Paranormal Descends upon Willow Creek! Believe-It Tour Hit Film Site, Psychic Sasquatch in Happy Camp, Pseudoscience of Anti-Bigfootology, Book Raven

Touring the nation this summer is the BELIEVE-IT TOUR (http://www.believeittour.com/), now in California and heading toward the Bigfoot Scenic Highway (State Route 96), from Willow Creek to Happy Camp.

This tour seeks to explore all things strange and interesting along the way, as one may see on their Flikr photos page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/believeit/). They are interested in aligators and burritos every bit as much as they are in Skunk Apes, or the beings in their logo: Aliens, Bigfoot, Ghosts, and... Santa Claus. Their logo's motto?: "Explore Life Like You Did As a Child." Check out their progress through their blog at: http://we-believe-it.blogspot.com/
Recently, we at Bigfoot Books received a call from organizer and Believe-It member, Mike Esordi, and were invited to join them on the path up to the Patterson-Gimlin Bluff Creek film site. Unfortunately, their touring van might not do too well on that wretched road. Bobo was to be their guide, but apparently he has Flaming Lips tickets. So, we may be playing local tour guide.
Some major out-of-the-area BF hunters are said to be attending, so keep watching. With recent mysterious noise-making activity reported (and recorded) in Bluff Creek, there may be some more documentable action this coming weekend! See Cliff Barackman's report on the noises here: http://northamericanbigfoot.blogspot.com/2009/08/bluff-creek-update.html.

Here are some mission statements of the Believe-It Tour:
"Overview: Why as children are we so open to believe what as adults we are taught to reject? Mission Focus Areas: Paranormal, Cryptozoology, Extraterrestrial, Monsters, and Folklore. Our Vision: To strengthen our childhood beliefs—to think beyond the reality of what we see. Our Mission: To create a forum for believers in the five focus areas, to share their experiences and interact with one another, to encourage and revive childhood beliefs, and to build a community for all to participate from amateur to expert."

In other "paranormal" news:
We've been receiving the interesting blog feed from Happy Camp Linda's BIGFOOT SIGHTINGS. Recent reports through the RSS feed have included a FLYING BIGFOOT and a STONE-AGE BIGFOOT FOOTPRINT, not to mention a strange one about an upright-walking human-like REPTILIAN creature. Check it out here: http://bigfootsightings.org/, and if you are interested in the Happy Camp area read her archived report here: http://bigfootsightings.org/2008/08/19/life-in-bigfoot-country-happy-camp-california/. It includes some cool photos of BF iconography in her area, including BIGFOOT TOWING's truck logo and the giant metal HAPPY CAMP BIGFOOT STATUE.
Associated with the Happy Camp folks is another group, FRIENDS OF SASQUATCH, which seeks to use "psychic methods in exploring the nature of the Bigfoot phenomenon. (The images are screen shots of the website of the group, which you should view here: http://friendsofsasquatch.com/). Since the creature is a "needle in a haystack" out there, their website says, means such as this can help in the perhaps otherwise nearly hopeless effort of finding it. In fact, the group seeks to make contact: "Our primary level of interest is the facilitation of interspecies communication."

In the screen from the website viewed here one may see one of the group's members asking a tree if it has seen Sasquatch in its lifetime standing there. I quote: "Talking to trees is not new to me. I have felt their auras for years. If you haven’t then try it if you’re open to the experience at all. You can stand near a tree and feel the spirit and energy that emanates from them… especially the older trees. My new interest in talking to trees is to try to pick up impressions of things they’ve seen - Bigfoot in particular. I asked (using clairaudience) if the tree had seen a creature larger than a bear. This tree did not give me a positive answer and I don’t know if it was because it hadn’t seen Sasquatch, or if I wasn’t able to pick up the answer, or if I needed more time than we had to establish adequate communication. While we were there I closed my eyes, hoping for a vision of what the tree may have sensed, but all I could see was a bright green energy coming from the tree."

