THE MURPHY FILE NEWSLETTER
Newsletter #8 April 18, 2006 Editor: Chris Murphy This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
?C.L.Murphy 2006
?C.L.Murphy 2006
Continuing thanks for the positive support for this endeavor, both by direct email and on the Bigfoot Forum. There is an old saying that tells us, "There is nothing new under the sun." However, by the same token there is nothing old either. It all depends on what one knows. If you are just getting into the sasquatch field, then just about everything I present will be "new." However, to the veterans, much will be "old hat." Nevertheless, continually "raking over" old stuff does result in new findings because the passage of time provides new perspectives, especially where technology comes into play. There is really no such thing as an "old dig." What was kicked aside as irrelevant 30 years ago can provide a vast array of new knowledge today - and even more "tomorrow."
Did you Know, Nice to Know, or Need to Know
April 18, 2006 marks the 5th anniversary of Rene Dahinden's death Click Here . I remember him fondly and often think about him. He became very frustrated in his latter years because we were not very much closer to proving sasquatch existence than we were when he entered the field in the 1950s. I met with him regularly for nearly six years. When he first showed me the Bossburg "cripple foot" casts, about 1997, I was very impressed Click Here. However, when I asked him what level of credibility he gave the prints, he said 50%. Rene himself followed the prints in snow (there were over 1,000) and at one point there was a yellow patch where something had obviously urinated. He regretted that he did not take a sample. He also regretted not paying more attention to details when he first viewed the Patterson/Gimlin film. He told me the packaging from the film developer was "right there on the table." All he had to do was go over and take a look at it and we would have had the answer to the troublesome question as to who developed the film. Anyway, this is all 20/20 hindsight, and old Rene certainly contributed a lot towards resolving the sasquatch issue - and despite all the water that flowed under the bridge, I do miss him.
Scott McClean posted an article from the Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, dated October 5, 1958, about the Jerry Crew incident. Here is another paper that came out before the Associated Press story, and two points are noteworthy. The article states that workers, "reported hundreds of footprints in an area about 30 miles long stretching from the village of Willow Creek to a stream called Bluff Creek west of Somesbar." I did not realize that many prints were found. Furthermore, "Crew said Raymond Wallace, another employee of the Granite Logging Co. for which Crew works, measured the stride and found one stretch where Bigfoot apparently was chasing a deer and was loping along 10 feet at a stride." The intent here I believe is "step" or "pace" (say left toe to right heel, or the space between footprints). I believe this is incomprehensible for either a sasquatch or a man with wooden feet being pulled with a cable by a truck - as we are told Wallace was to fake prints.
Dr. Henner Fahrenbach enlightened me with the following information concerning the Oregon Vortex: "The reason that scientists are ignoring the Vortex - not an isolated roadside attraction - is that that sort of thing is a well-known optical illusion. You can always take the hanging ball as the vertical reference. If then you yourself are not parallel to the line the ball hangs from, you are involuntarily trying to compensate for the visual incongruities. There is absolutely nothing different with the place with respect to gravity! What the people are doing is exploiting the lay of the land and an abundance of off-kilter "reference" marks like the crooked house." Now, with regard to the ball that appears to roll uphill, Dr. Fahrenbach states the following: "It [the ball] doesn't really run uphill; the observer gets fooled into believing that by the contorted reference frame. The rule of thumb is that if it conflicts with the laws of physics (and especially if somebody is trying to make money off it), it is bogus or, as in this case, an optical illusion." Has anyone else here been to the Oregon Vortex? Here's my vortex article if you want to review it Click Here.
It bothers me to no end when I read accounts like the one concerning Y. L. Merejinsky (correct spelling) in John Green's, Sasquatch, The Apes Among Us (page 139). The summary is as follows: In 1959 Professor Y.L. Merejinsky of Kieve University was taken to a place in Azerbaijan where he was told he might be able to photograph a Kaptar, or Russian Snowman, which was known to come to a particular spot to drink. The creature showed up, but Merejinsky decided to try and kill it rather than photograph it. He took a shot but missed - thus no creature, no photograph. All we have is his word that it was skinny and covered with white hair from head to foot. But that is not the end of the story. Doctor Marie-Jeanne Koffmann accompanied Merejinsky and witnessed the entire incident. Despite Merejinsky's stupidity (photo first; shoot later if you must), one would think the testimony of two scientists would have been adequate for the Russian scientific community to have launched a major expedition to find the creature. Indeed, even influenced Western world professionals to react more positively to the sasquatch issue. It appears scientists don't even believe scientists when it comes to hominids. Nevertheless, Professor Boris Porshnev apparently believed the story and included it in his part of the book he co-authored with Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans (L' Home de Neanderthal est Toujours Vivant, pages 167-69). The book is in French so Liza Jane Grajek kindly translated the story for me. It is included in my article series Click Here . If you prefer to read the French version, Click Here .
This photograph of a footprint found in Hyampom, California in 1963 shows ground water that has seeped to the lowest portions of the print. Click Here It demonstrates very clearly that the heel came down and dug into the soil, then rolled up onto the toes which again dug in. If we invert the photo, you get an even better picture of the action. Click Here (Inverted) Dr. Meldrum shows the action very nicely in his diagram on page 132 of Meet the Sasquatch Click Here (Diagram) (Note: the toes would dig in more as the foot raised). It appears to me that this type of action should be at least reasonably apparent in all possible/probable sasquatch footprints, but it is. It not. Many prints appear to show that the heel and central part of the foot came down evenly, then the toes dug in, providing a slightly deeper impassion that the rest of the foot. One can, of course, make a footprint of this nature by purposely bringing his or her foot down evenly rather than heel first. Anyway, from this observation, It would appear that different sasquatch walk in different ways. I will mention, however, that a footprints fabricated with a wooden foot, or a plaster casts, would be very even because the wood or plaster would not be flexible - you could not sort of "dig in and roll it up."
