Interview with Nick Redfern, pt 1.

Fortean author Nick Redfern

A few days ago I had the good fortune to speak at length with well known Fortean author Nick Redfern. Over the course of the interview, Redfern took on several topics that should be of interest to readers here, although I'm certain much of it will be controversial to many readers too. Redfern, largely due to his experiences in Britain, has come to view the bigfoot phenomena as likely having something paranormal in it. (Nick, by the way, has a new book on this very topic, There's Something in the Woods. He keeps a blog of the same name dedicated to bigfoot-type phenomena here.)

Usually, that's about enough to stop most bigfoot researchers right there. I hope people will be able to keep an open mind and actually read what Nick had to say, because I think what he's saying is worth hearing and judging for ourselves. As I have said before on this blog, in a post concerning the intersection of bigfoot and UFOs:

But here’s the deal on that -- we really don’t know anything about what’s going on out there. Some of these details that have been historically winnowed out of bigfoot reports, details like the subjective response of witnesses, how their bodies felt, their emotional reaction; and physical details that don’t fit our understanding of the world, like the occasional light, and who knows what else -- these things get edited right out of the report. We have already been looking at the idea of infrasound on this blog. It’s very difficult now to reconstruct older cases that might be helpful in figuring out whether infrasound has anything to do with bigfoot because the clues have been edited out or repressed. . . Thirty years ago, we had no rational conceptual basket for the experiences that go along with the infrasound hypothesis, so rather than collect the data, we (almost always) threw it out. The same thing could be happening with the lights and other trappings of UFO [and let me add now, other strange] encounters. There could be data here that, thirty years from now, will have a rational explanation, but we just don’t have the mental framework to grasp it now. We should be meticulous in our collection of the data. If the witness is otherwise reliable, and especially when there is physical evidence too, let’s take it all in. I can almost guarantee that, down the line, the things that weird us out now will look different later on.

And that's what I really want any researchers who might read this to take away from it. You'll see Nick make the same kind of call -- let's not throw anything away. Let's gather all the evidence, even if it's weird, and put it all together. What looks strange to us today may one day have a completely rational explanation.

I enjoyed the chance to hear Nick's views and I have to tell you, with some of the problems we have in bigfoot research, ie, finding enough physical evidence to prove bigfoot exists, I'm downright sympathetic to his views. Whatever your views, I hope you'll enjoy the interview too.

Now, without further adeiu, here's part one of my interview with Nick Redfern.

DB: What I'm interested in is exactly what you were talking about on Paranormal Radio with Captain Jack -- bigfoot accounts with "high strangeness" in them. It's been a kind of obsession of mine for quite a while, though I've never.. I may have been near a few bigfoot creatures before, but I've never experienced any "high strangeness" stuff.

Nick: Hmm..

DB: That I noticed anyway..

Nick: Okay.

DB: But I get a lot of other people telling me stuff that does seem strange. You may remember I had a couple of interviews up from people who had very strange things happen during their encounters..

Nick: Yeah.

DB: So if you've got any stuff like that I'm interested in hearing about it. And I'm also especially interested in any bigfoot encounters you might have had yourself.

Nick: Okay. Yeah, I mean I can talk about a few weird things that have happened. Do you want me to just sort of start at the beginning as to how I came to this conclusion and the journey along the way and things like that?

DB: Sure, that'd be great!

Nick: Okay. Well basically, my interest in cryptozoology goes back to when I was about five years old. And my parents took me on holiday one summer to
Scotland, and we spent a day at Loch Ness. I've still got a fragmentary memory of this story of my dad telling me about how, you know, there was supposedly this dinosaur living in the depths of Loch Ness. And, you know, when you're five years old you're not necessarily old enough to appreciate all the intricacies of the story. But you're old enough to know, "Wow, there's a monster living in that lake!"

