "wringing her hands nervously".

Now, one may object that Guttilla is simply reporting what he saw.  I don't think so.  I think these paragraphs are constructed to set a mood of anxiety and fear so that the story will have a greater impact.  And if you don't think so, ask yourself how Guttilla could know that Mrs. Childress was recalling "the eerie events of the past few months" by observing her, or how he could know what her mind "flashed" as he interviewed her?  Did she actually recount for him that her mind went through "the commonplace aspects of her life her children, neighbors, the family pets, and the harried routine of a homemaker, mother, and manager of a busy home nestled in the suburbs of Saugus, California" while she "remembered how simple life was prior to the bizarre circumstances of her encounter with the unknown"?  This would be an awkward and unnecessary step in an interview.  And if she didn't tell him these things, why did he write about them as he did, if it wasn't to ratchet up the anxiety level of the reader?  To my mind, this is plain literary invention used to spice up the tale for his readers.

When I see this kind of thing in reports of bigfoot, I'm instantly suspicious that the writer's motives aren't serious.  Which is not to say that one doesn't want to set up the scene for the reader, showing how the events have affected the witness --I've done this myself, but remember that there's a question of invention here.  Guttilla appears to be making things up to create a better sense of anxiety.  In the link I just gave, to the story of the Angry Old Man told by Dave in KY, I didn't invent anything.  I used what Dave told me.  Guttilla could have done the same and it would have had pretty much the effect he wanted, but rather than limit himself to what the witness told him, it looks as if he ascribed thoughts and feelings to her that he could not have directly known.

So much for the "frame narrative".  What about Mrs. Childress's story?  It's hard to say who has done the inventing, but I must say that there is a rather classic literary device used in the story she tells.  Take a look at this excerpt and see if you spot it.  [The ellipse between the two paragraphs shows where I've removed an authorial intrusion so that we can stay with the story.]

He said that when his special unit arrived at the UFO crash site, a pungent odor permeated the air. The object itself, which he said was oblong in shape, was broken in two but apparently landed before exploding. Lying around in several places were bodies of the occupants. He described them as four of the most hideous-looking creatures you can imagine. He said they were huge, about nine feet tall, covered with a fine hair, and were a perfect likeness of what has been described as Bigfoot. The occupants' faces were hairless, Mongoloid in appearance, with flat, wide noses. The mouths, which he said seemed to be agony, showed a row of teeth with what looked like stubby fangs.

. . .

Ed continued and said that when they examined the dead bodies of the creatures at the crash site, they found one still alive. One of the men tried to give it water The creature reached up and grabbed the man's shoulder hard, then gasped and died. Ed emphasized that each of the creatures wore a copper-colored belt with a huge buckle rifted with small buttons. He said that the belt glowed when activated but didn't say what it was used for. On their feet were boots something like sandals but with very thick soles. Apart from these things the creatures had nothing else on them.

Did you spot it?  That moment familiar to movie-goers everywhere, when someone dies while reaching out to a survivor before collapsing back.  There's hardly any chance that cheap melodramatic moment actually happened.  I also note that the word "hideous" is used in what seems to be an inappropriate way.  If the creatures really were "a perfect likeness of what has been described as Bigfoot", then I don't think very many people would describe them as hideous.

These strike me as markers that the story told here is plain made up.  Yet if it is invented, then who is doing the inventing?  Because we've actually got multiple frames here now.  Guttilla is retelling a tale told him by Mrs. Childress, who is retelling a tale told to her by a guy named Ed.

However you sort that out, the story contains obvious literary inventions.  Add to this the fact that the story itself is little more than a re-framing of the famous Roswell Crash story, with the substitution of bigfoot for small aliens, and there is really no reason to credit the story at all.  If Guttilla is faithfully retelling what he was told, you have to wonder why he thought the story was worth passing along?  The clue is his intro to the story -- he knows it's a good scary story that readers will like.  I think this marks him as an unserious reporter, and we have no reason to credit any story that he tells without someone else backing him up.

Now this is too bad, because a lot of the bigfoot/UFO stories come through Guttilla.  Luckily, he isn't the primary source for a lot of them.

How about a story that seems to have features that give us more confidence that it really happened?  I think the strange tale of the Presque Isle UFO and bigfoot sighting is a good candidate.  For one thing, it was reported in the newspaper.  Also, the story includes the names of real people who continued to talk about the events long afterward.  Matters have been complicated by a story of a balloon launch, but it seems that that has been dealt with by a reference to the facts as known from the events.  (Here's the Paranormal Pastor's take on all of it, including the balloon hoax angle.  It's a good examination of the entire episode.)

