Bigfoot
Bigfoot
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?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
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THE MURPHY FILE NEWSLETTER
Newsletter #9 April 30 2006 Editor: Chris Murphy
?C.L.Murphy 2006
It appears I have taken something for granted, so need to clear the air. I have considered material provided to me in connection with this newsletter as intended for subsequent publication. This, however, does not appear to be the intent in all cases. To be on the safe side from here on, I will confirm usage of material and send originators a draft showing what I intend to show in the newsletter.
Did you Know, Nice to Know, or Need to Know
Marlon Davis sent me the following information which I find very intriguing. "In response to your newsletter, with the long toed Yowie. I don't know if you realize it, but there are humans with long toes, and possessing a mid tarsal break. I say there are, but unfortunately these people took a hit from measles, and being forced by missionaries to wear clothes, and it wiped them out ... or at least they say.
This photo was taken in the 1920's. Group Photo - Click Here These people are called the Yahgans. They lived in Tierra del Fuego, down at the extreme end of South America. This would be the southern equivalent to Point Barrow Alaska. Precipitation falls there 300 days out of the year. The water temperature hovers near freezing. The wind blows constantly. Yet these people went about completely naked, with no ill effects. The women dove for mussels. Charles Darwin anchored the Beagle off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, and these people came out in canoes. He said that he observed a woman suckling a child, and there was sleet on the child and the woman's bosom - both completely naked. Besides their indifference to cold, the Yahgans could grip rocks with their feet and hold on to them in a gale. ( Click Here for Darwin's detailed observations.)
They hunted by throwing rocks, and were very accurate with them. The men suffered from a psycho-neurotic disorder that appears to be congenital. They would go into a violent trance, preceded by melancholy. Whenever they felt themselves becoming this way, they would ask to be tied up, until it passed. The Yahgan name was given them by the missionaries, but the name that they called themselves was Yamanas. This meant literally...."alive", or living ones. They were an anthropological treasure trove, and yet were hardly studied at all before they disappeared. Look at the toes in the group photo - Toes Detail - Click Here. Also notice in the group photo that the breasts of the women begin very low down." (Reference: Richard Lee Marks, Three Men of the Beagle, Click Here for details )
I think we can gather from this information that sasquatch would not have any trouble living in cold climates. Nevertheless, I do note in additional material Marlon sent to me that the Yahgans did use fire for warmth and cooking (Tierra del Fuego means " Land of fire," so named for the smoking fires these people kept going constantly). One thing that intrigued me a little was the shelters the Yahgans built Click Here. This is what is said about them: "The Yahgans did not live in caves nor did they build huts or houses, they had "wigwams," but that word is misused to describe their shelters. They would find some fallen wood, a few boughs to pull together to serve as a support, and would pile tall grass and reeds against the sticks to make a kind of windbreaker." This is the type of structure I would envision sasquatch would make.
And let's talk about fire for a minute or two. As fire, to my knowledge, is not used (controlled) by any animals except human beings, I would think that it might be used as a bit of an indicator as to whether or not a creature is human or non-human. Nevertheless, at some very distant point in the past (beyond 1.4 to 1.5 Million years ago) humans (or whatever we were then) possibly did not use/control fire. That the sasquatch does not appear to use fire, puts its intelligence much lower than that of human beings; certainly lower than ANY human beings on this planet. When we use the words "ape-man" or "man-ape," the inference is 50/50, but I would think any creature that was 50% human, and even much, much less, would still learn how to control fire. In my mind, this is the main and strongest argument for the Green/Bindernagel stand that the sasquatch is an "ape," there is no "man" whatsoever. Nevertheless, having said all of that, there are cases where sasquatch have been seen playing with fire. Disregarding domesticated chimps that can be taught to smoke cigars, all animals, to my knowledge, have an inherent fear of fire. So perhaps the sasquatch is a notch or two up the ladder, but absolutely well below the human threshold, whatever that might be. (Recent findings on man's use of fire Click Here.)
