#bigfoot — Public Fediverse posts

How Bigfoot Was Born: The 1958 Bluff Creek Hoax That Created a Modern Myth #bigfoot #bluffcreek

Bigfoot reports typically involve an animal that flees, watches from cover, or seems merely curious. Dogman reports are overwhelmingly predatory in nature. #bigfoot #dogman https://bigfootbeat.blog/post/827498442928570369/dogman-vs-bigfoot-the-terrifying-difference

CRYPTID CORPS #1 REVIEW: THIS MONSTER SQUAD CAME READY TO THROW HANDS
Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, a Chupacabra, and a...
https://comiccrusaders.com/comics/comic-book-previews/cryptid-corps-1-review/
#Cryptid Corps #Cryptid Corps #1 #Antarctic Press #Massive Publishing #Anthony Cleveland #Max Bertolini #Claudio Nunes #Rob Jones #Anthony D Grate #indie comics #horror comics #science fiction comics #supernatural comics #Bigfoot #Mothman #Chupacabra #Wendigo #comic book reviews #Comic Crusaders

CRYPTID CORPS #1 REVIEW: THIS MONSTER SQUAD CAME READY TO THROW HANDS
Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, a Chupacabra, and a...
https://comiccrusaders.com/comics/comic-book-previews/cryptid-corps-1-review/
#Cryptid Corps #Cryptid Corps #1 #Antarctic Press #Massive Publishing #Anthony Cleveland #Max Bertolini #Claudio Nunes #Rob Jones #Anthony D Grate #indie comics #horror comics #science fiction comics #supernatural comics #Bigfoot #Mothman #Chupacabra #Wendigo #comic book reviews #Comic Crusaders

CRYPTID CORPS #1 REVIEW: THIS MONSTER SQUAD CAME READY TO THROW HANDS
Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, a Chupacabra, and a...
https://comiccrusaders.com/comics/comic-book-previews/cryptid-corps-1-review/
#Cryptid Corps #Cryptid Corps #1 #Antarctic Press #Massive Publishing #Anthony Cleveland #Max Bertolini #Claudio Nunes #Rob Jones #Anthony D Grate #indie comics #horror comics #science fiction comics #supernatural comics #Bigfoot #Mothman #Chupacabra #Wendigo #comic book reviews #Comic Crusaders

CRYPTID CORPS #1 REVIEW: THIS MONSTER SQUAD CAME READY TO THROW HANDS
Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, a Chupacabra, and a...
https://comiccrusaders.com/comics/comic-book-previews/cryptid-corps-1-review/
#Cryptid Corps #Cryptid Corps #1 #Antarctic Press #Massive Publishing #Anthony Cleveland #Max Bertolini #Claudio Nunes #Rob Jones #Anthony D Grate #indie comics #horror comics #science fiction comics #supernatural comics #Bigfoot #Mothman #Chupacabra #Wendigo #comic book reviews #Comic Crusaders

CRYPTID CORPS #1 REVIEW: THIS MONSTER SQUAD CAME READY TO THROW HANDS
Bigfoot, Mothman, a Wendigo, a Chupacabra, and a...
https://comiccrusaders.com/comics/comic-book-previews/cryptid-corps-1-review/
#Cryptid Corps #Cryptid Corps #1 #Antarctic Press #Massive Publishing #Anthony Cleveland #Max Bertolini #Claudio Nunes #Rob Jones #Anthony D Grate #indie comics #horror comics #science fiction comics #supernatural comics #Bigfoot #Mothman #Chupacabra #Wendigo #comic book reviews #Comic Crusaders

Impronte inesplicabili a Sumatra e l’intrigante possibilità dell’orango umano
https://www.jacoporanieri.com/blog/?p=44685

#criptidi #creature #animali #primati #scimmie #teorie #ipotesi #indonesia #sumatra #dalmondo #folklore #credenze #miti #scienza #ricerca #leggende #bigfoot #orango #società #popolazioni #villaggi #giungla #foresta #biologia

She wrote the lyrics. She co-wrote the book(!)
She co-wrote the music, y’all. I had to go.
I cannot believe my good luck tonight to get our photo in the lobby of her Off-Broadway musical “Bigfoot!” at NY City Center, closing Sunday.

