Thom Powell Week: The Contemporary Researcher

We are celebrating Thom Powell Week He will be speaking at an engagement sponsored by Oregon Sasquatch Symposium and University of Oregon on November 3rd.

In 2004 the first edition of this work, Meet the Sasquatch, accompanied a sasquatch exhibit at the Vancouver Museum, British Columbia, Canada. In that same year, it won the Anomalist Book of the Year Award in the category of best illustrated book. General feedback and comments from numerous researchers, together with new findings, indicated that the work should not be simply reprinted. As a result, it has been updated, with a considerable amount of new material added, and has now become Know the Sasquatch/Bigfoot. For this new edition, Chris Murphy again consulted many major sasquatch/bigfoot researchers, scientists, and others. The information provided is the latest available, and again is highly authoritative.

We were fortunate to get a copy of this exclusive and extensive book about the Sasquatch; as much about the creature as it is about those that investigate. We literally read all 300 pages cover to cover in one night. One of the chapters covers none other than Thom Powell. Below we have a short excerpt from that chapter.

THOM POWELL: THE CONTEMPORARY RESEARCHER.
Thom Powell is best known as author of The Locals, an entertaining and informative book that presents some of the stranger, even "paranormal," aspects of the Sasquatch phenomenon. The book has been acclaimed for providing fresh information, fresh perspectives, and being well-written. Conventional scientists, of course, have no patience with even a hint of paranormalism, so Thom has had to "ride that tide," like many others who have reported findings in that connection.

Thom's interest in the Sasquatch began as a skeptical science teacher, searching for local examples of pseudoscience that he could use in his middle school science lessons. Thom did not take the whole Sasquatch matter seriously until he moved from downtown Portland to outlying Clackamas County, Oregon, in 1988. There he met neighbors who reported Sasquatch sightings in the immediate vicinity. In an effort to debunk those sighting claims, Thom got to know local Sasquatch researchers such as Joe Beelart and Frank Kaneaster, who had track casts and other evidence to share.

Thom's interest in photography led to an interest in deploying remote wildlife cameras (camera traps) in an attempt to resolve his questions about the validity of the whole Sasquatch issue. In the late 1990s, this initiative led to involvement in Ray Crowe's local organization, the Western Bigfoot Society, and Matt Moneymaker's fledgling Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). At about this time, the BFRO was making organizational changes, and Thom soon became the regional director for the Pacific Northwest.

As he continued to pursue his interest in camera systems, Thom was overwhelmed with BFRO sightings to investigate, and as a matter of necessity, he steadily added regional investigators including Jeff Lemley, Leroy Fish, Rick Noll, and Allan Terry.

In 2000, this group collaborated on the BFRO's Skookum Expedition. The expedition was actually organized to support an Australian film crew that was producing a segment for a cable TV series on cryptids called Animal X On the advice of Joe Beelart and Henry Franzoni, Thom took the expedition to the Skookum Meadows area of Washington's Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Due to an extraordinary set of circumstances, the well-known Skoopkum Cast was produced (see: Chapter 8, section: The Skookum Cast), Which became not only a valuable item of sasquatch evidence, but also the first completed chapter of what would eventually become Thom’s book.

You May Also Like
November 3rd Event
Cryptomundo's Review of The Locals

EXTERNAL LINKS
Know the Sasquatch Book
Thom Powell's book the Locals

Thom Powell Week: To true believers, Bigfoot lives

We Are kicking off Thom Powell Week. That's right! We are dedicating a whole week to Thom Powell.

Many of you may know him as author of "The Locals" We are doing this to help promote an event co-sponsored by the Oregon Bigfoot Symposium and the University of Oregon at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 in the UO Living Learning Center’s South Building. Tomorrow we will have a full bio of the man, until then, keeping with our pulse on breaking news, we thought we would launch THOM POWELL WEEK with an article just released today by columnist Bob Welch of the Registered Guard.

To true believers, Bigfoot lives

BY BOB WELCH
Register-Guard Columnist
Appeared in print: Sunday, Oct 17, 2010

LEABURG — Outside Ike’s Pizza, a half moon tints the thin clouds above the McKenzie River in a touch of mystery. It is just after 8 p.m. last Thursday. The restaurant is closed.

Inside, sweat trickles down the semi-bald head of a 40-something man who is telling of his encounter in Northern California five years ago.

“Please don’t put my name in the paper,” he says. “I have kids who go to school up here. But he looked like the old King Kong. I call it ‘bug-eye gorilla.’ I ran away, then built the biggest campfire I’ve ever built. Haven’t been camping since.”

Behind the man, on the wood-paneled wall, a drawing of a Sasquatch-like creature — “Enoch” — shares face time with the chinook salmon over the fireplace.

Ike’s owner Dave Starck hands the man a paper towel to wipe off the sweat, then turns to me.

“This is what happens to people who’ve had encounters,” says Starck, whose on-display plaster casts of supposed Sasquatch prints fan the creature’s flames. “One customer took one look at that poster and said, ‘That nose was pressed up against my window when I was a kid.’ Another woman was so shaken by it she went back outside. We had to deliver her pizza to her out there.”

The film crew from England is expected shortly. For now, I feel like an agnostic who’s stumbled into a church of tried-and-true believers.

Why here? Why now? Why me?

Because much as I’d like to just make fun of this Bigfoot stuff, I can’t — even though when the guy says the Sasquatch had “matted sideburns,” I confess I think of some Bigfoot/Elvis incarnation.