Matt Crowley has jumped in regarding my discussion on the Hyampom footprint: "With all due respect I must disagree with the conclusion drawn in your latest newsletter.The enclosed photographs show tracks I made with a rigid prosthetic foot I fabricated using an old tennis shoe, some two part urethane casting compound, and a clay female mold. I made the tracks by bounding around on some mud flats here in Seattle, down by the Duwamish River. I had no idea that a totally rigid prosthetic foot was capable of making these kind of tracks until I actually tried it. As you can see in my photographs, the heel and toes have ?dug in? while the mid-foot has not." Click the following to see the prints: Print #1 Print #2 Print #3 Print #4, and here is the foot sole with a tennis shoe Matt constructed to make the prints, Click Here
Here is what an impression looks like when a solid plaster cast is pushed down directly into soft sand Click Here . This print was made from Dahinden's "master" cast of the 1958 Bluff Creek print found and cast by Bob Titmus. Dahinden glued the cast onto a flat base so that pressure could be somewhat evenly applied when the cast was pushed into soft sand. Click Here . The finished cast copies on the left are from the P/G film site casts. He did not use the same process to make these casts; just simply pushed the master casts into the sand (no block).
Jim Roberts of Winnipeg, Manitoba, is the first, to my knowledge, to win an award for sasquatch art. Jim's carving of a sasquatch took a first place ribbon at the Prairie Canada Carvers' Association competition. The 14-inch high carving is shown here: Click Here View #1 Click Here View #2. Jim tells me he used illustrations in Dr. John Bindernagel's book, and Robert Bateman's painting for inspiration. Congratulations Jim. Here is Jim's website - lots of great carvings Click Here
While I was down in Texas last year for their Bigfoot Conference, Craig Woolheater took me out to Lake Worth. I was amused to see alligator warning signs, so had Craig take a photo of me standing by one Click Here. Craig sort of said, really nothing to be concerned about, but I was still a little uneasy. He just sent me this clip Click Here. Can you imagine meeting something like that face to face! I would much rather meet a sasquatch. Thanks Craig, (nothing to be concerned about, yea right).
A sasquatch exhibit at the Idaho Museum of Natural History, Pocatello, is in the making. Everything I have was packed up Click Here (but that's not all) and shipped April 23. The museum is now sorting things out and planning their exhibit. Dr. Jeff Meldrum will be adding his casts and posters, etc., so the exhibit will be the most comprehensive (if not the largest) ever held. I now have my spare room back, and save my photographs and books, one would hardly know I am involved in sasquatch research. Here is the museum's website Click Here . When accessed, click on the first entry COMING SOON: Bigfoot Invades IMNH for full details. Here's the site for the Bigfoot Rendezvous Click Here (June 16/17/18) that will start the ball rolling.
Not much sasquatch research on my part in the last two weeks. I have been getting it together with my photographs, which number in the thousands. When one gets to this point, albums or file boxes are hopeless for quick referencing. The only way to go is proper Acme Visible or Kardex files. Files1 Click Here Files 2 Click Here. The "tower" seen has the capacity for about 10,000 photographs (up to 8" x 5"). Naturally, I have tons of digital images as well, but I always take regular photos of anything important, or that might be needed for publication.
Up here (or down here) in British Columbia, we have Sasquatch Beer, and now Sasquatch Bread Click Here and then Click Here . Both are really great stuff if you happen to be in the neighborhood.
Actual Links for "Click Here" Insertions Shown Above
Group Photo: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_3_original.jpg
Toes Detail: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_5_original.jpg
Darwin's Observations: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_14_original.jpg
Print from Dahinden's Master: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_10_original.jpg
Titmus Cast on a Block: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_11_original.jpg
Shelter: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_12_original.jpg
Crowley Print #1: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_6_original.jpg
Crowley Print #2: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_7_original.jpg
Crowley Print #3 http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_8_original.jpg
Crowley Print #4: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_9_original.jpg
Crowley Foot: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_13_original.jpg
Idaho: http://www.fallingrockproductions.com/rendezvous/
Carving#1 http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/20060415110332884_15_original.jpg
Carving#2 http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_1_original.jpg
Bread Label: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_2_original.jpg
Bread: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_3_original.jpg
Jim Roberts' Website: http://www.namaycush.com/
Alligator Sign: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_4_original.jpg
Alligator Clip: http://www.nbc5i.com/news/8779506/detail.html
Shipment: http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_5_original.jpg
File #1 http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_6_original.jpg
File #2 http://forum.hancockhouse.com/images/articles/2006041813174144_7_original.jpg
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The unknown world: How I tracked Bigfoot through the Malaysian jungle
Jan McGirk joined a team of paranormal investigators to check out reports of 10ft giant apes in the rainforest near Kota Tinggi. This is what they found...
