The Occult Section

There’s a sucker born every minute. Famous words said to have been uttered by P.T. Barnum. And it’s true, no matter what is put out there, there are people bound to believe it or buy into it. This is especially true in the paranormal field.  So if you believe orbs are ghosts, I have a bridge I can sell you, dirt cheap. Oh, and now you can also buy some Bigfoot hair.

“Not a guarantee.”

Monsters may not lurk under beds and in closets, but hair from Bigfoot may be bought at a place near you.

While Ty Shafer of Lufkin cannot be 100 percent certain the lock of hair he has in his possession is from Bigfoot himself, he is selling the novelty item for $30.

Shafer, a funeral director at Carroway Funeral Home, thought local residents may be interested in the novelty item because of the rumors of a Bigfoot wandering wooded areas of East Texas.

“A guy from Rush County called and said when he was younger he and some other people — he swears up and down — saw a baby Bigfoot,” Shafer said. “They said they ran it up a tree, but it smelled so bad they left it.”

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is commonly known as a hairy ape-like monster. The texture of the hair in question might surprise people , Shafer said.

“You would think it would be coarse, but it looks really soft — like you would see on a well-groomed dog or something,” Shafer said.

Shafer, originally from Amarillo, doesn’t have a shop, but he sells novelty items online, in local auctions and by taking out classified ads every other Thursday in The Lufkin News. Shafer has been with Carroway Funeral Home for the past eight-and-a-half years.

“If I sell it, it’s fine, if not I’ll keep it,” Shafer said. “Since I’ve been buying and selling things, my collection just keeps getting a little bigger.”

Having a lock of alleged Bigfoot hair is catching the attention of people across the country. Shafer fielded a call from as far away as Oregon on Tuesday about the item which he got two weeks ago. So far, he doesn’t have a serious buyer.

“People who call about it are more curious than anything,” Shafer said. “They ask a few questions, but then they say they’ll get back to me.”

Shafer is no stranger to getting attention for items he comes across and purchases. He has made a hobby out of looking for treasures on the Internet, estate sales and inside storage units for sale. In fact, at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Shafer and his 1990 red Ferrari will appear on the History Channel’s “Cajun Pawn Stars.” According tohistory.com, “Cajun Pawn Stars” puts a Southern spin on the History Channel’s hit series “Pawn Stars” with a cast of quirky characters. Viewers will have to tune in to see if Shafer is willing to part with his Ferrari which he bought from a dealership in Montgomery, Ala.

Many of the items Shafer buys from out of state, including the hair thought to belong to the famed monster, who allegedly lurks through desolate sections of the woods.

“I can’t confirm it’s Bigfoot hair. You’d have to have the actual Bigfoot to match the hair,” Shafer said. “He’s just a big Bigfoot fan.”

The man Shafer purchased the lock of charcoal colored hair from had it labeled No. 7 of 10.

If you are interested in seeing the hair for yourself, it will be on display at Nacogdoches Auction beginning Friday. The hair will be on display until it is auctioned on July 7, Shafer said. The auction is located about three miles north of Angelina River at 7821 U.S. Highway 259. For more information about the “Bigfoot hair,” or other items sold by Shafer, call 676-6059. For more information about the auction, contact Bonnie Worley at 462-9400.

Something smells bad about this, but I doubt it has anything to do with this hair sample actually being from a Bigfoot. It’s just strange that no mention is made as to the origins of the hair, other than Shafer bought it “out of state.” But I guarantee you, someone will buy this. Maybe I should start selling the dust in my apartment and call them “orb hairs?”

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Personally, I’m getting a bit tired of all the supposed chupacabra sightings and bodies being found lately. I’m a pretty open-minded guy, and believe in the possibility of many things, but it seems as though almost every single chupacabra sighting or body turns out to be that of a mangy coyote or feral dog. I think the bigger mystery here has nothing to do with cryptozoology, and mainly just revolves around the question of why so many mangy coyotes are being found now. I’m not sure why people see a hairless dog and equate it with something that’s supposed to be this lizard-like creature (mixed with a dash of grey alien) with spines and spikes and vampiric teeth. I just don’t see the connection.

