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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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.

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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!]

Cryptopornography

I got an email from a friend and long-time loyal reader of Skeptophilia last week, to the effect that I'd picked a hell of a time to take a vacation.  Along with the note, there was a link to a story about how Bigfoot erotica was projected to play a decisive role in a congressional race in Virginia.

Poor timing indeed.  If you didn't hear about this, the concise version is that Democrat Leslie Cockburn took a shot at Republican Denver Riggleman on (what else?) Twitter, to wit: "My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist.  Now he has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica.  This is not what we need on Capitol Hill."

The claim is debatable.  Riggleman did co-author books called Bigfoot Exterminators Inc.: The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006 and The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him.  The latter certainly sounds a little suspect, but Riggleman said it was intended for the humor value only.

"I didn’t know there was Bigfoot erotica, even with all my Bigfoot studies," Riggleman said.  "I thought this was such a joke that nobody would ever be dumb enough to think that this was real, but I guess her campaign did."

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

The relevance to the race is also dubious; even if Riggleman is turned on by Bigfoot (or writes stories for people who are), it really has no impact on his ability to craft law.  My own contention is that the vast majority of us have odd proclivities in the sex department that we'd much prefer the public didn't find out about, and despite that, most of us are pretty nice, responsible people.

So why Cockburn is harping on this, and not on the fact that Riggleman allegedly has ties to white supremacists, I have no idea.  That is important.  Any shaggy shagging is inconsequential by comparison.

This is all background, however, because yesterday my friend emailed me with a second link and the message, "It's not too late!!!"  The gist of this story, which hit the Los Angeles Times a couple of days ago, is that the sniping between Riggleman and Cockburn has led to a spike of sales of Bigfoot erotica on Amazon.

I'm not making this up.  According to the story on the phenomenon:

The interest in Bigfoot erotica has boosted the genre on Amazon.  Carrie High's "Bigfoot Knocked Me Up: The Complete 10 Book Set" — one of the very few erotic Sasquatch books with a title that can be printed here — was ranked No. 175 in the horror erotica subcategory early Tuesday, soon climbing to No. 83 in erotica/science fiction, No. 86 in erotica/interracial and No. 51 in the Kindle store subcategory of erotica/transgender.

Okay, I'm not going to judge; cf. my previous comment about everyone having kinks.  But the fact that there are enough people who have Bigfoot erotica kinks that it affects Amazon rankings is a little surprising.  I mean, did people hear about the Riggleman/Cockburn kerfuffle and said, "Hey, I didn't know anyone else got hot for Sasquatch!  Lemme check into that Bigfoot porn stuff!"  Or are people just curious?

No way to tell, I guess.  I was assured by an author friend, however, that cryptid porn is a big thing, and that there's even a book with the title Wet for Nessie.

And no, I didn't make that up, either.

What does worry me, however, is the effect the research for this post is having on my Google search history.  It's already bad enough; being a writer of paranormal fiction (including a line of murder mysteries), I've probably already got a file three inches thick with the FBI.  (Recent searches: "How long after a body is buried can you tell if the person was poisoned by an opiate?" and "If someone is shot with a compound bow, would the arrow embed or go right through their body?")  So now the FBI will have a whole new angle to investigate, namely, if my fixation on cryptozoology has a decidedly more (shall we say) intimate motivation.

About which, allow me to assure you, it does not.  Eight-foot-tall hairy proto-hominids are not my thing.

Nor is the Loch Ness Monster.  Just to clear that up as well.  Although in the interest of honesty, one of my books does have a scene with a guy having sex with a Japanese fox spirit, resulting in unfortunate consequences for all concerned.  But I didn't write it because it turned me on, it's because it was critical to the plot.

Really it was.

Anyhow, that'll teach me to take two weeks off.  I'm just glad that the story progressed in such a fashion that I could write about it without being hopelessly behind the times.  And now, I'm heading off to do some writing.  Today's search: "How low does a person's blood pressure have to drop before they lose consciousness?"  Hope the FBI agent assigned to me isn't disappointed at the fact that this one is only about killing people, not about kinky sex.

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

This week's book recommendation is especially for people who are fond of historical whodunnits; The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.  It chronicles the attempts by Dr. John Snow to find the cause of, and stop, the horrifying cholera epidemic in London in 1854.