Published: 22 February 2006
At first glance it might have seemed like nothing. A four-inch impression in the mud of the Malaysian rainforest. On closer inspection, however, it seemed as if it might be the astounding find the expedition had been hoping for. A footprint of the creature known variously as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the tropical Yeti or - to locals - the Mawas.
Said to grow up to 10- feet tall, with an awesome armspan, a trio of these undiscovered hominids were at the centre of a flurry of unconfirmed sightings by frightened plantation workers three months ago. And in the fading light of the Bukit Lantang woods on the fringe of dense forest in Johor state, a single splayed print appeared to offer the most compelling evidence yet that we were on the trail of the mighty beast.
The Mawas appears to have grabbed for support when it teetered off-balance, because tree branches 11 feet overhead had been damaged, directly above the spot where the animal's left heel had sunk four inches into a muddy puddle. A stick had snapped beneath one of its toe depressions.
A second fresh footprint proved impossible to find but recent damage to a rotting log, located a couple of strides away, suggested it had might have borne a prodigious weight.
For the excitable team of Yeti hunters, mainly a mix of Singapore enthusiasts and volunteers from the capital Kuala Lumpur it was vindication. Even the sceptics, including this reporter, were secretly impressed.
As with the two extremely faded footprints that had been found preserved in fresh tar on a nearby road, this print measured nearly a triple handspan across, roughly 11 by 19 inches. The Australian tracker Tony Burke, part of the Singapore team, estimated that to make such a print, an animal would have to weigh at least 240kg.
"I'm a cynic, but if we could see a right footprint as well, we could at least measure its gait. Maybe if we had some scat, I could be totally convinced," he said. "I am about 50 per cent there. Let's see what the lab results are."
An official government committee of research scientists, appointed by Abdul Ghani Othman, chief minister of Johor state, has been trying to verify Bigfoot's existence since late January, by interviewing witnesses, setting upcamera traps in its likely haunts, and collecting evidence from tribal informants in the national parks.
But our paranormal investigators' search party, tailed by an excitable science-fiction film crew from Los Angeles, was anything but stealthy. Kong Kam Choy, a 40-year-old construction worker who likes to trek through the jungle in his free time, convinced the gaggle of researchers to tramp through a leech-infested grove near a palm plantation where he had come across unusually big tracks that he could not readily identify.
It was just two hours before dusk, thunder was rumbling and the group was disappointed, having made a futile afternoon voyage upriver to examine a set of tracks discovered on 10 January near the Tanjung Sedili creek. These had since been washed away by tropical downpours and overrun by wild boar.
Then we struck gold. Kenny Fong, an e-commerce professor who founded Singapore Paranormal Investigators five years ago, came running when Josh Gates, a sci-fi documentary maker, summoned him to check out the peculiarly large footprint.
Professor Fong considers himself a debunker who is keen to spot a hoax. Using a police crime scene kit designed to preserve footprints for court evidence, he set about the job. A technician required three full bags of plaster (at about 1lb a bag) to fill the huge depression made by the single footprint. The muddy size 20 footprint was doused with hairspray before quick-setting plaster was poured into each crevice.
As the group gawked and cameras whirred, the print took on that unmistakable and almost comically ominous Bigfoot shape - the flat foot with four rounded digits, plus a gorilla-like big toe jutting out from the side. "People say Bigfoot doesn't exist, and I have had my doubts. But what else could it be?" asked Professor Fong, who promptly toppled off a hillock in his excitement to photograph the group in front of the fresh paw print.
According to Vincent Chow, a Malaysian bio-diversity expert, this area of diverse rainforest has been rife with Bigfoot sightings all month. "An elephant has been foraging in those woods for food, so farmers set off explosives to frighten it away from their fields," he said. "But animals get accustomed to these blasts and ignore them. Now we think a Bigfoot family of three may be shadowing the elephant, who clears the way.
