Ghostsquatch

At the end of yesterday's mashup of alien invasions and giant superintelligent (and malevolent) bugs, I wrote that I couldn't guess what might be the next bizarre woo-woo hybrid, but speculated that it might be ghost Bigfoots.  I picked that largely because it sounded ridiculous.

As of this writing I have now been emailed three times by loyal readers of Skeptophilia that yes, there are people who believe in spectral Sasquatches.

It will come as no surprise to those familiar with the cryptid world that the Ghost Bigfoot Theory became more than just a fever dream of mine because of Nick Redfern, author of Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction, Body Snatchers in the Desert: The Horrible Truth at the Heart of the Roswell Story, Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot, Three Men Seeking Monsters, and about a dozen other titles on similar topics.

But to set the stage, a bit of explanation.  You almost certainly know all about such familiar cryptids as Bigfoot, Nessie, El Chupacabra, and Champ, and if you're a regular reader of this blog you likely also have a good working knowledge of some less familiar ones -- the Bunyip, Mokèlé-Mbèmbé, LizardMan, Sheepsquatch, the Beast of Gévaudan, Black Shuck, and Cadborosaurus.  You are probably also well aware that there has never been a bit of hard evidence for the existence of any of them.  All we have is sketchy eyewitness accounts, grainy photographs, and videocamera footage so shaky it looks like it was taken by a person who had just consumed about a quart of espresso.

What explains this dearth of tangible proof for any of these mysterious creatures?  There are two possible explanations that come readily to mind:

1. None of them actually exist.
2. The eyewitness accounts, photographs, and video clips aren't of actual, live cryptids; what people are seeing are the ghosts of prehistoric animals.

Well. I think we can all agree that option #2 is a pretty persuasive scientific explanation, can't we?  Redfern clearly thinks so.  He writes of a discussion he had with his friend, Joshua Warren, on the subject:

Could it be that certain animals of a strange and fantastic nature seen today are actually the spirits or ghosts of creatures that became extinct thousands of years ago?  As fantastic as such a scenario might sound, maybe we shouldn’t outright dismiss it.

Indeed, paranormal expert and good friend Joshua P. Warren, the author of the highly-relevant book, Pet Ghosts, told me that he had extensively investigated a series of encounters with apparitional, ancient animals on farmland at Lancaster, South Carolina – one of which seemed to resemble nothing less than a spectral pterodactyl.  Josh seriously mused upon the possibility that the ghostly presence of certain extinct animals might very well help explain sightings of monstrous beasts in our presence to this very day.

“Maybe Bigfoot is a phantimal,” said Josh to me, utilizing a term he uses to describe ghostly beasts, “perhaps even the ghost of a prehistoric creature, similar to the enormous extinct possible ape, Gigantopithecus, or maybe even the spirits of primitive humans.”

Okay.  Right.  A "phantimal."  So, what we've succeeded in accomplishing here is to take something that is potentially open to investigation (I hesitate to call what the Finding Bigfoot people did "investigation"), and place it entirely outside of the realm of what is even theoretically verifiable.

Redfern and Warren seem to think that this is a good thing.  If all of those people who claim to have seen Bigfoot are actually seeing a spectral proto-hominid, then the lack of evidence somehow becomes a point in favor of the claim, right?

Ghostly Sasquatches, after all, leave behind no hair samples.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gnashes30, Pike's Peak highway bigfoot, CC BY-SA 3.0]

This seems mighty convenient to me.  It takes all of the objections that skeptics have to the cryptozoology thing, and dismisses them at one fell swoop: "Of course there's no tangible proof.  If we're right, there' wouldn't be."  It also explains all of the cryptid sightings with equal facility.  Nessie and Cadborosaurus are spirit pleisiosaurs. Mokèlé-Mbèmbé is the ghost of a brachiosaurus.  Black Shuck and El Chupacabra are the ghosts of deceased canines.  Sheepsquatch is the ghost of... well, I still don't know what the fuck Sheepsquatch is.  But the ghost of some prehistoric mammal or another.

All of this, of course, just goes to show something that I've commented upon before; there's no crazy idea out there that's so outlandish that someone can't elaborate upon it so as to make it even crazier.  We take something for which there is no evidence, but which at least isn't biologically impossible (the existence of cryptids), and put it in a blender with another thing for which there is no evidence (the existence of ghosts), and pour out a wonderful new Woo-Woo Smoothie -- Cryptids are the Ghosts of Prehistoric Animals.

Maybe we can elaborate it further, you think?  Maybe the spirit animals are actually in contact with... aliens!  That's it, the spirit animals are spies and are relaying information on us to their alien overlords!  I'm sure that somehow it's all tied up with the Roswell Incident, HAARP, and the Illuminati.

Or maybe I should just shut the hell up, because every time I say, "Ha-ha, surely nobody believes this," I turn out to be disproven within twenty-four hours.

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Bear with us

A paper appeared last week in the Journal of Zoology that has elicited a good bit of self-satisfied chortling amongst the people who think cryptids are abject nonsense.  It was written by a data scientist named Floe Foxon, and is entitled, "Bigfoot: If It's There, Could It Be a Bear?"