The story was written up by John Keel in an article for Flying Saucer Review shortly after it happened.  I have also found what appears to be a reprint of the news article as it appeared at the time on the front page of The Morning News, Erie, Pa., August 1, 1966.   Though the source may not be entirely credible, it does appear to be written in the style of a 1960s local news report (with possibly some later editing intrusions, but I can't say for sure.  The original article is not available online that I can find).  There are page numbers that indicate that the recounting comes from a book and not the original newspaper, nor Keel's FSR article, so that is a problem, but my guess is that this comes from one of Keel's retellings in one of his books sometime after the FSR article appeared.

UFO SIGHTED ON PENINSULA, GIRL DESCRIBES LANDING

An unidentified flying object was sighted on the Peninsula shortly after dusk Sunday night. A Jamestown, N.Y., girl described by Peninsula police as being almost hysterical, near shock, said a craft suddenly appeared in the night sky from the north and landed about 300 yards from the car she was sitting in. She was identified as Betty Jean Klem, 359 Brodhead Ave., Jamestown, N.Y. Peninsula police were taking the statement from her and several friends today. Miss Klem gave the following account to a Morning News reporter:

"We were sitting in the car waiting for help. Our car was stuck in the sand. We saw a star move. It got brighter. It would move fast, then dim. You could see it come down. It was metallic. Sort of silvery. It landed between two trees. It came straight down. The car vibrated. I know we saw it. We had taken a walk up in that area earlier. There was nothing between those trees then. All of a sudden it was just there. We could see the lights on the back."

(She later described the craft as being mushroom shaped with a narrow base rising up to an oval structure.)

The sixteen year old girl was still shaking as she talked to the newsman and police officers. Her eyes were red from crying. Police described her as a pretty sensible young woman.

Peninsula Police Chief Dan Dasconio said, "I know what people are going to say, but this girl saw something that scared her badly. This is no joke as far as I'm concerned."

The girl said that as she and her boyfriend, Douglas J. Tibbets, eighteen, of Greenhurst, N.Y., watched from the front seat of his car a beam of light came out of the craft and moved along the ground in a straight line.

"It lit up the whole woods along its path. It wasn't like a search light. There was light along the ground, along its whole path."

She said the light did not waver back and forth like a search light, but continued to extend its beam into the woods. Shortly after the light went into the woods, there occurred the most horrible part of her ordeal, according to the girl. She related that a Peninsula police car approached from behind and pulled up near their stuck vehicle. She said as it did so the beam from the UFO light went out. Her boyfriend jumped from the car and told the officers, "There's something weird going on here."

The officer accompanied the youths down the road about 300 yards to a point near where they said the craft had landed. Just as they approached the area the horn sounded in the boy friend's car and they ran back.

The girl said there was a "thing right by the car. I don't know what it was. It was bigger than you," she told the newsman. It was about six feet tall. "You would have had to look up to see it."

In a very brief sketch that the girl drew of the "Thing" it appeared to have the general shape of an upright, large creature, such as a gorilla, although she maintained it was not any kind of animal that she has ever seen before. She described it as a dark, apparently featureless creature, not human, maybe animal, which moved sluggishly back into the bush after she had leaned on the horn after seeing it.

In her interview by the Morning News, she made the following comments: "The ship was big. It came half-way up between these trees." (Officials said the trees are 60 to 70 feet tall).

"When it came down and landed, the car vibrated. We had the car radio on. I think it was WICU Radio. No, it didn't make any interference on the radio."

Asked if it made any kind of noise, she said, "It sounded like the noise in a telephone receiver, only louder, of course. Then it stopped. When it landed there were no lights on it. Then some lights came on by the back of it. The oval top. The others asked me if I saw it. We just couldn't believe it was really happening."

At one point during the interview, she suddenly said, "We heard someone walking on the roof. No, it wasn't stomping. It was more like scratching. We didn't see anything then. We didn't get out of the car. I was a nonbeliever about this space craft business. But I believe now."

 The people named in the report actually exist (or existed - some have passed away) and some of them continue to talk about the case today.  Aside from Keel and the newspaper reporter, I'm not sure who else looked into the case at the time, but my guess would be that there were other investigators.  I hope their reports will come to light in the future.

But note also how weird the account is.  It doesn't have the feel of a literary invention.  Some details left out of that report include the fact that the footprints found on the site did not match any kind of bigfoot prints you've ever heard of.  They looked more like circular depressions, about 15" in diameter.  Like Uncle Hairy was jumping around on pods.