"Fourteen large footprints were found nearby on Saturday. Then at 4am, workers were awakened by 10 minutes of weird hooting, a kind of call and response session, while they were asleep at a palm oil plantation." The planter, Abdul Rahman Ahmad, said his terrified workers at Komping Lukut described the eerie night cries as long drawls in three distinct pitches. "They said it sounded like squeals of wild pigs mixed up with the deep barks of gibbons - but not like owls," he recounted. They also heard heavy crashing through the underbrush. Mr Chow speculated that at least three different animals, which the local tribes call Hantu Jarang Gigi, or "snaggle-toothed ghosts", must have been involved in this curious chorus.
Historical records show eight claimed sightings of enormous apemen in southern Malaysia that date back to 1871, and the Orang Asli tribes who inhabit the forest famously dread an encounter with these shy, oversized apes, known variously as Sasquatch in Canada, Yowie in eastern Australia, Bigfoot in the western US or the Yeti in the Himalayas.
The creature is almost ubiquitous and many cultures throughout the world have legends about man-beasts. Recorded sightings in North America date back to the early 1800s. According to some Native American tribes, the Sasquatch are not flesh-and-blood creatures in the first place but spirits which appear to humans in times of crisis. But despite numerous sightings, photos and footprints of often questionable origin, there has never been conclusive proof that these creatures exist. No droppings, no bones, no hair and no bodies found - alive or dead.
So far the same remains true of the Malaysian Mawas.
A photo of the clear new footprints preserved in tar ran in Kuala Lumpur's leading English daily, the New Straits Times, last Sunday. One group of local Bigfoot-stalkers claimed to have unearthed evidence that up to 40 of the reclusive black-furred Mawas hominids were roaming the rainforest feasting on rambutan, durian, mangoes and fish. The animals are said to range all along the dense jungle that connects Endau Rompin, Kota Tinggi and Tanjung Piai districts and are not exclusively vegetarian. Their huge bulk must also be maintained by hunting jungle fowl and mule deer near the swamps.
Some scientists theorise that these enormous Malaysian apes might have descended from Gigantopithecus, a huge primate that roamed southern China more than 300,000 years ago.
Jane Goodall, probably the most distinguished primatologist in academia, is an unabashed Bigfoot enthusiast and recently confessed: "I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds ... so the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."
In Malaysia, Mawas-mania is building, fuelled partly by television. The plaster cast from Bukit Lantang woods will be presented to government scientists by Syed Abdullah Alattas, a Malaysian celebrity better known as "Uncle", who stars in a popular reality show called Seekers. Every week he tracks down the paranormal on camera, invariably surrounded by a group of female acolytes armed with daggers, who squeal fetchingly whenever they encounter the unknown.
For our trip, the Seekers crew had brought in an array of arcane equipment, including remote control robot cameras, infrared goggles and sound-enhancers, but the fresh footprint was found by chance. During a demonstration of the sound-boosting sensors before we left for the jungle, it was easy to distinguish whether restaurant diners were chewing on breakfast croissants or toast. But, during a 12-hour monitoring period in the forest, no aural trace of the bigfoot was detected.
Lack of evidence is not likely to slow the bandwagon building momentum in Kuala Lumpur though. Cartoons show a giant ape straddling the landmark Petronas Towers and grinning rubber-ape masks are being hawked at traffic lights in the city centre. Despite the growing excitement, there have been no urban sightings of Bigfoot. So far, the only sign of the primates has been found in the southern wilds, usually close to the water.
The Johor National Park director, Hashim Yusof, is sceptical about the existence of giant apes, but will not rule out the possibility. "The Endau-Rompin National Park covers 500 square miles. We only have information on half of the flora and fauna inside it," he admitted. The area lies in roughly the same latitude as Borneo, where thousands of species unknown to science have recently come to light.
Environmentalists are concerned that the craze to market Bigfoot as a peace-loving new-age monster may put the entire rainforest ecology at risk - and indeed some think that the sightings may be linked to environmental changes in the first place.