London of the mid-nineteenth century was an awful place.  It was filled with crashing poverty, and the lack of any kind of sanitation made it reeking, filthy, and disease-ridden.  Then, in the summer of 1854, people in the Broad Street area started coming down with the horrible intestinal disease cholera (if you don't know what cholera does to you, think of a bout of stomach flu bad enough to dehydrate you to death in 24 hours).  And one man thought he knew what was causing it -- and how to put an end to it.

How he did this is nothing short of fascinating, and the way he worked through to a solution a triumph of logic and rationality.  It's a brilliant read for anyone interested in history, medicine, or epidemiology -- or who just want to learn a little bit more about how people lived back in the day.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Nyeti

Diehard believers in the Yeti -- known in North America as Sasquatch or Bigfoot -- have this tendency when confronted to bring out such dubious evidence as photographs of prints and blurred video footage.

Skeptics, of course, need more than that.  While those could be evidence of the fabled proto-hominin, the fact is that it's all too easy to fake that sort of thing.  In these days of Photoshop, creating absolutely convincing videos or photographs of Bigfoot (or UFOs or ghosts or what-have-you) is child's play.  And given the combination of attention-seeking behavior and desperation by the pro-Sasquatch cadre, it's not to be wondered at that we skeptics look at all this stuff with a wry eye.

"But wait," the squatchers cry.  "We have hard evidence!  In the form of hair, teeth, feces, and so on!"

And, in fact, so they do.  The Messner Mountain Museum (amongst other places) has a variety of bits and pieces from the Himalayas that have been long claimed to be from the fabled Abominable Snowman.

But of course, the problem is, until that claim is evaluated by a trained scientist, it remains conjecture, given that unless you know what you're looking at, a great deal of mammal fur (not to mention mammal shit) all looks kind of alike.

Finally, the museums have acquiesced.  You can see their reluctance; if the samples proved to be from a non-Yeti source, it's kind of an anticlimax, which would be bad for business.  But the demands of science proved persuasive, and they handed over the goods to Charlotte Lindqvist, professor of biological science at the University of Buffalo.

So, without further ado: the samples from the museums turned out to be from...

... eight bears and a dog.

Which is simultaneously expected and a little disappointing.  Being a biologist myself, no one would be happier than me if the Yeti did turn out to be real.  For one thing, it would be highly entertaining to watch the creationists trying to explain that away.  For another, the sheer magnitude of the coolness factor of there being a hitherto-undocumented giant primate species is undeniable.

But alas, Lindqvist has shot down our hopes and dreams.  "Science does not (or at least should not) have an agenda, and I didn't set out to debunk the Yeti myth," Lindqvist said.  "Although we had a hypothesis that they could be bears, the samples we analyzed were of unknown identity to us and we didn't know what to expect...  Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears."

Or, as my pal and fellow writer Andrew Butters (of the wonderful blog Potato Chip Math) succinctly put it: "Yeti?  Nyeti."

The scientific method wins again, even though the win is a bit of a Pyrrhic victory for us cryptozoology buffs.  We keep hoping for another coelacanth, and the scientists give us eight bears and a fucking dog.

I mean, no disrespect intended toward bears and dogs, which are cool in their own right.  But still.

So I guess it's back to square one, which I have to admit we kind of never left in the first place. There are other cryptids left to search for, but none of the remainder seem all that likely to me.   For example, I just can't take seriously things like the Scottish Kelpie, which is a man-eating horse-headed water creature, who can also shapeshift into a beautiful naked woman.

Call me skeptical, but I just don't think that one will bear out.

Anyhow, if you're a Bigfoot aficionado, sorry to rain on your parade.  But as I've so often said, you can't argue with the facts.  (Well, you can, but you won't succeed, and you'll make yourself look like a damn fool in the process, as the inimitable Melba Ketchum proved when she claimed she'd found Bigfoot DNA, created a journal so she could publish a paper she'd written that no peer-reviewed journal would touch, had a major online meltdown when everyone laughed at her, and thereby torpedoed her own career.)

As for me, I'm on to bigger and better things, like planning a trip to Australia so I can search for the legendary Drop Bear, which has been likened to a "giant carnivorous koala."  I hear they can be dangerous, so I plan on doing what the locals suggest, which is to walk around holding a screwdriver point-up over my head, so if a Drop Bear drops on me, he'll impale himself.  Better safe than sorry.

