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Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

carlitos said:
Peruvian Jungle Puppies!

https://apple.news/Ab4Go383VRIChFuFlOxIa-g

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Ooooh, I'll be there in a couple of weeks. I better put some old batteries in my camera so that it fails at the critical moment and then I'll be entered into the Cryptozoology Hall of Fame as their ace photographer!

All kidding aside, a timely post - thank you.
I'll be keeping an eye out for the Bush Dog as well.
 
Mr. Bigfoot

Is this a coincidence, or is there a link?

A 1956 episode of the syndicated TV show, Death Valley Days, purported to relate true stories of the old west, was entitled "Mr. Bigfoot." The story tells of giant human footprints found in a California desert in the early 1900s.

This episode came out a couple of years before the Ray Wallace hoax tracks in Northern California involving Jerry Crew and the coining of the word Bigfoot by the Humboldt Times editor Andrew Genzoli.

Is this just a weird coincidence? Or did Days influence Wallace with an idea to hoax giant human tracks, or give Genzoli the idea for a name?

DVD episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubSDxgp4bo0

The Crew event and the launching of Bigfoot: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/true1959.htm
 
jerrywayne said:
Is this a coincidence, or is there a link?

A 1956 episode of the syndicated TV show, Death Valley Days, purported to relate true stories of the old west, was entitled "Mr. Bigfoot." The story tells of giant human footprints found in a California desert in the early 1900s.

This episode came out a couple of years before the Ray Wallace hoax tracks in Northern California involving Jerry Crew and the coining of the word Bigfoot by the Humboldt Times editor Andrew Genzoli.

Is this just a weird coincidence? Or did Days influence Wallace with an idea to hoax giant human tracks, or give Genzoli the idea for a name?

DVD episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubSDxgp4bo0

The Crew event and the launching of Bigfoot: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/true1959.htm
Click to expand...

Probably hard to tell at this point, but it seems likely that Genzoli may have heard the phrase before, although it's the kind of obvious take on words that are frequent among people without people really even having been influenced by each other, kind of like "big-head."

I'm guessing that those early "big-foot" stories are what encouraged believers to think that Bigfoot had a history before the 1950s, and in a way, the legend did, but for the wrong reasons.
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
Probably hard to tell at this point, but it seems likely that Genzoli may have heard the phrase before, although it's the kind of obvious take on words that are frequent among people without people really even having been influenced by each other, kind of like "big-head."

I'm guessing that those early "big-foot" stories are what encouraged believers to think that Bigfoot had a history before the 1950s, and in a way, the legend did, but for the wrong reasons.
Click to expand...

Here is how I see “the historical Bigfoot,’ there wasn’t one. Green, Dahinden, and Sanderson tried to invoke a history for Bigfoot in typical Fortean fashion, by citing old newspaper reports and stories. These stories can be cataloged: “true” historical accounts such as the alleged “Siege of Mt. St. Helens” that really don’t match up with contemporary reports (3 toed, long pointy eared apes); stories of literal gorillas seen in American forests, most likely imagination or falsifications inspired by press stories of gorillas in Africa; overtly “fake news” of hairy men or ape-men, something local newspapers would publish to boost sales or entertain their readers; Indian accounts that were tall tales and/or representative of an animistic Native Culture; and the European fascination with the hairy man myth and stories of giants finding a home in the New World in campfire tales and later in spurious news reports. Such a collection of dubiously authenticated stories was employed by Green and allies to form a basis for historicity, to give the Sasquatch/Bigfoot story (which originated in the 1950s) a covering back story.

For me, the Bigfoot story as we know it has its origin in the pop culture of the 1950s. The Shipton photograph renewed world wide interest in the Yeti, fortunately coined as the mysterious Abominable Snowman. The Sasquatch/Bigfoot is nothing but the Yeti transplanted to the North American continent via romantic imagination (bipedal, cone head and all); that’s why early on it was often referred to as “America’s Abominable Snowman.” The contemporary myth of the Sasquatch/Bigfoot has two foster fathers: Ray Wallace and John Green. Wallace created Bigfoot as we know it with his hoaxed track-ways, giving it the appearance of something solid behind the stories, something holding real evidence, and moved it beyond the ephemeral. Green, converted to Bigfootville because of two Yeti-like recent reports by white men, and one Indian witness report mirroring First Nation lore, rushed to link the BC Yeti to the California tracks (such tracks had not yet appeared in Canada) and all it took then was a claimed “sighting” of a bipedal large ape (again, a Yeti trope) by two Wallace employees to set in motion the creation of a new American myth.

This is why I find the Death Valley Days episode interesting. Anything that has potential to help explain more fully what influenced the early days of the Bigfoot story ought be considered.

