The Occult Section

Rick Dyer just won’t go away. The Bigfoot hunter who claims to have found, shot and killed Bigfoot keeps tempting the media with alleged proof of Bigfoot, and consistently doesn’t deliver. He finally said his film, “Shooting Bigfoot,” would prove his claims once and for all. And now that the film has premiered, surprise surprise, it doesn’t prove anything at all. Except that Dyer is better at marketing himself than actually finding Bigfoot.

New candidate for Biggest Douche in the Universe.

SAN ANTONIO -Earlier this year a professional Bigfoot tracker claimed he shot and killed a Bigfoot on the Northwest side of San Antonio.

Rick Dyer said he shot and killed the creature in a wooded area near Loop 1604 and Highway 151 in September 2012.

While Dyer wasn’t able to provide any proof to back up his claim, he told KSAT 12 the truth would come out when a documentary film was released this spring.

That movie, “Shooting Bigfoot,” premiered at documentary film festival in Canada this week.

In February, Dyer said the film would prove his claims and he would go down in history as the man who killed Bigfoot, but the film just leaves more unanswered questions.

The controversial Bigfoot hunter with a history of pulling off hoaxes in the past said the documentary team captured him shooting and killing the creature when it was lured into their campsite with a rack of ribs.

The incident is featured at the end of the documentary that followed Dyer and 3 other professional Bigfoot hunters on their quest to find the creature and prove its existence to the world.

While the film has had excellent reviews, it didn’t exactly prove Dyer’s claims.

The morning after the film premiered, Dyer shared his disappointment in a YouTube post.

“I was there, I know exactly what happened and I tried to spill that to everyone else,” Dyer said in the video. “I’m sorry that Bigfoot did not come out and do a song and dance for you, but Bigfoot did come out and you do see him.”

While the film reportedly does show glimpses of a creature, it ends without explaining what it was.

While some Bigfoot believers are still supporting Dyer, many others are claiming it was all a big hoax.

Dyer isn’t giving up. He still claims the body of the Bigfoot he shot is being housed somewhere in Las Vegas and he said it will be shown to the world in August.

So now he’s claiming that he’ll reveal the body in August. Keep dangling that carrot, Mr. Dyer. Some people may still believe you by then. But if you truly have a Bigfoot body, it will be just as profitable now as it will be in August. So why wait?

Technorati Tags: bigfoot, conspiracy theory, cryptozoology, debunking, finding bigfoot, hoax, media, News, paranormal, people, rick dyer, san antonio, sasquatch, shooting bigfoot, thoughts, video, yeti

So many interesting anecdotes about Bigfoot, and so little actual proof. I came across this story of a woman who has been holding on to some biological material (hairs and skin, mostly) from what she claims is a sasquatch. Her story, while extremely interesting, doesn’t bring us any closer to determining if Bigfoot exists, unfortunately.

SUTHERLIN, Ore. – Betty Klopp has been holding on to these strands of hair and bits of skin for nearly 45 years.

“Of course I’ve kept it,” Klopp told KPIC News. “I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

She believes the clumps came from a bigfoot.

No one has proven the existence of bigfoot - or sasquatch or yeti or skunk ape, as some call the creature.

Klopp is convinced the forest dweller is really out there.

“Oh definitely,” she said. “I don’t think people should go around shooting him if they find him.”

Her sasquatch keepsake comes from her parents. Klopp said her parents were driving along in the 1960s, towing a small trailer, when they swerved off the road to avoid hitting what they believed was a man.

Klopp said her parents stopped at the Porter Creek Store to assess what had happened. They got out of the car and searched the area, but they found nothing.

The next day, her parents discovered pieces of skin and hair snagged on the trailer.

“This is something you don’t run into every day, quite literally,” Klopp said.

She said the material was sent to a university of Montana for testing about 3 years ago. The results showed the DNA was too deteriorated and the hair too degraded to make any identification.

Klopp still believes. She decided to share her story after hearing reports that someone in Texas had killed a bigfoot.

“There are reports that someone has one and has shot it and is storing it in his freezer,” Klopp said. “I would like to know for sure.”

It’s a shame that usable DNA could not be extracted from the samples that she has. DNA testing was pretty non-existent in the 1960s, and I’m guessing it would have been pretty tricky for her to preserve the hair and skin well enough for it to be tested. Plus, there would always be the issue of contamination.

