Another Inconclusive Polish Yeti Movie
In this film Justyna Folger is getting her feet wet in a shallow stream, but then she and her boyfriend (the movie maker) realize there’s something crouching on the opposite shore. At the end you can see a brown blur as the thing stands up and runs to hide.
A short article here: Polish Yeti Caught Spying On Bikini Girl by Jason Clarke, published August 31, 2009 in the Morningstar.
The other Polish Yeti movie is here: The Polish Yeti
I’m not going to say I don’t believe Justyna’s story. I’m just wondering why these amateur Polish movie makers had such a hard time keeping the camera still.
Another article about this incident: Apeman caught on video ’stalking’ bikini girl
Bigfoot in Illinois
Bigfoot in Illinois is an article posted on the Prairie Ghosts website. After reading about the Illinois sightings, I believe there’s an infestation of Bigfoot in that state. Actually, from Bigfoot’s point of view (and he was here first, right?) there’s probably an infestation of humans. The run-ins people have had with a huge hairy creature there give me the impression that he’s so used to being around people he’s become very curious and takes risks on being seen.
This is a heavily populated state but still, Bigfoot has been seen in various parts of central Illinois including Effingham, Decatur, Clinton, Pekin, Peoria, and Farmer City; south to Centreville (and St. Louis,) Murphysboro, Enfield, and Chittyville, and north to Elizabeth. There was even a sighting in Westchester, Cook County! Weldon Springs State Park and Shawnee National Forest are sighting locations. Most recently, in 2000, there was a sighting in Essex. So if you’re in Illinois, by now you probably feel like you’re surrounded by Bigfoot encounter locations. Perhaps many of the sightings are of one rogue, lost Bigfoot roaming through Illinois, not knowing how to get out of the populated areas. Or… maybe there’s nests of them here and there with entire family groups.
To the man who emailed me on August 9, 2009 about finding Bigfoot footprints near Murphysboro, Illinois… yes… they’re in Illinois and at least one has been seen in Murphysboro before! Here’s another link on the same site with more information: The Murphysboro Mud Monster.
I looked on Google Maps for all these places. I saw how skimpy the wooded areas of the state are. I can only feel sorry for the poor Bigfoot who is trying to maintain cover when there are so many people all around.
One strange sighting was the Cole Hollow Road Monster, nicknamed Cohomo. Starting in May 1972, in East Peoria, there were multiple sightings of a tall white hairy being suspected of living beneath an abandoned house. On May 25 the police took over 200 calls from people who had spotted Cohomo.
One man said he spotted the creature nearby in Fondulac Park and stranger still, said that “a set of strange lights … seemed to descend vertically and land behind some trees.” Hmmm…
The last sighting of Cohomo was on July 27 that year when two people said they saw him swimming in the Illinois River. The site says, “They got close enough to him to know that he smelled awful and looked like a ‘cross between an ape and a caveman’.” Seems strange that he was swimming and still smelled bad! The map below shows the area where Cohomo was a resident in 1972.
August 30, 2009
Georgia Bigfoot
The Georgia Bigfoot website is the place to go for information about Bigfoot tracking in this forested southern state. Does Georgia seem like an unlikely place for a Bigfoot sighting?
Consider this:
Back in the 1990s a man living in a mobile home in Georgia was disturbed by something (or someone) walking around his home and pounding on the walls. Worse, the thing killed some of his dogs and stole lots of dogfood. His frequent calls to the Sheriff’s department were considered a nuisance. The result of this disturbance is the Elkins Creek footprint, cast by Deputy James Akin of the local Sheriff’s department. This footprint cast was studied by Dr. Grover Krantz and Jimmy Chilcutt and declared to be real. This is a sighting story worth reading and the site includes footprint cast photographs. On a separate page you can see Jimmy Chilcutt’s dermal ridge analysis of the Elkins Creek print.
