Bigfoot Discovery Museum hosts day dedicated to Bigfoot research

Santa Cruz Sentinel does a great job promoting The Bigfoot Discovery Museum's fourth annual Bigfoot Discovery Day on Saturday at both the museum and the Louden Nelson Community Center in Santa Cruz.

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum was founded by none-other-than Michael Rugg in 2004 following a career as a computer graphic artist and illustrator.

FELTON — The memory of his encounter with the large, hairy man along the banks of the Eel River in Humboldt County lay dormant for years — but came back in a flash decades later, while he was reading a passage about a similar encounter.

Michael Rugg says he was just a toddler when he wandered off alone on a trail while his parents cooked breakfast at their campsite on the river that early summer morning in 1950.

He passed through some brush and emerged onto a sandbar — and that's when he encountered a bigfoot.

“I looked up into the gaze of a very large man completely covered in bushy dark hair, with nothing on but a rather poorly fitting, torn shirt,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I looked at the hairy man, and he looked at me, then my parents started screaming for me, ‘Mikey, Mikey, where are you?'”

When he returned to the campsite and told them about the encounter, they reassured him that what he'd seen was likely a homeless man.

He forgot about the incident until about 20 years later, when a passage in a book about bigfoot sightings prompted the flashback — and helped explain his self-described obsession with all things Sasquatch.

The Bigfoot Discovery Museum, which Rugg founded in 2004 following a career as a computer graphic artist and illustrator, will host its fourth annual Bigfoot Discovery Day on Saturday at both the museum and the Louden Nelson Community Center in Santa Cruz.

Activities will include a presentation of evidence — including sound recordings, a large, unidentified tooth and a video clip of an unidentified, bipedal figure — that has been accumulated over the years in communities including Felton, Zayante, Ben Lomond and near the Forest at Nisene Marks in Aptos.

Local eyewitnesses will talk about their encounters for the first time in a public forum, while other presentations will explain research methodologies.

One of the eyewitnesses who may attend the event, Placerville resident Colette Alexander, said she saw a bigfoot near the Pocono trail head about a mile from downtown Santa Cruz along the San Lorenzo River in June 1999. She was eating a sandwich when she looked into the woods, “and this thing was mimicking me eating my sandwich ... I slowed down mid-bite, and it mimicked me doing that.”

She later studied primates at Cabrillo College, but when she tried to tell her professors about it, “I got shut down pretty hard. They don't condone that kind of stuff.”

In 2009, she finally reported the sighting to www.bigfootsightings.org. A full account can be read at (http://bigfootsightings.org/bigfoot-research/bigfoot-sightings/page/2/)

One of the experts expected to attend the event, Bart Cutino, is a longtime researcher with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and Alliance of Independent Bigfoot Researchers. He'll talk about field research he's conducted using thermal imaging devices and recount a sighting near Mount Rainier in Washington state in 2008.

Rugg says it's time people stop discounting the experiences of those who've seen and heard things outside of the norm, and for those who have had those encounters “to stop repressing their experiences.”

“I allowed myself to go ahead and believe my own memory ... It's time for people to realize that there's a lot of stuff going on out there that current science cannot explain,” he said.



If You Go

Bigfoot Discovery Day

When: Saturday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m.: Barbecue lunch and fellowship at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum; 6-9 p.m.: presentations at the Louden Nelson Community Center

Where: Bigfoot Discovery Museum, 5497 Hwy. 9, Felton; Louden Nelson Community Center, 301 Center St., Santa Cruz

Cost: Admission to the museum is free; lunch is $5-$6

Information: 335-4478 or mike@bigfootdiscoveryproject.com

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Almost Daily's coverage of Bigfoot Discovery Museum

EXTERNAL LINKS
Bigfoot Discovery Project
The Bigfoot Discovery Museum Show

Bigfoot Cousins Claimed in Many Countries

Considering Benjamin Radford is a skeptic, he even has a top ten list "Why Bigfoot is Bunk" we find it awfully nice of him to provide us with a brief description of the primary Bigfoot variants around the world. If you really want to get an idea of these variants in a visual geographic context follow the link to the AKA Bigfoot World Map.


Bigfoot Cousins Claimed in Many Countries

By Benjamin Radford, LiveScience's Bad Science Columnist
posted: 12 October 2010 10:41 am ET

A group of Chinese researchers has announced that they are mounting an expedition to seek evidence of the yeren, the Chinese version of Bigfoot. There have been other searches for the yeren in decades past, all failing to find conclusive evidence of its existence. The team, led by a man named Luo Baosheng, is hoping to raise $1.5 million to launch the search.

While Bigfoot is by far the best-known of mysterious bipedal creatures said to inhabit the world's wilds, it is far from the only one. Many countries and cultures have stories of hairy, feral man-like creatures.

Canada's Sasquatch
The Canadian Sasquatch is essentially the same creature as the American Bigfoot, though it is claimed to be primarily nocturnal and a fast runner. Some say it steals food and abducts women — and men: A logger named Albert Ostman claimed that in 1924 while camping in British Columbia he was kidnapped by a Bigfoot family and held for nearly a week. Ostman suspected that he had been captured as a potential breeding mate for the young female Sasquatch of the family, but before he could do the dirty deed he escaped when the male elder choked on Ostman's snuff tobacco. Needless to say, Ostman offered no evidence of his experience.