Technorati Tags: bigfoot, cryptozoology, dna, finding bigfoot, media, montana, News, oregon, paranormal, people, sasquatch, skunk ape, sutherlin, thoughts, yeti

As a New Yorker, I often make fun of the Boston Red Sox. I mean, how could I not? They’re making the Mets look respectable these days. But I digress, and this post is not about offending Red Sox fans. If I wanted to do that, I could just talk about how Kevin Youklis is just the latest Sox player to trade up and go to the Yankees. But I digress again…No, in this post, I want to talk about Dustin Pedroia, and his interest in Bigfoot. Finally, a Red Sox player I can kinda like! I initially learned of his interest through Loren Coleman, who tweeted about Pedroia’s Sasquatch love. And today I came across this story, so I guess it’s getting more mainstream attention…

FORT MYERS ­— Today is a Red Sox off day. Some players will fish. Others play golf.

Dustin Pedroia has a hobby that falls a little outside the box — the search for Bigfoot.

You probably knew that if you follow Pedroia on Twitter (@15Lasershow), where a “Sasquatch Crossing” sign serves as his avatar. This spring, he walks around, a lot, in a light blue T-shirt with a Bigfoot drawing on it.

His next-door neighbor in the clubhouse, Will Middlebrooks, says Bigfoot is all Pedroia talks about, not only the TV show about the search but Bigfoot himself.

Middlebrooks is convinced that Pedroia believes in Bigfoot “120 percent.”

Pedroia is noncommittal. A little like Carl Everett was when it came to the subject of dinosaurs, he hasn’t seen foolproof evidence with his own eyes yet.

The search for Bigfoot, though, that matters.

Pedroia believes in the search for Bigfoot. Bigfeet, actually.

“There’s gotta be” more than one, he said yesterday. “I don’t know, I haven’t seen them. Keep looking for them.”

Pedroia does not miss episodes of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot.”

“It’s good, man, it’s good stuff,” he said.

Pedroia is up to date on all the claims, old and new, of the tall, lumbering creature known for its putrid stench, humongous footprints, ape-like noises and extremely reclusive habits. He said the Les Trout-Sasquatch YouTube videos are “pretty cool.” He is not into the Loch Ness monster, but Yeti (the Abominable Snowman, believed to be roaming the Himalayan Mountains) is “probably from the same family, probably from the same origin.”

The idea that all the Sasquatches must be breeding brings up the idea that there are baby Sasquatches sequestered in the woods somewhere.

“They call them juvenile Sasquatches,” Pedroia informs a newcomer to the search.

The conversation makes Pedroia a bit wary.

“It’s not a big deal, it’s normal stuff,” he said.

It’s not new, either. He heard about them growing up in central Sacramento.

“It’s Northern California, they’re everywhere, man. You see them at Wal-Mart,” he said.

So, he’s got a sense of humor about them. His wife, Kelli, is not on the same page about Bigfoot.

“She has no imagination,” he said. He agrees that there have been some Bigfoot hoaxes.

“For sure, we had one coming out of our bullpen until he got a haircut,” he said, referring to reliever Andrew Miller. He said he’d be willing to join the hunt one offseason, be on the TV show if it came around to that.

“I don’t know how many there are but the search continues,” Pedroia said. “Gotta find one. I’ll go look.”

He still would like to know more.

“There’s not much research on it,” he said. “We’ve got to find one first, then we’ll know.”

He keeps looking over at Middlebrooks. The third baseman finally can’t help himself.

“Where do they look? Everywhere?”’ he asks.

Pedroia acts annoyed.

“I don’t know, I’m not the founder of the show, I just watch it,” he said. “You’re not going to go in CVS and see one.”

Middlebrooks knows he has no shot at turning Pedroia into a skeptic.

So the search continues.

And when the searchers find him, or her, juvenile or not juvenile, Pedroia understands that’s not the end of the story.

“Then they’d go find more,” he said. “There’s more than one.”

It’s great to see more mainstream celebrities and scientists getting into Bigfoot and paranormal phenomena in general, and hopefully it opens the eyes and minds of more skeptics out there.

Technorati Tags: animal planet, bigfoot, boston, celebrity, cryptozoology, dustin pedroia, finding bigfoot, fort myers, loren coleman, media, News, paranormal, people, red sox, sasquatch, thoughts, tv show, yeti

At this point, I think a lot of people would say that the show Finding Bigfoot couldn’t sink any lower. So apparently, Matt Moneymaker and his team are looking to do the opposite of sinking: heading into the skies in a hot air balloon in their search for Sasquatch.

The Finding Bigfoot team is always open to new ways of locating their target; this week, a new technique takes the search up above Valles Caldera National Preserve.

