Abominable Chicken Man

My daily commute takes me straight through downtown Bishopville, SC. If that name sounds familiar to you don’t be surprised. The town was made famous, more or less, back in 1988 with the alleged sightings of the Lizard Man at the Scape Ore Swamp. I’ve written about the Lizard Man in the past here, if you need a refresher. Last week on my way to work, I had to stop my car as a chicken crossed the road. 

Recognizing a golden opportunity for a joke, I quickly went to twitter to announce this. I suppose that’s a commentary on our current social media obsessed society, but I digress. Because of my extremely witty joke, Theo Paijmans, linked me to an interesting newspaper report which I had not heard of before. It’s the strange tale of the “Abominable Chicken Man”. A primate of unknown origin which apparently had a craving for chickens and was roaming around the Oklahoma country side in the late 60’s early 70’s. 

Probably not what was seen

The story was reported in The Spokesman-Review by Dennis Montgomery on March 1st of 1971. This encounter had occurred the previous December. Montgomery relates how a local farmer located in El Reno, Oklahoma suffered some loss and damaged property at the hands of this “Chicken Man”. Montgomery writes:

An El Reno farmer walked out to his chicken coop one day in December and found its door on the ground, apparently thrown there after being ripped off the wall.

On the surface of the door, and inside the coop on the walls, were a number of strange hand prints - like none he’d ever seen before. They were about seven inches long and five inches wide.

The farmer initially contacted a local game warden/ranger who was also at a loss to explain the origins of the hand prints. So the local zoo was contacted to see if they could offer any insight on what may have attacked the farmer’s chickens. Montgomery tells us:

Zoo Director Lawrence Curtis says the prints appear to be like those of a primate. A primate is an animal like a gorilla or a man that can stand erect. The thumber of the print is unusual. Curtis says it crooks inside, as if it were deformed or had been injured.

‘It resembles a gorilla,’ he said, ‘but it’s more like a man.’

‘It appears that whatever made the prints was walking on all fours. There were some footprints on the ground outside,’ he said. Whatever it was was barefoot. Barefoot in December.

This farmer was not the only one person to have come across similar prints. Montgomery notes several other individuals across Oklahoma who were said to have discovered the same, or similar, hand prints as the original farmer did. As to what this creature could have been, Montgermery relates:

Oklahoma has only for native animals big enough to leave such prints: the black bear, the mountain lion, the wolf and man. Curtis has ruled out all but the last.

‘We’ve shown it to several mammalogists and several wildlife experts in Oklahoma and some passing through. All agree it is a primate,’ he said. ‘These prints were made by some sort of a man, perhaps looking for chickens,’

Check this link in order to read the full article. Montgomery goes on to draw parallels between this “Chicken Man” and other Bigfoot creatures seen throughout North America. The chicken farmer never claimed to have seen the creature, only the devastation it left in it’s wake. There are a number of sightings of bigfoot-like creatures reported in the area in and around El Reno, Oklahoma. Did this famer have an encounter with the Bigfoot? It’s possible. Those hand prints certainly do sound quite large and the fact that the creature got around on all fours could possibly rule out a human culprit. Unless they were up to trickery, a possibility which I can’t deny.

The ‘Abominable Chicken Man’ never seemed to show back up. Maybe he had enough chicken? Maybe he went on a diet? Who knows? Either way, it makes for yet another interesting wrinkle in the Bigfoot story.

Further reading:

El Reno’s Dermals - Cryptomundo

Oklahoma - a Bigfoot Hotspot - From the Shadows

Beast of Gevaudan

One of the first books I purchased from the paranormal field was Brad Steiger’s The Werewolf Book. (Technically I purchased an earlier version, the amazon link there is to the latest edition). Within this fascinating book, is a story which I was reminded of while working on yesterday’s post.  Our tale begins in the mountainous region of France, called Gevaudan. Clark, in Unexplained!, tells us the following:

One day in June 1764, in a forest in the Gevaudan, a mountainous region of south-central France, a young woman tending cows looked up to see a hideous beast bearing down on her. The size of a cow or donkey, the creature resembled an enormous wolf. Her dogs fled, but the cattle drove the beast off with their horns.