Articles on this site include the practical matters of Basic Track Casting and Processing and Investigating Potential Sasquatch Evidence. The Photo Gallery has images from trail cams, tracks and casts, and wilderness scenes showing what the terrain in Georgia is like.
I looked over the entire site before moving on to the blog, which has quite a few valuable articles though it is no longer being maintained since the site was passed on to new owners at the end of 2007. What’s there is worth a read! It starts with Game Camera Survey Phase One, published March 2, 2006 by Samuel Rich. If you’re planning to use trail cams, this is a good primer. Or if you’d like to read about a wood-knocking, howling adventure, check out Mike2K1’s story, Serendepity…How we got from Point A to B. Part I and Part II. I also appreciated Red circles, shadows and the Blob agenda. I will come back to this blog to read the rest of the postings.
All this leaves one question unanswered… Do Bigfoot enjoy eating Georgia peaches?
Probably so…
August 29, 2009
The Skunk Ape Files – Florida’s Bigfoot
Who knows what’s lurking in the swamps and wooded areas of Florida? Emma Carroll, owner of The Skunk Ape Files knows what’s out there. On her website you can read about her sighting and many other sightings in Florida and elsewhere, even in Iraq.
There’s a sighting report form on the site and she’s received some great stories. She adds whatever is reported to her recent sightings list without judgment. She wrote, “I do not judge the sightings that are reported. Hopefully all are true but only the teller knows for sure.”
Do you want to know more about who Emma Carroll is? Check out her bio on her page about Florida Bigfoot researchers.
Emma is an artist. She’s posted some of her art and included paintings and drawings done by others too: Skunk Ape Art. She’s also got a page of photos.
I was fascinated by the historical stories on the Man Mountain page. It tells about burial mounds found with giants in them! The last story on the page was sad…
If you’re looking for information about the Skunk Ape of Florida, you’ll find lots of sighting stories and useful information on The Skunk Ape Files. This is a homespun site, unpretentious yet full of detailed sighting stories about Skunk Ape that will make you think twice about walking country roads in the Sunshine State at night.
Bigfooting for Cash: Capitalizing on Bigfoot
This week I received email from someone who objected to my review of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy because the organization accepts money from people wanting to be included in their research expeditions. Certainly, everything about this organization spells money… the website appears to be professionally designed, there’s a membership application on the site, and photos of expensive equipment give one the impression that there’s got to be some kind of funding going on.
Membership is clearly explained on the site and requires a $60 annual fee: TBRC Membership. There’s also an annual TBRC conference. I believe the $15 general admission charge is very reasonable, and the public is welcome to attend so that price is not just for members. The person who wrote to me said that a friend paid several hundred dollars to participate in a TBRC weekend expedition. There’s no mention of this kind of fee on the site, so far as I can detect. Such a fee rivals BFRO’s expedition costs.
So this brings up a topic that I believe a lot of people have problems accepting – that people want to make money with their Bigfoot research hobby! Moreover, equipment costs money! I can totally identify with both issues. My partner and I are both unemployed at this point and we don’t have the high-tech equipment to use like the big organizations do (TBRC, BFRO, etc.) …so money, getting donations, and finding solutions in order to be able to do Bigfoot research – these have been topics of conversation around here! Until recently we didn’t even have a 4 wheel drive vehicle to take into the forest. I just purchased a 1995 4wd Ford Aerostar van for Bigfoot research activities, and I still can’t take it into the forest because it needs better tires first. I’m hoping to get them before the end of the year, but there’s other equipment we’d like to have: a good video camera and trail cams, for example. I would love to be able to make YouTube videos of our activities in the forest. So money, yes… it is an issue. I’m very close to putting a donation link on my Friends of Sasquatch site. I had one on this site many months back but never got any donations. Also the AdSense I have on this site doesn’t even cover the cost of my server, so I can’t really say I’m making money here at all.