My sense is that this really isn't a bigfoot report.  I believe the witnesses are telling the truth about what they saw, but I don't think they saw what they think they saw.  But I think maybe this is what it's like when you have a genuine account that combines bigfoot and UFOs -- there's a weirdness to it that defies logical explanations.  It isn't wrapped up into a neat scary story.

Scientists break speed of light

Using something called quantum tunneling,  a pair of German scientists have violated one of Einstein's tenets:

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.

For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

Now, quantum tunneling is weird, and it is contingent upon matter and energy being understood as waves, which is exactly how modern physics sees the world of the very small.  The world of the very large, however, is difficult to reduce down to the quantum level.  So while this result is interesting, it doesn't mean we will be making star ships that go faster than light very soon (if ever).

But a civilization that was many millions of years older than ours, with a science advanced far beyond ours, might be able to get past these issues and use something like this to manipulate time and space to their purposes.

ALSO OF INTEREST:  Does the brain tap into the future?

...that’s where the work of Radin and Bierman come in. They have performed experiments in which it appears that the brain is reacting to stimuli before it is experienced. Radin and Bierman have conducted experiments in which subjects viewed random images flashing on a computer screen. Some of the images were rather neutral while others were meant to invoke a highly emotional response. The researchers discovered that the subjects responded strongly to the emotional images compared to the neutral ones, and that the response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds before the images appeared.

Bierman recently repeated these experiments using an fMRI brain scanner and documented emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Other laboratories have made similar findings.

Assuming the data is being recorded and interpreted correctly, what's going on here? How is it possible that information can run backwards in time? Roger Penrose believes that quantum effects in the brain could explain backwards referral. He suggests that such effects may occur commonly and even routinely. “If in some manifestation of consciousness,” says Penrose, “classical reasoning about the temporal ordering of events leads us to a contradictory conclusion, then this is strong indication that quantum actions are indeed at work!"

So there's an example of the quantum manipulation of time brought up in the first article.  Very nice.

Both links via The Daily Grail.

Lost on the turnpike of possibilities, looking for signposts

So, yeah, bigfoot and UFOs.  This is a tough topic for many bigfoot aficionados, and if you find yourself recoiling from it instinctively, I know exactly where you are coming from.  Over the years, I've become reconciled to the fact that there's something to UFOs.  My hunch is that nobody really knows what they are, but from all evidence, considering they've been around at least 60 years, and quite probably much longer than that, they don't seem to be harmful to most people.  (People who experience "abduction" might argue that point, but nobody seems quite sure what that is all about either.)  Maybe it's better to say that I've simply grown used to the weirdness of UFO accounts and it doesn't bother me anymore, but it really, really did when I was much younger.

I can recall seeing a movie..

Actual movie poster

Hilarious movie trailer

(thanks to an anonymous poster, I know now this was 1957s Invasion of the Saucer Men, as seen above), on afternoon television when I was very young (so probably late 60s) wherein a young couple were cornered in their sporty topless coup by a group of small alien creatures.  These creatures could be kept at bay with light, but in darkness they could not be stopped.  As these things usually go, the couple had a light affixed to the car which worked very well until the battery went dead.  Then the aliens advanced and made short work of them, though this wasn't shown like it would be today.  Something about that scene scared the absolute bejeesus out of me.  I wanted nothing to do with aliens.

(As an aside, as a symbol light would ordinarily represent knowledge while darkness can represent ignorance.  The subtext of the movie might suggest that it is knowing about the aliens that renders them powerless as monsters.  But I was too young to think about such things then.)

Fast forward to the mid seventies and my interest in bigfoot and the yeti.  I didn't find them scary at all, mostly because in those days, bigfoot was believed to be a phenomenon of the North West only.  But just try to combine bigfoot and aliens.  I wasn't having it.

I bring this up because of a point Cullen Hudson made in comments from the last bigfoot/UFO post.

To me, and I've no clinical proof of this, it is something akin to apophenia, wherein individuals will look for connections amongs disparate interests. That is to say, some invidividuals who are interested in the whole of paranormal phenomena will, in a need to synthesize, find connections among those things which may have nothing in common beyond coincidence.

(Apophenia, btw, is, put simply, finding patterns in chaos.)

I knew that this was not where I started from, anyway, but it's a point worth considering.  Maybe as I grew less frightened by aliens, it seemed ok to combine them with bigfoot and so I did some kind of mental "mash up" or what have you.  Except that it's not me doing the mashing up.  The experiences of others are actually out there to be found and studied if you have the inclination to look at them.  As I've mentioned before, I know that bigfoot researchers have often thrown out cases that had any indication of UFO connection simply because the researcher would not tolerate that connection.  (Probably thinking something along the lines of, "That can't be true, so this person must be a nut," or perhaps, "I'm having a hard enough time getting people to take me seriously!")