Matt Moneymaker, president and founder of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), once again leads his team into a bigfoot research opportunity, this time in the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico. According to Animal Planet:

The team travels to the Jemez Mountains in New Mexico to investigate a thermal image video of a possible bigfoot. With sightings in and around the vast Valles Caldera National Park, the team narrows down their search by using a hot air balloon.

Fans will know that using a hot air balloon is yet another attempt by the Finding Bigfoot team to utilize all of the techniques they may have at their disposal, conventional or otherwise. Whatever idea a team member has, if there is the least bit of potential in it, they are all willing to keep an open mind and give it a try—one of the more admirable traits regarding the passion of the team, whether one believes in their quest or not. If they are never able to find the evidence they need, it certainly will not be because of a lack of willingness to try.

Just the Facts

The BFRO indicates on its website that there are numerous undisputed facts regarding the search for bigfoot over the years. These include the following:

• It’s a fact that for more than 400 years people have reported seeing large, hair-covered, man-like animals in the wilderness areas of North America.
• It is a fact that sightings of these animals continue today. Real or not, these reports are often made by people of unimpeachable character.
• It is a fact that, for over seventy years, people have been finding, photographing, and casting sets of very large human-shaped tracks. Most are discovered by chance in remote areas. These tracks continue to be found to this day.
• It is a fact that the cultural histories of many Native American and First Nation peoples include stories and beliefs about non-human “peoples” of the wild. Many of these descriptions bear a striking resemblance to the hairy man-like creatures reported today.

According to the BFRO, the dispute of these facts is not in whether or not they are actual facts, but rather over what they mean. Some believe, as does the BFRO, that the whole of these facts indicate that there is a likely primate living in very low populations, not yet “discovered” and “confirmed” by mainstream science. Others, however, believe that these “facts” simply point to an ongoing cultural phenomenon, which is perpetuated via misidentification, wishful-but-incorrect thinking, and deliberate fabrication of evidence—photos, sightings, footprints, videos, etc.

I don’t think this is a bad idea. Jeff Meldrum and others decided to take to the skies to look for Bigfoot recently as well. But Meldrum is an actual scientist, not a reality TV show star. Still, it’s probably a more efefctive way of finding Bigfoot than setting off fireworks in the woods at night.

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So with all the news this week of alleged Bigfoot DNA being sequenced, how could I not just keep doing Bigfoot stories? And if you believe what you read in this story, the big hairy fella has a taste for apples.

He should sell those apples for a hair transplant.

A Vermont man insists he spotted Bigfoot in his backyard – and he says he’s got video to prove it.

Frank Siecienski of Hubbarton first thought that it was only a deer ravaging the apple orchard that stands on his property last year.

“I pointed it out to my wife and she says ‘oh God,’ the deer must have been hungry,” he told WCAX-TV this April. “And I said no, a deer couldn’t have eaten that many apples in one night.”

So the self-described Sasquatch researcher set up a camera to keep watch of what was going on outside.

The footage, he claims, shows Bigfoot and its young scaring away a coyote.

“They’re very mysterious animals and they’re a night creature and they are very intelligent,” Siecienski told ABC 22. “I just hope he comes back.”

The Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, however, says the man’s claims are a hoot and the creature spotted is probably just an owl.

Paul Bartholomew, a Bigfoot researcher, says Sasquatch sightings in New England are nothing new.

“It’s a global phenomena and it’s here in our own backyards,” the Whitehall, N.Y., resident told WCAX.

Bartholomew said the descriptions of Bigfoot are often the same.

“Red glowing eyes, about 7 feet tall, making a sound like a pig squealing or a woman screaming and walking like a man but looking more like a gorilla,” he explained.

The majority of Bigfoot sightings are reported in the Pacific Northwest.

The creatures are believed to stand as much as 10 feet tall and weigh up to 500 pounds.

I can think of many explanations for what is actually captured in this photo, but I don’t see Bigfoot OR an owl. And a series of still photos, while technically is what a video is, doesn’t make this a video. This is a series of photos from a trail cam. I’m not quite sure where that explanation came from, but there it is. It looks like a poorly made Sasquatch costume, or at least a Bigfoot with the mange. Maybe he should eat more meat?

Technorati Tags: apple orchard, bigfoot, cryptozoology, debunking, finding bigfoot, Frank Siecienski, Hubbarton, media, new york, News, paranormal, people, picture, sasquatch, thoughts, tv show, Vermont, video, yeti