Hamid Mohd Ali, a frog-catcher from the Orang Asli tribe, claims he came eye to eye with a giant ape, which his people call the "Siamang", late last year. Other locals allege that they saw the giant creature cross the road at twilight or leap down from a river bank.
"We believe that people can only see it once in a lifetime," Hamid told reporters. "But in this year alone, four villagers have seen it [the Bigfoot] and we think this is because of the shrinking jungle."
At first glance it might have seemed like nothing. A four-inch impression in the mud of the Malaysian rainforest. On closer inspection, however, it seemed as if it might be the astounding find the expedition had been hoping for. A footprint of the creature known variously as Bigfoot, Sasquatch, the tropical Yeti or - to locals - the Mawas.
Said to grow up to 10- feet tall, with an awesome armspan, a trio of these undiscovered hominids were at the centre of a flurry of unconfirmed sightings by frightened plantation workers three months ago. And in the fading light of the Bukit Lantang woods on the fringe of dense forest in Johor state, a single splayed print appeared to offer the most compelling evidence yet that we were on the trail of the mighty beast.
The Mawas appears to have grabbed for support when it teetered off-balance, because tree branches 11 feet overhead had been damaged, directly above the spot where the animal's left heel had sunk four inches into a muddy puddle. A stick had snapped beneath one of its toe depressions.
A second fresh footprint proved impossible to find but recent damage to a rotting log, located a couple of strides away, suggested it had might have borne a prodigious weight.
For the excitable team of Yeti hunters, mainly a mix of Singapore enthusiasts and volunteers from the capital Kuala Lumpur it was vindication. Even the sceptics, including this reporter, were secretly impressed.
As with the two extremely faded footprints that had been found preserved in fresh tar on a nearby road, this print measured nearly a triple handspan across, roughly 11 by 19 inches. The Australian tracker Tony Burke, part of the Singapore team, estimated that to make such a print, an animal would have to weigh at least 240kg.
"I'm a cynic, but if we could see a right footprint as well, we could at least measure its gait. Maybe if we had some scat, I could be totally convinced," he said. "I am about 50 per cent there. Let's see what the lab results are."
An official government committee of research scientists, appointed by Abdul Ghani Othman, chief minister of Johor state, has been trying to verify Bigfoot's existence since late January, by interviewing witnesses, setting upcamera traps in its likely haunts, and collecting evidence from tribal informants in the national parks.
But our paranormal investigators' search party, tailed by an excitable science-fiction film crew from Los Angeles, was anything but stealthy. Kong Kam Choy, a 40-year-old construction worker who likes to trek through the jungle in his free time, convinced the gaggle of researchers to tramp through a leech-infested grove near a palm plantation where he had come across unusually big tracks that he could not readily identify.
It was just two hours before dusk, thunder was rumbling and the group was disappointed, having made a futile afternoon voyage upriver to examine a set of tracks discovered on 10 January near the Tanjung Sedili creek. These had since been washed away by tropical downpours and overrun by wild boar.
Then we struck gold. Kenny Fong, an e-commerce professor who founded Singapore Paranormal Investigators five years ago, came running when Josh Gates, a sci-fi documentary maker, summoned him to check out the peculiarly large footprint.
Professor Fong considers himself a debunker who is keen to spot a hoax. Using a police crime scene kit designed to preserve footprints for court evidence, he set about the job. A technician required three full bags of plaster (at about 1lb a bag) to fill the huge depression made by the single footprint. The muddy size 20 footprint was doused with hairspray before quick-setting plaster was poured into each crevice.
As the group gawked and cameras whirred, the print took on that unmistakable and almost comically ominous Bigfoot shape - the flat foot with four rounded digits, plus a gorilla-like big toe jutting out from the side. "People say Bigfoot doesn't exist, and I have had my doubts. But what else could it be?" asked Professor Fong, who promptly toppled off a hillock in his excitement to photograph the group in front of the fresh paw print.
According to Vincent Chow, a Malaysian bio-diversity expert, this area of diverse rainforest has been rife with Bigfoot sightings all month. "An elephant has been foraging in those woods for food, so farmers set off explosives to frighten it away from their fields," he said. "But animals get accustomed to these blasts and ignore them. Now we think a Bigfoot family of three may be shadowing the elephant, who clears the way.