This is the start of the beast’s reign of terror. Steiger offers readers a description:

The creature was described as a hairy beast that walked upright on two legs. Its face was sworn to be like that of Satan, and its entire body was said to be covered with dark, bristly hair. Those who were fortunate enough to escape the beast’s clutches always mentioned an “evil smell” that emanated from its foul hide.

Unlike many other paranormal creatures, the Beast of Gevaudan seemed to have a taste for human flesh. It slaughtered men, women, and children throughout Gevaudan. Though it did seem to have a predilection for women and children. The people, as Steiger writes, were convinced that they were dealing with a ‘Loup-Garou’ or Werewolf. A somewhat typical encounter with this “Werewolf” is told below by Steiger:

On the Night of January 15, 1765, a blizzard raged in the mountains. When his 15-year-old son did not return from tending sheep, Pierre Chateauneuf lit a torch and went in search of the boy. The horrified father discovered the mutilated body of his son near the bawling flock.

The grieving Chateauneuf carried the body down the slopes to their small farm home in the valley….

It was then, Chateauneuf later told the authorities, that he saw the beast staring at him through a window. The werewolf’s eyes were glassy, like those of a wild animal, and its dark face was covered with hair.

The angry farmer dashed to a wall, pulled down a musket, and fired point-blank at the creature. The black, hairy monster had apparently anticipated the man’s attack, for it dropped down before the musket was discharged. Chateauneuf testified later that as he reloaded the musket and ran outside, he saw the beast running across the snow toward his orchard. It looked like a man running in an animal’s skin.

That the people were dealing with something which seemed not to be a typical wolf seems evident from the accounts. Although even at the time some doubted the stories of “Loup-Garous” and believed that there must be a rational explanation for what was occurring. Eventually village petitions would reach Louis IX at Versailles. The King ordered that soldiers be dispatched to search the mountains of Le Gevaudan. The soldiers came up empty-handed, apparently failing to locate any kind of beast, whether normal or paranormal, which could be responsible for the deaths.

The attacks by the creature increased until it all ended in a rather dramatic, and perhaps difficult to envision, scenario. Steiger reports that a posse of several hundred men had succeeded in finally cornering the beast in some trees near the village of Le Surge d’Auvert. He writes:

Jean Chastel was given credit for the kill. According to Chastel's testimony, he had retired a short distance from his companions to read his prayer book. He happened to glance up from his devotions and saw the beast coming directly toward him, walking erect. Chastel said that he had prepared himself according to certain ancient traditions. His double-barreled musket was loaded with bullets made from a silver chalice that had been blessed by a priest.

The bullet from the first barrel of Chastel's musket struck the monster in the chest. It let out a fierce howl and charged its attacker. Chastel aimed the next shot directly for the monster’s heart. The werewolf dropped dead at his feet, the silver bullet in its heart.

With that final shot the end of the three year long wave of horror caused by the Beast of Gevaudan came to an end. A part of me can’t quite move past the almost “mythic” way in which the creature was killed. The ‘holy’ or ‘devout’ man kills the evil creature with a blessed object. I don’t know, perhaps I’m reading too much into the tale. Regardless if we assume Chastel’s account is correct, he successfully stopped a creature which had been terrorizing Gevaudan for nearly three years. What was this creature? By all reports it certainly sounds like it really was a werewolf. The people of the town were convinced, though there were skeptics of this story. Whether it was supernatural creature or some natural predator, it makes for a very interesting, if tragic, tale.

