Monkey Suit

[poliphilo]

 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. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If Bigfoot is as smart as a gorilla or chimpanzee it's smart enough to keep out of our way.

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.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I have a vague memory of similar links between bigfoot and UFOs, but no idea from where. I suspect it's from something read in Robert Anton Wilson's books.

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.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip. I googled Vallee- and spent the evening reading interviews he's given. I think he's on the right lines- and I like it how undogmatic he is.