Before you chuckle, heck, think about it. Maybe THIS is the secret method that the BFRO and other groups need? Maybe the communion-based approach can be more effective than the "hunt-and-capture" modality so many field researchers seem to use. Again, I quote: "Because of the nature of the Sasquatch Research we’re doing, we’ve felt the need for a degree of secrecy. ...What we’re doing deals with broadening our abilities to contact Sasquatch telepathically. The reason for this is that we live in the center of the Klamath National Forest, an area known for frequent Sasquatch sightings, yet it is hard to get people here to talk about what they’ve seen. Therefore we’ve realized that if we’re going to have a chance of finding Sasquatch in this huge forest, we need a competitive edge. [WATCH OUT, BFRO and NABS!!!] Developing psychic abilities is a way of making contact, and improving our chances of finding that needle in a haystack known as Sasquatch, in the middle of the Klamath National Forest. So most of our Sasquatch research activities this past year included attempts at perceptive communication, some of which were more successful than others."

I say, hmmm... all the more luck to them!!!

NOW READING: In preparation for our major (well, maybe not) scholarly work, The Leap of Skepticism, we came across a great essay by old-time UFO researcher and scientist, Stanton Friedman. He appeared recently on the "Art Bell" Coast-to-Coast AM radio show. This work, entitled "The Pseudo-Science of Anti-UFOlogy," may have MAJOR usefulness for bigfoot researchers. In the field of Bigfoot we quite often have to deal with the issue of the "paranormal," when in fact this thing appears by most evidence to be a simple, physical creature, living on the earth as a hominoid ape would (or as a hominid would, we should perhaps say). Check it out here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16785256/PseudoScience-of-AntiUfology-by-Stanton-T-FriedmanFriedman
or in copy-and-pastable form at:

http://www.theufochronicles.com/search?q=Stanton+Ufology

Here I quote from the Coast-to-Coast AM (http://www.coasttocoastam.com/) newsletter on the show:

"Ufologist Stanton Friedman spoke from Denver, where he'll be presenting at MUFON's 40th Annual International UFO Symposium this week. His topic at the conference is the 'Pseudoscience of Anti-Ufology.' There are a number of people who masquerade as scientific investigators of the UFO phenomenon, he said, but these debunkers don't actually investigate, nor are they scientific. He detailed the 'four basic rules of debunkers': What the public doesn't know, I'm not going to tell. Don't bother me with the facts, my mind is made up. If you can't attack the data, attack the people, it's easier. Do your research by proclamation--investigation is too much trouble, and nobody will notice the difference anyway." Bigfooters, TAKE HEART!

Meanwhile, a while back, a mysterious raven decided to make its perch on the front porch of Bigfoot Books. We were able to get up within a foot, with full eye contact. It did not fly away, apparently posing for this image. A new company logo? Or did it perhaps have other, more MYSTERIOUS motives?

NEWS: Bigfoot Books on Cryptomundo! Save Bluff Creek Company Store! A Meeting with Jerry Hein & Vocalizations, Sasquatch Hair Samples & Footprints

