Definitely a costume.
In fact, I know a local man who is a bit of a camera trap fanatic who had his wife dress up in a gorilla suit.
He has his camera trap set up over a carcass of a road-killed deer.
He has had some very interesting photos, including a fight between his feist dog and a red-tailed hawk.
For a joke, he had his wife dress up in a gorilla suit and stand over the deer carcass. He then took the photos e-mailed them to all of his family and friends, some of whom believed it was authentic.
The camera trap leaves a time stamp, and his wife was photographed in the gorilla suit on two different occasions that were nearly two week apart. Because he had photos from two different dates, one of the people who believed it was real warned him to stay out of the woods because “That thing is staying around there!”
BTW, has anyone heard of the famous Ivan Marx footage of a limping bigfoot? Marx also had his wife dress up as a sasquatch and filmed her limping around.
You can see his entire crappy documentary on youtube!
Do I believe in bigfoot? Not really.
It would be awesome if they existed!
But the evidence is rather poor, don’t you think?
You know, I can understand believing in ghosts and the supernatural (heck, I do), because they’re all ‘energy’ and ‘intangible’ and whatnot, so of course there isn’t physical proof or signs of them, but an 8ft tall modern-day hominid whose range is the wilds of the PNW? That I would assume would leave tracks, dens, corpses, and poop lying around? And the best we have is fuzzy shots of what is indistinguishable from a man in a gorilla suit and some smeary footprints? And this is across almost 60 years worth of people looking for the things.
In this day and age, it just makes no sense to me that people still believe they exist.
Man. Retrieverman, you sure are pushing a lot of my buttons lately! That’s why, newcomer that I am, I love your blog! BIGFOOT IS REAL!!!!! I know, because I’ve BEEN HIM! And once in that suit, you just BECOME Bigfoot! Sort of like that movie, “The Mask!” Boy, the tales I can tell! Now, most of my perpetrated sightings were done during my hooligan teen-age years, and I do sorta sometimes feel a bit guilty about it all(despite the snickering), but I DID learn a LOT about people, exagerration and fear in the human species, and how to spot a fake a mile away–I personally did a much better quality job of creating sightings and tracks and other “feeding signs” than most I’ve seen published elsewhere–there are just certain quality etiquette/artistic standards that SHOULD be considered when staging such incidents! I am apalled at how poorly and amateurishly most efforts are(yes, I am a Sasquatch snob!). I might be allowed to go into this more over on the Querencia blog–it has been discussed, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, I have no qualms answereing any questions you might have here(if only because the statute of limitations is LONG passed on my activities involving this subject, although it probably is a miracle I never got shot during those days–I will say that “Being Bigfoot” can be VERY dangerous–humans ARE the most dangerous critter in the woods, hands down!)…..
“I want to believe.”
I’ve always thought that perhaps the stories of Bigfoot were holdover tales of Sapiens/Neanderthal encounters. But who would have believed that stories of “brownies” had any validity? Even if those telling of brownies never encountered the Flores hominids, did any of them ever encounter “holdovers” of other hominds? Ardi would make a pretty good “bigfoot/yeti/sasquach”. It’s interesting sometimes to see the myths tally up to something that once existed. Is Bigfoot real? Doubt it. I’d love to find some holdover Neanderthal group or even an Amerindian tribe hold out, but it’s very very long odds. The fakery doesn’t help, but one does wonder if some of the stories from various areas ARE based on some “not that long ago” encounter with the real deal that was then morphed into the modern myth.
Of course “krakens’ weren’t real until someone actually finally found one. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/photogalleries/giant_squid/
VR, Peggy Richter
I’m pretty into cryptozoology. I regularly frequent the Fortean Zoology blog: http://forteanzoology.blogspot.com/
I’m open to lots of possibilities. However, I am very skeptical about bigfoot and the rest.
I don’t think Neanderthals ever made it to North America.
I don’t think they still exist.