DB: Right

Nick: And so that really sort of sparked my interest, and even now as I said I can remember a few things from that day, but having been to Loch Ness again on several occasions.. You know I think one of the reasons why it captures people's imagination so much is the fact that it looks spooky. You know, it's a huge loch, very very black water, it's got an old ruined castle on it's shores. It looks atmospheric, and I think, you know, that was one of the things that sort of captured my interest and imagination. And over the years, you know, from that age upwards, fourteen, fifteen, I began reading books on the subject, the ones that were around at that particular time in the late 70s early 1980s. You know there actually weren't that many books available, in England at least -- a lot of imports. It was very much an underground subject, a fringe subject. But I started subscribing to newsletters and things like that, and then, when I finished school, I went into journalism. I worked as a feature writer for a rock music magazine in England called Zero. And so what happened was they taught me the inside and out of journalism. I was still developing this interest in, I guess, the UFO subject, cryptozoology, and the paranormal. And so I thought, "Why not try and combine the two?" So I started writing for magazines and newsletters -- of course this was pre-internet era. It was just somebody would put their own stapled newsletter together and send 50 copies out to different people or whatever. So I used to do a lot of that. And then that kind of progressed into more mainstream journalism writing, and then also doing crypto and Fortean stuff for mainstream publications. From there, that led to the books.

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: And so, what basically happened over time was -- where I was living back in England, which was an area called Staffordshire, a county in England -- I was doing a weekly column for a newspaper called the Chase Post. And this brought in a lot of reports from people who, you know, they'd seen like a black cat, a big large black cat running across the road late at night, or they'd seen an out of place animal. Something like a wolf, for example. People would see wolves, wallabies and things like that, kangaroos. But I would say for every, I don't know, twenty or thirty reports that would pour in, there would be one or two which would fall into the classic bigfoot type of category.

DB: Really?

Nick: Now of course, when you talk about bigfoot, everybody knows the bigfoot, the sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, or other parts of the US, or the Yeti of the Himalayas, and then you've got the Yowie in Australia, and etc., but bigfoot and Britain aren't two words that spring to mind collectively. You know, when you're investigating and thinking about these things.

DB: Right

Nick: I mean Britain itself, to put it into perspective, England, Scotland, and Wales combined, in terms of the square mileage, is actually smaller than the state of Texas where I now live.

DB: Yeah.

Nick: So it's not that big a country, even though there are a lot of wild areas and forests and woods, etc. And the population is 60 million, which is a pretty substantial population for a small country. And so the idea that a bigfoot or a colony of bigfoot creatures could be roaming around the British Isles sounds bizarre and preposterous, and yet the witness reports are no less credible than anything we're getting from the US, or China, or India, or wherever, Russia. So I began looking into these reports and, just to go back to the big cats, I mean everybody who is interested in cryptozoology has heard these stories of big cats roaming the British Isles.

DB: Right.

Nick: And that's quite plausible.

DB: Yes.

Nick: A lot of reports, a lot of escapees, that sort of thing. But when it comes to bigfoot, then you really are in a whole different category. Now, one of the things I found is that many of the bigfoot reports that, not just came to me, but that came to other researchers as well -- what I did, as well as digging through my reports that people would give to me, I went back and looked through the old literature from years ago and found a lot of very similar reports, where people had said things like they'd seen a giant gorilla in the woods fifty years ago.

DB: Right.

Nick: Or what they described as a man-like bear being seen in the woods, that sort of thing. And I began to realize that, to my surprise, the number of bigfoot reports in Britain was probably much bigger than anyone else had probably previously realized. I mean, certain areas of the British Isles were teaming with reports. I would say I've got upwards of, probably, low three figures from all across the British Isles and spanning a period of about eleven centuries. The earliest one is literally from about 900AD, something like that.

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: Now, several things stand out when you talk about the British bigfoot. One is that in many of the reports, the areas in which they've been seen has some sort of significance. Let me explain what I mean by that. A lot of bigfoot sightings in Britain have been made in the vicinity of ancient stone circles, prehistoric burial mounds, and areas that ancient man perceived as being of some significance. Whether magical, cultural significance, whatever. One classic example is a place, ironically not far from where I was born and grew up, called the Cannock Chase. The Cannock Chase is this large area of woodland, or forestland, in the county of Staffordshire that I mentioned earlier, where I was born. And there's an area on the Cannock Chase called the "castle ring." Now the castle ring is an ancient structure built by ancient man, I think something like four or five thousand years ago. There are all sorts of theories concerning why it was built, what it's significance was and is..

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: But the interesting thing about castle ring is that it has been the sight of nine or ten bigfoot-type encounters, that I'm aware of at least.

DB: Hmm!

Nick: This includes people seeing shadowy forms in the woods, bright red eyes -- I actually had a very weird experience myself once over there when staking the area out, and saw what looked like a flitting, shadowy form with these two red eyes. Now of course people can say, "You're seeing things that you're looking for," and what are the chances of something being in the area at the time you're looking for it. I would agree with those sentiments and those statements. And that's why I think the British bigfoot, at least, is different in some ways to some of the reports from elsewhere. It is the case that they, you know, turn up in these prehistoric locations, and sometimes people are looking for them. It's almost as if these creatures know and manifest for them. Now I know to some people, they think, "Oh, Nick's off on his paranormal tangent again," and there's like a little rolling of eyes and shaking of heads..