Not to toot our own horn too much, but BIGFOOT BOOKS appeared recently on one of the largest cryptozoological web sites on the planet, CRYPTOMUNDO (http://www.cryptomundo.com/). But hey, it is for a good cause! Perhaps someone out there in the Bigfooting world would like to consider a real estate investment that could also preserve an important piece of Bigfoot history? Check it out here: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/save-bf/. Cryptomundo covers all things cryptid. If you want to know more about whatever strange creature may have appeared in your backyard, they probably have a section on it. It worked for me recently when I needed to know more about a Giant Salamander report. Loren Coleman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loren_Colemana.org/wiki/Loren_Coleman), who runs Cryptomundo, is the author or editor of some thirty books, including many dealing with Bigfoot, most notably the fine reference books, "The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates" and "Cryptozoology A to Z," He wrote, as well, a biography of early bigfooter/Abominable Snowman hunter, Tom Slick, who financed the classic Pacific Northwest Expedition in Bluff Creek area in 1959-1962. Coleman's theories are mentioned in the article,"Sex and the Single Sasquatch," as well: http://www.ncbuy.com/news/2003-03-07/1006308.html. He appears frequently in television documentaries on Bigfoot and other topics. Active in the field since the 1960s, he resides in Maine.
The Bluff Creek Company store, where Patterson and Gimlin provisioned up for the 1967 expedition that gave us their famous bigfoot film, may be demolished soon--unless SOMEONE acts. Recently I spoke with the current owner, since 1964, of the business so linked with the mystery of Bluff Creek. He remembered Roger Patterson, but not Bob Gimlin. He also told me of the many Bigfoot incidents that had occurred at the store site, including a nearby "stench worse than a slop truck on a 100 degree day." Here follows the paraphrase of what I said on the issue, done by Loren Coleman:
"Writing recently, Streufert noted that a location that might be in most immediate danger is the 'Bluff Creek Company store, where [Roger] Patterson and [Bob] Gimlin bought supplies in 1967. According to owner, Phil Smith Sr., the old store building and adjacent Bluff Creek Resort with mountain and river acres are going up for sale. Someone in the Bigfoot community should buy this place before the decrepit yet historical Bluff Creek Company Store is demolished! He warns the building is slated for destruction soon. Back behind the store Mr. Smith showed this writer the slab where The Greasy Spoon Restaurant once stood.... I spoke with the owner, Phil Smith, Sr., on my way up to the Yakima Round-Up. He told me then that the building was not usable, and that it would have to be torn down eventually. He’s planning to sell the place, and to put it up on the market soon. I think he’d thought that it would be a selling point to the property if he ‘cleaned it up’ a bit. I tried to convince him of the value of the building, its historical significance (which he agreed with), and that the building would be an asset for that reason. I told him I’d spread the word around the Bigfooting community.'"
“'The asking price would be around $300,000 he tells me, including the going concern of trailer park/campground, riverfront access, and something like 19 acres of nice mountain land. It would make a great Bigfoot museum or expeditionary supply store, I think. It SHOULD be preserved by someone in our field. We can still save it. Phil is getting pretty up in years, and (apparently) tired of the upkeep.... The last time I was up in Bluff Creek I noticed there were some bulldozers in the lot right next to the old Company Store building [it turns out these were from the work being done up on Fish Lake Road]. It put the fear into me that it might be torn down right then. BUT no! I called the Orleans Community Services District today, and spoke with Shirley Reynolds, who runs the office there. She says the thing is still standing, and that she hasn’t heard of any plans to destroy it yet…. Orleans, she says, is the HEART of the Bigfoot Territory (and Willow Creek is only the ‘Gateway’ to Bigfoot Country).'” For more on this issue see our previous post: http://bigfootbooksblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/cryptid-salamander-yakima-writers-block.html

Loren also told me he likes to support bookstores, which we here at BIGFOOT BOOKS do greatly appreciate! All you bigfooters, come on in! We normally have 50-70 Bigfoot/Sasquatch book and video titles in stock, new and used.

IN OTHER NEWS, a visit from Bay Area bigfoot hunter, Jerry Hein.

Mr. Hein, whom we had previously met at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up, was passing through Willow Creek while on a camping and bigfoot hunting trip in our area. He had photos of some footprints out of a total of nine he'd found in roadside dust 7.4 miles from the ranger office on Hwy. 88, on T-Bar Road, 28 miles south of Happy Camp, north of Somes Bar and Orleans, on July 13, 2009. See photos below.

At left, Hein's travel map, with the route highlighted in yellow--right near Bluff Creek!

These do have a sasquatch-like shape to them, and were quite large, 14.5 feet by 6.5 inches; there was a distinct four-foot bipedal stride between the impressions. The detail is revealed better in a larger image, where one can more clearly see a heel impression. Upon further investigation some reddish-brown hair was found snagged about 10 feet up in a shrub. A sample was taken and will be tested. It does not look human, and seems too fine to be from a bear (and the height where the sample was found would mitigate it being from a bear).

Jerry also told us of a strange experience he'd had the night before up at Tish-Tang camping area, along the Trinity River right at the south end of the Hoopa Reservation. This site is known for past sightings and footprint finds. He and a few other camp groups in other sites at the spot all heard a very intriguing noise that was not your average hooting owl or chuffing deer. The sound was like a high-pitched and then lower-pitched "shee-wah" or "shee-yuk," which sound would be repeated three times and then stop, and then start up again in a while from another spot. This went on for at least ten minutes. Finally, freaked out by this, two other camp site groups actually packed up their cars in the middle of the night and departed from the area! The remaining guy besides Hein, in a nearby campsite, stayed where he was, obviously way too drunk to drive or even to care. Hair samples found by Jerry Hein off Hwy. 88. They will be tested soon for their origin and possible DNA. Note the interesting cinnamon-brown color. Image, Jerry Hein's amazing collection of Bigfoot merchandise and swag, at Yakima. Captured from Tom Yamarone's YouTube slideshow for "Jerry Crew, He Knew What to Do," viewable in the sidebar of this blog or at his blog site, http://www.bigfootsongs.com/.

