6 ms·

A short history of Bigfoot sightings and lore

29 points by samclemens 7y ago

rozim 7y ago
Also, for some sightings, it could be a hunter/poacher in a ghillie suit.
0_gravitas 7y ago
I had a professor last semester who believed that Bigfoot (among other 'supernatural phenomena') is/are actually interdimensional beings 'operating in a frequency just out of our bandwidth', which was his justification for why 'video evidence' for them was always so poor and low detail/obscure. Of all things, I'm always surprised at how well bigfoot has captured people's imagination, for what would just seem to be a glorified gorilla
- steve19 7y ago
  I dont think bigfoot or "large cat" sightings would capture the imagination of Africans. In Africa they have other mythical beings, which in some cases are large reptiles. A lot of sightings are proven hoaxes so the out of focus images no doubt were intentional. I doubt an extra dimension reptile would somehow be restricted to a random lake in Scotland. Now if people started sighting Nessie in London...
- nvrspyx 7y ago
  One of my favorite pastimes is listening and reading about paranormal/alien encounters and theories. I don’t believe a lick of it, but I find it entertaining to hear theories that make you question reality, if just for a moment. My favorite that I’ve heard thus far is that humans are a product of alien genetic engineering combining alien and primate DNA. This supposedly involved multiple “steps” to get what we know as humans with protohumans (e.g. Neanderthals) being previous “steps” or attempts. Bigfoot is either one of those “steps” or attempts. I’ve also heard a theory that Bigfoot was a “happy accident” and carries out duties for the aliens. I think the latter has come about as a way to explain some supposed connection between Bigfoot and the missing 411.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    > One of my favorite pastimes is listening and reading about paranormal/alien encounters and theories. I don’t believe a lick of it, but I find it entertaining to hear theories that make you question reality, if just for a moment. The thing is, when you think about it, reality is probably much stranger than you give it credit for. All we know about reality is what we perceive and infer from those perceptions... among which is quite a bit of knowledge about how fallible our ability to perceive reality actually is. Most of what you think you know is inferred from memory, which is notoriously unreliable, and/or relayed by others, which is at least as unreliable. And the kicker is, our understanding of what reality is relies on the assumption that reality is even understandable to us in the first place, which is not a given.
    - 0_gravitas 7y ago
      Which is why anecdotal evidence is useless, and study's of very large n's are the closet we'll get to a truth
- GuiA 7y ago
  Hopefully that professor didn’t teach anything close to electronics/physics/chemistry.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    Thankfully he didnt, but he is a well tenured English teacher who like to focus on biblical themes. Hes a nice guy really, and I liked him as a person, but he is absolutely batshit insane, this was just one of his "eccentric" beliefs
steven2012 7y ago
I just don't understand how people continue to believe that Bigfoot exists. The footage from the 1970s, once stabilized, looks embarrassingly like a man in a gorilla suit. Plus they admitted their faking it. The fact people still believe this makes me understand exactly how conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers believe what they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q60mSMmhTZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q60mSMmhTZU
- GuiA 7y ago
  It’s a weird feature of humanity. Once an idea (or meme in the original Dawkins sense) starts spreading, it’s very hard to make it disappear, no matter how ridiculous it is. See flat earth theories, various nutty religious theories (“Jesus crossed the ocean and lived the rest of his days in the USA”), etc. I guess it’s a social thing? Humans have a fundamental need to bond and feel part of a bigger “us” and these things serve as a substrate for it.
  - sdf6798 7y ago
    What about aliens? Are they an idea or reality? :-)
    - gus_massa 7y ago
      Alien bacteria-like in their original planet: Nobody know, but yes. Some steps are easy, some steps are unknow. It's a little optimist to say a clear "yes", but "yes". Intelligent Alien living happily in their original planet or nearby: Nobody know, but probably yes. There are more unknows unknows step here. I'm particularly worried abbot the prokaryote-eukaryote transition, but there are more steps and more unknow steps. So let's hope that the universe is big enough and say "probably yes". Intelligent Alien visiting us in flying saucer: Nobody know, but probably no. The distances are too big. There is no hard evidence like a crash from time to time. We don't receive any electromagnetic weird signals, and electromagnetic communication is so efficient it would be weird that they use other means to communicate between starships. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but let's say "probably no".
