Tag: Bigfoot
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Copy-paste cryptozoology
A review of Chasing American Monsters: Over 250 Creatures, Cryptids, and Hairy Beasts by Jason Offutt (2019). I’ve been thinking a lot about cryptozoology lately. While consuming content about many other subjects, I see excellent examples in cryptozoology to illustrate public attitudes towards and understanding of science, paranormal thinking, colonialist themes, misperceptions about evidence, media…
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The Mysterious Monster Mash of the Mid 1970s: Bigfoot hits prime time TV
Bigfoots and their other monstrous cohorts were presented to U.S. audience in a serious television documentary for the first time in 1974. The outing was so successful that it still is notable today. This documentary, its remixes, and a few other pieces of media gold from that decade paved the way for ideas of Bigfoot/Sasquatch…
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Supernatural Creep: When explanations slide off to the fringes
Originally published as Supernatural Creep: The Slippery Slope to Unfalsifiability for my column Sounds Sciencey on csicop.org May 29, 2013. I’m taking a step beyond sciencey with the following topic. What happens when science doesn’t cooperate with your subject area? Researchers of unexplained events may get frustrated and disenchanted with the scientific process when the eyewitness accounts they collect are too weird to explain via…
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Science and cryptozoology: The taboo subject of Bigfoot doesn’t add up
Episode 7 of Laura Krantz’ Wild Thing podcast on Bigfoot, science and society explores the contentious relationship between the orthodox scientific community and those scientists who choose to seriously explore fringe topics like this one. Several science-minded Bigfoot advocates are profiled who lament the way society and the “Ivory Tower” of science (a monolithic metaphorical…
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Believers are the majority: Paranormal acceptance in America is rising
The results of the 2018 Chapman University survey of American Fears have been released and they suggest that America (that is, even well-educated America) is even more accepting of the paranormal than in the past three years. You can view the entire survey here but let me highlight the major points as well as some…
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Legitimizing ghost research: Scientism, sensitives, and cultural authority
As I wrote yesterday, sociologists and ethnographers are paying greater attention to paranormal communities. I commented on Bader’s analysis of Bigfoot seeking groups and their mix of naturalistic and paranormalist views among participants. Perhaps separation rather than mix may be more apt. The observation of different camps within a paranormal field is not new but…
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Supernatural in Society conference: Bader on Bigfooters
There is a lot of new research happening in academia about paranormal culture and belief. I kid you not. Scholars in sociology, psychology, religious studies, and media studies are noticing that millions of people are deeply affected by paranormal beliefs and personal experiences. There is so much happening, especially regarding ghostly episodes, that it’s difficult…
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Monster tales of the southern swamps (Book Review)
Beyond Boggy Creek: In Search of the Southern Sasquatch, by Lyle Blackburn (2017) This is Blackburn’s third book in a semi-series of volumes on southern bipedal creatures. I reviewed the other two books as well: Chronicle of the Lizard Man (Book Review) Definitive guide to the Fouke monster – Beast of Boggy Creek (Book review)…
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Monsters (and sciencey-sounding nonsense) Among Us – Book Review
I feel I should preface this book review with an explanation of why I, a person that rejects paranormal explanations (for good reason), would be interested in reading books about cryptozoology and strange accounts. I think stories are valuable and people like them. I have no problems with authors collecting and relating stories from history…
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Manual of monsters from cinema and culture – Book Review
I found an advertisement somewhere online for Rue Morgue Magazine’s Monstro Bizarro collection, “An Essential Manual of Mysterious Monsters”. Maybe it was via the editor, Lyle Blackburn. I pay attention to Lyle’s books because I’ve liked them all so far but I’m not a Rue Morgue reader. This collection of columns looked interesting so I…
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Well-worn paranormal paths go nowhere: When to give up
Gary Campbell is the keeper of the Official Sightings Register at Loch Ness. In an article today in the Daily Record, he says that even after 20 years of this project, sightings still continue. Gary Campbell, keeper of the register, said the fascination of Nessie was showing no signs of abating. He accepted five sightings for…
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The Bigfoot Book: Speculation and supernatural but no skepticism
Nick Redfern’s latest, The Bigfoot Book, has a sound premise and great potential. It’s all about stuff you may never have heard about or saw relating to the Bigfoot phenomena. This is a collection of small articles on topics related to the Bigfoot phenomenon – an “encyclopedia” (though not comprehensive by any means) written in…
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Dreaming of DNA: Review of Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the last Neanderthal
Originally published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast, Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal: A geneticist’s search for modern apemen is highly enjoyable and reveals a bunch of interesting tidbits as well as showing us some rather personal insights and new facts from the professor who attempted to bring credibility to the study of hairy…