This photo, of Scott McClean and Steve at Bigfoot Books, was taken by Tom Yamarone courtesy of his blog.

In one more news flash: BIGFOOT AGAIN MAKES THE COVER OF THE EUREKA TIMES-STANDARD NEWSPAPER. It happened in 1958, again in 1967, and now in 2009. The paper ran a short article on its front page, above the fold, to honor the completion of the Bigfoot Mural done by Duane Flatmo. Check it here: http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12918007

Regarding Mr. Flatmo--he hasn't had time to respond to our own interview questions, but heck, we're just a blog, right? He swore he'd answer, and we'll post that blog entry when he does.

The massive theory of the "Leap of Skepticism" is still in progress, and may never be finished.

Rare Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot Film Screen Captures, the BBC X-Creatures Documentary, and THE LEAP OF SKEPTICISM

In the 1998 BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/) production, "X-CREATURES: SHOOTING THE BIGFOOT," there is an interesting presentation of the Patterson-Gimlin film reel with John Green in his Harrison Hot Springs, Canada home. He is actually sitting beside his projector running a copy of the full film reel, not just the famous bigfoot segment. One can see how very small and brief the reel is and, though they don't show the roll from begining to end (they cut to Green talking and images of the host pondering and commenting), some of the rarely seen earlier footage taken before the famous apprx. 1-minute bigfoot segment is shown.

Here at left is Bob with the pack horse riding on a washed-out area.

This is revealing stuff, wherein one may get a larger picture of the activities of Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in the area before the creature was filmed. Also, one sees the seasonal and landscape conditions of Bluff Creek that year pretty clearly. These bits were meant to be used as stock footage in a documentary film idea on which Patterson was working.

Here's another one, with a more rare instance of Bob filming Roger rather than the other way around. One can see the autumnal colors of the foliage probably shot that day, October 20th, 1967, or directly prior to it.

Here's an interesting screen-shot capture of Gimlin riding up the Bluff Creek creekside road. Not always known is the fact that at that time a leveled dirt logging road ran right up along the creek itself. Access to the film site from their base down by Louse Camp, about 2.5 miles away, would have been much easier than the hellish bushwhack, boulder-hopping creekwalk and bracken climb that it is today. These days it is a hike that could take one all day in the round trip, with many a scratch or twisted ankle. This image appears on the film reel just before a pan through the trees on the hillside. Then the film breaks suddenly into the famous Bigfoot sighting part. Heading upstream they, "came to an overturned tree with a large root system at a turn in the creek, almost as high as a room," and they saw the hairy hominid "crouching beside the creek to their left."

Here we show the first two clear strides the creature takes in the film, and an image of just how high the sand bar was that Roger had to bound over to get his filming spot (this crossing is seen as a frantic white blur in the film). Then we see a blurry Patty entering the most well known part of film terrain, by the long, fallen log.

BIGFOOT SCREEN CAPTURES (click to enlarge images somewhat):
One frustrating thing with the P-G film is that it is difficult to catch the first glimpses of the Sasquatch creature as it moves off from the creek side right at the start of the film (and often these are edited out from documentaries). At this point Patterson is probably in a state of shock and extreme excitement (not to mention most likely some fear of this apprx. 7-foot cryptid creature), having just gotten away from the panicking horses. At the start of the film he is running up to and across the creek to get a better filming vantage point. We have endeavored to freeze-frame these moments, otherwise nearly totally lost in blur. The first creature image above shows the first clear glimpse of the film's subject. Here we may see the wet sand at the creekside, and then in following frames a fleeting glimpse of the water of Bluff Creek, to the left.

"Cover me!" Roger yells to Bob, as he races up the bank. Bob is trying to control the horses, while bounding off and readying his rifle, just in case the creature attacks.

Here follow the first clear stride, one from the begining of the more stable part of the film, and then an obscure image of the retreat of the creature at the very end of the film, at the east side of the film site.

