Robert Gray Middle School does Bigfoot Comedy

Ian Sloan (standing) and, from left, Gwyneth Bushman, Max Fawcett and Nicole Panet-Raymond star in Robert Gray’s production of “North Woods Nonsense.”
CLAIRE OLIVER / SOUTHWEST COMMUNITY CONNECTION)

The very School that Bigfoot researcher Thom Powell teaches at will be performing a Bigfoot Comedy.

'North Woods Nonsense'
RGMS theater department presents upbeat, family comedy as its winter production
BY CLAIRE OLIVER

The Southwest Community Connection, Dec 1, 2011
HILLSDALE – Southwest Portlanders have the chance to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot in this neck of the woods, when Robert Gray Middle School’s theater department presents its production of “North Woods Nonsense,” a comedy by Andrew Ross, starting Dec. 1.

The action in this witty, upbeat comedy centers around the lobby of the rundown Lost Loon Hotel at Moose Bottom Lake, where handyman Pete has written a fictional story about Bigfoot kidnapping a local resident that ends up being published in a national tabloid.

People from all over nevertheless take the account as true and come to the hotel to search for Sasquatch on their own.

This sighting also provides the perfect excuse for Birch and Pine, assistants to inept congressman Oakley, to suggest a trip to the hotel to keep him out of the public eye. The pair is trying to keep Oakley, who is head of Congress’ parks committee, from speaking in public to prevent him from sharing his ideas of turning the Grand Canyon into a giant lake, building a mall at Yellowstone and building condos at Mount Rushmore.

Hilarity ensues with the convergence of the Bigfoot enthusiasts and the reporters hot on Oakley’s trail.

“It’s an amazingly fantabulous blow-you-away comedy the whole family would love,” said eighth-grader Ian Sloan, who plays Rep. Oakley.

Cast members said they’ve all had fun embodying their characters.

“I feel like my character is some part of me,” said eighth-grader Nicole Panet-Raymond, one of the sisters who manages the Lost Loon Hotel.

“I love my character because I get to scream a lot,” said eighth-grader Gwyneth Bushman, who play’s Panet-Raymond’s eclectic sister.
The cast has been rehearsing together since the second week of school, and its members said the group is now like a giant family.

“There’s a lot of love, and it’s a lot of fun,” Sloan said.

“Because we’ve created such a collaboration, it’s amazing to see it come together on stage as well,” Director Jules Moorhouse said. “It’s a great family show.”

“North Woods Nonsense” will open Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. on the school’s stage, located at 5505 S.W. 23rd Ave., and will continue Dec. 2 and 9 at 7 p.m. and Dec. 10 at 2 p.m.

Tickets cost $5 for students and $7 for adults and are available at the door or online through www.graypta.org. The theater and box office will open 30 minutes prior to each performance. All money raised through ticket and concession sales will support the Robert Gray PTA Theater Program.

Bigfoot takes to stage, page
Bigfoot isn’t just making an appearance on Robert Gray’s stage.

Thom Powell, a science teacher at the school, published his second book, “Shady Neighbors,” earlier this year, and the sasquatch mystery is the novel’s central theme.

Combining Bigfoot and baseball, the novel follows a rural family threatened by the imminent development of its land, according to the book’s description on Amazon.com. When the family begins to notice strange occurrences in the area caused by an unknown force, they must learn to work together with that force for the greater good.

“Shady Neighbors” is available for purchase on Amazon. Powell’s first book, “The Locals, a Contemporary Investigation of the Bigfoot/Sasquatch Phenomenon,” is a nonfiction investigation of the sasquatch legend. It is also available online.

For more information, visit www.shady-neighbors.com.
SRC: The Southwest Community Connection

Kentucky is where Bigfooting is at

In a two-week poll we asked Bigfoot Lunch Club fans which websites they visited most. Kentucky Bigfoot came out on top.

There are two good reasons why Kentucky Bigfoot topped our list.

1) Kentucky is a hotspot. The much anticipated Erickson Project has claimed to have convincing evidence from Kentucky. Plus, Kentucky will be showcased in two shows this coming TV season; Finding Bigfoot and Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy.

2) The second and larger reason for Kentucky Bigfoot topping the list is the Organization itself. They are as authentic as researchers can be, extremely organized and they reach out to their audience. They are inclusive and share their research publicly. Their self-described purpose, "...is to obtain 'one' database as to monitor population density and migration patterns for all reported Kentucky Bigfoot encounters. To determine authenticity, credit is given to each source and witnesses are contacted whenever possible. The information contained therein is being used solely for research and educational purposes.