P.S. Patterson is all important too. But without Green and Wallace, there would be no Patterson because there would have been no Bigfoot.
 
The woollybooger, or bigfoot as it's known today, was used by my grandfather to keep people from finding his moonshine still during prohibition. The story goes back further than the 1950's.
 
jerrywayne said:
P.S. Patterson is all important too. But without Green and Wallace, there would be no Patterson because there would have been no Bigfoot.
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Do not underestimate the importance of Peter Byrne and Tom Slick.

Acting under Slick's directions, Peter flew to the Pacific Northwest and set up a base in in what at that time appeared to be the heart of activity of the phenomenon, Trinity County, in Northern California. There, at a tiny settlement named Salyer, near the town of Willow Creek, he assembled equipment that included four-wheel-drive vehicles, all terrain, heavy-duty motorcycles, cameras and binoculars and all-weather camping gear. He set up an office with staff and recruited an outdoor team of men and women with backgrounds of experience in the heavily forested terrain of the mountains. Once ready, he set about what he named The Great Search, for something which, if eyewitnesses were accurate in their descriptions, was a giant, unclassified, hair-covered, bipedal, man-like primate that might well have as its ancestor an equally enormous primate that at one time lived in Asia - in fact in the region from which America's Native Americans originated - a huge beast known to scientists as Gigantopithecus.
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This is a great resource http://www.petercbyrne.com/greatsearches.html

Look closely at the picture in the bottom right of the page. I think there was a reason Roger Patterson chose Bluff Creek to film Patty in 1967.

Curious if Bigfoot Bookman has located the location of that picture.
 
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Jodie said:
The woollybooger, or bigfoot as it's known today, was used by my grandfather to keep people from finding his moonshine still during prohibition. The story goes back further than the 1950's.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a Scooby Doo plot.
Did he ever tell anyone "Hey, that's just a story." or was he in character his whole life?
 
jerrywayne said:
Here is how I see “the historical Bigfoot,’ there wasn’t one. Green, Dahinden, and Sanderson tried to invoke a history for Bigfoot in typical Fortean fashion, by citing old newspaper reports and stories. These stories can be cataloged: “true” historical accounts such as the alleged “Siege of Mt. St. Helens” that really don’t match up with contemporary reports (3 toed, long pointy eared apes); stories of literal gorillas seen in American forests, most likely imagination or falsifications inspired by press stories of gorillas in Africa; overtly “fake news” of hairy men or ape-men, something local newspapers would publish to boost sales or entertain their readers; Indian accounts that were tall tales and/or representative of an animistic Native Culture; and the European fascination with the hairy man myth and stories of giants finding a home in the New World in campfire tales and later in spurious news reports. Such a collection of dubiously authenticated stories was employed by Green and allies to form a basis for historicity, to give the Sasquatch/Bigfoot story (which originated in the 1950s) a covering back story.

For me, the Bigfoot story as we know it has its origin in the pop culture of the 1950s. The Shipton photograph renewed world wide interest in the Yeti, fortunately coined as the mysterious Abominable Snowman. The Sasquatch/Bigfoot is nothing but the Yeti transplanted to the North American continent via romantic imagination (bipedal, cone head and all); that’s why early on it was often referred to as “America’s Abominable Snowman.” The contemporary myth of the Sasquatch/Bigfoot has two foster fathers: Ray Wallace and John Green. Wallace created Bigfoot as we know it with his hoaxed track-ways, giving it the appearance of something solid behind the stories, something holding real evidence, and moved it beyond the ephemeral. Green, converted to Bigfootville because of two Yeti-like recent reports by white men, and one Indian witness report mirroring First Nation lore, rushed to link the BC Yeti to the California tracks (such tracks had not yet appeared in Canada) and all it took then was a claimed “sighting” of a bipedal large ape (again, a Yeti trope) by two Wallace employees to set in motion the creation of a new American myth.

This is why I find the Death Valley Days episode interesting. Anything that has potential to help explain more fully what influenced the early days of the Bigfoot story ought be considered.

P.S. Patterson is all important too. But without Green and Wallace, there would be no Patterson because there would have been no Bigfoot.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much how I see it, too. There have been stories of "Wildmen" for a long time, but they're so far removed from the modern notion of Bigfoot that any attempt to relate them on the part of believers is an obvious ploy to have the legend seem deeper than it actually is.

Giants have existed in myth for a ridiculously long time, add in the European myths for Werewolves and general man-beasts of all varying types, along with newspaper clippings of "strange apes on the loose," and you basically have a fictitious history for the Sasquatch.