"Fourteen large footprints were found nearby on Saturday. Then at 4am, workers were awakened by 10 minutes of weird hooting, a kind of call and response session, while they were asleep at a palm oil plantation." The planter, Abdul Rahman Ahmad, said his terrified workers at Komping Lukut described the eerie night cries as long drawls in three distinct pitches. "They said it sounded like squeals of wild pigs mixed up with the deep barks of gibbons - but not like owls," he recounted. They also heard heavy crashing through the underbrush. Mr Chow speculated that at least three different animals, which the local tribes call Hantu Jarang Gigi, or "snaggle-toothed ghosts", must have been involved in this curious chorus.
Historical records show eight claimed sightings of enormous apemen in southern Malaysia that date back to 1871, and the Orang Asli tribes who inhabit the forest famously dread an encounter with these shy, oversized apes, known variously as Sasquatch in Canada, Yowie in eastern Australia, Bigfoot in the western US or the Yeti in the Himalayas.
The creature is almost ubiquitous and many cultures throughout the world have legends about man-beasts. Recorded sightings in North America date back to the early 1800s. According to some Native American tribes, the Sasquatch are not flesh-and-blood creatures in the first place but spirits which appear to humans in times of crisis. But despite numerous sightings, photos and footprints of often questionable origin, there has never been conclusive proof that these creatures exist. No droppings, no bones, no hair and no bodies found - alive or dead.
So far the same remains true of the Malaysian Mawas.
A photo of the clear new footprints preserved in tar ran in Kuala Lumpur's leading English daily, the New Straits Times, last Sunday. One group of local Bigfoot-stalkers claimed to have unearthed evidence that up to 40 of the reclusive black-furred Mawas hominids were roaming the rainforest feasting on rambutan, durian, mangoes and fish. The animals are said to range all along the dense jungle that connects Endau Rompin, Kota Tinggi and Tanjung Piai districts and are not exclusively vegetarian. Their huge bulk must also be maintained by hunting jungle fowl and mule deer near the swamps.
Some scientists theorise that these enormous Malaysian apes might have descended from Gigantopithecus, a huge primate that roamed southern China more than 300,000 years ago.
Jane Goodall, probably the most distinguished primatologist in academia, is an unabashed Bigfoot enthusiast and recently confessed: "I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. People from very different backgrounds and different parts of the world have described very similar creatures behaving in similar ways and uttering some strikingly similar sounds ... so the existence of hominids of this sort is a very real probability."
In Malaysia, Mawas-mania is building, fuelled partly by television. The plaster cast from Bukit Lantang woods will be presented to government scientists by Syed Abdullah Alattas, a Malaysian celebrity better known as "Uncle", who stars in a popular reality show called Seekers. Every week he tracks down the paranormal on camera, invariably surrounded by a group of female acolytes armed with daggers, who squeal fetchingly whenever they encounter the unknown.
For our trip, the Seekers crew had brought in an array of arcane equipment, including remote control robot cameras, infrared goggles and sound-enhancers, but the fresh footprint was found by chance. During a demonstration of the sound-boosting sensors before we left for the jungle, it was easy to distinguish whether restaurant diners were chewing on breakfast croissants or toast. But, during a 12-hour monitoring period in the forest, no aural trace of the bigfoot was detected.
Lack of evidence is not likely to slow the bandwagon building momentum in Kuala Lumpur though. Cartoons show a giant ape straddling the landmark Petronas Towers and grinning rubber-ape masks are being hawked at traffic lights in the city centre. Despite the growing excitement, there have been no urban sightings of Bigfoot. So far, the only sign of the primates has been found in the southern wilds, usually close to the water.
The Johor National Park director, Hashim Yusof, is sceptical about the existence of giant apes, but will not rule out the possibility. "The Endau-Rompin National Park covers 500 square miles. We only have information on half of the flora and fauna inside it," he admitted. The area lies in roughly the same latitude as Borneo, where thousands of species unknown to science have recently come to light.
Environmentalists are concerned that the craze to market Bigfoot as a peace-loving new-age monster may put the entire rainforest ecology at risk - and indeed some think that the sightings may be linked to environmental changes in the first place.
