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?

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The big news this week is this story about Russell Crow filming a UFO. We’ve done tons of stories of celebrities seeing ghosts or UFOs, and now we can add Russell Crowe to the mix. Unfortunately, this “ship” seems to have a much more earthly explanation…

Making (UFO) movies, making songs, and fightin’ round the world!

A short video clip recently taken by actor Russell Crowe was uploaded to YouTube earlier this week and has many wondering if he might have recorded a UFO from his apartment overlooking a marina in Sydney, Australia.

Crowe tweeted, “A friend and I set camera to capture fruit bats rising from Botanic Gardens. This was a big surprise.”

The big surprise wasn’t bats but instead two mysterious, glowing red or yellow rodlike objects (or streaks), one above the other, moving in tandem from right to left in increments over the course of three photographs. The top image in the sky seems to be casting a light directly downward, though curiously the light does not seem to be reflected by any of the trees or leaves nearby.

Of course any time anyone connected with Hollywood or the entertainment business captures anything weird on video — whether it be a Bigfoot, a ghost, or a UFO — the suspicion often turns to a hoax created for publicity. Indeed, several videos in recent years have been revealed as computer-generated hoaxes. Sometimes the intent is to stir up publicity for an upcoming science-fiction film, though in one case last year a viral video of an eagle snatching a baby in a park turned out to be a student project for a Canadian art school. In this case, however, there seems little motivation for Crowe to hoax a UFO video; his new film, “Broken City,” is about a crime drama, not aliens.

Though Crowe’s UFO video is claimed to be a time-lapse video, it is not. A time-lapse video typically compresses an extended recording of an image (typically a static shot taken over the course of hours, days, or even weeks) into a few seconds or a few minutes. What Crowe allegedly recorded is closer to a timed exposure, which is a single photograph (or series of photos) taken over a long period of time. Timed exposures are often used in low light or at night, and are used to help pick up poorly lit images in the frame (such as the flying bats that Crowe was attempting to photograph).

However the same process that allows poorly lit images to be recorded also overcompensates for brightly lit objects, such as electric lights. This results in the well-known effect of light streaks of moving cars seen on nighttime highways, or photos of fireworks. Indeed this exact effect can be seen in Crowe’s images, which appear large because they were taken with a telephoto lens.

One person has posted a fairly convincing analysis of the video, showing that the image is almost certainly a passing sailboat whose lights were accidentally captured by Crowe’s camera. Perhaps the biggest clue that the UFO existed only in Crowe’s camera (and not over Sydney, Australia’s most populous city) is that no one else saw it or recorded it. Surely if such a brightly lit, mysterious object was hovering over Sydney’s Botanical Gardens, it would have been seen by hundreds or thousands of other people — and likely recorded on at least a few smart phones.

Crowe, of course, isn’t alone in his sighting. Several film stars, celebrities and politicians have reported seeing UFOs; President Jimmy Carter was said to have seen a UFO, as have Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, Congressman Dennis Kucinich,John Lennon, and others.

Of course, as Crowe’s photos show, all it takes to create a UFO sighting is to see or record something unidentified flying or floating in the sky — and not everything unidentified is unidentifiable.

On first look, you can tell that this is a times exposure photo, so what is on the pictures is not a disc-shaped object, but a streak of something moving. Check out the video below for a much better explanation than what I can give…

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I first came across this story the other day, on the Facebook page of our friend Courtney Mroch of Haunt Jaunts. As I said on her page…one of the greatest discoveries of all humankind would only be worth $100,000? I’d get more for it on eBay.

For some reason, I’m not entirely confident that this guy has $100,000…

The people behind a new UFO movie are searching for the best evidence related to UFOs or extraterrestrial life.

Filmmaker James Fox is working on what he describes as “the definitive UFO film,” and he aims to release the film in movie theaters across the country. Fox, who is known for his UFO documentaries like Out of the Blue and I Know What I Saw, will reveal details about this new film at the International UFO Congress in Fountain Hills, Arizona on Saturday, March 2nd, such as the name of the world-renowned screenwriter with whom he is working, and details about a large cash incentive being offered by the film’s producers for UFO evidence.’

Fox told the Huffington Post that the producers of this UFO film are offering $100,000 for the best UFO or extraterrestrial-related evidence. Fox explained, “This material can be in the form of a photograph, video or film footage or debris from an alleged crash site. But it must be able to withstand scientific scrutiny by our chosen panel.”

Again, more details will be provided by Fox at the International UFO Congress.

I’m curious who would be on this “scientific panel,” and if the filmmakers will find someone to award the $100,000 to. I’m not going to hold my breath, though.