Lobby. Waiting for friends, I see some people greeting someone coming up the steps, curse words are involved. Then the person coming up the stairs is the writer! The reason I am here!!
#ILNY #NYC #Bigfoot the #Musical #OffBroadway #musical #comedy #AmberRuffin #CNN

She wrote the lyrics. She co-wrote the book(!)
She co-wrote the music, y’all. I had to go.
I cannot believe my good luck tonight to get our photo in the lobby of her Off-Broadway musical “Bigfoot!” at NY City Center, closing Sunday.

Lobby. Waiting for friends, I see some people greeting someone coming up the steps, curse words are involved. Then the person coming up the stairs is the writer! The reason I am here!!
#ILNY #NYC #Bigfoot the #Musical #OffBroadway #musical #comedy #AmberRuffin #CNN

She wrote the lyrics. She co-wrote the book(!)
She co-wrote the music, y’all. I had to go.
I cannot believe my good luck tonight to get our photo in the lobby of her Off-Broadway musical “Bigfoot!” at NY City Center, closing Sunday.

Lobby. Waiting for friends, I see some people greeting someone coming up the steps, curse words are involved. Then the person coming up the stairs is the writer! The reason I am here!!
#ILNY #NYC #Bigfoot the #Musical #OffBroadway #musical #comedy #AmberRuffin #CNN

She wrote the lyrics. She co-wrote the book(!)
She co-wrote the music, y’all. I had to go.
I cannot believe my good luck tonight to get our photo in the lobby of her Off-Broadway musical “Bigfoot!” at NY City Center, closing Sunday.

Lobby. Waiting for friends, I see some people greeting someone coming up the steps, curse words are involved. Then the person coming up the stairs is the writer! The reason I am here!!
#ILNY #NYC #Bigfoot the #Musical #OffBroadway #musical #comedy #AmberRuffin #CNN

Bigfoot remains a moneymaking hoax

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

#Adirondacks #Bigfoot #BigfootHoax #cryptidHoax #fakeBigfoot #GeorgiaBigfootHoax #hoax #MinnesotaIceman #NewYorkStateFair #RickDyer #TravelingHoaxes

https://sharonahill.com/?p=10164

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

Once again, someone has rather uncreatively posed a hairy man prop as an amazing find and put it on display for all the rubes to pay to see.

See UPDATE below the story.

This time, it’s at the New York State Fair.

Dack

Self-titled Bigfoot expert Charles “Snake” Stuart claims to have found a dead Bigfoot specimen in the Adirondack Mountains in October 2024. A hastily cobbled together website at BigfootRemains.com shows the body. The site also contains a Press Release which details a trail of nonsense that describes the 8ft creature as Neanderthal-human hybrid coined “Dack”. There is sciencey fluff about his technique and the DNA results. He pretends to do a news interview. He wants money for more research. It’s all laughably bad.

There are many reports of Bigfoot in the New York mountains, so the basis for the claim was not extreme (as cryptid claims go). This is very much a pop cryptid example as the story is more about making bank than making history with a scientific find. There is nothing about this that is remotely believable; it’s designed for entertainment.

While I haven’t sought out the Bigfoot community response, I suspect it is overwhelmingly negative. They are pretty serious folk. Oh wait… this just floated in from infamous legit serious Bigfoot guy Matt Moneymaker with the BRFO:

Oh, he’s pissed, poor thing.

It’s likely there will be a few who are so gullible that they think this is real. Nevertheless, it’s getting some publicity so I bet it will be popular. For my own little side show, I hastily cobbled together a history of related cryptid gaffs.

Hank

Before there was Dack, there was Hank. In fact, Dack looks a lot like Hank. Maybe they are related. Hank was a hoaxed body created by Rick Dyer in 2014 made of of latex, foam and camel hair that Dyer and a partner toured around the US charging people $10 a head. According to the San Antonio Express News, they pocketed $60,000 before the jig was up. Dyer had claimed that he had shot the creature in Texas. This was a classic story of “fool me twice” because Dyer was already an established Bigfoot con artist so you were kind of daft if you fell for this a second time.

Georgia Bigfoot Body

Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed to have encountered several Bigfoots in the Georgia woods in 2008. They dragged one huge dead body out and put it in a freezer, releasing a photo to the press. Partnering with well established Bigfoot huckster Tom Biscardi, they held a press conference revealing more photos. Many Bigfoot believers wanted this to be “the real deal” as Biscardi called it. But the hoax was short-lived. When the time came to examine the real body, the fakers bolted and the jig was up. It was a suit with added animal guts. This is the episode Moneymaker cites in his Facebook rant screenshotted above. I think these chuckleheads were trying to pull off another Minnesota Iceman caper, but they were too witless.