Foxon's conclusion was, "Yeah, it probably is."  Foxon writes:

Previous analyses have identified a correlation between ‘Sasquatch’ or ‘Bigfoot’ sightings and black bear populations in the Pacific Northwest using ecological niche models and simple models of expected animal sightings.  The present study expands the analysis to the entire US and Canada by modeling Sasquatch sightings and bear populations in each state/province while adjusting for human population and forest area in a generalized linear model.  Sasquatch sightings were statistically significantly associated with bear populations such that, on the average, every 1000 bear increase in the bear population is associated with a 4% increase in Sasquatch sightings.  Thus, as black bear populations increase, Sasquatch sightings are expected to increase.  On average, across all states and provinces in 2006, after controlling for human population and forest area, there were approximately 5000 bears per Sasquatch sighting.  Based on statistical considerations, it is likely that many supposed Sasquatch are really misidentified known forms.  If Bigfoot is there, it could be a bear.

While this certainly is a suggestive correlation, it's not the slam-dunk the scoffers would like it to be.  There are no known black bear populations in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, but all of those states have had significant numbers of Bigfoot sightings; Illinois, in fact, is fifth in the nation for the number of sightings (exceeded only by Washington, California, Florida, and Ohio).

This may seem like an odd stance for a self-styled skeptic to take, and don't interpret this as saying more than it does.  My point is that it is a significant jump (and Foxon himself is clear on this point) from saying "many, perhaps most, Sasquatch sightings are actually black bears" to saying "all Sasquatch sightings are actually black bears," which is the reaction I'm mostly seeing.  My issue is with not with Foxon and his analysis, which is excellent, but with the doubters who are saying, "Ha-ha, we toldja so" and thinking this settles the question.

It's precisely the same reason I agreed with controversial physicist Michio Kaku when he said that even if only one in a hundred credible UFO sightings are unexplainable as natural phenomena, that one percent is still worth looking into.  For myself, both Kaku and most Bigfoot aficionados go a lot further into the True Believer column than I'm willing to; but in my mind, an abject statement of disbelief is no better than an abject statement of belief given that in both cases there are plenty of data left to explain.

So the whole thing leaves me pretty much where I was.  We don't have any convincing hard evidence either of Bigfoot or of alien visitation, so my opinion is they're both unlikely to be real phenomenon.  But "unlikely" doesn't mean "certain," and my opinion is just my opinion.  In neither case should we stop looking, nor close our minds to the possibility that we doubters could be wrong.

The burden of proof, of course, still rests on the ones making the claim.  You can't prove a negative, Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, and all that sorta stuff.  So Foxon's paper gives us a good reason to be cautious about accepting Bigfoot sightings as conclusive -- but then, we really should be cautious about accepting damn near anything without due consideration of alternative explanations.

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Clothes make the monster

In new developments in cryptozoology, today we consider: when Bigfoot wears clothes.

The reason this comes up is because of an article by the ever-entertaining Nick Redfern over at Mysterious Universe, which has the title "Further Accounts of Clothed Monsters."  My first reaction was, "Further?  I didn't know that was a thing in the first place."

But it turns out that this isn't the first time Redfern has considered the possibility, and he references an article he wrote a year and a half ago called "When Bigfoot Gets Stylish," which begins thusly:

Without doubt, one of the most bizarre aspects of the Bigfoot phenomenon is that relative to nothing less than clothed Bigfoot!  It’s one thing to encounter such a creature.  It’s quite another, however, to see it fashionably attired in pants and shirts...  Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman says: “In the 1960s and 1970s, reports from the American West would occasionally surface of hairy bipedal Bigfoot being seen with tattered plaid shirts and ragged shorts on their bodies.  In some research, there were intriguing attempts to relate these to files of paranormal encounters with sightings of upright entities said to be wearing ‘checkered shirts.’  (Within parapsychology, there is a subfield of study regarding ‘checkered shirted ghosts.’)  Investigators generally did not know what to make of these Sasquatch wearing plaid shirts, but dutifully catalogued and filed them away, nevertheless.”

I have three questions about this:

1. Where does Bigfoot get his clothes?  I mean, I can accept spotting Bigfoots wearing shirts and pants, but you very rarely ever see them in the clothing department at Macy's.  Maybe they order them online or something.
2. There's a "subfield" of paranormal studies specializing in ghosts in checkered shirts?  That seems like kind of a narrow field of study, as if a psychologist decided only to use test subjects who were wearing argyle socks.  You'd think it'd limit your access to data pretty considerably.
3. So Bigfoots like plaid, eh?  No pinstripes or paisley or hoodies or NFL jerseys or anything?  Someone really needs to work with them on their fashion sense.  Not that I have anything against plaid (or, honestly, have that much room to criticize), but if that's all you wear it becomes a little monotonous.

The more recent article, though, gives us some additional examples, such as a family in Colorado whose car was attacked by "a hairy man or hairy animal... (who) had on a blue-and-white checkered shirt and long pants," a woman in Barnstaple, England who saw a "large black dog... (that) walked on its hind legs... and was covered in a cloak and a monk's hood," and a woman in Kent, England who saw a "hulking figure... (who) had a loincloth around its waist and furred boots."

So that's kind of alarming.  Not that monsters are adopting clothes, but that given the choice, they're deciding to wear blue-and-white check, monk's hoods, loincloths, and furry boots.  I mean, it's not that I'm expecting them to wear Armani suits, but even by my own dubious standards of sartorial elegance, this seems a little odd.

It also occurs to me, apropos of the plaid-wearing Bigfoots, that we might be talking about... people.  I say this from personal experience, given that my mom's family comes from the bayou country of southeastern Louisiana.  You know those folks on the This No Longer Has Anything To Do With History Channel, on the show Swamp People?  Yeah, those folks are all cousins of mine.  Seriously.  I have a photograph of my great-grandfather, along with his wife and ten children, wherein he could easily be mistaken for a Sasquatch in overalls.  My family might be weird as fuck, but they definitely have no problem growing hair.