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If you think Bigfoot is an interdimensional being, you’ve lost your footing
A person making an extraordinary claim may feel very special. A couple that I met recently who do paranormal research described some acquaintances’ behavior during an investigation of a supposedly haunted place : a woman “swooned” as the spirit overcame her. It was all very dramatic, they said. I’ve seen similar when one ghost hunter of a…
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Stone-throwing wall-thumpers: Review of Australian Poltergeists
Paul Cropper sent me a copy of his new book with co-author Tony Healy, Australian Poltergeist: The Stone-throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases. He must have known how much I love this topic and was eager to learn about various cases around the world. I learned about the concept of poltergeists before…
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Neutrality and the wood ape report
It’s very difficult to be truly neutral. In most situations, you can only get somewhere by taking a side and exploring it. Last week’s hubbub regarding the Wood Ape report that I posted on Doubtful News was illustrative of a number of different issues that arise when attempting to learn more about and assess an…
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Sykes paper is a clarion call for higher standards for cryptozoology
The highly anticipated paper from B. Skyes regarding DNA testing of anomalous primates has been published and is, thankfully, freely accessible. In 2012, the team from University of Oxford and the Museum of Zoology, Lausanne, put out a call for samples of suspected anomalous primates – Yeti, Bigfoot/Sasquatch, Almasty, orang pendek. The samples, if accepted,…
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A Bigfoot book that is incredibly relevant 30 years later
Once again, I’ve finally gotten around to a classic cryptozoology text. MAN! I missed out on this one for so many years. John Napier’s Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality ©1972 is one of the best Bigfoot texts I’ve read. I’m sure it’s because Napier was a scientist, a paleoanthropologist and primatologist…
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The long and short of The Making of Bigfoot
This is a brief review of Greg Long’s Making of Bigfoot. I don’t have the extra time or feel it’s worth the effort at this point to write much in detail. But in a nutshell, Long goes in search of the truth about Roger Patterson and his famous Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967 that he contended…
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A ruse by any other name still stinks
As one who runs a website about weird news, it’s been a crazy start to the year. A number of hoaxes proliferating around the media the first week of this year. They are passed on almost with the same respect as actual news. If you resolve to do anything this year, resolve to doubt the…
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No, you are not the new Jane Goodall: My Twitter exchange with Melba Ketchum
I had a discussion with Melba Ketchum today on Twitter regarding her continued claims that Bigfoot will be proven true. Some of it spilled over to Facebook – her favorite communication outlet. I was surprised she responded and it went on for quite a while. For those of you who missed it, good for you. But…
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Defending the faith of cryptozoology
My latest post, regarding the rational vs non-rational response to the new cryptozoology book by Loxton and Prothero, Abominable Science, went live on Huffington Post yesterday. Cryptozoology Gets Respect While Bigfooters Behave Badly. When critical thinkers approach the subject of Bigfoot (or cryptozoology in general) with a focus on the evidence, they are met with…
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Ketchum’s Galileo Gambit
One of my essential reading blogs, Respectful Insolence, has resurrected an older post on The Galileo Gambit. It was timely. It was in reference mainly to the day to day parade of quackery that passes by in the media. Orac coined the term “Galileo gambit” to describe a very common ploy used by quacks – they…
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Half-baked dragons and truthery
Last night on Virtual Skeptics… of course we had robots. Now they are attacking animals and making rats really depressed. Best quote came from an audience member who said the best way to make a rat depressed is to send him to grad school. Win. Bob talked about the defacing of the Delacroix painting by…
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The TRUTH about Spike TV’s $10 million bigfoot hunt
I’m proud (certainly not quite the right word) to call Tim Holmes a friend (and sometimes admirer). He’s a nice guy with an unconventional outlook on the world. In HIS world, Bigfoot is out there and UFOs visit regularly. I wrote about Tim and the Who Forted gang after I attended the premier of the…
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Facts? You keep using that word, Bigfoot hunters.
“You are Not Entitled to Your Own Bigfoot Facts” is my latest piece up on Sounds Sciencey. It’s a continuation on this piece which still gets a lot of hits on the site. In this one, I take to task some self-styled Bigfooters who consider speculation as “fact”. It gets pretty silly… Self-styled Bigfoot researchers…
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Why I give up on Bigfoot sites and forums
I’m going to have a bit of a rant. This post is mostly opinion. However, it is based on actual situations that can be documented. It’s about cryptozoology forums and how they don’t work. I’ve posted before about how I stopped visiting Cryptomundo because my comments were not posted as they were critical of the…