Minnesota Iceman

These hoaxes followed a pretty successful gaff that is still discussed today: the Minnesota Iceman. Originally known as the Siberskoye Creature, Frank D. Hansen’s specimen of a hairy ape man encased in ice, made the rounds in the US and Canada in 1968. Hansen’s tale of how he came to have the creature changed repeatedly. It had been found floating as a block of ice off the coast of Siberia (if this sounds like a Scooby Doo episode, that’s because it was), or it shot in Vietnam and transferred to the US, or Hansen shot it himself in Minnesota. The Iceman garnered attention from the founders of cryptozoology Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan Sanderson who visited Hansen’s specimen (still encased in ice) and came away believing it was a real hominid carcass. Heuvelmans even wrote about it as real. The story of the Iceman is wild. Hit the TetZoo site for more. The conclusion is, you guessed it, it was a hoax – a latex prop made to appear like it had been shot in the eye. Creative! The ice did the job of obscuring the details. Clever! However, when government officials came sniffing around, Hansen stated the real body had been retrieved by the owner and he was using a replica prop instead. Convenient.

Step Right Up

There are many other examples of cryptid hoaxes – constructed, dead, or alive – that have been displayed in public for a fee. P.T. Barnum was great at this. He gave us the Cardiff Giant (actually a replica of a fake), and the Feejee mermaid in the mid 1800s. The “real” fake Cardiff Giant was supposedly a lithified giant man whose appearance was a sensation in New York in 1869. Created by George Hull, who spend a large amount of cash to have it constructed, he cleared a tidy profit by the end. Funny enough, a Facebook comment on “Dack” called it the Cardiff Giant 2.0. Eh, that commenter forgot a few examples in between.

The infamous Hodag of the late 1890s was a constructed beast from the Wisconsin woods that was so popular that it became the mascot for the town of Rhinelander. Gene Shepard was a noted storyteller and jokester, it’s unlikely many people believed this mash-up monster was real. Today, the Hodag has his own store and traveling shop that appears at cryptid town festivals.

The Jersey Devil, known in 1785 as the Leeds Devil, was advertised as being live on exhibit at Philadelphia’s Arch Street Museum for 10-cents admission. The “devil” was a cruelly concocted hoax where a kangaroo was painted with fake wings and prodded to jump around. The stunt didn’t save the sad excuse for a museum, which closed.

I’m sure I’m missing some examples. What we are seeing here is the art of the hoax. The audience always forgets that real discoveries aren’t made this way. They want to hope, and get a glimpse of something fascinating. Instead, they either get a rude awakening or they laugh at the joke that they willingly fell for. Maybe that’s worth a dime. But not much more.

Update #1

Bigfoot research personality Steve Kulls has discovered that the Charles Snake Stuart is really Brian Andrew Whiteley, a rather awful visual artist. So, as suspected, this is a stunt. It’s unclear if Whiteley will show up with the display at the fair, which starts tomorrow. Currently tickets are still selling via Eventbrite.

Cryptid fans continue to complain that this is bad for the reputation of the field. But hoaxes have been an integral and common part of cryptozoology since its beginning. In fact, the most successful hoaxes have built the foundation of several cryptids, including Bigfoot and Nessie, to the point that the way we think about the creatures today is inextricably tied to the hoax portrayal.

Update #2

Seems like the stunt was a success. He did show up at the fair and continues his schtick. People seem to like it. There is a sliver of my being that finds this outright hilarious. Other than the 13% or so that may take Bigfoot seriously, the rest of society sees it as a harmless tall tale, or as nonsense. I’m guessing that most of the visitors here are playing into the fun. But, there may be a spark, a feeling that this is what Bigfoot would really look like. Because we have no body, we build the description of cryptids based on media and art. The template of Bigfoot was from the Patterson Gimlin film. “Dack” is built from that template from nearly 60 years ago. Nessie’s image was built on the hoaxed Surgeon’s photo. Media depictions play a massive role in how we envision our most beloved cryptids.

I don’t know if Whiteley will make much net profit on this event, but he has succeeded in establishing himself as a B-grade jackass. He’s likely revelling in all this attention, succeeding where Rick Dyer failed.

See more on HOAXES.

For the Patterson Gimlin Film hoax, see here.

World UFO Day.

