MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

When talking about esoteric fringe analytics, you see stories that loop into coincidences that are worthy of mention for the sheer coincidence and Fortean overtones that play an all too familiar tune.

Joseph Heller created the term “Catch 22” to describe a paradox in which people become victims no matter what action they take. The choices seem to put us in circles and one can measure a circle beginning anywhere.

If there is an underlying oneness of all things, it does not matter where we begin. We can see ourselves drifting into other circles and sharing other experiences with others who see the patterns and marvel at how they create repeatable patterns in history.

The same applies to the paranormal and how circles in time overlap and create some peculiar mirror images of experience.

The space-time continuum can and will rhyme in time – the faces change but the stories all sound the same and they are quite compelling when you use circular logic to explain an elusive mystery.

For example:

In June of 1868 near the town of Valhalla, Michigan which is within what is today the Manistee National Forest, a young three-year-old child named Katie Flynn suddenly went missing.

An impromptu search was quickly initiated but was suspended late that night. The next day a “faint cry” was heard by the searchers in the late afternoon and as they made their way through the dense brush, a second “cry” was heard. Then it was reported that a large, dark-colored, fur-covered animal was seen leaping from the heavy brush into the river. It escaped despite being shot at by members of the search party.

The child was found nearby, with the exception of some scratches – she was unharmed, standing on a downed tree trunk. Upon being questioned, she stated that
“A big doggie came along, took me in his arms, and walked away with me. He brought me here and left me for a while. When he came back, he had some wintergreen berries in his “hand”. He gave me the berries to eat.”

She also stated that it scraped together a pile of leaves on which they both slept through the night. One of her shoes was missing and when asked about it, she said: “the big doggie ate it.”

The newspaper claimed it was a bear, but Katie called it a “big doggie”. There is another similar case, which was the May 1888 disappearance of the 2¹/²-year-old daughter of Millard Davis of Boiceville, New York. It was reported in the New York Times, that the child was found 24 hours later 2 miles away in a deep valley.

She stated that a big bear had taken her, that she slept beside the bear through the night.

She also claimed that the bear walked upright like a human.

Linda Godfrey appeared on Ground Zero to talk about Dogmen sightings in Michigan and Wisconsin and she is now working on a book dealing with all sort of cases and reports of cryptid creatures.

In a loop of coincidence, another story similar to the cases in the 1800s recently happened in the woods of North Carolina.

A boy who went missing earlier this week told his family that he “hung out in the woods with a bear for two days.”

Three-year-old Casey Lynn Hathaway disappeared last Tuesday from his grandmother’s backyard while playing with other children, according to the Craven County Sheriff’s Office.

The FBI, state investigators and the U.S. Marine Corps from nearby bases at Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point joined the effort to find the boy. Last Thursday, Hathaway was found.

Despite strong winds and heavy rain, search teams and concerned community members were tirelessly combing the woods in the area since Hathaway disappeared, hoping to find the boy.

He was located by professional search and rescue teams, the FBI reported.

Casey’s parents believe that God sent him a friend to protect him and that it is a miracle. Search and rescue teams said that they heard the young boy calling out to his mommy and that except for a few scratches the boy was healthy.

The question is how the boy did not suffer exposure to the cold with just a small jacket covering his body? Also, how is it that a big bear was there to take care of him when most bears in the area are hibernating?

It is also interesting to note that there are many stories and sightings of Bigfoot there and in fact, Marion North Carolina declared Bigfoot their official animal and have Bigfoot festivals every year.

While we are told that the Bigfoot legend is a legend which has been around for centuries, the modern interest in finding the creature has spanned nearly 60 years and even then there are those that believe that the species is dwindling.

My whole position on the creature has been one of skepticism, and then after a meeting with the late Lloyd Pye I had a general interest in it from a scientific perspective. I knew that after my meeting with Lloyd Pye, that there was more to the Bigfoot creature than just some tall tale told at a campfire.