19th Century Chupacabras

While thumbing through one of my paranormal books the other night, I came across a familiar story. A group of sheep farmers were upset because something was attacking and killing their livestock. The creature was not, however, eating the sheep. According to witnesses,  it was biting their jugulars and, apparently, draining them of blood. If this sounds familiar to you, hold your assumptions for just a second. The above the story comes not from Puerto Rico in 1995, instead Charle Fort relates the account in his book Lo! (which I of course read in The Book of the Damned) written in 1931. Fort tells readers:

In the month of May, 1810, something appeared at Ennerdale, near the border of England and Scotland, and killed sheep, not devouring them, sometimes seven or eight of them in a night, but biting into the jugular vein and sucking the blood.

As far back as 1810, something  was roaming the countryside, draining livestock of blood. Fort goes on to describe how a large “dog” was killed. At which point the killings ceased. That this is anything more than a convenient explanation seems obvious to Fort. He has already spent much of Lo! showing readers how a satisfying answer to a problem, no matter how much data is ignored, is almost always preferable to a real mystery. He tells of more sheep killings in the same manner:

For about four months, in the year 1874, beginning upon January 8th, a killer was abroad, in Ireland. In Land and Water, March 7, 1874, a correspondent writes that he had heard of depredations by a wolf, in Ireland, where the last native wolf had been killed in the year 1712. According to him, a killer was running wild, in Cavan, slaying as many as 30 sheep in one night. There is another account, in Land and Water, March 28. Here, a correspondent writes that, in Cavan, sheep had been killed in a way that led to the belief that the marauder was not a dog.

This correspondent knew of 42 instances, in three townlands, in which sheep had been similarly killed—throats cut and blood sucked, but no flesh eaten. The footprints were like a dog's, but were long and narrow, and showed traces of strong claws. Then, in the issue of April 11th, of Land and Water, came the news that we have been expecting. The killer had been shot. It had been shot by Archdeacon Magenniss, at Lismoreville, and was only a large dog.

Other towns seemed to have encounters with a same, or similar, creature. This time it was a bit different in that no matter how many “dogs”, who were most assuredly the culprit, were shot it did not stop the killings. Fort tells us:

See the Clare Journal, issues up to April 27th—the shooting of the large dog, and no effect upon the depredations—another dog shot, and the relief of the farmers, who believed that this one was the killer—still another dog shot, and supposed to be the killer—the killing of sheep continuing. The depredations were so great as to be described as "terrible losses for poor people." It is not definitely said that something was killing sheep vampirishly, but that "only a piece was bitten off, and no flesh sufficient for a dog ever eaten."

The scene of the killings shifted.

Cavan Weekly News, April 17—that, near Limerick, more than 100 miles from Cavan, "a wolf or something like it" was killing sheep. The writer says that several persons, alleged to have been bitten by this animal, had been taken to the Ennis Insane Asylum, "laboring under strange symptoms of insanity."

It seems that some of the killings were simultaneous near Cavan and near Limerick. At both places, it was not said that finally any animal, known to be the killer, was shot or identified. If these things that may not be dogs be, their disappearances are as mysterious as their appearances.

The creature’s reign of terror was far from over. By 1905, similar attacks were occurring in England. Fort relates:

There was a marauding animal in England, toward the end of the year 1905. London Daily Mail, Nov. 1, 1905—"the sheep-slaying mystery of Badminton." It is said that, in the neighborhood of Badminton, on the border between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, sheep had been killed. Sergeant Carter, of the Gloucestershire Police, is quoted—"I have seen two of the carcasses, myself, and can say definitely that it is impossible for it to be the work of a dog. Dogs are not vampires, and do not suck the blood of a sheep, and leave the flesh almost untouched."

It’s not hard to see the similarities between the nature of the attacks on these sheep and the later attacks by the ‘Chupacabra’. Is it possible that this could have been done by the same kind of creature? In some of the cases sighted by Fort, the mysterious phenomena went away without the “resolution” of having killed a dog or wolf. Ending as strangely as it began. This habit of mysterious phenomena starting and stopping suddenly is really par for the course. UFOs are often sighted in “Flaps” or “Waves”, so to is Bigfoot. Perhaps we are dealing with some kind of natural phenomena which is cyclical in nature? This idea is certainly not unique to me and in fact I believe I first read it in Keel’s books.