In any case, the whole thing throws us back into the realm of "the plural of anecdote is not data."  Unfortunately.  Because it adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the field of cryptozoology.  It's also nice to think that in a harsh winter, the Sasquatches have some woolens to keep themselves warm, when their pelts, loincloths, cloaks, and furry boots aren't enough.

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Swamp people

I've written here at Skeptophilia for twelve years, and I've been interested in weird claims since I was a teenager, so it's not often that I run into a cryptid I'd never heard of.

Much less one from my home state of Louisiana.

So I was pretty shocked when a loyal reader sent me an article on the "Honey Island Swamp Monster," a southern relative of Sasquatch (and thus a cousin of Arkansas's Fouke Monster and southern Florida's Skunk Ape), who allegedly haunts the swamps along the Pearl River in Saint Tammany Parish.

Unlike a lot of cryptids, though, the Honey Island Swamp Monster doesn't have a long history.  The first reported sighting was by a retired air traffic controller named Harlan Ford in 1963.  Since then, the crypto-crowd has seized upon the story as they always tend to do, and the Monster has made appearances on shows like Mysteries and Monsters in America wherein they search every week for some strange beast, and every week find exactly zero beasts, then high-five each other for being such amazing beast hunters and do the same thing next week.

Oh, and if you're ever in Saint Tammany Parish, apparently there are Honey Island Swamp Monster Tours wherein a guide will take you out into the swamp, and you'll come back having had the thrilling experience of seeing no monsters while getting approximately 8,382,017 mosquito bites.  (I will say, however, that the Louisiana swamps are beautiful even without monsters.  I have great memories of growing up fishing, boating, birdwatching, and swimming -- yes, with the alligators and cottonmouths and all -- in the Atchafalaya Basin Swamp of south central Louisiana.)

But as far as the Honey Island Swamp Monster goes, the sad truth is that when you start doing a little digging, the whole story starts to fall apart pretty quickly.  On cryptid sites there's a lot of buzz about some camera film found amongst Harlan Ford's belongings after his death in 1980, claiming that it had photographs of the Monster.  But I found actual images of the developed film, and... here they are:

To say this is underwhelming falls considerably short.  It further supports my contention that there's something about aiming a camera at a cryptid that causes the AutoBlur function to turn on.

More damning still, though, is something rationalist skeptic and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell uncovered back in 2011.  He was looking into the stories of the Honey Island Swamp Monster, and specifically Harlan Ford's role in perpetuating them, and he found, buried near Ford's former hunting camp on the Pearl River, one of a pair of shoes with an altered sole for making Swamp Monster tracks.

Oops.

Nickell calls this "prima facie evidence of hoaxing."  And I have to admit that if he were alive, Ford would have a lot of 'splainin' to do.  As do his apologists, such as his granddaughter Dana Holyfield-Evans, who still support his claims, especially when it involves television appearances on shows like Not Finding Bigfoot on the Folks, This Seriously Isn't About History Anymore channel.

So sad to say -- because, as I've pointed out before, as a biologist, no one would be happier than me if it turned out there really was a Bigfoot lurching around in the wilderness somewhere -- this one is kind of a non-starter.  Anyhow, you cryptid hunters, do keep looking.  Just because one story turned out to be false, doesn't mean they're all false, right?  Even if the last 562 stories were false, same thing, right?

Of course, right.

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Cryptids down under

Friday's post, about alleged sightings of a Bigfoot-like creature in Kent, England, prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me an email with a link captioned, "Don't forget us Aussies!"

The link was to an article at the site news.com.au, entitled, "'These Things Are Dangerous': Dean Harrison Claims Yowie Responsible For Missing People," wherein we find that the Australian version of Bigfoot -- the Yowie -- is not content with merely scaring the shit out of you, it actually is trying to kill you.

This should come as no surprise, because Australia has a well-deserved reputation for having dangerous wildlife.  Not only do they have six-meter-long saltwater crocodiles and abundant great white sharks, Australia is home to four of the top-ten deadliest snakes in the world (the Eastern Brown Snake, the Mainland Tiger Snake, the Coastal Taipan, and the Inland Taipan), the most venomous jellyfish known (the box jelly), and the most aggressive and dangerous bird in the world (the cassowary).  For fuck's sake, they even have a plant (the gympie-gympie) with hypodermic-needle-like hairs that inject a neurotoxin, resulting in excruciating pain that can last months.

"Don't forget about the Drop Bears," an Australian friend of mine told me.  "You visit Australia, you have to be constantly on the lookout for Drop Bears."

So I guess the Australian Bigfoots have to be pretty fierce just to fit in.

Harrison doesn't just collect Yowie sightings from other people, he's actually seen them himself.  On one occasion, he says, he barely escaped unscathed.  He was out for an evening run in the town of Ormeau, on the Queensland coast, and suddenly heard a terrifying noise.

"I heard all this crashing coming through the bush behind me and it sounded like a group of kids just trashing the place," Harrison said.  "The sound of snapping branches and crushing leaves started to get closer until a large figure emerged about ten meters behind me.  I got these unexplainable chills which are what we call the nameless dread … and like a rabbit in spotlights, basically, my whole body just locked up."

I dunno, "unexplainable" is not the word I'd use for being scared if a huge creature emerged from the underbrush near me at night.  Myself, I think it'd have been entirely explainable if he'd pissed his pants and then had a brain aneurysm.