Here's a neat shot of John Green (right) with Dale Moffit (dog handler) and another man (not sure of I.D.) at Bluff Creek, California in August 1967 (just two months prior to the P/G film). The dog is "White Lady, " seen more clearly in Meet the Sasquatch, page 185. They are at a track location we believe was downstream from the film site, at an area where loggers had a trailer camp. Click Here
I am just getting into an in-depth review on Australia's yowie. I met Paul Cropper, a foremost Australian researcher, in Texas last year, and am highly impressed with the material he presented. Remarkably, the yowie, like the sasquatch, appears to come in three, four, and five toe versions. One of the best documented yowie sightings took place in 1912. The creature was observed squatting by a stream, and when it stood up, was estimated to be 7-feet tall. Sydney Jephcott, a bushman, went to the location immediately and found many four-toed footprints. In his own words: "A striking peculiarity was revealed in the footprints; these, resembling an enormously long and ugly human foot in the heel, instep, and ball, had only four toes - long (nearly five inches), cylindrical, and showing evidence of extreme flexibility." Here is an artist's conception from Out of the Shadows by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper Click Here. Unfortunately the book is out-of-print, but Tony and Paul are working on a new book, The Yowie File, which I am anxious to see.
And while we're "hanging about " in Australia, note the following from the Healy/Cropper book (page 146). "Although Australian paleontologist have provided us with no fossilized great apes, they have uncovered remains of a type of supposedly primitive man who just might have had something to do with the yowie legend. In 1967 [good year - CLM] during the digging of irrigation canals, about 40 very unusual skeletons were unearthed at Kow Swamp, between Swan Hill and Echuca. The skeletons, between 9,000 and 14,000 years old, were robust, large-toothed and appeared radically different from those of modern Aborigines. The jaws were among the largest human jaws ever found - one almost equaled that of Heidelberg Man - at that time the world's largest. They appeared, in some respects, guide similar to those of Java Man (a southeastern form of Homo erectus). It is important to note, however, that although they appeared so primitive, the Kow Swamp skeletons were by no means the oldest discovered in Australia. Remains of a more slender 'modern type' - clearly one of the ancestors of the modern Aborigines - have been dated at 30,000 years and it is generally accepted that such people lived in Australia for at least 20,000 years before that." As Ray Crowe pointed out years ago, sasquatch bones are probably sitting in some dusty box in a museum basement as are the Australian bones (whatever they are). Hey Paul, anyway we can at least get some photos of those bones?
Dave Hancock's nesting eagles are certainly no "spring chickens." They are at least 18 years old and by my calculation are great grandparents to the 7th power, with 32 children and 336 grandchildren (given eagles reach sexual maturity at age two). Here we see one of the eagles turning over the eggs Click Here. Anyway, I suppose I'm just jealous because I don't have a video hooked up to a sasquatch nest (yet).
This drawing of a sasquatch Click Here was done by a lady in Sharonville, Ohio. She stated that she saw the creature leaning on a tree observing her children at play, and that it was grinning. The incident happened on July 2, 1984. I have been looking at this drawing for about ten years as it popped up now and then, noting that it has a very convincing quality. Then the thought struck me the other night that if the creature was in fact grinning, it probably also has the ability to laugh. Now, laughing is a very special gift, and as far as I know it is limited to human beings. Do chimps actually laugh? I know they express amusement, but I don't think they can actually laugh and get the enjoyment that humans derive from this strange human trait (for lack of a better word). Remarkably, I believe people have actually fainted from laughing, and I seem to recall a comedian making a person in the audience laugh so hard that he couldn't stop and they had to take him out of the theater. Who knows, perhaps we can catch a sasquatch that way.
And while we are on the subject of art, I do wonder why early native art (petroglyphs, pictographs) is so abstract. This applies to everything depicted, be it sasquatch or anything else. Art is basically a talent, and I would think that one of those guys would have had the ability to depict a sasquatch like the lady in Sharonville.
Generally speaking, one way to likely tell the difference between a man and a women without having to speculate on what's below the shoulders, is the presence of a reasonably large (noticeable) Adam's apple. If you look up the function of the organ, you will see that male sasquatch probably have an exceedingly large Adam's apple - if we are to believe in some of the howls attributed to the creature.
New Stories
The Biggest Blunder in Hominid Research History Click Here
An Unusual Sasquatch Click Here
Book News
Bigfoot Encounters in Ohio is nearly on the doorstep. Now that I have had a chance to more thoroughly review the advance copy, I have to say that, "Hancock House has done it again - excellent book quality." Even if your four-year-old gets a hold of it, you can simply wipe it of and put it back where it belongs (hey, I've been there). You will be pleased with this book.
Actual Links for "Click Here" Insertions Shown Above
Dahinden Card: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_6_original.jpg
Bossburg Casts: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_8_original.jpg
Vortex Article: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/article.php/20060326163434174
Porshnev Story - English: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/article.php/20060414210806975
Porshnev Story - French: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_9_original.jpg
Hyampom Positive: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_10_original.jpg
Hyampom Inverted: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_11_original.jpg
Meldrum Diagram: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_12_original.jpg
Green/Others - Bluff Creek: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_13_original.jpg
Yowie: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_14_original.jpg
Eagle: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060413112936320_3_original.jpg
Sas. Drawing - Ohio: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060405165159531_15_original.jpg
Unusual Sasquatch: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/article.php/20060409230741873