Could the above reports be of an actual Chupacabra in the 19th century? By all accounts it certainly bears a strong resemblance. As with most of this Fortean/Paranormal stuff, we are left only to wonder and marvel at the interesting accounts left to us. 

Living Dinosaurs!

As a kid I was extremely fascinated by Dinosaurs and read voraciously on the topic. Every book on the topic I could find I would read. At one point I even thought I would grow up to be a Paleontologist when I was older so that I could spend everyday with these wonderfully fascinating beasts. As with many of my childhood ambitions, my dream of being a paleontologist was abandoned when I found out how terribly boring their day-to-day lives were, and as I discovered the wild and crazy world of Fortean phenomena.

Imagine my surprise when I found that these two seemingly disparate passions found an interesting intersection in the form of modern sightings of living dinosaurs! The current scientific theories suggest that the demise of the dinosaurs began some 65 million years ago, give a take a few years for stragglers to completely die out. This allowed our ancestors, the mammals, to gain a foothold on the planet and for humans to eventually arrive on the scene (thanks to the intervention of the Annunaki of course wink, wink).  

Since when has science ever had the final answer on anything? After all, prior to 1938 it was generally believed that the Coelacanth, a close relative to the lungfish, had been extent since the Cretaceous period. This turned out to not quite be the case as fisherman began collecting very-much alive specimens of the species. Who’s to say that some other dinosaurs also didn’t survive the decimation of their fellows and continued flourishing to this very day (aside from conventional wisdom, but who needs that?)

With this in mind I offer to you dear reader the following tales and accounts of interactions with giant terrible lizards who certainly should not be roaming around any longer. As always draw your own conclusions as to the validity of the reports. For myself, I will take these people by their word until sufficient evidence comes in to the contrary. 

Mokele-mbembe

Perhaps the most (in)famous of all living dinosaurs is Mokele-Mbembe which translates as "one who stops the flow of rivers" in the language of the people of the Congo river basin. Mokele is a favorite dinosaur of my wife and many others for that matter. Sightings of the creature have been reported in Western sources for a few hundred years. Mokele makes his home in the Congo River basin of Africa traditionally in Lake Tele. Local tradition holds that Mokele is an herbivore which seems to prefer shallow waters. The creature most clearly resembles a Sauropod.  

Some sightings:

One of the earlier “modern” accounts comes from just over 100 years ago. Commissioned by the German government, which had a colony in the area of the Congo, Capt. Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz came in the area to do a survey of the land. His writings report the following.

The animal is said to be of a brownish-gray color with a smooth skin, its size is approximately that of an elephant; at least that of a hippopotamus. It is said to have a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth but a very long one; some say it is a horn. A few spoke about a long, muscular tail like that of an alligator. Canoes coming near it are said to be doomed; the animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crews but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out by the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It is said to climb the shores even at daytime in search of food; its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. This feature disagrees with a possible explanation as a myth. The preferred plant was shown to me, it is a kind of liana with large white blossoms, with a milky sap and applelike fruits. At the Ssombo River I was shown a path said to have been made by this animal in order to get at its food. The path was fresh and there were plants of the described type nearby. But since there were too many tracks of elephants, hippos, and other large mammals it was impossible to make out a particular spoor with any amount of certainty

The above was reported by Jerome Clark in his Unexplained! 2nd edition, which as I’ve pointed out previously on this blog has a newly printed 3rd edition.

Expedition after expedition has been mounted to find this creature over time, all clearly unsuccessful. The thing that allows this creature to remain a possibility is the fact that this area is home to the second largest rainforest in the world. This is all to say that it’s not terribly unlikely that a small population of sauropods could have survived to this day. 

