Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Messin' with Sasquatch?



If you know me well, you knew it had to come.  Some will wonder, “But why so quickly, Mark?  Do you really want to concern the world about your mental state this soon on your blog?”  I guess the answer is yes, I’m willing to risk it.  What am I talking about?  In a word -- Bigfoot.   Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, Yowie, Skunk Ape, Woods Ape, Abominable Snowman – it doesn’t matter what you call him, Bigfoot is still a big stinking deal.

When I was a young boy in the late sixties and early seventies, Bigfoot was everywhere.  I can remember watching with wide-eyed awe the Patterson-Gimlin recording from 1967, filmed just a few days from when I turned three years old.  It has been played and analyzed again and again, all the way down to today actually.  For a young boy, the thought of a real-life nine-foot-tall, five-hundred-pound monster roaming the woods was more than spell-binding.  I’ll never forget going with my dad and brother to see Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot.  It was a poorly done docudrama, but it scared the daylights out of me, and it intrigued me as well.

From that movie in 1977 to a chance event a few years ago, I didn’t give much thought to Mr. Bigfoot.  Oh, I enjoyed The Six Million Dollar Man when Steve Austin figured out that Bigfoot was really from a race of space aliens, but that show had long since gone off the air.  I caught the occasional Discovery show about Bigfoot sightings in various places.  I really liked the one with the Indian on an Oklahoma reservation who served as a guide.  He explained that Bigfoot could hypnotize you into forgetting you saw him.  As they walked through the forest, he kept saying, "I can smell him.  Do you smell him?  He was just here."  I have a little Indian blood myself and a pretty keen nose.  I wondered if maybe I could sniff out a Bigfoot as long as I could avoid letting him hypnotize me.

My interest in Bigfoot changed in 2006, however, when I learned that a close neighbor where I grew up claimed to have had an encounter with a Sasquatch while I was still a boy.  Furthermore, the sighting was within a quarter-mile of our family farm!  I also learned that hundreds if not thousands of people claim to have seen a Bigfoot.  (I suppose the same can be said of Elvis and space aliens, but I don’t personally know anyone who claims to have seen either one of those.)  This knowledge piqued my interest again, and I have kept up with Bigfoot events ever since (don’t ask me if you don’t want to know).

Bigfoot is hot in the news again.  The latest Bigfoot installment is as fascinating as all the others.  Dr. Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian and long-time DNA sequencer has been studying physical evidence provided to her by Bigfoot researchers across the country.  After five years of work, she has submitted her research to a scientific journal and it is now undergoing peer review.  She expects the results to be published soon at which time she is to release some high-definition “irrefutable” video evidence of the existence of Bigfoot.  You can Google her and you will get a host of references, just one of which I’ve included here:


The latest installment begs all the usual questions:  “Where are the carcasses?”  “Does no one have a camera on their cell phone?” “ Who were the scientists that helped her?” “ What journal is reviewing the evidence?”  “Why haven’t we heard anything?”  It gives the impression that it will end with the same empty feeling you get after watching an episode of “Finding Bigfoot” – no real evidence but everyone associated is still sure Bigfoot exists.  The lack of evidence is just further proof of how elusive Bigfoot is.  You can’t believe you wasted an hour of your time – again.

Will this research verify the existence of Bigfoot?  Here’s doubting it – but the wide-eyed boy in me still wants to believe in a massive chest-thumping Wookie roaming around North America even getting down to Logan County, Kentucky.  I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not even remotely expecting a positive outcome.  In fact, if you do a little more research on Ketchum, it appears her interest in Bigfoot is tied to her understanding of the Nephilim mentioned in the book of Genesis, but that’s a topic for another day.

You can follow Melba Ketchum along with her throngs of Twitter followers (about 350) at https://twitter.com/DrMelbaKetchum

Happy squatching from a Bigfoot believer wanna-be!

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