#ufos #ufo #aliens #alien #ufology #ufosighting #extraterrestrial #ufologia #ovnis #ovni #area #ufosightings #ancientaliens #aliensarereal #space #extraterrestrials #paranormal #alienabduction #ufofiles #uap #extraterrestre #universe #nasa #extraterrestres #ghosts #flyingsaucer #ufohunter #et #bigfoot #roswell

https://itsmostamazingindia.wordpress.com/2025/07/02/world-ufo-day/

In North America’s forests, enigmatic creatures like the Dogman, Bigfoot, and Wendigo inspire both fear and fascination. #Bigfoot #dogmen #wendigo https://youtu.be/Wthjt5Q5Foo?si=nfoV3qaUlHctDcG8

Interview with the late Richard Mason on Bigfoot and dogmen in Illinois. #Dogmen #bigfoot https://youtu.be/iZnPllHZRgg?si=FQX6WRBJfSg45BPS

Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. Unfortunately, they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and hope make a living doing stuff like this, but I argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us without enlightening or even entertaining us. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that there might be a still-living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle here.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, so I binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it. The Iceman was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, that Hansen made money off it, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Mention of Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show, even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real Iceman body they believe is buried there. The other half goes to the remote location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature where they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint, which they do not show on camera in any detail, but gush over it, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans. They totally don’t know what they are talking about.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in premise. Their suggestion is that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (just all sorts of wrong) could still be living in the offshore ocean trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant to appear as a monster 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow – a made-up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the Gowrow creature was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is a well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters that large creatures use subterranean passageways (through rock) to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave. The location is not shown, but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it, and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, because the cave is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this, and there were no safety precautions shown for white nose syndrome protocols.

They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. In order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something, and we are going to just jump in and finish what he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion is that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. And they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and make a living doing stuff like this, but I will argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us more than enlighten or even entertain. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that this suggests there is a still living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, and binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it, which was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations I would guess, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real body they believe is buried there. And the other half goes to the location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature – they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint which they do not show on camera in any detail but gush over, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in their suggestion that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (all wrong) could still be living in the offshore trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow, almost certainly a made up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the creature that might be the Gowrow was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is the well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters using subterranean passageways to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave – it is not shown where it is but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, it is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this. They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. Likely in order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this.” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something and we are going to just jump in and finish was he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they, indeed, were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with excessive hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. Unfortunately, they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and hope make a living doing stuff like this, but I argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us without enlightening or even entertaining us. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that there might be a still-living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle here.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, so I binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it. The Iceman was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, that Hansen made money off it, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Mention of Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show, even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real Iceman body they believe is buried there. The other half goes to the remote location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature where they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint, which they do not show on camera in any detail, but gush over it, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans. They totally don’t know what they are talking about.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in premise. Their suggestion is that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (just all sorts of wrong) could still be living in the offshore ocean trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant to appear as a monster 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow – a made-up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the Gowrow creature was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is a well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters that large creatures use subterranean passageways (through rock) to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave. The location is not shown, but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it, and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, because the cave is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this, and there were no safety precautions shown for white nose syndrome protocols.

They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. In order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something, and we are going to just jump in and finish what he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion is that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. Unfortunately, they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and hope make a living doing stuff like this, but I argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us without enlightening or even entertaining us. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that there might be a still-living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle here.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, so I binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it. The Iceman was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, that Hansen made money off it, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Mention of Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show, even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real Iceman body they believe is buried there. The other half goes to the remote location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature where they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint, which they do not show on camera in any detail, but gush over it, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans. They totally don’t know what they are talking about.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in premise. Their suggestion is that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (just all sorts of wrong) could still be living in the offshore ocean trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant to appear as a monster 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow – a made-up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the Gowrow creature was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is a well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters that large creatures use subterranean passageways (through rock) to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave. The location is not shown, but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it, and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, because the cave is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this, and there were no safety precautions shown for white nose syndrome protocols.

They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. In order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something, and we are going to just jump in and finish what he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion is that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. Unfortunately, they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and hope make a living doing stuff like this, but I argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us without enlightening or even entertaining us. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that there might be a still-living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle here.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, so I binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it. The Iceman was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, that Hansen made money off it, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Mention of Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show, even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real Iceman body they believe is buried there. The other half goes to the remote location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature where they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint, which they do not show on camera in any detail, but gush over it, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans. They totally don’t know what they are talking about.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in premise. Their suggestion is that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (just all sorts of wrong) could still be living in the offshore ocean trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant to appear as a monster 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow – a made-up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the Gowrow creature was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is a well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters that large creatures use subterranean passageways (through rock) to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave. The location is not shown, but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it, and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, because the cave is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this, and there were no safety precautions shown for white nose syndrome protocols.