Maybe no “purebred” Neanderthals exist now, but regarding some of my neighbors……There is fossil evidence of a primate critter that is a dead ringer for a Bigfoot ancestor–I speak of”Gigantopithecus”, of course. Interestingly, the fossil record has not(yet) produced any line that looks like it leads to modern day gorillas, and remember, Mountain Gorillas were not “discovered” by modern science till early 1900’s. ditto with the Okapi, and the formerly extinct-for-millions-of-years Coelocanth(sp?) fish! However, IF there WERE any real Bigfoots(Bigfeets?), they would NOT be showing up in suburbia(I wouldn’t think)–only the very remotest places, like Pacific Northwest or the Himilayas, could there be even the SLIGHTEST possibility, in my opinion, of a population of the critters. As a former Bigfoot sighting perpetrator(and I publically, sincerely apologize–snicker–for any anxiety to my victims–snicker–and to serious Sasquatch researchers–snicker–that I have caused frustration in the past…but dang! I and my accomplices had a hoot doing it!) And it has given me a perspective that most people, of course don’t have! Which is why, although I disbelieve the majority of hoo-haw about Bigfoot being real, every once in awhile, in some extremely remote place, some really realistic sign/sightings occur, that make me wonder–could it be? Because of course, when you are perpetrating this stuff, you gotta have witnesses, of course, and you are not likely to do it in the middle of nowhere where hardly anyone goes(unless you KNOW the people and their itinerary, which I did, in some cases…). Some of the tracks are SO GOOD, I wonder how in the heck they faked them, having faked so many of my own….It probably would have been justice if, during my wild teen-age Bigfoot days, if while I was out hoaxing, I would have bumped into a REAL Bigfoot–a rutting male, for example. A great scene for a future comedy, perhaps?
Gigantopithecus was known from fossils in China. There is no evidence of them in Northeast Asia or the Russian Far East.
We know them only from teeth and some partial jaw fragments, and we have no idea how they moved. They may have been upright walkers, but may have not been.
That said, I do know people running into strange things in the forest, but as to whether they are primate or not, I somehow doubt it.
That said, I’m far more open than most people to cryptozoological finds. The find all sorts of new animals all the time.
You should check out the Center for Fortean Zoology: http://www.cfz.org.uk/beta/index.htm
They have a youtube channel you might like (but you have to download adobe flashplayer): http://www.youtube.com/user/cfztv
They have a monthly internet show about these issues called On the Track. I personally love it, even though I don’t always agree with their findings.
Neat website! But no, I can’t see anything on U-tube or most any video on this computer(alas).
To Peggy Richter, in regards to your possible Native (North) American “holdouts”–I’m sure you are probably familiar with “Ishi” the Yahi in Northern California–fascinating story–Ishi has long been one of my heroes. But were you aware that quite a few Apaches held out in the Sierra Madre mountains for decades after Geronimo’s surrender? There’s a great book about them out called “They Never Surrendered”–and documents “wild” Apache prescence there well into the 1920’s and even 30’s. Something the U. S. government didn’t exactly want to acknowledge……
Oh, wait a minute, I almost forgot one of my ULTIMETE FAVORITE Bigfoot explanation/theories! In that they are connected with UFO’s, and are apparently seen a lot in conjunction with space ships! Of course the question arises, why would aliens be releasing Bigfeets on Earth? Or ARE they being released? I have this image of alien space ships stopping by earth to let their pet Sasquatches out to pee, and the dang critters take off(tired of being cooped up in those flying saucers so long, of course–perfectly logical!) and they have to buzz around trying to find them again. This would explain quite handily why Bigfeets are seen in such diverse places, but then no further trace appears. And perhaps why some large, hirsute humans sometimes get picked up by mistake! We have further evidence in the image of none other than—CHEWBACA!
Have you ever heard of Lloyd Pye?
He’s got the best theory of them all.
Humans are from outer space. We’re part bigfoot and alien!
Hey, that explains a lot! Some of the alien abductions may have been attempts to make humans into pets–obviously mostly unsuccessful. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “ALL MEN ARE ANIMALS!…but some of them make good pets.”
Ha ha ha I love the fact that some people believed it was real.
Amazing, isn’t it?
it’s not that I think Neanderthals still exist, but that late survivals may have contributed to myths (one does wonder about the “trolls” that lived under bridges, etc. the descriptions are not that far off from Neanderthals as described by someone terrified to death of them). One does wonder why they DIDN’T make it to NA — their prey animals did (mammoths, etc). They certainly survived long enough to have done so (yes, I know the “newest” fossils are in Spain but it’s not like significant archeological research has been done in Siberia and even so, much of the applicable area would now be under water). Amerindians may have used boats down the Pacific coast, but mammoths sure didn’t. There ARE areas in the west that could hide big animals, but sadly, I think the stories, like the “thunderbird” (== now extinct giant condor + maybe some dinosaur bones) are hold overs for things now gone. It’s possible that a large primate still hangs out in some areas, but it’s as likely as finding a new species of tiger. the odds are more remote every day.
The areas in the West that hid “hold out” American Indians are not similar to the environment of the Neanderthal. They would have had to significantly adapt to a new environment, and the evidence is that they had problems doing that. Still, it’s fun to speculate. There’s some areas in the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas that don’t see people for years at a time. Much less travelled than the Pacific Northwest.
VR, Peggy Richter.
We used to share the planet with several other species of human. It is likely that these things have worked their way into our folklore.