Lead by Charlie Raymond, a high school teacher and IT Specialist. Charlie holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Florida. He developed this website to document all credible bigfoot encounters in Kentucky. He believes bigfoot to be a "flesh and blood" unidentified hominid, VERY closely related to us.

Out of 165 voters we ended up with 18 listings the top ten list is below.

01.) Kentucky Bigfoot
02.) BFRO
03.) Tristate Bigfoot
04.) Cryptomundo
05.) Oregon Bigfoot
06.) Bigfoot Encounters
07.) MABRC
08.) FB/FB
09.) Bigfoot Field Reporter
10.) Bigfoot Evidence

The pie chart below shows the percentages of the votes with Kentucky Bigfoot commanding 22% of the votes.



Our hats are off to Kentucky Bigfoot, we salute your contribution to bigfooting.

You can continue to vote for your favorite website at our facebook page

Spiegel Online: Hiking the Redwoods with California's 'Squatchers'

Brandon Kiel, 41, is a San Francisco-based field researcher with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (Photo: Gabriela Hasbun / DER SPIEGEL)

"I like the romantic notion of our search, this wonderful gray area," Kiel says. If Bigfoot is actually discovered one day, he notes: "Then all of this will be over."

Germans are interested in Bigfoot too, Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.

This is a thoughtful article that reflects bigfooting in a way we may not get in the American mainstream press.

A Passion for Bigfoot
By Philip Bethge

The plaintive howl echoes through the forest sounding like a muffled "whoop, whoop, whoop." Brandon Kiel pauses to listen in the dark, holding his breath for a moment before drawing air into his lungs.

Once again, Kiel cups his hands in front of his mouth and imitates the call: "whoop, whoop, whoop." The sound echoes back through the night, but all else is silence. Bigfoot isn't answering.
"The season is favorable," Kiel says, with a touch of disappointment. "But it's always possible that the animals are not in the area." The blueberries are ripe, and the calves of the Roosevelt elk, one of Bigfoot's favorite foods, haven't matured yet.

Kiel, 41, is a field researcher with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO), a group based in the United States. The creature he is looking for is said to be clever, shy and stealthy -- an expert at camouflaging itself. But here in the redwood forests of northern California, Kiel is hoping he'll be blessed with hunter's luck. He and 20 fellow field researchers are on an expedition to track down Bigfoot.

The Believers

Kiel calls the ominous creature "Squatch," short for "Sasquatch," a word in a Native American language that means "wild man of the woods". The shaggy, mythical creature -- half ape, half human -- is believed to be powerfully built, reach heights of up to 2.5 meters (over 8 feet) and weigh up to 230 kilograms (500 pounds), and it allegedly spends its time skulking through the forests of North America. So far, there is no real evidence of the existence of this alleged primate species. Indeed, human beings have never actually gotten their hands on a Sasquatch, either dead or alive.

Nevertheless, experienced "Squatchers" like Kiel are convinced that the animal exists. Even the Native Americans in the region had songs praising this mysterious miniature version of King Kong. Dozens of huge footprints have been found. Hundreds of eyewitnesses from the Canadian province of British Columbia all the way down to Florida -- including police officers, park rangers and professors -- claim to have laid eyes on the creature. The literature even mentions tufts of hair and a Bigfoot toenail found near the Grand Canyon.

"I am convinced that the Sasquatch exists," says British Columbia wildlife biologist John Bindernagel. For years, Bindernagel has put his academic reputation on the line by not only believing in Sasquatch, but also studying it. "I estimate the population of the animal to be several thousand at least," says Bindernagel, who has already written several books on Bigfoot.

Bindernagel also has a theory on how Bigfoot reached the American wilderness. He speculates that Gigantopithecus, an extinct genus of giant ape, once migrated from Asia across the same land bridge in what is now the Bering Strait that the first humans are believed to have crossed to reach North America.

The Squatchers

Bigfoot is believed to be particularly prevalent in the area around the town of Klamath, in northern California, where a group of adventurous souls has gathered on this October day. Camouflage clothing is de rigueur, and the mood is euphoric. The most avid members of the group have studied the BFRO's expedition handbook, which informs readers to expect "type 1" inspections: a visit by "one or more" Bigfoots to the tent camp while everyone is sleeping, "most often between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m."

No one in the group questions whether the creature exists. Instead, they discuss its biology. The Squatch is "mainly nocturnal," Kiel says. It lives in groups and is "stinky, musky." Its diet includes "roots, slugs, frogs, deer, elk, fish, onions and berries." It literally licks its fingers after eating a meal of skunk cabbage.

Kiel has a round face with a vandyke beard, and he keeps his hair cropped short. When asked whether he has ever encountered the creature, he says: "Sure, just a couple of weeks ago."