Pterosaurs

Relatively large-winged reptiles which took the skies some time in the late Jurassic Period. Some of them had wingspans upwards of 16 ft or more, with one of the largest being Hatzegopteryx thambema(having 33-36 ft). Like other dinosaurs, the Pterosaurs died out near the end of the Cretaceous period, or did they?

Writing for paranormal.about.com, Stephen Wagner relates the following accounts of people that claimed to have seen the Pterosaur very much alive.

January, 1976, Harlingen, Texas - Jackie Davis (14) and Tracey Lawson (11) reported seeing a "bird" on the ground that stood five feet tall, was dark in color with a bald head and a face like a gorilla's with a sharp, six-inch-long beak. A subsequent investigation by their parents uncovered tracks that had three toes and were eight inches across.

February, 1976, San Antonio, Texas - Three elementary school teachers saw what they described as a pterodactyl swooping low over their cars as they drove. They said its wingspan was between 15 and 20 feet. One of the teachers commented that it glided through the air on huge, bony wings - like a bat's.

September, 1982, Los Fresnos, Texas - An ambulance driver named James Thompson was stopped while driving on Highway 100 by his sighting of a "large birdlike object" flying low over the area. He described it as black or grayish with a rough texture, but no feathers. It had a five- to six-foot wingspan, a hump on the back of its head, and almost no neck at all. After consulting some books to identify the creature, he decided it most looked like a pterosaur.

These stories are anecdotal to the extreme of course, but as always I’m not sure what more we have to go on besides the stories. The accounts are interesting to say the least, but who knows how much validity there is to them.

Loch Ness ‘Monster’

Plesiosaurs first arrived on the scene, the scene being Earth’s oceans of course, some 205 million years ago during the the Triassic period. They officially lived until about 66 million years ago going extinct about the same time as all of their reptile brethren did. Except that one of them didn’t get the extinction memo and has shown up a number of times over the years in a lake in Scotland. The earliest “sighting” allegedly happened to a Saint Columba in the 6th century, who used his god powers to keep the beast at bay. The modern version of Nessie begins in 1933 with the following account by a George Spicer and his wife who claim to have seen  a creature which they described as “having a large body (about 1.2 metres (3 ft 11 in) high and 7.6 metres (25 ft) long), and long, narrow neck, slightly thicker than an elephant's trunk and as long as the 10–12-foot (3–4 m) width of the road; the neck had undulations in it. They saw no limbs, possibly because of a dip in the road obscuring the animal's lower portion” (Wikipedia).

1934 brought us the so called “Surgeon’s Photograph” (shown above) which was purportedly captured by Robert Kenneth Wilson and was later to be published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934. The good doctor claimed to have taken the picture after sighting the creature in the Loch, although the photo is generally believed to be a hoax.

As with Mokele, many expeditions have been mounted to capture on film Nessie and all have proven fruitless. The reason for this may be that Nessie isn’t as corporeal as one may assume. A blogger over at the aptly named LOCH NESS MONSTER blogspot page discusses the author, Ted Holiday’s more interesting explanation for the Loch Ness Monster posited in his 1979 work The Goblin Universe.

The blogger writes:

This theory essentially borrowed from the obscure work of a Professor Harold Burr in positing that Nessie was a three dimensional form which could be formed and held by something Burr called Life Fields which were electrical in nature and had some organic organising properties.

Burr proposed this as a biological principle but Holiday took it further in suggesting that a mind could control the process and cause unexpected forms to materialise. Indeed, he proposed a universal mind akin to God as the controller of these phenomemon though the discussion also included the human mind and the collective subconciousness of the entire human race.