I can also see why many people who do Bigfoot research as a hobby are offended by organizations that charge for participation. The organization may justify this as a needed revenue building opportunity so that expensive equipment can be purchased, gasoline paid for, and organizational expenses paid. On the other hand, some of this money could be siphoned off for other uses. Do any of these organization czars get paid? Does Matt Moneymaker actually make money with Bigfoot explorations?
My informant stated that he has been doing Bigfoot research for quite a few years, paying his own way, with a group that does not accept donations or collect fees. There are probably hundreds of similar Bigfoot researchers who do this because they love squatching, not because they’re looking for donations for their research organizations. I picture them as hard working people (mostly men) who buy their own research equipment and go on expeditions with their friends in their spare time.
At the other end of the spectrum are people like “he whose name will not appear in my blog” whose Bigfooting business plan has been put online by an ex-cohort.
There are lots of ways that Bigfoot researchers and investigators try to earn money, and here are some that I know of:
1. Creating a website then asking for donations
2. Putting advertising on the website
3. Charging for expeditions
4. Creating a NPO then charging membership fees
5. Getting large donations from rich businessmen needing a tax write-off
6. Writing a book about Bigfoot
7. Creating Bigfoot themed products and selling them
8. Gathering Bigfoot evidence, then selling it
Am I missing anything on this list?
So which of these are acceptable and which aren’t? When should a hobby turn into a business?
Is it ethical to charge a fee for expedition participation when anyone can just go out into the woods and start squatching on their own?
I’d like to get comments on this from anyone having strong feelings one way or the other about money issues in Bigfoot research. I told the person who emailed me, “I have never paid to be in any Bigfoot research organization or to go on any expeditions. It seems senseless especially since there are many miles of forest for anyone to explore, and being in a large group is likely to repel a Bigfoot, not attract one.” That’s just my opinion; I’m sure there are others able and willing to pay hundreds for a little field training.
The Polish Yeti
A 27-year-old film maker, Piotr Kowalski of Warsaw, claims to have filmed what looks like a Bigfoot in the Tatra Mountains in Poland. The film is now in the hands of The Nautilus Foundation of Poland, a group which attempts to explain unusual phenomena.
Source article: I had walk with a yeti on holiday published August 29, 2009 in the Sun.
The proportions seem right, but the way it lingers out in the open, lurching forward, seems kind of odd. I think a real Yeti would stay behind the rock the whole time rather than allowing himself to be seen. I don’t have an opinion on whether or not this was a hoax though my first reaction is that it probably was a friend in a hair suit. Perhaps someone with CAD skills can measure the proportions using Jack D. Davis’ methods explained on his Is it Real? website.
What do you think? Real, or fake? Or are you reserving judgment, as I am?
August 28, 2009
Stocking Hominid Research
Continuing my tour of Bigfoot sites around the internet, I found Stocking Hominid Research, Inc. – a non-profit organization for scientific study of Sasquatch. The site says, “We use critical thinking and forensic procedure in our investigative process.”
The About Us page gives biographical information for Diane Stocking, Donna Stocking Cohrs, and a few other team members. Most of the work they’ve done has been in Florida but they’re willing to consider doing a follow up on sightings anywhere in North America. If I ever again need to refer someone to a field investigator in Florida, I’ll know who to call on!
There are some outstanding research papers on this site. I couldn’t read them all, but what I looked at impressed me. Check out The Credibility of Sasquatch Witnesses by Barbara Wasson (PDF file) or The Sociological Impact of Bigfoot Reports by Ron Schaffner. I can see I’ll have to return to this article archive when I’ve got more time.
An especially valuable page on the site has sound files of Bigfoot howls, as well as a fascinating 911 call recording. For comparison there are links to sounds made by other woodland animals, including the elk. On a separate page you’ll find some great photographs of animal tracks.
The page on hoaxes and misidentifications fascinated me. They rejected the Florida Skunk Ape photographs and even the Skookum Cast! Will they add a section on the Bigfoot massacre theory? Time will tell…
Don’t miss the page of their own photos so you’ll know what kind of evidence they find acceptable. There’s also a few sightings listed on the site.