"I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew I was in danger… and I knew that if I turned around and made direct eye contact, things would get exponentially worse." Harrison said.  So he broke into a sprint, and the creature started chasing him.  "He’s yelling and he’s roaring and he’s doing some sort of almost like a talk over the top and on every footstep … his diaphragm in his chest would bounce."  Which is pretty good detail to notice when you're running away from a giant proto-hominid at night.

"Before I knew it, he’s right next to me.  I thought, this is it, this is the end of my life.  I’m about to die right now."

Fortunately, though, he spotted a streetlight in the distance, and hauled ass toward it.  The Yowie for some reason decided not to pursue, and Harrison lived to squatch another day.

One of Harrison's infrared shots of a Yowie near Gold Coast, Queensland

The Yowie has a long history, and legends of encounters go back to Indigenous Australians far predating European colonization.  But the sightings persist, and Harrison says he gets a new report from somewhere in the country "every second day."

He's still waiting for unequivocal hard evidence, though (as are we all).  At least here we have a big country with a huge amount of wilderness and lots of places to hide.  So the idea of a significant population of some large mammal species living there and not leaving behind any traces is at least more plausible than the same thing existing in, say, southeastern England.

But the article concludes rather sadly that we still don't even have a clear photograph of a Yowie, and we'll have to keep looking.  It ends with an adjuration for Yowie-seekers not to confuse Yowies with the Bunyip, another bizarre denizen of the Outback.

Myself, I don't see how you could.  The Yowie is a three-ish meter tall apelike creature, while here's a 1935 illustration of the Bunyip, by Gerald Markham Lewis:

I'm not seeing much similarity, although there is the commonality that either would inspire you to think, "Holy shit, I'm gonna die."

In any case, that's our exploration of cryptozoology in The Land Down Under.  If I'm ever lucky enough to visit Australia, I'll make sure to do some Yowie-hunting.  I'll also keep a weather eye out for Drop Bears.

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The Beast of Sevenoaks

It's been a while since we've looked at anything of a cryptozoological nature here at Skeptophilia, so I'd like to rectify that with a story from an unexpected location.  Most of the Bigfoot sightings come from two areas -- the remote regions of the United States (particularly the Pacific Northwest), and the Himalayas.  This time, though we've got a report of a sighting in southeastern England.  The Brits, who evidently did not wish to be outdone by either the Nepalese or a bunch of upstart Americans, are claiming their own Bigfoot-clone, according to a recent article by Brent Swancer at Mysterious Universe.

Nicknamed "The Beast of Tunbridge Wells" or "The Beast of Sevenoaks," this cryptid is described as an eight-foot-tall creature, human-shaped but covered with hair, with "long arms" and "demonic red eyes."  Some locals are afraid to go outside at night because there have been so many sightings in the past six months.  There are a number of highly entertaining eyewitness accounts in Swancer's article, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.  Indeed, the story claims that the Beast has been seen for more than a hundred and fifty years, and include an excerpt from a local newspaper describing a sighting that occurred in 1858.  More recent ones come from such credible witnesses as "an elderly lady" and someone "known only as J. Smith of Sevenoaks."

Well, far be it from me to doubt anecdotal reports from J. Smith of Sevenoaks, but I feel obligated at this point to mention that my personal trainer, Kevin, actually grew up in Sevenoaks, so I asked him what he thought about the possibility of there being Bigfoots in that part of the world. 

Here is, in as near as I can get to a direct quote, what Kevin said:

If there are Bigfoots all over the fucking place, why hasn't anyone gotten a good photo?  Here we are, all carrying around the equivalent of a thousand-dollar point-and-shoot camera in our pockets, and the photos we get are still crap.  And another thing is, you have to look at where the people from Monster Hunters and Finding Bigfoot always go.  It's places like the Appalachians, right?  Notice that this is also moonshine country.  Give me enough to drink, I'll not only see Bigfoot, I'll see the Queen, the Pope, and Jesus.  So if there were Bigfoots in a densely-populated place like Kent, someone would have gotten a good photo by now.  And I can tell you that growing up there, I saw lots of drunk people, but I never once saw Bigfoot.

Hmm.  Let's take a look at the circumstances during which J. Smith saw Bigfoot, as described in Swancer's article: "The witness... claims that he had gone out to a pub with some friends, after which they had gone off to chat and a BBQ..."

Well, alrighty, then.

But of course, mere scoffing isn't enough, however often I engage in it myself.  So let's interject a bit of a science lesson that may raise some questions in your mind.

There's a concept in ecology called "minimum viable population."  This is the number of organisms needed in a population to assure that (assuming nothing changes) the birth rate equals or exceeds the death rate.  It is quite difficult to estimate, and depends on a great many factors, including the number of offspring per mating, mortality in the young, dependency on available resources, size of the territory, and so on.  To give two extreme examples that will illustrate this: the MVP for mosquitoes is probably pretty damn close to two, as long as one was male and one was female, and they were near enough to find each other and had a source of food and water.  Mosquitoes can produce so many young from one mating that it's likely you could rebuild a sizable population in short order from those two survivors.  Elephants, on the other hand, reproduce very slowly, and the young are slow to reach sexual maturity; in order to have a population large enough for the birth rate to equal or exceed the death rate (from natural causes, predators, poaching, and so on), you would need hundreds, perhaps thousands, of individuals in the population.

Get it?  Now, let's consider how many Britsquatches we'd need to have a viable, sustainable population.