And what breed of dog would this be? Perhaps you need to imagine it with hair.

Don’t resign yourself to chupacabra nightmares just yet. Even Jack Crabtree, the supplier of photos to The Facts, his local Texas paper, doesn’t think that he witnessed a real chupacabra, or “The Bigfoot of Latin Culture,” as dubbed by CNN during a previous chupacabra sighting.

According to a report by ABC News, the retired wildlife biologist and his wife Linda saw the slow-moving, hairless creature wandering by a creek at the back of their house on the Fourth of July. They took photos, and Crabtree sent them to the newspaper, jokingly calling it a Chupacabra.

However, the paper either didn’t get the joke, or didn’t care, and they ran it on the front page, stirring excitement similar to the other Texas Chupacabra sighting a few months ago. When that creature was spotted, Animal Control Officer Frank Hackett described the animal: “All I know is, it wasn’t normal. It was ugly, real ugly. I’m not going to tell no lie on that one.”

Crabtree told ABC News that he can’t believe people’s reactions:

“I’ve been amazed with the fascination people have with chupacabras and other mythical animals,” he said. “I’m really not a believer in chupacabras or Bigfoot or the Abominable Snowman.”

An even scarier thing here? That the newspaper took an offhand joke by this guy and reported it as a chupacabra sighting. The media will do anything for some attention, it seems.

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, bigfoot, chupacabra, cryptozoology, debunking, extraterrestrial, media, News, paranormal, people, sasquatch, texas, thoughts, ufo, ufos

It’s good to see that nature preserves are protecting Bigfoot as well. The Dallas Observer tells us of a man who was kicked off the Mineola Nature Preserve near the Sabine River on Tuesday. He was apparently trying to lure sasquatch to his Toyota sedan using fruit, steak and nuts. For some reason, I suspected he’d be driving a pickup truck.

Young Bigfoot are always suckers for candy. Or for helping to look for lost puppies.

A man from Lancaster spent Monday night in a nature preserve 75 miles east of Dallas trying to lure Bigfoot to his black Toyota sedan, police say.

Mineola Police Capt. Jack Newman tells Unfair Park he responded to a trespassing call Tuesday morning to find the man camped out in his car along the Sabine River, with bait on the roof of the car he said was meant to draw the reclusive forest giant out of hiding.

“He had some pieces of orange and a piece of steak and some nuts right on the top of his car,” Newman says. Next to a tree about 20 yards away, he says, the man had scattered a few more orange pieces. “I don’t know if he’d been trying to coax him over to the car or what.”

“He’d heard something about Bigfoot down around the Sabine River,” Newman says, though as far as he knows, the biggest wildlife draws around the preserve are deer and wild hogs. Fanning the flames of mystery, Newman says he can’t release the name of the man, who he says left the scene when asked. “He didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to be in there,” Newman says.

A report from KMOO radio in Mineola, though, says there have been fresh rumors of a Bigfoot sighting on private property near the preserve. One possible explanation: theTexas Bigfoot Research Conservancy held its annual conference in nearby Tyler in late October, though as Noah Bailey pointed out after hearing me on the phone this afternoon,Mineola has been a hotbed of Sasquatch activity for years.

Buster Green, a Mineola Nature Preserve caretaker who works for the city, says he spotted the man Tuesday morning and spoke to the would-be hunter briefly before calling police. “He was rolled up there sleeping in his vehicle when I come by,” he says. Green says the man had a camera in his car; KMOO reports he was otherwise unarmed. “He said he’d come down here on kind of a whim,” Green says.

“He was a big boy. He’s over six-foot, 230-ish,” Green says. “He didn’t need nothing to be hunting Bigfoot. He could’ve gone down there with just a switch.”

I’m not sure why he was kicked off of the preserve if he was unarmed. Though I’m also not sure what he expected to do with Bigfoot if he did indeed manage to lure him into his car.

Technorati Tags: bigfoot, cryptozoology, dallas, humor, nature preserve, News, paranormal, people, sasquatch, texas, thoughts