I don’t have much more to say on the topic of Nessie, the creature is so iconic at this point I’m not too sure what I could add that hasn’t already been said. Although I do wish to point the reader towards something Greg Taylor wrote up about a Nick Redfern article for the Dark Lore Vol 2 anthology entitled “"What Lies Beneath"

Burrunjor

We come now to our final stop on today’s tour of “living dinosaurs” and what better place to wrap it up than with the ‘king’ himself? At some point during the Cretaceous period our friend the Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived on the scene instilling in all creatures living at the time mixed feelings. On the one hand, T. Rex was one of the largest land carnivores ever known to have lived. On the other, their arms were almost comically tiny. I digress. T. Rex were known to have roamed of much of what is now North America and, as with most of our other friends we’ve spoken about today,  to have gone extinct around 65 million years ago. Or perhaps not? Blogger Peter James Theiss, relates the following accounts on his Dinoplaza blog about sightings of a creature in Australia called the Burrunjor. This creature, by all accounts, sounds strikingly like our friend the T. Rex. Here are some of the accounts Theiss shares:

In 1922, north of Cloncurry, stock men saw a "big lizard monster" that was bipedal and moved its tail from side to side when walking.

In 1950, in the Burketown region, two reptile tracks were sighted by ranchers.

Back in 1950, cattlemen lost stock to some mysterious beast that left the mutilated, half-eaten remains of cows and bulls in its wake over a wide area, stretching between the border country and Burketown.  At first the cattlemen suspected crocodiles, but, Charles Waterman, a cattleman, described a "fearsome", mottled 20 foot tall beast carrying a cow in its jaws that bounded out of sight as he hid behind a bush.

Searchers on horseback found huge reptilian tracks of some bipedal-walking beast.  They followed these three-toed tracks with their cattle dogs through some rough jungle terrain until they entered swampland beyond which was more dense scrub.

However, it was at this point that the cattle dogs became uneasy and ran off.  The horses were also uneasy and obviously did not want to cross the swamp.  While most of the cattlemen decided their animals knew best, two men set off on foot with their carbines.

The story goes that they soon came across further tracks in an open area beyond the swamp.  While his mate searched about, the other man briefly spotted the dark form of an enormous creature, perhaps 30 ft. in height, further off in dense timber.  The men left the scene in haste.

Be sure to head over to Theiss’ blog in order to read more of the accounts that he shares. What is going on here? Is there some kind of Dinosaur living in Australia? We all know that the country has all sorts of bizarre and kooky animals, maybe living dinosaurs are just another part of the fauna of the land?

Conclusions?

One of the biggest criticisms of the continued existence of our friends the Pterosaurs, Mokele-Mbembe, T-Rex or Burrunjor, and the Loch Ness Monster are the locations where they are sighted don’t necessarily have a lot of good hiding places for them. Mokele could, at least in theory, hide in the rain forest, Pterosaurs? Not so much. After all, most of them are sighted in the Midwest of the United States. There aren't too many places for a giant flying creature to hide. Honestly the same can be said of the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, Loch Ness is actually quite large and deep. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a big enough population of creatures living in the Loch to sustain a Plesiosaur or family of them. Of course this is working under the assumption that these are actual physical creatures and not phantoms from another time. Which, seeing as this is the world of the Fortean, who can say they aren't?

For all we know these creatures could be slipping temporarily from their own time and invading ours. And really, is this any crazier than their existing currently living dinosaurs? That’s all for now dear readers, be sure to check back in on Monday for more from the strange world of the Fortean!

Bigfoot musings

The twitterverse (or at least the very tiny sub-section of people that are interested in weird things) was all a buzz today over the news that Justin Smeja, the guy who claims to have killed a Bigfoot, had successfully passed a lie detector test. According to the person that administered the test, this meant that Justin Smeja was telling the truth. Or at the very least believed that what he was saying was true. For many in the Bigfoot/Cryptid community this brought up a whole host of issues. Guy Edwards, writing on both Bigfoot Lunch Club and Cryptomundo, asked a very pertinent question with his article entitled, “Bigfoot Killer Passes Lie Detector Test. What Does it Mean?”. Personally I'm not sure that it means a whole lot of anything. Allow me to elaborate just a little bit. It seems to me that all the polygraph indicated was that there was “No deception detected” in response to the questions asked of Smeja. This tells met that Smeja certainly believes he killed a Bigfoot. However this is not the same thing as actually killing one. As a background to this whole issue Smeja claims to have shot and killed not only an adult Bigfoot, but also what appeared to be a juvenile Bigfoot. For a more in-depth look at this event you can read Jeffery Pritchett's interview for Examiner.com with Smeja. 