I was interested to find that an early researcher who looked into these matters had taken an attitude similar to mine from the beginning, but had found his attitude changing as facts accumulated.  As he put it in the first paragraph of an article about hairy humanoids and UFOs submitted to the 1976 CUFOS UFO Conference:

Not in my wildest dreams did I ever see myself sitting here talking to you about this outlandish thing.  I was once so conservative that I would not even listen to a man who claimed he had once worked at Wright Patterson Air Force Base and seen little frozen UFO occupants there. He became very peeved when I didn't listen.  Well, it seems that the years do change one's perspective.

I've bolded that last sentence because I think there is a lot there to talk about.  Years, especially years of experience with strange things, do modify our perspectives.  Where once I was terrified and unwilling to even contemplate a connection between bigfoot and UFOs, I'm no longer very worried about it.  Now, it's just one facet of a large and complex mystery.

But looking back, I also note that what used to scare me (and others at the time too) pretty good in the theaters seems pretty tame today -- and, dare I say, lame.  I mean lame in terms of the power to terrify.  Horror of another time, like comedy, rarely translates perfectly.

Having read Jacques Vallee, I have to wonder -- is this not exactly the point?

It may be that there is no real connection between bigfoot and UFOs, but that it has become convenient for someone or something (my own inclination right now would point toward a more mental and less mundane source, ie, the collective unconscious), to have us think so.  In a deeply speculative mood, it strikes me that it may be that there is no such thing as bigfoot or UFOs at all; that these are tools by which we as a species learn to overcome our fears.

For those scoring at home, that would mean that, when taken by this mood, I subscribe to a modified psychological theory as an explanation for bigfoot.  And aliens.  And whatever else you may have peering in at the window.

Of course, I do have some trouble with physical evidence when I am talking up this theory.  That dang yeti hair..

The thought occurs to me at this point that bigfoot research seems to be rigged in such a way that, so long as you believe bigfoot might exist, there is enough evidence to keep you interested.  If you don't believe at all, there isn't enough to convince you.  Therefore, you are subject to your own free will.  There is nothing to compel you one way or another.  I sometimes wonder if that is by accident..

Bigfoot and UFOs, dozens of cases found

Recently I was making the point that I had only run across precious few cases involving bigfoot and UFOs.  That situation has changed somewhat.  Where once I had a paucity, I now have an embarrassment of riches.

I got one batch of reports, in the form of four articles from the late '70s and early 80's, from The Professor over at The Big Study.  He is a veteran UFO researcher with some interest in hairy humanoids, so he has kept them all these years and graciously sent me copies when I asked him if he knew of any sources for such things.

Another chunk of reports, dating from 1956 (the oldest I found with my search techniques, anyway) to the present, came from a website called UFOInfo.com.  The site has collected thousands of humanoid sightings from UFO reports, using many sources.  It must represent an enormous output of effort by the sitekeeper there, for which he should be applauded.  I copied all of the reports into one document so I could search it, and it came to nearly 5,000 pages, comprising a million and a half words.

Searching through that database lead me to finally locate the case I mentioned last time, but had not been able to find again.  Here it is:

242.
Location. Near Tillamook Oregon
Date: September 27 1989
Time: 1620
A woman was alerted by her granddaughter to something unusual outside. She stepped out and was confronted by an object resembling an inverted toy top hovering just above the ground. It was 20 to 30 feet in diameter and had a flat bottom and a bright yellow-white light shining at both ends. The woman approached to within 30 feet of the craft and a door opened revealing a blond human-like entity of average height with fair skin and blue eyes, wearing a silvery coverall. The woman then noticed at a window next to the door a large hairy, Bigfoot type creature apparently seated and only visible from the chest up. The woman stared at the object and beings for a few minutes, and then the object suddenly vanished from plain sight.

HC addition # 116
Source: Mufon Journal # 264, April 1990
Type: A

So there you have it, bigfoot sitting in a UFO like Chewbacca, with location, date, time, and source.

So, finding this treasure trove all of a sudden has me asking myself some questions.  First, why do the UFO guys have so many reports and the bigfoot guys have so few?  You probably are already guessing that I think selection bias has something to do with it.  I've mentioned before that I saw this going on in a large bigfoot organization -- cases were simply thrown out if a UFO was mentioned.  But I also think there is a natural reason for it.  If someone sees a UFO and a bigfoot together, who are they more likely to call?  I think the UFO researcher gets that call 9 times out of 10.  For one thing, polls indicate that about half of Americans believe UFOs are real, while the percentage that think bigfoot is real is quite a bit lower.  But, really, which seems the more important observation there -- that an alien technology appears to be operating on our planet, or that there is a big hairy guy running around?  I think aliens win that one too.

