Scott and his buddy Craig once went to a Bigfoot convention held at Mt. Baker. They quickly discovered that the only people convening there were three really old guys talking about their Bigfoot sightings at a local dive bar. They proceeded to drink beers with these guys and stumble through the forests of Mt. Baker, until, legend has it, Craig woke up in his driveway.
Who hasn't wondered if crazy creatures like Bigfoot are real? I caught this Memorial Day footage while watching a documentary called Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. In order to test whether or not the creature filmed could've been human, the crew enlisted the help of three-time All-American sprinter, Derek Prior. I think he actually ran for WSU. In any case, they set up the shoot at the same hillside and timed Derek running across the same path. It turns out he ran twice as fast as the alleged Bigfoot, so in your face Bigfoot! What remains unexplained though, is the fact that the creature appears to grow taller at the end of the footage, almost like it has a baby on its shoulders. They analyze it here at about minute 4:30.What I loved, though, is that on the first try, poor Derek bites it. He's not hurt or anything, thank goodness, and he finishes the job on the second try, but I just keep thinking of him like, losing his full-ride scholarship over this endeavor. How pissed would his coach be? What if they were like, "What caused your fall, Derek?" and he was like, "I don't know - it looked like it was a dragon!" And then, they would just have to analyze that footage and see if it really was a dragon, or perhaps a human in a dragonsuit. Well, never mind. If you're bored, the full footage is below. Derek Prior appears at about minute 2:30. If you do watch it, check out how serious the investigation is.
I'm not sure if any footage we have of Bigfoot is real, but as a kid, I was strongly affected by photographic evidence of monsters. That's why I was astounded when, in 1994, they revealed that this famous shot of Nessie was a hoax.
It turns out that it was really, according to Wikipedia and Unmuseum.org, to be:
"essentially a toy submarine with a head and neck made of plastic wood, built by Christian Spurling, the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been publicly ridiculed in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that employed him. Spurling claimed that to get revenge, Marmaduke Wetherell committed the hoax, with the help of Chris Spurling (a sculpture specialist), his son Ian Marmaduke, who bought the material for the fake Nessie, and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent), who would call to ask surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson to offer the pictures to the Daily Mail."
First of all, I'd like for someone to also admit to the hoax of the clearly-fabricated and overly-British name, "Marmaduke Wetherell." In any case, the pic was a fake, and that shocked me. Although, when I went to Loch Ness at age thirteen, I did totally threw rocks in the water and snap photos of the splash. I would later show people the photos, giggling and claiming they were Nessie. Somehow, I forgot that Nessie was a water monster, and not an underwater grenade, as most of the photos seemed to show evidence of.
Which brings us to crop circles. The beloved math-nerd hoax that provides acne-riddled MIT students an outlet for which to create larger than life fractals in an outdoorsy setting they might otherwise avoid due to their severe hay fever. I say this of course, with total jealousy, because I only wish I was as smart and sneaky as the people who create them. I mean, look at this one:
Or what about this one?
In any case, these people are great. I actually saw a TV special featuring Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, two old Englishmen who admitted that they had created crop circles by stepping on boards tied with string. STILL at the end of the show, the voice-over guy was like, "But we'll never really know what is behind these strange occurrences." I was like, but those old guys just showed you how they did it!
One of the first reports of a crop circle was explained like this.
How much does the "mowing devil" remind me of every picture in the scary book section of the Westwood Elementary School library? Does anyone else remember that other little devil that made hoof prints in the rooftops of snowy English houses? The "Jersey Devil" or the "Leeds Devil"? Yeah, well I'd like to confront him and let him know I would have liked to have actually fallen asleep in 5th grade. I mean, I don't know why it scared me, it just looked like this
What's scary about that? I'd like to close with something my dear friend Richelle Mead witnessed and shared with me. Like me, she also spent many a sleepless night worried that aliens were coming for her, and this video of a purported alien on Larry King Live only re-agitated her fears. If you don't want to watch all fifteen minutes, fast forward to about minute ten and at least watch the reenactment video which is priceless. Also, if anyone wants to join me in my efforts to get Derek Prior to dress up like a yeti and run like the wind over some tundra, let me know. We can share the profits equally.