I'm not here to pass judgment one way or the other on this issue. In fact, this news got me to thinking about Bigfoot and the fact that I've never really had a chance to sit down and organize my thoughts on the big hairy hominid. And so I would like to take a moment or two of your time tonight and try to put down in writing were my opinion on Bigfoot is at the moment. As with any of my opinions on fortean topics, this is subject to change anytime, assuming new evidence comes along that causes me to re-evaluate the issue. Without further delay let's get started!

Undiscovered primate or Inter-dimensional traveler?

One last note, my thoughts on Bigfoot actually encompass all hairy hominids from around the world. So, although I will only be referring to 'Bigfoot' or 'Sasquatch', please understand that I also mean any other similar creature you can think of. Including, but not limited to, the following; Almas, Amomongo, Bukit Timah Monkey Man, Yeti, Yowie, Abominable Snowman, and so on. Thank you!

It seems likely that the most basic question to deal with first is whether or not Bigfoot is an actual flesh-and-blood creature or some etheric denizen from some other place. From the many reports I've read (and some of which I will be including below), I'm currently of the opinion that at least some (if not the vast majority) of Bigfoot encounters can best be explained by a creature that is altogether more paranormal than physical. We certainly don't seem to have much in the way of physical evidence for this creatures existence and as I said some of the reports can be quite bizarre. Please understand I said we don't have much physical evidence, not that we don't have any evidence. I know there are cases of hair, scat, and other very physical samples being collected from something that would seem to be quite physical in nature. However, most of these have turned out to be inconclusive at best or mis- identifications at worst.

So for the time being I'm content with having the opinion that there is a paranormal aspect to Bigfoot that is not typically taken into consideration, especially when people make claims of shooting one. As an example, here are just a few of the more bizarre/supernatural Bigfoot encounters that I was able to locate. Both of the following were found from a Google Groups post. The first example is from a Val Power, an anthropology undergraduate from Vancouver who wrote of her alleged Sasquatch encounters.

Too much has been written on too little direct observation. The focus of this report is the phenomenal aspect of the Sasquatch based on my two encounters in British Columbia.

REPORT #1

As we entered the forest via a well worn path, we both noticed and remarked that we could feel a pressure on the top of our heads. It was not uncomfortable but quite noticeable. The trail we were on led to a gulley and I knew this area very well as I was raised only three blocks away from it. Miriam and I would come here often on walks.

Once in the forest we did not walk more than one and a half city blocks. We spent time looking at the variety of vegetation and sitting on a log talking. This is not an area of thick undergrowth.

As we got up to continue our walk along the path, I noticed a log by which appeared suddenly, a Sasquatch laying on the ground facing the log. Its knees were slightly bent. Its fur was black. Miriam didn't seem to notice it and continued down the path. I got on my hands and knees because I wanted to get a good look at this creature.

I was only about a foot away from it at most, and close enough to comfortably reach out and touch it. Between the Sasquatch and myself was a visible, clear barrier. The bottom edge was approximately three to four inches from the ground. I did not look to see the height of the barrier nor the length, nor did it occur to me to see if I could walk around to see its face.

I wanted to reach out and touch its fur but didn't because I was unsure if the barrier would have an affect on my hand or my physical being.

As I knelt on the ground I heard a 'metallic' like 'click-click' and my eyes became as a microscope. Looking through this new heightened lens I could examine with clarity a single hair and how it fit into the light, creamy colored skin. Without touch, I could move aside a hair to examine it and know the thickness of its fur. There was no sound.