In the late 1990’s I came to the conclusion that Bigfoot was many things of not different things to many people. First and foremost, many people believe that he is a mythological creature that has become somewhat of a sociological icon that is more or less a catch-all for unexplained activities in the woods.

He can also be the result of physical manifestation through willful manufacture, meaning that he or it exists but has been brought into the realms of a supernatural being rather than a flesh and blood animal.

I have always seen the Bigfoot enigma as simply an uncatalogued animal that possesses the intelligence of a typical primate.

I saw a Bigfoot or Sasquatch in Washington State near Mount Adams. He had a golden brown color, about 7 to eight feet tall, muscular build. His face was flattened as if it had hit by a shovel much like how a face looks when someone puts a nylon sticking over their heads.

When I first sighted the creature I estimated that it was a lot shorter and thought it had to be a juvenile, but after I returned to the area where I saw him eating apples I realized that the trees were much higher in the orchard where he stood.

I know that I have received a few jeers from people about my sighting but it certainly shocked me and it wasn’t what I expected. Not by a long shot.

You may also be surprised to know that I sometimes think to myself that the due date for finding it as long past it’s time – and then something comes up in the news that makes me wonder if I am just being impatient or just questioning my capacity for hope.

It has to be said that if the phenomenon is of social origin, how did it become so widespread, how does it sustain itself, and why has it been so long lived?

If the phenomenon is of elaborate manufacture, how has it been so geographically and temporally widespread manufactured – how has it been successfully accomplished and how is it concealed?

If the phenomenon is the by-product of a cataloged animal how are human perceptual mechanisms failing us?

If the phenomenon is the by-product of an uncatalogued animal then bring us the evidence and seriously investigate the creature.

There is hope of finding a creature and classifying it.

Scientists recently discovered that the Yeti are real creatures. In fact, while the idea of the creature being a giant ape-man similar to Sasquatch has captured our imaginations of investigators for centuries – the Yeti, are in reality, an as of yet unknown species of bear that lives in the Himalayas.

What is most interesting is that we probably know less about these very unusual bears than we “know” about the Yeti.

Scientists from the University at Buffalo figured out that Himalayan brown bears split off from the rest of the regional bear population several thousand years ago, which is why they’re so genetically distinct from most other brown bears. Living in geographic isolation for so long has separated them from other Asian brown bears, and even from their relatives on the nearby Tibetan plateau.

They even look different.

In fact, they are claiming that the bear itself is a hybrid species that would appear quite massive if it was seen standing on its hind legs.

This could explain the sightings of what can be called werewolves, and the hairy beast that some say are as big as a cow.

I grew up in Utah in a rather rural area in western Salt Lake County. Within a mile of my home was the foot of the Oquirrh Mountains. These mountains were allegedly off limits to most people because they were patrolled by the Kennecott copper corporation. However, there was an urban legend that was passed around at the barber shop that there was another reason.

There was a story that went around that there was an area of the mountain region where Bigfoot was sighted and that the area was patrolled because people claimed that he would eat their rabbits and their chickens.

In the many years, I lived in the area I never saw a Bigfoot, but there were reports that the creatures were seen just southwest of where I lived near Butterfield canyon and the Bingham copper mines. On the other side of the mountain sloping towards Tooele County is an area where a group of rocks are positioned in such a way that from the ground it looks as if a huge Sasquatch is looking down on the area.

I always wondered if someone did that on purpose to further the legend of the only Sasquatch that would be so close to an urban area.

Most sightings in the Utah area were mostly documented in the Uinta Basin, Not far from the Skinwalker Ranch.

However, most recently there have been sightings in the Heber Valley farther south and a recent sighting reported in Provo, Utah.

From American Fork Canyon to Payson and sightings of Big Foot have been reported all over Utah County over the last two years.

Recently, the local media jumped on to a story where a family focused their camera on the mountains of east Provo and captured what looked like a Bigfoot.