To get a handle on this, I referred to the paper "Estimates of Minimum Viable Population Sizes for Vertebrates and Factors Influencing Those Estimates," by David Reed, Julian O'Grady, Barry Brook, Jonathan Ballou, and Richard Frankham, which appeared in the Journal of Biological Conservation in 2003.  The paper is lucidly written but relies on some rather specialized models and technical mathematics; if you want to give it a go, you can access it here.  The main thing of interest for our purposes is in the Appendix, wherein Reed et al. use their techniques to make an upper and lower bound estimate for MVP; the lower bound is just using raw birth and death rates, the upper bound generated from a mathematical formula that estimates the number of individuals required to give a 99% likelihood of the population sustaining for forty generations.  Interestingly, there is a large primate species listed -- the Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei).  And Reed et al. place the lower bound for MVP for the Mountain Gorilla at 849, and the upper bound at somewhat over 11,000 individuals.

So assuming the Sevenoaks Britsquatch (Sasquatchius anglicus kentei) has a similar MVP, and has been wandering about the highways and byways of southeastern England since time immemorial (or at least since 1858), you can't just claim that there are two, or four, or even a dozen of them... you have to believe that there are thousands.

Maybe someone can explain how there could be a thousand (or more) eight-foot-tall hairy hominids hiding out down there southeast of London, doing all the things animals do -- feeding (and an animal that size would need a lot of food), making noise, sleeping, mating, dying, and so on -- and they've only been seen a handful of times near Sevenoaks, have left behind zero actual evidence, and no one has gotten a photograph.  That such a thing could happen in the trackless woods of the Pacific Northwest, or the icy reaches of the Himalayas, I might be able to believe.

But Kent?  Really?

I'm sorry, but I'm with Kevin; this just sounds preposterous to me.  As much as I'd love to see some cryptid discovered, and confirmed by science, I'm betting this won't be the one.  In fact, I think what we should be doing is looking for some prankster in Sevenoaks with a gorilla suit.

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May this house be safe from tigers

One thing I find to be somewhere between amusing and maddening is the length to which people will go to hang on to their cherished notions.

I mean, on some level, I get it.  We all have our own opinions and biases, myself very much included, and it can be pretty jarring to find out we're wrong about something.  But presented with evidence against what we believe, at some point we just have to say, "Okay, I guess I was wrong, then," and revise our worldview accordingly.

Or, more apposite to today's post, when there's a complete lack of evidence for what we believe.  I was thinking about this because of an article in the Sun Journal about Loren Coleman.  Coleman's name should be familiar to any aficionados of cryptozoology; he's been hunting cryptids for decades, and in fact in 2003 founded the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.  He's not some kind of fanatic; he does respect the hard evidence, and has been unhesitating in calling out fakes for what they are.  In fact, the Skeptical Inquirer -- a hard sell if ever there was one -- said, "among monster hunters, Loren's one of the more reputable."

Coming from the Skeptical Inquirer, this was damn close to a love letter.

On the other hand, there's the second half of this quote, which is where we run into trouble.  "...but I'm not convinced that what cryptozoologists seek is actually out there."  This, to me, is the problem with cryptids; considering the sheer number of people out there looking, by now something should have surfaced other than easily faked footprints and blurry photographs.  It's why I don't take my usual "hold the question in abeyance" approach on this topic -- I've moved over into the "probably not" column.  At some point, you have to assume that zero evidence means there's nothing there to see.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gnashes30, Pikes peak highway big foot, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Coleman, of course, has devoted his entire life to hunting cryptids, so he's a classic example of the sunk-cost fallacy; once you have thrown enough of your time, energy, and money into something, it becomes nearly impossible for you to admit you were wrong.  So when Kathryn Skelton, reporter for the Sun Journal, asked Coleman point-blank why there's been no scientifically admissible evidence of Bigfoot despite thousands of people searching for him over the last hundred years, Coleman came up with an explanation that should go down in the annals of confirmation bias:

The problem is most of the cryptid hunters are male.

"I have a feeling that there’s something in the pheromones in males that are driving Bigfoot from them," Coleman said, apparently with a straight face, "and most of the success that’s occurring is with small groups of women that are having contact with no guns, maybe not even cameras, and really not getting all excited because they don’t find evidence right away.  Jane Goodall and every other primatologist that’s had success has been female, and I think that’s going to be the future."

So all those years I spent back-country camping in the Pacific Northwest, little did I know that I was chasing the Bigfoots away with my manly pheromones.

My reaction upon reading this was to say, "Oh, come on."  This kind of argument makes me want to take Ockham's Razor and slit my wrists with it.  It put me in mind of the old joke:

A guy has a friend who, every time he comes for a visit, tosses a pinch of glitter into the air and says, "May this house be safe from tigers."  After doing this a half-dozen times, the guy finally says to his friend, "Um... why are you saying, 'May this house be safe from tigers?'  There isn't a tiger within a thousand miles of here."

The friend gives him a serene smile and says, "Sure works well, doesn't it?"

Now, allow me to say that if any of the cryptids that people are out there searching for do turn out to be real, no one would be more delighted than me.  If there ever was incontrovertible proof of (for example) Bigfoot, the scientists would be trampling each other trying to be the first one to publish a paper about it.  So I'm not hostile to the idea per se, and neither, I suspect, are most scientists. 

But how long do you hold out in the face of exactly zero evidence?  And by "evidence" I don't mean eyewitness accounts, or even photos and videos.  Photos and videos are way too easy to fake, and to quote Neil deGrasse Tyson on the subject of eyewitness testimony, "In science, we need more than 'you saw it'...  The human brain and sensory systems are rife with ways of getting it wrong.  Now, maybe you did see something; if so, bring back a piece of evidence that can be studied in the lab.  Then we can have the conversation."