As I knelt on the ground, I was given a message or a knowing, "When the barrier touches the earth, the worlds will blend, and chaos will result".

As suddenly as it appeared it disappeared. I stood up and saw Miriam walking towards me. I asked her what she had been doing to which she replied, "Looking at a house in the trees". The house was small, on a branch approximately ten to twelve feet up in a tree. I didn't see the house and she didn't see the Sasquatch.

Later on in the article, Val analyzes what she believes happened to her and her friend during the events. It's a fascinating read and I suggest you check out the link to give it a glance yourself. The same Google Group post also has an excerpt from the book The Psychic Sasquatch by Jack “Kewaunee” Lapseritis.

[p. 27] This story was related to me over a six-year period through a series of letters, numerous telephone calls, and personal interviews. The account took place west of the Rocky Mountains; the names and places are changed to protect the family involved. These events occurred in the latter part of the 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Mr. Jeffrey and family are well established members of their community.

[p. 29] On the first night, they [the Jeffrey family] decided to walk along the lake after dark thinking they might see a Bigfoot further away from their trailer. After a while, they heard a banging of sticks on a hollow tree. Then loud thumping noises at a distance, as if something with huge feet was carelessly stomping the ground as it ran.

The banging on trees seemed to be coming from different directions, evidently by two separate individuals. The noise was heard repeatedly, which greatly perplexed them.

The Jeffrey family decided to hide in the brush in an effort to catch a glimpse of a Bigfoot. Before long, they were astounded by an ungodly cry [p. 30] unlike anything they had ever heard before.

What they observed in the moments that followed was beyond their wildest imaginations. They reported that the Sasquatch stepped out of the forest holding a flashlight device, and directed the beam up in the air while howling upwardly.

During this time, other unseen creatures hit their sticks against hollow logs making a loud drum-like thud. There were three bangs, then a pause; three bangs, then a pause – always three.

Within minutes, a round, saucer-shaped glowing object appeared on the horizon and hovered over the trees directly above the Sasquatch. The frightened family huddled in the bushes, observing the peculiar ritual.

There is a little bit more to the excerpt to be found on the Google Groups post, but of course to get the full story you'll have to check out the book. This particular account doesn't necessarily rule out a physical creature, but it certainly doesn't sound like an unclassified species of hominid. At least not in the classical sense of some kind of animal. This creature seems to have a pretty healthy grasp of technological understanding. Again, doesn't mean that the beings aren't from around here but that they are certainly stranger than we may know.

Just like any other fortean topic, my mind isn't entirely made up on what Bigfoot is. I do tend towards the explanation that there is some paranormal/supernatural aspect to Bigfoot that makes it far more than just another member of the hominid family. Cases such as the ones sighted above have definitely led me to this tentative conclusion. But like any good Fortean, I haven't completely settled into one camp or the other.

This makes my opinion on this whole Smeja/Bigfoot killing issue a little hard to pin down. Assuming that he isn't lying, as indicated by the polygraph test, then what does that mean exactly? It makes me wonder what he actually shot and killed. If the creature related in the above accounts is indicative of a Bigfoot, then how in the world did Smeja shoot them? Maybe he shot one of the biological Bigfoots (Bigfeet)?

These are just some of my random thoughts on Bigfoot. I realized that this post was getting a bit long so I'll be wrapping it up for now, but rest assured I will be returning to the Bigfoot issue from time to time in the future. As usual be sure to follow the links below for all of the additional information. Also let me know what you think in the comment section below. Do you think Bigfoot is some kind of inter-dimensional traveler or a surviving member of some long thought to be extinct member of the hominid family tree?

Additional Info:

Bigfoot Killer Passes Lie Detector Test. What Does it Mean?

'To Kill Or Not To Kill' Interview with Bigfoot killer Justin Smeja 

Supernatural Bigfoot UFO Connection - Google Groups 

The Psychic Sasquatch