Uncharted waters

There's a scuba diving site off the coast of Belize called the Blue Hole.  It's a circular limestone sinkhole in the middle of Lighthouse Reef.  You're swimming along in water that's 30 to 35 feet deep, and quite suddenly the bottom drops out from underneath you -- as you pass over the edge you get the feeling that you've been launched into space.  It's disorienting; there are accomplished divers who have reported that they couldn't quite bring themselves to swim over the edge.  The bottom is invisible, 480 feet beneath you, but the sensation is that there is no bottom, that the depths keep sinking away beneath you forever.

The Blue Hole [image courtesy of the USGS]

I had something of the intellectual version of that experience while searching for a topic for today's post.  On days when nothing in the news presents itself, I usually just snoop around online until something comes up.  The keywords "weird news" are usually fruitful in this regard, and within short order I had found a possibility -- a website about Cadborosaurus, a mythical dinosaur species that supposedly accounts for sea serpent sightings off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.  (At first I misread this as "Cadburysaurus" and wondered if they were hatched from chocolate creme eggs, but sadly, this was not the case.)  But while I was reading about various sightings of the mysterious sea serpent, I was distracted by a link on the Cadborosaurus article to another site, which was called "Psychic Sasquatch Revisited."

Now, that sounded more interesting than sea serpents, so I clicked on the link.  I was brought to an article by a fellow named (I am so not making this up) Kewaunee Lapseritis, which to me sounds like the name of an obscure gastrointestinal disorder.  Lapseritis has written a new book, entitled The Sasquatch People and Their Interdimensional Connection, and the website acts as if this book is some kind of cross between Earth in the Balance, Chariots of the Gods, and the bible. Here's a brief excerpt from the preface, written by a guy named Christopher Murphy:

He [Kewaunee Lapseritis] elaborates on why they are humanoid beings and their purpose here is based on 32 years (out of the 55 years researching them) interacting with the giants (and ETs).  Kewaunee draws information from 187 witnesses who also experienced telepathic communication.  Quantum physics that describe the reality of mental telepathy, invisibility, inter-dimensionalism, and other PSI phenomena, actually juxtapose psychic Sasquatch and ET behavior.

Not only that: on this website you can purchase your very own SasqWatch, a wristwatch with a band shaped like a huge, hairy foot.

So I thought, "Wow, this is pretty fertile ground. Plus, I really enjoy saying 'Kewaunee Lapseritis.'  I bet I could make a blog post about this."  Then I noticed a link on that website for yet another website.  This link was entitled, "Mayastar: Pleiadian DNA Clearing." So I clicked on that, and was brought to a website for the "Mayastar Academy of Natural Healing and Spiritual Development."

Here is only the very first paragraph of their mission statement:

The Pleiadian DNA Clearing & Activation Attunement Programme is a series of 7 attunements facilitated by the Pleiadian Light Beings of the Star Alcyone.  These activations work on an etheric level to awaken and develop the full 12 strand DNA system that is the inheritance of all humans.  This awakens additional spiritual healing capacities and talents within us which can assist us and enhance our lives in many ways.  This system clears any blockages and activates the dormant elements of your DNA coding in order to fulfil [sic] the potential of your spiritual energetic blueprint.

Sort of spiritual Ex-Lax, is how I see it.  But maybe I only say this because I'm not a Pleiadian Light Being With Twelve-Stranded DNA. 

So unfortunately for me, I began to snoop around on the website.

I very quickly found out that to go through all of the nonsense on this website would take days -- there are books for sale, crystals (of course) for sale, instructions for mystical rituals regarding "focusing energy from Ancient Egypt and the Pyramids," courses on using Norse runes for divination, something called "Rainbow Sequence Healing Techniques," and... and... and enormous amounts of other stuff.  I know that sounds lame, but I was just overwhelmed.  I was faced with a source from which I literally had too much material to write a coherent post.  I think that was the point where my brain gave a little kick with the old mental scuba fins and zoomed right out over the edge of the Blue Hole.