DB: Yeah.

Nick: But I mean, I can only tell the story as I know it from my perspective in interviewing the witnesses, and I would say I've probably got.. probably at least twenty or thirty reports where these creatures have been seen in areas that are standout areas, stone circles, places like that. Now you could argue on the one hand, Britain is a very old country, and you don't have to drive too far anywhere to find an old castle, or an old stone circle, which is quite true. But when you specifically get these reports of people seeing these creatures within like ten or twenty feet of these stone formations time and again, and the witnesses don't know each other, then I think we have to conclude, or I do at least, that something weirder is afoot.

DB: Yeah.

Nick: Now there are other reports, for example, of bigfoot having been seen in the UK. One case, that I can think of, in the same location as a crop circle. And there was evidence at this crop circle where there'd been some sort of ritualistic activity going on. For example, there were five peacock feathers laid out, like in the form of a pentagram.

DB: Hmm!

Nick: And, of course, if you go to wikipedia or some search like that you'll find that there's a lot of legends and folklore, not all positive and good ones, attached to peacock feathers and the peacock itself. So to find a report where somebody had seen this, like they described it like a huge, or large chimpanzee racing across the road late at night from the same area where rites and rituals have been undertaken inside a crop circle. Then, again, I find it difficult to, kind of, separate these various phenomena.

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: You know, is it just coincidence that bigfoot has been directly opposite where a crop circle was made and there were some weird rites and rituals afoot? I think it's very very unlikely that there wasn't a connection. Now, to expound upon that, there are people within the UK, for example -- and I've tried this a couple of times -- who tried ritualistic magic to try and conjure these things up. And there have been a number of cases where people, including me, have basically gone out into the woods -- I actually detail this in my latest book, There's Something in the Woods..



DB: Uh huh?

Nick: Yeah, I've gone out and basically tried meditation and learned how to do ritualistic magic, and then, maybe a year or so later, somebody has seen something very very similar to what I envisaged in that area. Now I'm not, certainly there's nothing special about me, a number of people have done this and in their own minds as well they've had some success in this area.

DB: Right.

NIck: One of the other areas that clinches it for me, at least, that there's more to bigfoot than meets the eye in Britain, is that, I think I've got three or four reports on file -- it's a very small number, but to me it's significant -- where people have been driving home late at night and they've seen this large hairy creature shamble across the road. And as it's done so, anything from like a hundred to a couple of hundred yards in front of them, their headlights, or car engine, or both of them, have failed. Almost like a vehicle interference case in some UFO reports.

DB: Yeah.

Nick: Now how we explain that, I haven't got a clue, I'll be the first to admit. But, again, I fully realize that some people think, you know, that's just too outrageous, the idea that a bigfoot, or a living creature, could affect the headlights of a car, and yet the people relating these accounts have, to my mind at least, no reason to lie. They come across as genuine as other people, and no axe to grind, you know, not looking for payments for the interview, concerned about not having too much publicity, in some cases quite happy for their first name to be revealed, but they don't want everybody and his brother knocking on their front door. So you have to wonder what is the motivation for coming up with a really wild story like that which in many respects defies convention and reality? So I would say it's these sorts of things, having grown up in Britain, and having been exposed to British bigfoot reports, has made me appreciate more the high strangeness angle, that Is so relevant because of Britain being such a small country. And, as I say, because of the locations where these things have been seen also.

DB: Right.

Nick: Now when it comes to the US, I'm fully aware that most US researchers of the subject do take the approach that we're dealing with a flesh and blood animal that is simply hiding out in huge forests and has successfully managed to keep away from society for however many years, for the most part. And that could well be the case. But I have to say, I have investigated, like I'm sure most researchers have, so called "fringe cases," in the US.

DB: Yes.

Nick: One classic one, which is also in the new book, was concerning a sighting of a bigfoot in the woods of Oklahoma, which I think was about two years ago. And the couple who said they saw this huge creature just sort of stride across the path way in front of them in the woods, which they described as an immense creature, like eight foot tall or something like that.

DB: Uh huh?