So as much as I understand Loren Coleman's reluctance to give up on his favorite topic, there comes a time when a skeptical person kind of has no choice.  And coming up with some loopy explanation that the Bigfoots are running away because of the researchers' testosterone fumes does not help your case -- or your credibility.

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Right place, wrong time

You know, I am freakin' well fed up with paranormal shit happening when I'm not around.

I live only ten miles from the supposed home of the Connecticut Hill Monster, a Bigfoot knockoff that has apparently been known to terrorize campers.  And there's not just one; the site says it's home to a "migratory pod of Sasquatches."  I didn't know Sasquatches came in pods, did you?  I thought that was whales.  But that does bring up the question of what a group of Sasquatches would be.  A lope of Sasquatches?  A grunt of Sasquatches?  A blur of Sasquatches?

And you have to wonder where they migrate to.  Do they head down to the Keys for the winter, or something?  Heaven knows I would, if I were living outdoors in upstate New York.  But if so, you'd think someone would see them.  A pod of migrating Sasquatches walking down the median of I-95 would be a little hard to miss.

Be that as it may, I've been to Connecticut Hill many times.  In fact, for a while I did landscaping for a really nice lady with an enormous yard and about 438 flower gardens, and my route to get there took me right over the top of Connecticut Hill.  And how many monsters did I see, in all that time?

Zero.

This is adding insult to injury, because I lived in the supposedly Bigfoot-infested Pacific Northwest for ten years, and basically used to spend all summer backcountry camping in the Cascades and Olympics.  Once again, no luck.

Then, there's ghosts.  I grew up in southern Louisiana, surely an atmospheric place if there ever was one.   My grandma lived in a rambling old house surrounded by enormous, Spanish-moss-festooned live oaks, and during the year and a half I lived in the bedroom in her attic, I never saw anything scarier than cobwebs.  (C'mon -- an impressionable nine-year-old boy moves into his grandmother's dusty, creaky-floored attic?  If I'd been a character in one of my own books, I'd have been visited by the ghosts on day one.)

I even went to places that have long-standing reputations for being haunted, such as Oak Alley Plantation, in Vacherie, Louisiana, not far from where my mom was born.  Nothing.

Oak Alley Plantation [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Scott Oldham, Oak Alley Plantation, Louisiana (Scott Oldham), CC BY-SA 2.0]

So it's not like I haven't been trying.  Three years ago I got to tour the Crescent Hotel, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is said to be "the most haunted place in the state."  I figured, given my lack of success in the past, it made sense to start from the top of the list.  I did have a moment's uncertainty when I walked by two women in 1920s garb sitting on a bench.  After I passed them, I said to a friend, "Please tell me you saw those women."

She saw them just fine.  Turns out they were tour guides.

So not much luck there, either.  I did, however, get a photograph of a hallway, which -- if you squint at it just right -- shows a pair of spots that look a little like eyes, about a third of the way up from the bottom.

But other than that, nada.  My friend (the one who, fortunately, also saw the women in period dress) said she's had scary and inexplicable experiences in the Crescent, but the ghosts must have all been on holiday when I was there.

I even wrote a couple of years ago about investigating a local underpass where people had supposedly seen a creepy face in the shadows.  All I found was some weird graffiti and a stoned guy who was seriously impressed when I told him I was a paranormal researcher, but no creepy faces.

The latest example of right place, wrong time I found out about just yesterday.  In November Carol and I drove down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to meet up with some friends who live in Florida (so the place was chosen to split the difference).  Off season, so it was quiet, there were cheaper rates, and much less traffic.  Five days going out on long sandy beaches for early-morning runs, enjoying fresh seafood, lots of down time, and beautiful views of the ocean.  Once again, though, everything was perfectly ordinary while we were there.  Nice, but ordinary.

Well, an article in the Raleigh News & Observer says that just last week, there were UFOs spotted off Nag's Head.  U-F-fucking-Os, and once again, I missed them.  These were apparently pretty eye-opening, too; they left red trails in the sky that lasted over ten minutes and were seen by hundreds of people.  Here's a photograph:

The skeptics say the UFOs were probably military aircraft, although one of the people who photographed the trails, Wes Snyder, said, "I’ve caught thousands of plane trails and never have any of them looked like this, so I’m certain they are not your typical aircraft.  I’ve caught these trails before in several other time lapses, but I have yet to figure out what kind of plane possibly has these capabilities. ...  Whatever they are, they have some incredible maneuverability."

Well, all I can say is, I am sick unto death of always being left out.  You'd think the aliens, ghosts, cryptids, and whatnot would seek out people like me, because we scoffers would be awfully fun to surprise.  But no.  I've actually been out looking for weird stuff, pretty much my whole life, and found zip.

A little off-putting, that.

So anyhow, I'm issuing a challenge to any paranormal ghosties and ghoulies and assorted hangers-on.  Here I am!  Come and get me.  I live in a big old house out in the middle of nowhere.  I'm home alone most of the time, unless you count the dogs, which you probably shouldn't, because (and I mean this with all due love and affection) Guinness the Fearsome Pit Bull is actually a giant wuss who is terrified of anything bigger than a woodchuck, and the jury's still out on whether Cleo actually has a brain.  So they're sweet and cuddly and wonderful, but as protectors of house and home, they're kind of non-starters.

So like I said: I'm a sitting duck.  Totally defenseless, and honestly, kind of a big chicken.  When it comes to self-defense, my most outstanding skill is that I can run away really fast.