I've made the statement before that the the credulousness of the public and the greed of the purveyors of sham worldviews seem to be boundless.  The bottom of that Blue Hole apparently doesn't exist.  I find it astonishing that anyone would look at this website, regardless of his/her level of education, background in science and critical thinking, or philosophical stance, and not guffaw and say, "wow, what a load of bullshit."  But evidently "Mayastar" is a successful business enterprise, to judge by the fact that the "Academy" has had over 700 students, and their website has been "liked" on Facebook over 2,000 times.

And that's what I mean about swimming out over the edge, and the disorientation that results.   Because after reading about Mayastar, I'm thinking that Kewaunee Lapseritis's studies of psychic communication with interdimensional quantum Bigfoots sound by comparison like they're pretty well grounded in reality.  And from there, it's only a short step to believing in Cadborosaurus, even if they were hatched from chocolate creme eggs.

Tax-funded Bigfoot hunt

There was a bit of an uproar amongst science-minded types in New Mexico last year when it became known that Dr. Christopher Dyer, executive director of the University of New Mexico - Gallup, had allowed the university to sponsor a conference and an expedition to hunt for Bigfoot.

Dyer himself is an anthropologist, and therefore should know better.  But this didn't stop him from throwing himself and his school into the event.  Speakers were given honoraria up to $1,000, plus reimbursement for airfare, food, and lodging,  Expedition participants were even given snowshoes -- again, at the expense of the university.

Below is a jpg of the poster for the conference, courtesy of the wonderful site Doubtful News:

For those of you not up to date on your cryptozoology, Jeff Meldrum is the guy who along with Melba Ketchum was responsible for a lot of the pseudoscientific "Bigfoot is too real!" nonsense that's been around in the last few years.

And Meldrum is not the only one with a dubious background.  "New Mexico naturalist Rob Kryder" is also a True Believer, who thinks that the aforementioned Melba Ketchum's "study" was completely convincing despite the fact that her citations were bogus, and her data consisted of a rambling screed that can be summed up as "We have proof, dammit."

Kryder got into a snarling match with KRQE, the station that broke the story about the university-funded goodies all of the participants were getting.  Kryder didn't like the skew eye he and his fellow squatchers were being given, and responded thusly:

BIGFOOT IS A REAL SPECIES/PROOF
To KRQE: In response to your pseudo-investigation and false and misleading special report on the UNM/KX Bigfoot study, the evidence, funding and the blatant lie to the public about the proof of the species.  We at KX challenge you, KRQE to send your presumptious and biased investigative reporter Larry Barker out in the field for just 12 hours with my team.  And if you do, and Larry B isn’t a BF believer by morning, we agree to do all posssible to raise the $7k and pay back the #UNM account for the cost of the public disclosure conference on behalf of Dr Dyer. — The location – The Sandia Mountains just outside Alb NM, home of #KRQE and Larry Barker.  And after, to interview myself and Jeff Meldrum to present the truth of the matter.

So take that.  Of course, KRQE declined to take Kryder up on his offer, but instead decided that if the squatchers wanted to play hardball, they'd be happy to join in.  Larry Barker contacted Senator George Munoz, who is on the State Legislative Finance Committee, and Munoz decided that enough was enough.  So he sponsored a bill making it illegal to hunt Bigfoot on the taxpayer dime.  Here's the text of the bill:

Public funds shall not be expended by a state higher educational institution for the purpose of looking for or catching a fictitious creature, including:
(1) bigfoot;
(2) sasquatch;
(3) yeti;
(4) abominable snowman;
(5) Pokémon;
(6) leprechauns; or
(7) bogeyman.

I have to say that I love that he included Pokémon.  But it does leave open hunts for El Chupacabra, for which New Mexico has been an epicenter of sightings.  My feeling is if you don't include El Chupacabra, and Sheepsquatch while you're at it, you may as well not bother.

But it's certainly a step in the right direction.  I know I wouldn't be happy if Cornell was sending biologists up to our local cryptid hotspot, Connecticut Hill, to look for the famed Connecticut Hill Monster.  As much as I'd love it if there actually was some sort of weird creature stalking around in the woods only twenty miles from my house, the funding for finding it really shouldn't be defrayed by the government or taxpayer-funded institutions of higher learning.

So it'll be interesting to see if the bill gets passed, and more importantly, if other states follow suit.  I'll also be waiting to see what rejoinders Kryder and Meldrum have for Senator Munoz, because you just know they won't take this lying down.  And if they get Melba Ketchum involved, we'll really have a battle royale going.  I can barely wait.