- 7y ago
mouse_8b 7y ago
I like to think that Bigfoot did exist at some point. There is fossil evidence of large upright walking apes in Asia (gigantopithecus) contemporary with early homo sapiens. Those creatures could have come to North America the same way humans did. When Europeans showed up, the indigenous humans were ravaged by Old World disease. It seems logical that any contact between humans and Bigfoot would have similar consequences. I could believe that some small populations survived long enough to inspire stories. If there are any left, I imagine they would be spread pretty thin. In any case, there are no verified bodies to study, so we are left with our imaginations.
- lo_fye 7y ago
  Check out “Discovering Bigfoot” On Netflix. It’s actually worth a watch.
  - lo_fye 7y ago
    Or listen to 1 of the over 450 episodes of the podcast “Sasquatch Chronicles”, each of which contains 1 or more eye witness reports. http://sasquatchchronicles.com http://sasquatchchronicles.com
- rbosinger 7y ago
  There are older indigenous people on Vancouver Island who basically say that growing up there was definitely a bigfoot of sorts. Their parents would see them even more often. They don't seem to doubt it at all. I do recall a CBC video of an elder saying that they were around but that even he's beginning to think that might have been the last of them. If you think about how much North America has changed in only 150 years it sure seems plausible. Maybe it was just a particular group of extra large bears or something but I believe they're not making things up and did encounter some type of special animals at some point.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  The migration of H. sapiens sapiens from Africa to America left a trail with a lot of fossil and artifacts, and they have the correct chronological order. A similar story for the migration to Australia. As far as we know, other big apes and hominids never crossed some big water barriers and never reached America or Australia. There are no bones. There are no footprints, ... So your idea is possible, but it's very unlikely.
cushychicken 7y ago
I hate to say it, but I agree with Jane Goodall. Logically, I know Sasquatch doesn't exist. But I want to believe it does.
swasheck 7y ago
My dad and my uncle are staunch believers in a wild man sort of creature that lives out here in the remote San Juan mountains of southern Colorado. The stories they share are vague, but convincing. They grew up in these mountains, sleeping alone under the stars there throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Over the last couple of decades they have stories of things that they’d never experienced in their lives in the mountains. Screams. Destruction. Heart-pounding sounds and experiences. Now they quest for conclusive evidence and have yet to turn up any. It’s hard to reconcile the lack of evidence with the ascribed authority of their cumulative mountaineering experience, much like what’s described in this article.
- jjtheblunt 7y ago
  random observation : mountain lion calls sound like screaming primates. maybe they at least sometimes heard that.
beenBoutIT 7y ago
Back in the early 2000s there was a credible rumor circulating about a reclusive Bigfoot Easter Egg hidden in the outskirts of (Grand Theft Auto)San Andreas. This was the only time I've ever been excited about Bigfoot and for a sizeable subset of millennials this is the only credible Bigfoot lore we'll ever be exposed to. Considering that GTA San Andreas is the bestselling PS2 game ever made, Lapham's not mentioning it at all is lame. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-hunt-for-one-of-gamings-most-mythical-creatures http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-hunt-for-one-of-g...
giobox 7y ago
If in the Bay Area, there’s a crazy little big foot museum run by a wildly eccentric chap who is great fun to talk to in Felton, just 10 minutes outside of Santa Cruz. It’s just opposite Henry Cowell Redwood Statepark which is also well worth a visit, it’s a fun afternoon to see both. Admission is free too. He also tracks supposed big foot sightings in the Santa Cruz mountains. > https://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/ https://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/
lioeters 7y ago
I see similarities between Bigfoot and fairy/elf mythology. Aside from the difference in size, these creatures live "beyond the edge" of human society, in the wild - which seems to have metaphorical significance, like beings "out there" in the collective unconscious. Just like in dreams, my view is that these beings are reflections of humanity, upon which we project latent fears and desires.
- OnlineCourage 7y ago
  Like the Skunk Ape of Miami area and the Hodag of Wisconsin.
woodandsteel 7y ago
The question I would ask Bigfoot believers is what about the droppings? An animal this big would eat an awful lot of food (and mostly plants, I would assume), and so it would leave a lot of droppings, like many pounds a day. And they would be distinctive, and have Bigfoot dna in them. So where are all the droppings?