Hamid Mohd Ali, a frog-catcher from the Orang Asli tribe, claims he came eye to eye with a giant ape, which his people call the "Siamang", late last year. Other locals allege that they saw the giant creature cross the road at twilight or leap down from a river bank.
"We believe that people can only see it once in a lifetime," Hamid told reporters. "But in this year alone, four villagers have seen it [the Bigfoot] and we think this is because of the shrinking jungle."
- Details
Big, black, bad and invisible
TOM WRIGHT
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2005
Nobody ever saw The Varmint that menaced rural Blount County during my youth.
The farm boys who could knock the eye out of a squirrel at 40 yards never bagged
it. Their prized hounds never caught its trail.
The Varmint was real. My grandmother heard it. It followed my Aunt Lula,
although she never actually saw it. Nobody did.
Nobody ever lost a cow to The Varmint. But it was such a menace, nobody ever
considered there might be more than one. It was simply, The Varmint.
A lot of people heard it, though.
"That thing could squall like a baby," one neighbor reported, after hearing it
one night. The sound was so terrifying that the dogs yelped and ran for cover
under the house, he said.
A varmint story was sure to draw a crowd of listeners. It still does.
The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources is looking for its
own varmint because of reports of black cat sightings in other parts of the
state.
Everyone assumed our varmint was black, too. It sounded black. It blended into
the night.
The guys in the state Conservation Department sound a little put out. They say
Alabama has no native black cats. It has only two wild cats, the mountain lion
and the bobcat, neither of which comes close to being black.
They still dutifully investigate reports of distinct tracks or bite marks,
which, they say, usually turn out to be from dogs or coyotes.
The department even reviewed trapping and hunting records back to the 1600s and
reports of vehicle collisions with animals and said it is relatively sure that
there are no native black cats in Alabama.
They do, though, raise the faint possibility that some non-native black animal
might have been released after it grew too large to be penned.
If you see a suspicious track, they say, put a bucket over it to preserve the
evidence, then give the department a call.
That wouldn't have worked back in Blount County. It would have taken a wash pot
to cover The Varmint's big track.
http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/columnists/tomwright/051002.shtml
- Details
| Thoughts on the Patterson-Gimlin Footage - John Green |
| Almost thirty-seven years ago two young men from Yakima, Washington, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, emerged from a remote forest in the northwest corner of California with a brief 16-millimeter film showing a hairy creature walking along a sand bar on its hind legs, and the debate on whether their film shows an unknown animal or a man wearing a fur suit has gone on ever since. Now, thanks to a new book on the subject, that debate should be at an end. The answer has been in plain view all along, the creature on the film holding it, quite literally, in its arms. And that answer, ironically, is the opposite of the one in the book. The creature can not be a man in a suit. The writer of the book, of which only review copies are so far available, claims to have cracked the case by finding two key witnesses, the man who wore the suit, a Yakima acquaintance of Patterson and Gimlin named Bob Heironimus, and the man who sold a gorilla suit to Patterson and told him how to modify it, Philip Morris, a costume maker from Charlotte, North Carolina. The Heironimus story is not new. It surfaced several years ago one of the many unsubstantiated claims to have been "the man in the suit" that crop up from time to time. Phillip Morris appears to be a real find, a man who actually was making gorilla costumes in 1967 and who says he remembers selling one to Roger Patterson. One of the things that Morris is quoted as saying is that the way to make the arms in the suit look longer than human arms is to extend the gloves of the suit on sticks. Many people have noted that the arms of the creature in the film look unusually long, almost as long as its legs. Some, including myself in 1968, have published estimates of their length. No one went on to deal with the question of how human arms could be extended to match the extra length and what such an extension would look like. There is no way to establish for certain if any of the dimensions estimated for the creature in the film are accurate, but what can be established with reasonably accuracy is the length of the creature's legs and arms in relation to one another. From that ratio, which anatomists call the "intermembral index," it is simple to calculate how many inches must be added to the arms of a man of known size in order to make his arms long enough to fit the supposed suit. In my own case the answer turns out to be about 10 inches. But in order for the arms to bend at the elbow, which they plainly do in the movie, all of that extra length