They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. In order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something, and we are going to just jump in and finish what he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion is that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

"It waddn't a cat.
It waddn't a panther.
It whaddn't

::thinking::

it waddn't a dog."

#country #hillbilly #bigfoot #boogeymen #inbred #monsters

"It waddn't a cat.
It waddn't a panther.
It whaddn't

::thinking::

it waddn't a dog."

#country #hillbilly #bigfoot #boogeymen #inbred #monsters

"It waddn't a cat.
It waddn't a panther.
It whaddn't

::thinking::

it waddn't a dog."

#country #hillbilly #bigfoot #boogeymen #inbred #monsters

"It waddn't a cat.
It waddn't a panther.
It whaddn't

::thinking::

it waddn't a dog."

#country #hillbilly #bigfoot #boogeymen #inbred #monsters

For many years, cryptozoologists and people interested in myth have been fascinated by stories about Dogmen and Bigfoot. #dogmen #bigfoot https://bigfootbeat.blog/post/758697993380790272/bigfoot-and-dogmen

Triangle Trope of Vermont: Bennington

Vermont’s Bennington Triangle is my first stop on the Triangle Trope Trip this year. See also I Survived the Bermuda Triangle. And for a deep dive into the history of how these places became known, check out Paranormal Vortex Areas.

Glastenbury Mountain

On my way back from Vermont earlier this year, we passed Bennington and its infamous Glastenbury mountain, which has accrued a reputation as a spooky area hosting an array of supernatural and generally weird phenomena.

This reputation was boosted by real life tragedies, but also by writers and media producers who lumped events together, exaggerated some, made up others, and molded a contrived narrative. Their efforts enhanced and popularized the legends, eventually consolidating the package as the ‘Bennington Triangle.’

I did not have the chance to stop and explore Glastenbury, a lost village and rugged mountain that is likely named after Glastonbury, Somerset, England, though not spelled the same. The tiny town, now abandoned, had poor rocky soil and harsh winters, though it did manage to eek out an existence for a while in the mid 1800s. The railroad carried lumber and charcoal from the location to Bennington. But Glastenbury, Vermont only lasted 103 years, until 1937 when the trees had all been cut and last ditch efforts at tourism failed. The village lost its railroad line to flooding which scuttled any remaining potential and heralded its turn into a “ghost town”. It was unincorporated for lack of residents. (See also Glastenbury: A history of a Vermont ghost town by Tyler Resch, 2008)

Part of the Appalachian Trail, called The Long Trail through Vermont, passes over the Glastenbury mountain. From what I’ve gathered, trails through the old town and the mountain are not well-marked and a traveler could easily become lost. Haunted Hikes writer Andrea Lankford labels the 21-mile Glastenbury Loop as a ‘strenuous’ route today rising 2000 ft in elevation, not recommended for amateurs, with primitive roads and few rough shelters for bad weather. It’s a rugged environment, so, it’s not a wonder that several people have disappeared in the area, never to be found. The several disappearances, which were never fully explained, contributed mightily to the manufactured idea that the area, and the mountain in particular, was cursed and dangerous.

The Disappearances

In 1946, Paula Welden, a student of Bennington College, which was an all-women’s school at the time, disappeared after going for a hike one December day. She was never found. Welden’s disappearance was the most famous one of six supposed incidents. It was preceded by the vanishing of experienced but elderly outdoorsman Middie Rivers in 1945, and followed by a cluster of mysterious missing persons in 1950: eight-year old Paul Jepson went missing from a truck, Frances Christman and Frieda Langer disappeared within days of each other. Langer’s body was later discovered seven months later in an area around her campsite that had been previously thoroughly searched. Her cause of death was never determined. In November of 1950, Martha Jones disappeared after supposedly hitchhiking. One of the weirdest tales is that of James Tetford who was said to have vanished from a bus from St. Albans to Bennington in 1949. That is, he got on but never got off. This story has been greatly exaggerated, as it was many days before it was noticed that he didn’t return home. You won’t hear that part on paranormal media because it ruins the mystery.

It seems plausible that the disappearances in this localized area of Vermont inspired various fictional tales of haunted mountains. Weldon’s story, in particular, was loosely tied to the novel Hangsaman by author Shirley Jackson. Jackson lived in Bennington where her husband was a professor; she later became renowned for her uncanny tales including the shocking short story The Lottery and the short novel Haunting of Hill House, which was made into movies and a series. I recently finished a biography of Jackson (Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin) in which little mention was made of any unsettling characteristics of the Bennington area except for the way she was treated by the insular community.