Any ghosts or cryptids or whatever want to take the bait?  *drums fingers on table*  I'm waiting.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Quantumsquatch

A couple of days ago, I posted a piece claiming that quantum physics (specifically, string theory) proved the existence of the Lovecraftian octopoid god Cthulhu.  Or vice versa, it's a little difficult to tell.  This prompted a loyal reader of Skeptophilia to send me a link to a site along with the message, "Cthulhu isn't the only thing that's going all 'quantum' these days!"  And as proof, he sent me a link he'd run into over at Cryptomundo called...

... "The Quantum Bigfoot Theory."

I wish I were making this up.  Yes, folks, we have a second contender for the most ridiculous claim involving quantum physics.  One Ron Morehead, "an accomplished author with much field experience with the Bigfoot phenomenon," has taken cryptozoology and the whole quantum-vibration nonsense and put it in a blender, and poured out something truly breathtaking.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gnashes30, Pikes peak highway big foot, CC BY-SA 3.0]

He starts out by suggesting that the way us regular old biologists study living creatures may not be the way to approach Bigfoot:

Researchers knock on trees, sound-blast screams and yells, or whoop all over the hillside trying to get the attention of a Bigfoot.  Professional trackers experience track-ways left by these creatures that abruptly end, highly trained dogs will not pick up the scent, or if they do they usually don’t come back.  If what you’re doing doesn’t get the results you want, change what you’re doing…it’s that simple.  Folks who claim to be researchers discount those surreal accounts that don’t fall into their preset paradigm.  Is it time to reach beyond Newtonian rules of classical mechanics, and delve into a science that was established almost 100 years ago by Einstein, Born, Heisenberg and Schrödinger?

Well, there's a reason not to, and that's that the subject of study is Bigfoot, and not Submicroscopicfoot.  Quantum theory explains phenomena that generally are relevant in the world of the very (very) small.  Quantum probabilistic effects get "washed out" on ordinary scales of time and size, just as you can discuss the air pressure inside a balloon without worrying very much about the motion of one specific gas molecule.

So right off, he illustrates that he hasn't the vaguest clue what quantum physics actually is.  But he doesn't let that stop him:

(T)he world of quantum physics has been locked in mathematics.  It’s accepted worldwide by physicists.  We don’t see it, but it’s ever present in our lives.  We get that feeling that something is wrong, the phone rings and Aunt Marybell Sue was in a car wreck.  You have a déjà vu …this has happened before.  Without knowing it, could psychics actually be relating to folks from a quantum level?

Quantum physics is a little weird, but that does not mean "if it's weird, it must be because of quantum physics."  And if Aunt Marybell Sue gets in car wrecks often enough that people are experiencing déjà vu about it, maybe it's time to take away her driver's license.

The real coup de grâce, though, comes at the end of the article. Morehead states:

Is there a race of giants that have inherited the ability to move into the macro-world with quantum physics?...  The remains of giants have been found on earth before.  Most of us know about Greek mythology regarding aliens copulating with human women who then gave birth to a half god-half human, e.g., Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hercules, and so on.  They supposedly had great powers and supernatural abilities.  And most of us know of the biblical accounts of the same type of cross-breeding.  If we are to believe there is a core of truth to these stories, could Bigfoot be a diluted remnant of these and have inherited some of their quantum abilities?

It's funny, I've read a great deal of mythology, and I don't recall anything about Zeus being the product of an alien having sex with a human.  You'd think that'd kind of stand out in my memory.  But if we're making shit up, may as well go big or go home, right?

The most inadvertently funny thing about the whole article, though, is when Morehead states that there is no need to defer to posers like Brian Greene and Neil de Grasse Tyson on matters of physics:

You don’t have to be a physicist to understand enough about quantum physics to realize it could very well be our answer to the understanding of how Bigfoot might operate.

Which, in one sentence, sums up the entire woo-woo worldview.  "Don't expect us even to expend the effort of reading the fucking Wikipedia page on quantum physics.  We'll just throw around some terms that are sort of science-y or something, and call it good."

And we won't even go into Morehead's further speculations that Bigfoot might be the descendant of Lucifer and the Nephilim.

So there you have it.  An even dumber claim than Quantum-thulhu.  If there's any crazier woo-woo quantum absurdity out there, like using quantum physics to explain why Tarot cards work, I don't want to know about it.  There's only so much facepalming one person can endure.

*************************************

Astronomer Michio Kaku has a new book out, and he's tackled a doozy of a topic.

One of the thorniest problems in physics over the last hundred years, one which has stymied some of the greatest minds humanity has ever produced, is the quest for finding a Grand Unified Theory.  There are four fundamental forces in nature that we know about; the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity.  The first three can now be modeled by a single set of equations -- called the electroweak theory -- but gravity has staunchly resisted incorporation.

The problem is, the other three forces can be explained by quantum effects, while gravity seems to have little to no effect on the realm of the very small -- and likewise, quantum effects have virtually no impact on the large scales where gravity rules.  Trying to combine the two results in self-contradictions and impossibilities, and even models that seem to eliminate some of the problems -- such as the highly-publicized string theory -- face their own sent of deep issues, such as generating so many possible solutions that an experimental test is practically impossible.

Kaku's new book, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything describes the history and current status of this seemingly intractable problem, and does so with his characteristic flair and humor.  If you're interesting in finding out about the cutting edge of physic lies, in terms that an intelligent layperson can understand, you'll really enjoy Kaku's book -- and come away with a deeper appreciation for how weird the universe actually is.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Squatching down south

Lately there's been a surge of Bigfoot sightings in North Carolina.

