Cliff Barackman Expands on Hair Sample from Finding Bigfoot Oklahoma Episode

Possible Sasquatch Hair Sample from Finding Bigfoot

Cliff barackman continues his excellent re-caps of the Finding Bigfoot Episode. In his current Finding Bigfoot Cliff Notes, Cliff Barackman covers his meeting of Roger Roberts who had investigated Bigfoot sightings next to a nearby Indian reservation. Below is a short excerpt from his notes on the possible Bigfoot hair sample.

Of most interest to us was the hair sample. The hair sample had been found by a tribal game officer on an animal trail leading from a location where a bigfoot had been recently seen. It was found on some broken branches more than eight feet above the ground, which would seem to rule out that it was buffalo (which are kept nearby), bear, deer, or human hair. Roger had in his possession enough hairs to spare some for us to have tested for DNA material. In hair, all of the viable DNA is found in the medulla, or hollow center shaft of the hair. This is a bit problematic because bigfoot hair tends to have fragmentary medullas, if any is present at all. However, a DNA lab in Oklahoma City called DNA Solutions offered to test the sample to see if any material could be extracted for testing. If nothing else, they could examine the hair and tell us what animals the could eliminate as a possible source for the hairs.  Also of value is that they could get the results back to us in about a week.

Dr. Brandt Cassidy of DNA Solutions was unable to extract any DNA material from the hairs. He said that the samples were just too old and had not been stored in the the optimal way to prevent the gradual breaking down of the DNA material. However, he was clear about a few things. While superficially similar to a person’s hair, the hair did not appear to be human in origin. First off the hair shafts had tapered ends which would indicate that the hairs had never been subjected to a hair cut. Another difference that was found was that the medulla width was different than what is commonly found among humans. I was supplied with photographs of his microscopic analysis, and I was interested in the fact that the hairs showed to have a reddish tinge when lit from behind, even though the hair appeared to be black when viewed against other backgrounds. This reddish tinge is another distinct characteristic of bigfoot hair.

How the hair was delivered

Here is a clip from Finding Bigfoot's Bigfoot CSI episode

You can read Cliff Barackman's entire Oklahoma Episode recap at his website CliffBarackman.com

Author Whitley Strieber Explains Bigfoot

Whitley Strieber offers his perspective on Bigfoot

"Sasquatch is. Man does. This does not mean that they are better or we are better. It only means that we are different. The aim of Sasquatch is to be together. The aim of Mankind is to do together, and thus to understand one another." --Whitley Strieber

Whitley Strieber is most famous for his book, "Communion," a #1 New York Times best seller about aliens (Greys) visiting him. This was eventually made in to a movie starring Christopher Walken. He also hosts a radio show called Dreamland and his wife, Anne Strieber, runs his website Unknown Country. Due to the Dr. Melba Ketchum Bigfoot DNA press release, Mr. Strieber has offered his own perspective of Sasquatch.

If you have followed this blog within the last few days, you may be at risk of Bigfoot DNA fatique. Don't worry we wouldn't do that to you. While Mr. Strieber takes the opportunity to use Melba Ketchum's presser as a jumping point, his article is more about what makes Sasquatch different from man, and in our opinion, it is at least a great philosophical point. He begins this point and then expands on his long-time interest of Sasquatch.

We are as different as we can be. In fact, polar opposites. Sasquatch is here to be; Man is here to do. These are two opposite poles of consciousness, and if we can find balance, we can, each of us, find ourselves in a completely new way. This possibility has never existed before, not in all the long years that the two species have spent living on Earth together.

I've had a lifelong interest in the Yeti and Sasquatch. When I was a boy, an acquaintance of my parents, Tom Slick, led the first scientific expedition in search of the Himalayan Yeti. In 2001 his niece, my close friend Catherine Nixon Cooke, retraced his steps. Because of my interest, I have done many interviews on Dreamland with Bigfoot researchers, and I have never doubted that something was out there. For example, Dreamland this week will cover Bigfoot Sounds and will mark my 7th show on the subject since 2007. (All of these shows are available in the Dreamland Archive. Search on Bigfoot and Sasquatch.)

Mr. Strieber wanders in and out of Melba Ketchum's press release, but it is his effort to define the distinction between man and Squatch that we find most fascinating, and so he carries on.

They are not like us and were not meant to be like us. We are naked and must make our own shelter or die. Nature has clothed them in hair and given them, in their powerful senses, all that they need to thrive. We must make our technology. They are born with theirs. 

In fact, they have remained even more primitive than we were fifteen thousand years ago. They are a pre-stone age species, still, in effect, living entirely off the physical assets that nature granted them. We have not been like that for a very long time. Fifteen thousand years ago, we were already working stone and using animal skins to cover ourselves. Gobekli Tepi dates from a time when Sasquatch was a new species, so we were already builders then. Thirty thousand years ago, we were creating art at a high skill level in the caves of France and Spain. Fifty thousand years ago, we were using fire and stone tools, and creating edges in flint.

We have only highlighted the parts of Mr. Strieber's notes on what defines the distinction of Sasquatch and Man, he continues on to incorporate other aspects, like the left-hand path and other Esoteric traditions. You can read the original source in it's entirety at Whitley's Notes on Unknown Country.

DNA Consulting Company is Intrigued by Melba Ketchum's Bigfoot DNA

Roberta Estes formed DNAeXplain to offer
individual analysis of DNA results and genealogical assistance 

Thanks to Thom Cantrall for bringing this to our attention.

dna-explained.com is a blogging channel for DNAeXplain, a DNA genetics consulting company that offers individual written analysis of DNA results. While we have had opinions from Ketchum proponents and Ketchum detractors, Bigfooters and non-bigfooters. We haven't had an independent DNA expert react to the Melba Ketchum Bigfoot DNA press release.

Roberta Estes asks some very interesting questions and shed some insight to what Melba Ketchum may be saying between the lines.Her first questions are in the excerpt below.

This begs several questions.  Is all of the mitochondrial DNA the same, inferring a single maternal ancestor?  They have sequenced 20 different mitochondrial samples.  Given that the mitochondrial DNA is reportedly identical to that of modern humans, we can presume, one would think, that the mitochondrial DNA is Native American, so a member of haplogroup A, B, C, D or X.  Hopefully the forthcoming paper will be more specific.

She continues on to read what she deems subtle and non-subtle messages,

There are subtle and not so subtle messages buried here as well.  Obviously, for the team to acquire 20 samples to process, there has to be a population of these creatures living in North America.  Of course, everyone has heard of Sasquatch and seen photos and videos, but until this, nothing has been terribly convincing.  There has been no smoking gun.  If this research is valid and passes peer review, it not only confirms that Sasquatch is real, it vindicates many of the people who have had “sightings” over the years.  It becomes the smoking gun.  But as with much science, it raises more  questions than it answers.

For example, are there any non-admixed Sasquatch progenitors left, meaning the males that founded the Sasquatch line with the human female?  How would we tell the difference?  This of course implies that some sort of pre-hominid species existed on this continent before Native Americans arrived from Asia and had existed separate from hominids for a long time.  Is there other evidence of this creature in North America?

You can read the entire post by Roberta Estes here.