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Monkey Suit
I'm sorry the Bigfoot in the freezer turned out to be a gorilla suit. The hoaxers- who to judge by their videos are a couple of the dumbest bubbas going- have made monkeys of us all. According to today's reports they sold the freezer and its contents to a bunch of scientists for good hard cash before hightailing it back to the woods of Georgia. So, maybe not so dumb after all.
I can't be angry. Not really. We need our tricksters. They stir the pot. They keep things interesting.
But here we are- back where we started- Bigfoot is a cryptid again. And how likely was it really that something that big and lungeous would be wandering around the Southern United States without someone shooting it or trapping it or coming up with incontrovertible proof of its existence? The Pacific Northwest, maybe, the Himalayas, even more likely- but Georgia? Or is Georgia a lot wilder and craggier than I think it is?
Even so, lots of people- not tricksters but solid citizens- keep on seeing and hearing these things. They're like lake monsters. Just as every large body of water in the northern hemisphere harbours a cousin of Nessie, so every sizeable wilderness has its scary man-apes. There's always just enough evidence - sightings, stray hairs, footprints- to keep the files open, but never enough to close the case.
It's like some cosmic trickster is teasing us, leading us on, playing silly-bugger games.
I read a book once by Loren Coleman and somebody else which took the Jungian line. Cryptids are archetypes, emerging so forcibly from the collective unconscious we think we're actually seeing them. I'm half-persuaded, but it's not science, is it? All it does is replace one mystery with another.
Maybe what they really are is ghosts.
I can't be angry. Not really. We need our tricksters. They stir the pot. They keep things interesting.
But here we are- back where we started- Bigfoot is a cryptid again. And how likely was it really that something that big and lungeous would be wandering around the Southern United States without someone shooting it or trapping it or coming up with incontrovertible proof of its existence? The Pacific Northwest, maybe, the Himalayas, even more likely- but Georgia? Or is Georgia a lot wilder and craggier than I think it is?
Even so, lots of people- not tricksters but solid citizens- keep on seeing and hearing these things. They're like lake monsters. Just as every large body of water in the northern hemisphere harbours a cousin of Nessie, so every sizeable wilderness has its scary man-apes. There's always just enough evidence - sightings, stray hairs, footprints- to keep the files open, but never enough to close the case.
It's like some cosmic trickster is teasing us, leading us on, playing silly-bugger games.
I read a book once by Loren Coleman and somebody else which took the Jungian line. Cryptids are archetypes, emerging so forcibly from the collective unconscious we think we're actually seeing them. I'm half-persuaded, but it's not science, is it? All it does is replace one mystery with another.
Maybe what they really are is ghosts.
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It's a stereotype. But I guess, as with all stereotypes, there's some truth in it.
Cousins of Nessie
Re: Cousins of Nessie
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There have been wild men in the woods as far back as memory goes. I think the fauns of antiquity are ancestors- earlier versions- of Bigfoot and his friends.
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The PNW is very craggy and has more than a lot of backwoods (until we cut them down) as well as a lot of unusual species --- but also a lot of hunters in some areas, and a lot of loggers and salal harvesters and mushroom hunters and other people who make a living of sorts off of the backwoods. If there's any chance that bigfoot is real and actually exists in remote mountain hideaways, I'd think the North Cascades would be the most likely region; that or somewhere around here, in the maze of mountain rangelets that collide and split and collide again along the Oregon/California border.
On the other hand, "ghost" seems as likely as anything.
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And yet I've not given up hope of something "real" turning up. I understand scientists are even now testing some very curious hairs that were retrieved from a forest in south East Asia.
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mwa ha ha!
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In western Virginia, we have mountain lions, though officially the government claims they do not exist here. I have seen a full-grown adult myself. Despite a large number of enthusiastic hunters in this neck of the woods, none of the reports I've heard have come from them, or at least no reports of sightings while they were actively hunting for game. Bears, yes, but not cats. The analogy isn't too terribly bad, especially considering this particular hominid, if indeed it has a physical existence, is thought to be very shy about making its presence known, even more so than the big cats.
This is all theoretical, of course. While I've found the reports of Bigfoot intriguing, I remain skeptical. It's sort of like UFO sightings. There are lots of detailed reports from credible witnesses and no reason a priori to doubt what they say. This does not mean, however, that there's necessarily a physical reality to their experience, as in the usual interpretation that the earth is routinely visited by little green men from Alpha Centaurii.
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That's interesting about the mountain lions.
I think the analogy with UFOs is fair. I remember reading a very weird eyewitness account (probably from the Coleman book) which had apemen, black dogs and an UFO all appearing in the same place (a backwoods farm) over a period of hours.
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Just now, I googled "coleman bigfoot" and happend upon a book in which he wrote about "phantom panthers". Small world, eh?
Drifting off topic ever so slightly: If you haven't read it and can lay hands on a copy, Jacques Vallée's, Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, is one of the finest treatments of the UFO phenomenon I've ever read. The parallels he draws between alien abduction and traditional encounters with the fairy folk are alone worth the price of admission.
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(There's a story that something huge and smelling awful was seen in the woods back before the Civil War not too far from here--around the Bull Run river--but of course Bull Run takes in a lot of territory. Still, I like to drive by the old, old houses near Bull Run--wooden houses, tilting and silvered with age--and wonder if Big Foot once looked into the windows.)
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Ditto Nessie.
Ditto that dinosaur-thing that lives in the Congo.
Ditto the Thunderbird.