These sorts of things are fuel to the cryptozoologists' fire.  Why else, they argue, would you see clusters of sightings, if it wasn't because the animals themselves were present in an area?  I'm inclined to suspect some sort of tame version of group hysteria -- when one person in your neighborhood claims that a large, hairy proto-hominid has been hanging around in their back yard, you're more likely to attribute anything weird -- noises at night, a dumped-over trash can, the silhouette of a black bear -- as falling into the "I saw it too!" department.

Be that as it may, I'm all about evidence, so let's see what we've got.

First, we have Vicky Cook of Shelby, North Carolina, near the city of Charlotte, who claims to have seen a Bigfoot in broad daylight.

Apparently, Cook has been trying to attract Bigfoot for quite some time, to the extent that she puts out bait for them.  "They love peanut brittle, chocolate, and peanut butter sandwiches," Cook says.

So far, her strategy hasn't turned up much but a grainy trail-cam photograph that could be damn near anything.  She has said, however, that the Bigfoots come through quite regularly.  "They just walk through leaving a big mess sometimes," Cook said.  "Broken trees scattered everywhere.  Footprints.  They come into my back yard at night as well.  But never bother anything."

I'm not sure how "broken trees scattered everywhere" jibes with "never bothering anything," but that's just me.

She also doesn't seem surprised that the photo isn't very good.  "If I was to get a clear shot of a Bigfoot standing in the open ... guess how that would go?" Cook says.

I'm not exactly sure what she's getting at.  I think it would go pretty well, myself.  I've often wondered, in these days where everyone has their phone at all times and they go around snapping photographs of everything, why all the Bigfoot pics look like they were taken using the camera's "AutoBlur" function.

Then, there, the report of a "large, bipedal animal covered with hair," from McDowell County, in the western part of North Carolina.  The sighting was from John Bruner, who (like Cook) has been looking for Bigfoot for quite some time.  He takes a different approach, however; instead of attracting them with food, he scatters glow sticks around.  This "piques the curiosity" of the Bigfoots, he says.

Well, he claims that it worked, because he was out hunting for his quarry at night and saw one of the glow sticks start to move.  He gave chase, and got close enough to see it -- it turned and looked at him, then took off too fast for him to follow.

"Its face was solid black, no hair on it," Bruner said.  "The hair looked shaggy all over.  I was able to see details of the creature … like the face, and the hair was matted and stringy.  The eyes were farther apart than human eyes."

Some sightings a couple of months ago in Davie County, however, turned out to cluster around one area for a reason.  Multiple people called in to the authorities to report a Bigfoot with glowing red eyes.  Some of the folks who phoned were hysterical with fear.  Thinking this was enough to warrant at least a cursory look, the Davie County Sheriff's Department sent in their Animal Control Unit, and found...

... this.

Turns out the property owner thought it'd be fun to put up a Bigfoot statue, given how many times he's allegedly been sighted prowling around the area (Bigfoot, not the owner), which of course resulted in more sightings.  This prompted the authorities to put out a request:

This handsome fellow stands on Pine Ridge Rd. in Mocksville.  If you are traveling this road at night, please be advised that the eyes appear to glow.  If you see this phenomenon, you do not need to call animal control to report seeing Bigfoot, Sasquatch or any other large creature.  Thank you. 

Any media outlets with questions about this matter, please contact animal control directly at (336)751-0227.  Do not tie up 911 lines.

So that explains those sightings, at least.

Anyhow, apparently North Carolina is zooming up in the ranks, coming in right after the Pacific Northwest/northern California sightings that got the whole thing going.  Who knew?  I guess the western part of North Carolina is pretty solid forested mountains, just like the Cascades and Olympics, so if the Big Guy likes that kind of terrain, it'd be understandable that he lives there.

The other spot that's been hopping lately, however, is Florida, which has the southern relative of Bigfoot, the "Skunk Ape."  Or maybe they're just elderly Bigfoots who decided to move to Florida when they retired.  They tend to hang out in the Everglades, which seems weird to me, because (as beautiful as the Everglades are) they are home to mosquitoes big enough to carry off your poodle.  If I was a Florida Bigfoot, I think I'd prefer a condo in Sarasota over mucking around in hip-deep mud, trying not to get exsanguinated by flocks of giant bloodsucking bugs, and avoiding cottonmouths and alligators.

But that's just me.

Anyhow, if any of my southeastern readers knows of other sightings, I'd love to hear about it.  And maybe now that I'm retired, I can go looking myself.  Perhaps I should head on down there in January, when up here, it's so cold that you can go out well-wrapped and still freeze off important body parts.  I'll make sure to bring along glow sticks and peanut brittle.

*********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is about a subject near and dear to me: sleep.

I say this not only because I like to sleep, but for two other reasons; being a chronic insomniac, I usually don't get enough sleep, and being an aficionado of neuroscience, I've always been fascinated by the role of sleep and dreaming in mental health.  And for the most up-to-date analysis of what we know about this ubiquitous activity -- found in just about every animal studied -- go no further than Matthew Walker's brilliant book Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams.

Walker, who is a professor of neuroscience at the University of California - Berkeley, tells us about what we've found out, and what we still have to learn, about the sleep cycle, and (more alarmingly) the toll that sleep deprivation is taking on our culture.  It's an eye-opening read (pun intended) -- and should be required reading for anyone interested in the intricacies of our brain and behavior.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]