Technorati Tags: alien, aliens, extraterrestrial, flying saucer, International UFO Congress, james fox, media, News, paranormal, people, picture, thoughts, ufo, ufos, video

We here at The Occult Section love when new species are discovered (or are proven to exist). The big news this week is that scientists have finally filmed a living giant squid. Kudos to all the scientists who worked so hard getting these images.

Didn’t Will Smith punch this guy in “Independence Day?”

Kraken. Devilfish. Giant squid. One of the mysterious inhabitants of the deep ocean gets its close-up this weekend, seen for the first time alive and in its natural habitat.

Sought by scientists for centuries, the views of giant squids, creatures about 40 feet long dwelling in the deep ocean, arrive Sunday in Monster Squid: The Giant is Real, on the Discovery Channel (8 PM ET/PT). Underneath the excitement of the long-sought sea monster appearing alive is a serious scientific story, say the researchers who helped capture the first film views of the undersea creatures.

“Our first few glimpses were amazing, almost like the squid was teasing us,” says bioluminescence expert Edie Widder of Ocean Research and Conservation Association in Fort Pierce, Fla. “Then we definitely saw we had the right animal, those huge eyes.”

Produced with Japan’s NHK network, the show recounts the travails of three scientists, Widder, biologist Steve O’Shea of the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Tsunemi Kobodera of the National Science Museum of Japan, as they hunt for the first glimpse of a living giant squid in the Pacific Ocean off Japan. Made famous in the public mind by Jules Verne’s 1870 book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, tentacles and carcasses of the creatures have washed ashore and into fisherman’s nets for decades, but the squids had never before been seen alive, until now.

The public got an advance peek of the creature in a video clip from the show posted on YouTube that went viral earlier this month.

Like all squids, giant ones have eight arms, two feeding tentacles and a cap-like mantle. Giant squids are distinguished by their length, perhaps as much as 40 feet in females, with a mantle six feet long and eyes the size of cantaloupes. They dwell perhaps 300 to 3,000 feet underwater, turning their gaze upward to search for prey, even as they fall prey themselves to sperm whales.

“If they are monsters, they are very gentle ones,” says squid expert (or teuthologist) Clyde Roper of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Roper organized unsuccessful expeditions in the late 1990s hunting for deep-sea views of giant squids off New Zealand, and he delivers one of the more delightful moments of the show as he happily confirms to the scientists that they had succeeded in capturing the first camera shots of a living giant squid.

“It’s important for people to see this kind of science, seeing living creatures as they actually live, where they actually live, is still important,” Roper says. “It’s not all genes and computers, but every kind of science working together.”

Or not. The show has some fun with the scientists as they set out on their quest, trying out competing squid lures, failure dogging their every step as they seek out the giant squid. Aboard a bubble-topped three-man Triton submersible (“luxurious compared to a lot of things I’ve dived in,” Widders says), they eventually spent 285 hours in the depths on 55 sub dives, many more than 3,000 feet down in search of their quarry.

Their eventual success shows that luring the hidden denizens of the deep with bait and glowing lights that mimic prey might represent a better approach to documenting the creatures, instead of hunting them out in subs with bright lights blazing. “We’ve been exploring the deep ocean the wrong way, scaring them off instead of drawing them in,” says Widder, who employed a lure that mimics the bioluminescent lights of the glowing Medusa jellyfish on the expedition.

Bioluminescence, or light given off by living things, is seen in everything from fireflies to fungi, but plays a key role in creatures in the deep ocean, where glowing lanternfish and jellyfish are plentiful. Those jellyfish are preyed upon by smaller squids, which in turn are fed upon by giant squids. So, on the dives, Widder turned on her lure’s lights in a bid to entice a giant squid to come prey upon a jellyfish predator.

“Those huge eyes, living in perpetual darkness, clearly they pick up on bioluminescence above them,” Roper says. Although an electronic bioluminescence device that mimics the panic signal of a jellyfish first attracts a giant squid on the show, the longest encounter with one comes courtesy of plain old bait, a smaller squid, which entices the creature to hang around for extended observation. “It’s wonderful to be part of something scientifically successful,” Widder says.

What’s next? Well, she would like to try for observations of the colossal squid, the only one larger than a giant squid. Only discovered in the 1920s, colossal squid live in the Antarctic Ocean and grow to perhaps 46 feet in length. “In a heartbeat I’d go look for them,” Widder says. “It has bioluminescent eyes. That is something I’d like to see.”

The colossal squid? I can’t wait until they get some video of that beast.

Technorati Tags: cryptozoology, discovery channel, Edie Widder, giant squid, media, Monster Squid: The Giant is Real, News, paranormal, people, picture, thoughts, tv show, video

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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