29 points by samclemens 7y ago

Also, for some sightings, it could be a hunter/poacher in a ghillie suit.

I had a professor last semester who believed that Bigfoot (among other 'supernatural phenomena') is/are actually interdimensional beings 'operating in a frequency just out of our bandwidth', which was his justification for why 'video evidence' for them was always so poor and low detail/obscure. Of all things, I'm always surprised at how well bigfoot has captured people's imagination, for what would just seem to be a glorified gorilla

steve19 7y ago
I dont think bigfoot or "large cat" sightings would capture the imagination of Africans. In Africa they have other mythical beings, which in some cases are large reptiles. A lot of sightings are proven hoaxes so the out of focus images no doubt were intentional. I doubt an extra dimension reptile would somehow be restricted to a random lake in Scotland. Now if people started sighting Nessie in London...
nvrspyx 7y ago
One of my favorite pastimes is listening and reading about paranormal/alien encounters and theories. I don’t believe a lick of it, but I find it entertaining to hear theories that make you question reality, if just for a moment. My favorite that I’ve heard thus far is that humans are a product of alien genetic engineering combining alien and primate DNA. This supposedly involved multiple “steps” to get what we know as humans with protohumans (e.g. Neanderthals) being previous “steps” or attempts. Bigfoot is either one of those “steps” or attempts. I’ve also heard a theory that Bigfoot was a “happy accident” and carries out duties for the aliens. I think the latter has come about as a way to explain some supposed connection between Bigfoot and the missing 411.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  > One of my favorite pastimes is listening and reading about paranormal/alien encounters and theories. I don’t believe a lick of it, but I find it entertaining to hear theories that make you question reality, if just for a moment. The thing is, when you think about it, reality is probably much stranger than you give it credit for. All we know about reality is what we perceive and infer from those perceptions... among which is quite a bit of knowledge about how fallible our ability to perceive reality actually is. Most of what you think you know is inferred from memory, which is notoriously unreliable, and/or relayed by others, which is at least as unreliable. And the kicker is, our understanding of what reality is relies on the assumption that reality is even understandable to us in the first place, which is not a given.
  - 0_gravitas 7y ago
    Which is why anecdotal evidence is useless, and study's of very large n's are the closet we'll get to a truth
GuiA 7y ago
Hopefully that professor didn’t teach anything close to electronics/physics/chemistry.
- 0_gravitas 7y ago
  Thankfully he didnt, but he is a well tenured English teacher who like to focus on biblical themes. Hes a nice guy really, and I liked him as a person, but he is absolutely batshit insane, this was just one of his "eccentric" beliefs

steven2012 7y ago

I just don't understand how people continue to believe that Bigfoot exists. The footage from the 1970s, once stabilized, looks embarrassingly like a man in a gorilla suit. Plus they admitted their faking it. The fact people still believe this makes me understand exactly how conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers believe what they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q60mSMmhTZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q60mSMmhTZU

GuiA 7y ago
It’s a weird feature of humanity. Once an idea (or meme in the original Dawkins sense) starts spreading, it’s very hard to make it disappear, no matter how ridiculous it is. See flat earth theories, various nutty religious theories (“Jesus crossed the ocean and lived the rest of his days in the USA”), etc. I guess it’s a social thing? Humans have a fundamental need to bond and feel part of a bigger “us” and these things serve as a substrate for it.
- sdf6798 7y ago
  What about aliens? Are they an idea or reality? :-)
  - gus_massa 7y ago
    Alien bacteria-like in their original planet: Nobody know, but yes. Some steps are easy, some steps are unknow. It's a little optimist to say a clear "yes", but "yes". Intelligent Alien living happily in their original planet or nearby: Nobody know, but probably yes. There are more unknows unknows step here. I'm particularly worried abbot the prokaryote-eukaryote transition, but there are more steps and more unknow steps. So let's hope that the universe is big enough and say "probably yes". Intelligent Alien visiting us in flying saucer: Nobody know, but probably no. The distances are too big. There is no hard evidence like a crash from time to time. We don't receive any electromagnetic weird signals, and electromagnetic communication is so efficient it would be weird that they use other means to communicate between starships. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but let's say "probably no".
7y ago

mouse_8b 7y ago

I like to think that Bigfoot did exist at some point. There is fossil evidence of large upright walking apes in Asia (gigantopithecus) contemporary with early homo sapiens. Those creatures could have come to North America the same way humans did. When Europeans showed up, the indigenous humans were ravaged by Old World disease. It seems logical that any contact between humans and Bigfoot would have similar consequences. I could believe that some small populations survived long enough to inspire stories. If there are any left, I imagine they would be spread pretty thin. In any case, there are no verified bodies to study, so we are left with our imaginations.