So what is the oldest report of UFO bigfoot involvement?  If you aren't particular about how reliable they seem to be, that would be a report from 1888.  It comes from Brad Steiger's book Mysteries of Time and Space, first published in 1974.  The source is a personal journal sent to Steiger by a descendant of the writer.  So far as I know, no one has ever seen this journal itself, only the report of its contents written in Steiger's book, so there can be no independent attestation.  And even if we did see the report, there's nothing to say that it wasn't written by the person who sent it to Steiger.  Indeed, the wording quoted seems pretty silly for actual Native Americans in 1888, as you will see.  It is almost certainly spurious.  Anyway, in it the chronicler speaks of meeting with a Native American man who brings him to a cave to see a hairy man, which he called a "crazy bear."  It was said to have come from a flying contraption piloted by "star men," and that the star men occasionally brought these crazy bears down from above and let them go.

But if that story won't do, there is another from 1912 that seems more plausible, coming from Coleman and Clark's Creatures from the Outer Edge, first published in 1978.  In this one, an Ohio man and his mother are out berry picking when they notice a "strange dark cloud" overhead.  Unnerved by this, they decided to leave the area, but as they left they noticed they were followed by what would be in our parlance now, by their description, a bigfoot.

What would be the most recent report?  I suppose it would be this one:

123.

Location. New Gloucester, Maine

Date: October 25 2008

Time: 0127am

The main witness along with two other individuals was exploring a 60 acre sand pit when they saw an extremely bright light. They were terrified at first but decided that they would investigate. They continued walking toward the light until it led them to a section of the pit enclosed by thick trees with a small opening in the middle. At this point they saw a large upright being approximately 8 feet tall, covered with hair and with piercing ice blue eyes. Frozen with fear they stood still as possible until the creature noticed them and bolted into the trees. The witnesses then left the area.



HC addendum
Source: NUFORC


In between there are, as I say, dozens of reports.  I'm guessing around 100.  That's way more than I would have thought.  So it's not the case that these reports are extremely rare, it's just that bigfoot researchers don't get them.

Vote for Cliff

Remember that contest (Columbia's Next Pioneer) that Cliff Barackman wanted to win?  Well the final week is upon us.  Since the shenanigans that erased his votes, he's scratched and clawed his way back to the top.  But who is to say there won't be more shenanigans?  Us, that's who.  So go cast your vote today.

UPDATE:  I just voted, and the tally went down from 324 to 321 as of 9:08pm Eastern.  I call Shenanigans!  Cliff says their fine print says that they can pick whichever one they want anyway, so the numbers don't matter, but still..

Let's keep our eye on that number.

Pennsylvania bigfoot video

Screen grab of video courtesy of abc27 News

I haven't seen it and can't tell you anything about it yet, but apparently there is a new bit of video which is said by its owner to contain images of a bigfoot.

A Dauphin County man, who wishes to remain anonymous, says he may have caught images of Bigfoot with his flip-cam.

He says he was hiking the Appalachian Trail with his wife back in October when he came across what looked like a fort. He started filming, and says that's when he started hearing strange noises.

"You can actually hear it go 'huh-ah,' like a monkey.  I mean, deep in the lungs," he said.  "I panicked. The sounds were loud and they freaked me out, to be honest with you. I told my wife we need to get out of here. There's something up in these woods."

When he got home, he saw a strange image on the video.

Be wary because Tom Biscardi is involved.  I would guess the video will make its way to the internet.  Let me know if you see it out there and I'll put a link here.

Action item -- sasquatch/yeti DNA

We have all heard that there have been other "unknown primate" results from analyses of various hais in the past.  I"ve found a list of some scientists who may have provided some of these results from the bff:

Bryan Sykes< Professor of Human Genetics ay Oxford Institue of Molecular Medicine

Paul Feurst associate professor of molecular genetics at The Ohio State University.

Hans Brunner associate of Deakin University of Melbourne, Australia

Walter Birkby of the Univerity of Arizona.

If these people are still there , they have alleged samplesd.

  I'm headed out for the afternoon, but I wondered if anyone remembered any of these cases and could talk about them?  And as I mentioned yesterday, if these folks all took DNA, I wonder if they've saved their results so that they can be checked against other results?  Seeems a useful thing to look into..