Nick: And they said, and I know this gets into some wild areas, that the creature, they felt, was talking to them through their minds, almost like a telepathy, saying, "Don't come any closer, stay away."

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: And the bizarre thing was, they described it as almost being a very gentle, womanly voice, coming from this creature, as I say in the book, that looks like it could tear apart a small car! And they afterward began to experience a lot of weird activity in their home, like poltergeist activity, seeing strange balls of light flitting in the woods outside of their home, things like that. Now, again, you either have to say, "Well these people are just cranks," you know, seeking publicity, etc. But actually, the ironic thing is they weren't seeking publicity, rather they were looking to get some sort of idea, from someone who could, hopefully, help them as to what they saw. So, you know, if they're not cranks, if they're not crazy, if they're not fantasists, again, I have to conclude that even if bigfoot is a physical creature, there are far stranger things going on with respect to these perceived paranormal aspects, poltergeist activity in the wake of an encounter.

DB: Right

And I think one of the things that parallels very closely some of the cases I investigated in America and practically all of them in Britain is this issue of the self-illuminating red eyes.

DB: Yeah.

Nick: Now, in England, I can tell you that I don't think.. there's probably no more than a handful of the three figure reports I've got that don't mention either self-luminating red eyes, or very very bright eyes, like silver eyes or white eyes, but that don't seem to be reflecting from any particular light source.

DB: Right

Nick: Of course, you know, you can see an animals eyes in the headlights of your car if you're driving late at night, but most of the people I've spoken with said that, no, it was far stranger than that. It was almost like these eyes were lighting up half the face. They were that bright.

DB: Hmm!

Nick: I've got a lot of reports like that, where there are these stand out red eyes. And we get that in a lot of other crypto reports as well. Even some of the black cat reports in England have these aspects, and particularly the ancient black dog legends in Britain. A lot of the British towns and villages have these ancient stories of phantom black dogs, kind of like The Hound of the Baskervilles, which itself was actually based on one of these legends. And in these cases, the black dog is sort of like a "Grim Reaper" type character. If you see it on a lonely road late at night, there's going to be tragedy in the family, or somebody is going to die, that sort of thing.

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: And they're kind of like an archetypal legend that is instilled in much of British folklore, but again, these black dogs are described as having these huge, illuminated eyes. In some cases bright red, or silver, or white. You know, you look at the Mothman as well, this winged creature with glowing eyes. So whether or not.. to what extent that's relevant, and even what it means, I'll be the first to admit I don't know. I'd be speculating, I just haven't got a clue. But collectively, it's these types of reports -- the locations, some of the after-effects -- that lead me to believe, as I said, even if bigfoot is physical, there's more going on.

DB: Yeah.

Nick: Now let me talk about the paranormal, of course that's very much a simplistic term. You know, it's a catch-all term for who-knows-what. And it's also the same with people who say, well, bigfoot can flit in and out of dimensions, etc. That sounds great, but my first question is, "How do you define what a dimension is?"

DB: Uh huh.

Nick: It's these simplistic that get bandied about so much within many aspects of the Fortean world. And I think things like quantum physics, possibly, are beginning to answer some of these questions about other realities and things like that. But I think it's in the very early stages and I hesitate to go down that path and fully embrace it, but equally I think it's not a responsible thing to ignore the high strangeness, fringe cases. Unfortunately I know some researchers who do. They just flat out think that, you know, the witness had to be mistaken at best, or at worst, they're trying to con me and hoax me.

DB: Right

Nick: I can understand that if you're of a mindset that -- particularly if someone has seen a creature close up and they're convinced it was a fully flesh and blood animate object. But equally I think the responsibility is on us to try not to get caught up in belief systems, and to analyze all of the evidence, even if it doesn't always sit well with what we tentatively conclude. So that's what I try and do, and I'll be the first to admit -- I don't mind admitting some people think, when I start going off on this paranormal tangent, you know, they think, "Nick's lost it" or, you know, "He's been smoking too much of the good stuff!" So in that respect I find it -- what shall I say.. I'm trying to follow the path of staying impartial..

DB: Right

Nick: But I won't lie and say I don't come across cases that suggest there's more going on, because I do. And I don't want to ignore those cases. I want to be able to try and have an open, wide approach to the subject that doesn't cause conflicts because I believe this or I believe that. Now in saying the fact that I do subscribe to the idea that at least some of these things are paranormal, as I said, one of the things I've tried to think of is, well, how can we take this to the next level?

You can see part two of the interview here.