lo_fye 7y ago
Check out “Discovering Bigfoot” On Netflix. It’s actually worth a watch.
- lo_fye 7y ago
  Or listen to 1 of the over 450 episodes of the podcast “Sasquatch Chronicles”, each of which contains 1 or more eye witness reports. http://sasquatchchronicles.com http://sasquatchchronicles.com
rbosinger 7y ago
There are older indigenous people on Vancouver Island who basically say that growing up there was definitely a bigfoot of sorts. Their parents would see them even more often. They don't seem to doubt it at all. I do recall a CBC video of an elder saying that they were around but that even he's beginning to think that might have been the last of them. If you think about how much North America has changed in only 150 years it sure seems plausible. Maybe it was just a particular group of extra large bears or something but I believe they're not making things up and did encounter some type of special animals at some point.
gus_massa 7y ago
The migration of H. sapiens sapiens from Africa to America left a trail with a lot of fossil and artifacts, and they have the correct chronological order. A similar story for the migration to Australia. As far as we know, other big apes and hominids never crossed some big water barriers and never reached America or Australia. There are no bones. There are no footprints, ... So your idea is possible, but it's very unlikely.

cushychicken 7y ago

I hate to say it, but I agree with Jane Goodall. Logically, I know Sasquatch doesn't exist. But I want to believe it does.

swasheck 7y ago

My dad and my uncle are staunch believers in a wild man sort of creature that lives out here in the remote San Juan mountains of southern Colorado. The stories they share are vague, but convincing. They grew up in these mountains, sleeping alone under the stars there throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s. Over the last couple of decades they have stories of things that they’d never experienced in their lives in the mountains. Screams. Destruction. Heart-pounding sounds and experiences. Now they quest for conclusive evidence and have yet to turn up any. It’s hard to reconcile the lack of evidence with the ascribed authority of their cumulative mountaineering experience, much like what’s described in this article.

jjtheblunt 7y ago
random observation : mountain lion calls sound like screaming primates. maybe they at least sometimes heard that.

beenBoutIT 7y ago

Back in the early 2000s there was a credible rumor circulating about a reclusive Bigfoot Easter Egg hidden in the outskirts of (Grand Theft Auto)San Andreas. This was the only time I've ever been excited about Bigfoot and for a sizeable subset of millennials this is the only credible Bigfoot lore we'll ever be exposed to. Considering that GTA San Andreas is the bestselling PS2 game ever made, Lapham's not mentioning it at all is lame. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-hunt-for-one-of-gamings-most-mythical-creatures http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-hunt-for-one-of-g...

giobox 7y ago

If in the Bay Area, there’s a crazy little big foot museum run by a wildly eccentric chap who is great fun to talk to in Felton, just 10 minutes outside of Santa Cruz. It’s just opposite Henry Cowell Redwood Statepark which is also well worth a visit, it’s a fun afternoon to see both. Admission is free too. He also tracks supposed big foot sightings in the Santa Cruz mountains. > https://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/ https://www.bigfootdiscoveryproject.com/

lioeters 7y ago

I see similarities between Bigfoot and fairy/elf mythology. Aside from the difference in size, these creatures live "beyond the edge" of human society, in the wild - which seems to have metaphorical significance, like beings "out there" in the collective unconscious. Just like in dreams, my view is that these beings are reflections of humanity, upon which we project latent fears and desires.

OnlineCourage 7y ago
Like the Skunk Ape of Miami area and the Hodag of Wisconsin.

woodandsteel 7y ago

The question I would ask Bigfoot believers is what about the droppings? An animal this big would eat an awful lot of food (and mostly plants, I would assume), and so it would leave a lot of droppings, like many pounds a day. And they would be distinctive, and have Bigfoot dna in them. So where are all the droppings?