Just before the film reel ends one can barely distinguish the creature as it retreats into the dark forest at the big bend in the creek at the east end of the film site, right up against the canyon wall. At next frame one can see the tail-end film leader when the roll expires. This is evidence that this is a direct copy of the original camera reel, presented in its original form.

In a subsequent part of the episode we can see John Green in his cast collection room. In another a brief segment of Green's film of 6-foot 4-inch Jim McClarin walking on the film site for comparison is presented. The creature is clearly taller and more bulky by far than the human figure when the two films are shown together.

One great feature of this documentary is a brief clip of Bob Gimlin from a filmed interview John Green did in 1992. Here's Bob, transcribed as best I may: "This particular day that we got the film footage, well, starting out early in the morning, I left early in the morning and Roger slept in. And my horse loosened a shoe up, and I come back in to tack the shoe on tighter, and Roger was gone when I got back and uh after a while.... I had covered that morning and I had told him, and he said why don't we ride up in this area that we had ridden in...."

And then the host Chris Packham actually calls Gimlin on the phone. The transcription: "When I first saw this thing well it was just like the adrenaline flew, you know I was shocked, excited, like all right then, THEY DO exist, you know. [clever filmmaker edit here, making it SEEM as if Bob has changed his mind]... Well I've thought about this many, many times over the years. At one time in my life right shortly after the film footage I was totally convinced that no one could fool me. And of course I'm an older man now, and I see a lot of things, and I think there could have been a possibility. But it would have to have been really well planned by Roger, and I feel that they would have had to have been very, very careful because I had a thirty-ought-six loaded with a hundred and eighty grain bullets. And if that thing had have turned and rushed me I would have shot it. So I feel that IF that was a hoax somebody was taking an AWFUL big chance with their life."

What follows is some rather spurious logic from Packham, and a high-budgeted, but failed, BBC attempt to recreate the film for this documentary using an original Kodak Cine-100 camera and a guy in a reddish-furred ape suit.

They intentionally use obscuring trees and bushes, blurry focus and distance, all of which are to some degree in the PGF; but the end result, and especially the manner in which it is presented (attempting to debunk by assumption rather than evidence) lacks greatly in the kind of detail one may see in the P-G Film. Anyone can shoot a blurry home movie; but will it contain the fascinating and subtle details of the PGF? This one does not, and is transparently a man in a suit. The PGF film has been questioned, but never proven to be a hoax, whatever Packham thinks he's shown.

Craig Woolheater has put the two images side-by-side for comparison (http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/x-creatures/). OBVIOUSLY, this recreation does not replicate the creature, and is not even worthy of being put up against the original. Certainly it is not "proof" in any way that the film WAS hoaxed, even if it COULD have been.

Packham's absurdly illogical leaps of skepticism at the end of the film are truly laughable: "There's a hell of a lot of space in America, but it's trampelled all over. And in biolgical terms there is absolutely no chance at all that there's an unknown species of giant apes stalking around California, or for that matter Canada. You see the Bigfoot phenomenon isn't based on good science, it rests upon one thing: the Patterson film. And that is a hoax. We've shown you [OH REALLY] just how easily it could have been done [YEAH, RIGHT]. And now Bob Gimlin has broken his silence and confessed that he's not entirely sure of what he saw in the first place. And to me that is incredibly significant, because it's his word that has helped keep this hoax alive for over thirty years. But now it's over. Bigfoot isn't dead because it was never alive, only in the minds of the dreamers and the schemers. But then, good on them. You know if Roger Patterson were here today I'd shake him by the hand. I'm not saying I'd load his camera, but I'd shake him by the hand." This is logic worthy of, say, a third-grader; but anyway, more on that in my next post.

The X-CREATURES show does not seem to have been released on DVD, at least not in the USA. I couldn't find it anywhere save on YouTube. Here are links:
Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE3JlDgFbt4
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naTIP2R_hNo&feature=related
Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7UUPpN7dPU&feature=related It was hosted by Brit, Chris Packham, and aired in a six-episode run in 1999. Check here for a list of episodes and other info.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X_Creatures.

My own analysis will follow later. Coming up soon: THE LEAP OF SKEPTICISM!