has to be added to the lower arm. The result, in my case, is about 12 inches of arm above the elbow and 29 inches below it~almost as much of a monstrosity as Edward Scissorhands. The creature in the movie has normal-looking arms. It cannot be a man in a suit. Many issues in the long debate about the movie remain unresolved - what the film speed was, whether a man could duplicate the creature's unusual bent-kneed walk, whether its behavior was normal for an animal, whether the tracks left on the sandbar could have been faked, and so on - but all of them turn out to have been irrelevant to the main issue. My measurements of the film, made 36 years ago, gave the creature arms that were 30 inches from the shoulder to the wrist and legs that were 35 inches from the hip to the ground. My own measurements are about 24 inches from shoulder to wrist and 40 inches from hip to ground. Only the ratios of the measurements matter, the actual size of either the human or the creature makes no difference, and the ratios for creature and human are so much different that precise accuracy of the measurements is not significant either. The much ridiculed Patterson-Gimlin film does not show a man in a suit. What about Roger Patterson buying a gorilla suit? Philip Morris does not claim to have records, only a memory, and neither Mrs. Patterson nor Bob Gimlin remember Roger having any such suit. But Roger was trying to make a Bigfoot documentary at that time and most such documentaries contain re-enactments by someone wearing a fur suit. If he did buy one it has little more significance than an apprentice carpenter buying a hammer. And the descriptions of the suit by the two key witnesses are totally contradictory. Morris is quoted as having described his suit in precise detail, and how he made it. The suit had six separate pieces: a head a body (arms, torso and legs), two hands and two feet. A knitted cloth material served as a backing to thousands of synthetic nylon strands called dynel, which were driven by a powerful knitting machine with needles through the knitted cloth material and then pulled back through to the other side. It had a 36-inch zipper up the back. Bob Heironimus is also quoted, saying that Patterson made the suit himself by skinning a dead horse and gluing fur from an old fur coat on the horsehide. It was in three parts, head, torso and legs that felt like bigger rubber boots and that went to his waist. He thought the feet were made of old house slippers. The suit weighted 20 or 25 pounds and he needed help to get in and out of it. It also smelled bad. "It stunk. Roger skinned out a dead, red horse." =============================================A comment by Jeff Meldrum "It has been obvious to even the casual viewer that the film subject possesses arms that are disproportionately long for its stature. John Green is a veteran researcher into the question of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. He was among the first to view the film captured by Patterson and Gimlin and has studied it intensely in the intervening years. His recognition of the significance of the unhumanly long arms of the film subject is point that has not previously been articulated in such a straightforward manner. It is such a fundamental observation that it is considered a breakthrough in assessing the validity of this extraordinary film. Anthropologists typically express limb proportions as an intermembral index (IM), which is the ratio of combined arm and forearm skeletal length (humerus + radius) to combined thigh and leg skeletal length (femur + tibia) x 100. The human IM averages 72. The intermembral index is a significant measure of a primate's locomotor adapatation. The forelimb-dominated movements of the chimp and gorilla are reflected in their high IM indices of 106 and 117 respectively. Identifying the positions of the joints on the film subject can only be approximate and the limbs are frequently oriented obliquely to the plane of the film, rendering them foreshortened to varying degrees. However, in some frames the limbs are nearly vertical, hence parallel to the filmplane, and indicate an IM index somewhere between 80 and 90, intermediate between humans and African apes. In spite of the imprecision of this preliminary estimate, it is well beyond the mean for humans and effectively rules out a man-in-a-suit explanation for the Patterson-Gimlin film without invoking an elaborate, if not inconceivable, prosthetic contrivance to account for the appropriate positions and actions of wrist and elbow and finger flexion visible on the film. This point deserves further examination and may well rule out the probability of hoaxing." Jeff Meldrum Ph.D. Associate professor of Anatomy & Anthropology Idaho State University Pocatello, Idaho, 83209-8007. Dr. Meldrum is an expert in primate anatomy and locomotion. He recently coedited, From Biped to Strider: The Emergence of Modern Human Walking, Running, and Resource Transport. He became interested in the Sasquatch question eight years ago after witnessing 15-inch tracks in southeastern Washington state. He has examined numerous footprints, including those associated with the Patterson-Gimlin footage. |