Instead, when I hear of this gathering of eye witnesses at the McKenzie’s unofficial Bigfoot headquarters, Ike’s — and a five-man film crew from England’s Diverse Bristol (“Men vs. Wild”) film company arriving to capture it — I head upstream like a spawning salmon.

I arrive just before 6 p.m. The film crew is to arrive at 6:30 p.m.

As I wait, I ask Toby Johnson, 35, the organizer of last summer’s Oregon Sasquatch Symposium in Eugene, why he got involved in the movement. Above the greasy remains of a small pepperoni, he hands me his cell phone with a photo of what appears to be a very large footprint.

“Saw this print five years ago, in the hills near Thurs ton, while hiking with my son,” he says.

Like the folks in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” drawn to the Devil’s Tower, he followed the urge. “It awoke the child in me again,” he says. “There’s this mystery that could be true.”

But going public invites ridicule. “Suddenly, you’re grouped in with these banjo-picking ‘Deliverance’ types,” he says.

Still, that didn’t stop him from organizing the symposium or an upcoming lecture by Bigfoot author Thom Powell, an event co-sponsored by the Oregon Bigfoot Symposium and the University of Oregon at 7 p.m. Nov. 3 in the UO Living Learning Center’s South Building.

The handful of people here tonight all seem to believe. I hear of guys driving dark roads and suddenly seeing Sasquatch come out of the woods along a highway and into their headlights. Of recent footage supposedly taken by a river guide near the McKenzie River’s Fish Ladder Rapids, between Olallie and Paradise campgrounds, that appears to show a Bigfoot-like creature. (See YouTube footage on my blog at www.registerguard.com/blogs.) And of John Bull’s four encounters over three decades in areas south and east of Cottage Grove.

“At least 8 feet tall and 300 pounds,” says Bull, 42 and a chef’s assistant at a Eugene retirement center. “Smelled like a bear that had gone through a garbage can and laid out in the sun all day.”

Once, he and a few other Boy Scouts had sneaked away from Sharps Creek Campground for a few beers late one night. There it was, only 15 yards away, he says.

“I remember thinking I don’t wanna look. I did. His head turned and he looked over his shoulder at us, but never broke stride.”

As someone who spends time in the woods, I prefer a more lighthearted version, say, the Bigfoot in the Jack Link’s Beef Jerky commercials. But the witnesses clearly see beyond the humor veil.

“I’m a pretty good judge of character,” Johnson says, “but when someone wells up in tears or you see the hair of their arms stand up … . They want it to be a bear or something else, but they can’t shake the fact that it walked on two legs and had fingers and eyes like us.”

By nearly 8:30, I’m convinced that it’s a hoax — the film crew, that is — and am ready to leave. But suddenly in walk five Brits and Jim Stuckey, a hunting-show guide — think a Canadian Crocodile Dundee — who’s auditioning to host a new “strange encounters” show for which this is to be the pilot episode.

I watch the filming. Hear more stories. Then get in my car and head home through the darkness, glancing more than usual into the woods along the way.

Do you believe in Bigfoot? E-mail me at bob.welch@registerguard.com.

Source: The Registered-Guard

Other Thom Powell Links
November 3rd Event
Cryptomundo's Review of The Locals
Cliff Barackman talks about the Chehalis Project, investigated by Thom Powell

Bigfoot sighted on Taibai Mountain

China's People's Daily announces this breaking news.

Bigfoot sighted on Taibai Mountain
13:03, October 15, 2010


The file photo shows an unidentified Bigfoot in Shennongjia, China's Hubei Province.


The striking news on the appearance of a Bigfoot on Taibai Mountain in Xi'an, Shaanxi Provnice recently spread among local residents of Mei County located near the foot of Taibai Mountain. Is Taibai Mountain really home to a Bigfoot?

Who encountered the Bigfoot on Taibai Mountain?

Reporters interviewed many residents of Mei County, and their accounts varied. According to one story, when several travelers from Xi'an made camp in the deep forest, they suddenly heard a howl and when they looked up, they saw a hairy monster moving back and forth in the woods. After one of them cried, "It is a monster," they ran away in panic and nearly fell into a groove. It was said that these travelers were too frightened and were completely speechless for a few days after they got off the mountain, and they were admitted to the hospital right after returning to Xi'an.

However, according to another story, a few backpackers from Shanghai went to visit Taibai Mountain, the main peak of the Qinling Mountains, and started climbing the mountain in Houzhenzi Village, Zhouzhi County. They walked for two days in the misty mountain where there are a large number of old rattan plants and trees.

When they made camp at the foot of a cliff in the undeveloped Donghe scenic zone at dusk on the third day, they heard an unearthly cry and dimly saw a humanlike creature flying overhead, but the creature was quickly out of sight before they could take a good look. Afterwards, one of them said that the creature was entirely covered with hair but closely resembles a human being, and can swing from branch to branch. This unexpected incident really scared them all.

Then which one of the two stories is true? Or are both false?

A Taibai Mountain National Forest Park official told reporters that several tourists from Xi'an did tell park staff on Sept. 18 that they saw a wild creature in the mountain, but it is still unclear whether it was really a Bigfoot.

Reporters were also informed that Shaanxi Daily and other newspapers had published long reports on the discovery of half-human, half-animal creatures on Taibai Mountain as early as 1990s.

By People's Daily Online