The Woodwose is lumped in with being a Bigfoot, just as the Big Grey Man of the Ben Macdui is, it goes on and on. Anything even remotely large, odd, or hairy, suddenly becomes a Sasquatch.

If you believe in Bigfoot, then you have to believe Bigfoot has a lineage, and you can find that lineage in the pages of folklore, just as you can find all kinds of nonsense stories to attach to UFOs and aliens, if UFOs is more your cup of tea.
 
Jodie said:
The woollybooger, or bigfoot as it's known today, was used by my grandfather to keep people from finding his moonshine still during prohibition. The story goes back further than the 1950's.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt that a story about a vague man-beast goes back an awful long way, but the problem is that it has no actual bearing on the modern Bigfoot tale.

Man-Beasts go back to ancient times, in all varying forms. Look at Egypt, Greece, Europe in general.

Bigfoot has morphed into being from all of these confused and contradictory stories of varying man-beasts, ghosts, and random giants.
 
Monsters just beyond the woodline, firelight, outside the door have been around forever.
I wish I had saved the article, but I read about a term for wildmen attributed to NA. It was reported to be used as a derogatory term for "uncivilized" NA living in the "woods". Most certainly misconstrued by footers as evidence of BIGFOOT!
 
Cervelo said:
Monsters just beyond the woodline, firelight, outside the door have been around forever.
I wish I had saved the article, but I read about a term for wildmen attributed to NA. It was reported to be used as a derogatory term for "uncivilized" NA living in the "woods". Most certainly misconstrued by footers as evidence of BIGFOOT!
Click to expand...

A lot of stories about "wildmen" were exactly that, just stories about unruly, unkept men. It was also a way to describe an uncouth savage by the upper-classes. That's the real problem; it has so many meanings that are largely forgotten in terms of how it is used today. Tolkein's wildmen were exactly that, savages from the hills.

When you really are desperate to find some kind of history for a monster which you're pushing as factual, then you'll cling onto anything remotely resembling that monster throughout the pages of history's legends. Sometimes those monsters have literally nothing in common with the modern version, but that doesn't matter when you're a very needy believer. The best example of this is the Grey Man of Ben Macdui; many Bigfoot believers use that as evidence for Bigfoot in the UK. Let's look at it for a second: a big black vaporous ghost that appears through the clouds near the summit of the mountain...seems like Bigfoot! :confused:
 
Drewbot said:
Sounds like a Scooby Doo plot.
Did he ever tell anyone "Hey, that's just a story." or was he in character his whole life?
Click to expand...

Evidently in character his whole life. He was a scary looking man, missing one eye, fingers on both hands, and had loose folds of skin hanging from his arms that attached to his side like bat wings where his arms were burned in a fire.
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
I don't doubt that a story about a vague man-beast goes back an awful long way, but the problem is that it has no actual bearing on the modern Bigfoot tale.

Man-Beasts go back to ancient times, in all varying forms. Look at Egypt, Greece, Europe in general.

Bigfoot has morphed into being from all of these confused and contradictory stories of varying man-beasts, ghosts, and random giants.
Click to expand...

It does when it's described as the critter that exists in the PNW known as bigfoot.
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
A lot of stories about "wildmen" were exactly that, just stories about unruly, unkept men. It was also a way to describe an uncouth savage by the upper-classes. That's the real problem; it has so many meanings that are largely forgotten in terms of how it is used today. Tolkein's wildmen were exactly that, savages from the hills.

When you really are desperate to find some kind of history for a monster which you're pushing as factual, then you'll cling onto anything remotely resembling that monster throughout the pages of history's legends. Sometimes those monsters have literally nothing in common with the modern version, but that doesn't matter when you're a very needy believer. The best example of this is the Grey Man of Ben Macdui; many Bigfoot believers use that as evidence for Bigfoot in the UK. Let's look at it for a second: a big black vaporous ghost that appears through the clouds near the summit of the mountain...seems like Bigfoot! :confused:
Click to expand...

Probably just a remnant from the stories of the Picts that were supposed to be blue.
 
Jodie said:
Probably just a remnant from the stories of the Picts that were supposed to be blue.
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The Grey Man? It's mainly thought to be attributed to a known optical illusion known as the "Brocken Spectre," but has its roots firmly set in the supernatural, as far as myth is concerned. The Bigfoot connection has been made fairly recently, for the sake of those who support the idea that Bigfoot exists and exists in the UK. When you're writing books about the UK Bigfoot, you ideally need more than one chapter, so we get many nonsense stories about completely non-bigfoot-related yarns, lol.
 
I don't think whether it's real or not is the issue. I'm just saying the bigfoot legend wasn't born in 1950 in the PNW. THe legend existed way before then and there are about a hundred different names for the same legendary creature.
 
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