Mystery mongers

In 1992, author and storyteller Joseph Citro described the area around Glastenbury mountain and Bennington where the disappearances and other strange tales had been reported as the “Bennington Triangle”. He admitted in the book Weird New England (p. 74) that he “swiped” the term Triangle because of the mysterious association (presumably with the Bermuda Triangle). Citro, who is not a trained folklorist, also popularized other spooky tales such as that of UFOs, hauntings, hairy monsters, portals to other dimensions, and man eating rocks. (I will try and treat that Spooky Geology topic at another time.) Reading Citro’s writing, he plays at mystery mongering, a characteristic that genuine folklore scholars would not exhibit. If the disappearances were not supernatural, he suggests, perhaps they were the work of a serial killer dubbed the Bennington Ripper or Mad Murderer of the Long Trail. There is no solid evidence for this but became a popular idea for discussion for armchair true-crime fans.

As happens with difficult or unique places, insinuations were made that the natives claimed the mountain was cursed and that unexplained lights and sounds emanated from it. The origins of such tales are dubious, but often repeated, nevertheless. The strange stories are often connected directly to Glastenbury mountain and town, which did have some history of violent crimes and murders. However, many of the publicized incidents didn’t happen on the mountain.

Monster tales

Man-like monster stories also became attached to the area. Numerous residents reported a “wild man” terrorized the people of Bennington and Glastenbury around 1867. Witnesses reported an unkempt naked man in a coat flashed residents and waved a pistol before hiding in the forest. Rumor was that he existed among the boulder caves. Incredibly, this story later seemed to morph into Bigfoot lore. There is considerable reason not to read this as a Bigfoot tale but that didn’t stop people conflating the story and creating the Bennington Monster. Various internet and book sources reference an account of a stagecoach in the 1800s halted by a washed out road. The coach was attacked by a large creature with glowing red eyes. Another tale was popularized by Ripley’s Believe It or Not (so I am rather inclined towards “not”) where a man named Carol Herrick was found dead in the woods in 1943 having been “squeezed to death and his body surrounded by huge footprints.” This was also associated with the Bennington Monster. I’d be grateful if people who knew anything about that story could supply a credible source. A few people have also claimed to have heard animal screams in the woods at night or having seen the typical hair-covered tall bipedal creatures as recently as the early 2000s

None of these claims, however, stand up to any scrutiny. In my admittedly cursory searches for legitimate sources of these accounts, I found the usual copy-paste efforts of paranormal web pages replete with mistaken spellings and attributions. The intent of the stories is to feed into the paranormal spirt of place and to bolster the lore of a paranormal “Triangle” area. Some exaggerated and poorly researched YouTube features even compare the Bennington Triangle to areas in the Western US known as supernatural hot spots like the Uinta Basin in Utah, home of Skinwalker Ranch.

The Bennington “square”?

Other than the fact that some people did actually disappear and were presumed dead, very little evidence supports the overreaching paranormal and monstrous claims made by mystery mongers promoting the Bennington Triangle. The events from 1945 to 1950 and those fore and aft were connected and judged to be significant by one person, Joe Citro, who sensationalized the events and native legends. Heck, it’s not even close to being a triangle!

As with other paranormal “triangle” areas, we can see the accretion of additional reports and facts that are added simply due to proximity. In this case, the abandonment of Glastenbury along with unfortunate human and natural events that seem to be due to social and environmental circumstances, fed into the supernatural themes that became popular fodder for the TV shows, podcasts and self-made videos from the late 90s to the present. Notably, the events of the Bennington Triangle are mostly in the past, as no recent events are attributed to it. However, we can guarantee that the preexisting framing allows any strange event that takes place in the vicinity to be conveniently hanged onto the body of tales and add to its mystique.

Here is Part 1 & 2 of a short documentary featuring local historians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdyysF0VC20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBPMp8H3x3w

More:

• The Triangle Trope
• I Survived the Bermuda Triangle
• Paranormal Vortex Areas

#BenningtonTriangle #Bigfoot #folklore #ghostTown #GlastenburyMountain #mysteriousDisappearances #Paranormal #paranormalVortex #ShirleyJackson #unsolvedMysteries #vermont #windowArea

https://sharonahill.com/?p=8701