In late July, he explains, the Squatchers gathered at Bluff Creek, less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) east across the mountains. "We had walked about a mile and a half, when someone suddenly said: 'There's a Sasquatch sitting by the side of the road,'" Kiel recounts. "I didn't believe him, so I asked: 'Is it a bear?' But he was adamant."

Kiel grabbed an infrared camera and peered through the viewfinder. "And, sure enough," he says, "there was the heat signature of a very large animal with its back to us, without a neck, with massively broad shoulders and a pointy head. You could see it from the waist up. I was totally flabbergasted." Kiel claims that the creature then turned around and looked at him twice. The intimate exchange of glances lasted about 15 minutes. Then Kiel, the expedition leader, decided to pull out. "I wanted to be respectful," he says.

The area around Bluff Creek is well known among Bigfoot aficionados. It was where, on Oct. 20, 1967, a legendary amateur film was shot depicting a massive, hairy beast strolling through a riverbed for a few seconds.

Film experts -- and even special-effects artists working for the Disney corporation -- have repeatedly scrutinized the blurred, grainy footage. But the evidence remains unclear. Is the creature a person in an ape suit or a world sensation of cryptozoology, the search for animals whose existence has yet to be proven? The man who shot the video, a rodeo rider named Roger Patterson, continued to insist that the film was authentic up until his death in 1972.

At the BFRO camp in California, at any rate, no one questions the authenticity of the Patterson video. In fact, almost everyone in the group claims to have already seen a Bigfoot at least once. "I was elk hunting", says Rey Lopez, a government employee who lives near Sacramento. "At first I thought it was another hunter, but then I realized that it was a Sasquatch with whitish hair."

Alleged Proof

We pile into Lopez's large pickup truck and drive out into the night. After a few miles, he stops the truck on a parking lot in the middle of the woods. The group uses headlamps with red lenses to avoid startling the beast. After a brief walkie-talkie test, everyone is ready to go out "Squatching," the nightly foray into Bigfoot territory.

We spend the next few hours whispering and stumbling through the same woods in which parts of Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" were filmed. The undergrowth is wet, and the red light is barely strong enough to illuminate annoying roots poking out of the ground. Kiel, the expedition's leader, stops every once in a while and sends his "whoop" calls out into the night. Sometimes he also blows on a high-pitched whistle or hits trees with a large "Squatch knocker" -- in layman's terms, a branch -- hoping the hollow sound might attract Bigfoot.

Meanwhile, Robert Collier, who lives near Los Angeles, continues to observe everything with his night-vision goggles, which he proudly points out are "military grade." His eyes look green in the device's light.

The whole production has only one purpose: to somehow convince the woodland beast to communicate with the group. "Bigfoots have been known to answer us," says Kiel. "We experience time and again that rocks are thrown at us." He also points out that "wood-knocks," "whoops" and "screams" are regularly heard echoing from the undergrowth.

In fact, noisy audio recordings bear witness to the creature's supposed vocabulary, including sounds like blood-curdling screams and obscure-sounding jibberish. Particularly avid Squatchers say they've managed to make out bits of Russian and ancient Chinese in the audio soup.

Even some of the creature's genetic material is allegedly in circulation. Kiel claims that Melba Ketchum, a veterinarian based in Timpson, Texas, has analyzed dozens of hair samples, but that the results of her research have yet to be published. Nevertheless, there are rumors in the community that tissue from two dead Bigfoots is in refrigerated storage at Ketchum's laboratory.

Ketchum declines to comment, though, and the Squatchers have waited in vain for her to make an appearance at their annual Bigfoot conferences, which regularly attract several hundred attendees.

'A Good Excuse to Go Camping'

Does all of this sound crazy? Sure it does. And, yet, there are some questions that remain unanswered. For example, the 1992 discovery of a new bovine species, the Saola, in the jungles of Southeast Asia has given the Squatchers hope. The Saola lives in an area that is no less densely populated than many of the forested areas in the United States.

Couldn't it be possible that a shrewd giant ape has been hiding undiscovered in the forests of North America for centuries?

"It's a good excuse to go camping," says Bill Brewer, who harbors a healthy degree of skepticism despite being a BFRO member. Squatching, he says, also happens to be a lot of fun.

Perhaps this explains why these hikers in the northern California night seem undaunted in their enthusiasm, even though the woods remain stubbornly silent until the early morning hours. But at least that gives them a good reason to come back soon.
And it might also be that the Squatchers don't even want to find the mysterious, broad-shouldered creature after all.

"I like the romantic notion of our search, this wonderful gray area," Kiel says. If Bigfoot is actually discovered one day, he notes: "Then all of this will be over."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
SRC: Spiegel Online