The sighting, which occurred Jan. 2 and was posted on the internet Jan. 6, led to some follow-up by the Rocky Mountain Sasquatch Organization. A member of their group actually scaled the area and found that large rocks had been overturned and a few animal tracks were seen. There were also large footprints in the snow as well.

Back in 2012, there was a similar sighting of what looked like a Bigfoot, but of course, there were a few skeptics that had stated that it was possibly a baby black bear. While black bear sightings are rare in Provo Canyon, they do happen and that they can be mistaken for a Bigfoot.

While the internet is full of possible Bigfoot videos, many of them have been proven to be hoaxes, and there are many TV shows that have promised a Bigfoot hunt with results and no results materialize once again giving more weight that leans towards skepticism.

Contrary to some debunkers that want to gain attention the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, photographed on October 20, 1967, in Bluff Creek, California by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin is one of few pieces of film imagery that has not yet been proven to be a forgery.

For the many times, I have seen the footage I have often noted that it is obvious that the Bigfoot in the film is a female with breasts.

I once joked with Bob Gimlin about the idea of calling costume stores asking if any of them carried a Bigfoot costume with breasts attached. I am sure that the inquiry would be met with a quick hang up.

If the Patterson-Gimlin film is of an uncataloged animal, its subject bears a strong resemblance to the mountain gorilla.

So assuming that Bigfoot is a Mountain gorilla or as of yet an undocumented animal, then why have we not found one, killed one, or have found a carcass of the creature?

I would assume that one, the population of the creature has been fragmented. It has moved all over the United States and other parts of the world. I would then speculate that the population is dwindling. I would also speculate that most sightings are usually optical illusions or bear sightings.

There is also the theory that there are creatures in the woods of the Pacific Northwest but there is a wide area of cover provided by large tracts of forested land that cover the area.

The US Forest Service, a division of the US Department of Agriculture, manages 141 million acres of national forest, 41 million of which are in Oregon, Washington and Idaho and account for more than 27% of the land mass of these states.

Wilderness areas are contained within the national forests and their use is restricted: a use permit is required, there are no roads, there are no permanent man-made structures, and all mechanized devices are prohibited. Five-percent of the combined land mass of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho has this designation, which is an area larger than Massachusetts. There are also hundreds of thousands of acres of fully restricted land, such as watersheds, that no one may enter. The terrain in these areas is as rugged and inaccessible as areas in the Amazon and Himalayas.

According to David Paulides of Missing 411, people are mysteriously disappearing in our national parks in and in these woods. Paulides has written many books about Bigfoot but as for the disappearances, he says that they are from unspecified causes.

The reality of Bigfoot may be as mundane as a monkey that has yet to be classified by science. However, seeing one in the forests of the United States can be an experience not easily forgotten.

People take for granted that all species have been identified and so the idea of a great ape species living in North America is an absurdity until the “body of evidence” is exposed to the world. Even if it was exposed, the reality of such a creature could be as mundane as an endangered ape or gorilla that somehow found a way to cross continents and remain elusive from hunters and investigators, only to show up unexpectedly and witnessed by deep woods campers.

The whole idea of new and mysterious species being discovered and categorized is academic to serious researchers who realize that even in recent history animals that were once thought of as products of mythology have suddenly appeared and have been categorized by scientists.

The difficulty in capturing an undeniable picture, video, or even hair or scat samples of the Bigfoot has caused a number of people to dismiss outright the possibility of such a creature existing. However, eyewitness testimony continues to pour in and recently the sightings of such a creature have increased.

The aggressive nature of the Bigfoot is now becoming part of the story as well and of course, there are many people who believe the only way to document a Bigfoot is to kill it in order to put to sleep any and all questions as to whether or not it exists in the wild.

In the meantime, it seems that there is a caring nature to the wild animals and the bear facts may be more in line with mysterious creature comforts.

Written by Ron Patton