Nepal's Yeti
The Yeti, formerly known as the Abominable Snowman, is said to live in the forest below the Himalaya Mountains' snow line, though its tracks are occasionally found in snow. It is said to be muscular, covered with dark grayish or reddish-brown hair, and weigh between 200 and 400 pounds (90 to 180 kilograms). The Yeti is relatively short compared with Bigfoot, averaging about 6 feet (1.8 meters) in height. Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to scale Everest, found no evidence of the creature. Mountaineer Reinhold Messner, who spent months in Nepal and Tibet researching the Yeti found that large native bears were mistaken for Yeti sightings and tracks. The Yeti made news in 2007 when Josh Gates, host of the TV series "Destination Truth," claimed that he found large, mysterious footprints that might be from the Yeti. Despite extensive media publicity nothing more was learned about the tracks; they are now on display at Disney World.

Australia's Yowie
Yowie, the wildman from Down Under, reportedly stands anywhere from 5 to 11 feet (1.5 to 3.4 meters) tall, and has yellow or red eyes deeply set inside a dome-shaped head. Yowies are said to have tan, black, gray, or white hair covering black skin, with arms so long they nearly reach the ground. According to George Eberhart's encyclopedia "Mysterious Creatures" (ABC-CLIO, 2002), the name Yowie comes from the Aboriginal word "yuwi," which means "dream spirit."

Indonesia's Orang Pendek
According to "The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide" (Avon Books, 1999), "The natives of Sumatra have long believed in the orang-pendek, which means 'little man.' The orang-pendek seems to have a large pot belly and may be dark gray, dark black, yellow, or tan in color." It is also said to have very long head hair, and stand anywhere from 2.5 to 5 feet (0.8 to 1.5 m) tall. One of the first alleged sightings of the orang pendek occurred in 1923, when a Dutch settler in Sumatra saw one in a tree; though he was armed he refused to shoot it, because it resembled a human.

Though most of these creatures share similar features, there is more variation within the types than between them. The other thing they all have in common is a lack of hard evidence for their existence. Perhaps the new Chinese expedition for the yeren will yield real results, but if history is any guide the search will likely be both difficult and fruitless.

Rumor or Reality: The Creatures of Cryptozoology
The Surprising Realities of Mythical Creatures
Top 10 Beasts and Dragons: How Reality Made Myth


Benjamin Radford is managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and author of two books about mysterious creatures: lake monsters and el chupacabra (out in March). His Web site is appropriately named Benjamin Radford.

You may also like to view all these variants on the Bigfoot Lunch Club'c AKA Bigfoot World Map.




View AKA Bigfoot World Map in a larger map

Chinese Plan to find Bigfoot is muddy

Well, we did start our coverage about Chinese Scientist with a joke about all they need is funding. It seems to be more prolific than we thought. Not only is the financing for the project in question, so are the true intentions of original news release.

Plan to find Bigfoot is muddy
Source: Global Times [00:55 October 12 2010]



By Fu Wen

A fresh campaign to find "Bigfoot" - a legendary half-human, half-ape figure - may be suspended due to a lack of financial support, according to the archaeologist overseeing the project.

Two days after a global recruitment drive was announced to find volunteers for the search team, the organizer said funding might prevent them from going after the ape-like creature.

The Hubei Wild Man Research Association announced Saturday that they were looking for team members between 25 and 40, with good physical health and knowledge of biology.

However, Wang Shancai, founder of the association, told the Global Times Monday that there is no detailed plan for the recruitment drive as they are still looking to raise enough money to support the exploration.

He said they want to prove or disprove the existence of Bigfoot in the Shennongjia area.

More than 400 people claimed to have seen Bigfoot in the Shennongjia area over the last 100 years including villagers, reporters, tourists and explorers. However, there has been no hard evidence to prove its existence, the Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Wang is hoping that this renewed effort could put the Bigfoot mystery to rest.

"We encourage any companies, social groups and the public to donate or cooperate with us and contribute to the reso-lution of this long-term mystery," said Wang, who is also a researcher with the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

The planned year-long exploration needs 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) and some 50 people to work in small teams.

The exploration will focus on the area around the Shennongjia Natural Reserve, a 76,950-hectare forest in Hubei Province. Wireless cameras will be installed in caves to capture tracks of Bigfoot.

Witnesses have described Bigfoot as a creature that is more than 2 meters tall, walks upright and has a gray, red or black hairy body.

The last organized expedition to find the mysterious creature was in the early 1980s.

The new Bigfoot expedition has triggered controversy on the Internet with some saying the exploration is a campaign to boost tourism.

Tourists to Shennongjia surpassed 1.66 million in 2009 and brought in 550 million yuan ($82 million) to the region. The Shennongjia area reported a 70 percent jump in visitors during the 7-day national holiday, according to the Hubei-based Chutian Metropolis Daily.

"Our exploration is a pure scientific research activity. We don't accept government subsides because we do not want to become their financial burden," Wang said.

A documentary on China Central Television earlier this year said that some hair-like samples collected in Shennongjia, which were suspected of belonging to Bigfoot, turned out to be a new type of fungi that was not discovered in the region before.

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Scientists to look for China's Bigfoot

EXTERNAL LINKS
Scientists to resume scientific research for 'Wild Man' in Shennongjia
USA This Week 10/10/10
CNN 10/09/2010
Xinhua 10/09/10
Reuters 10/09/10