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We don't have threads for believers only or skeptic only on the BFF. All points of view are welcome in the same thread. Frame your comments or questions to the point of the thread...and there is no issue. Whether you are answered or not is up to the person who can answer the question. Whether you accept their answer or not, is up to you. I am pretty sure at this point every question that could be asked, has been answered. Is the answer you want, I have no clue...but a new thread isn't going to solve that.

Hey Crowlogic - had to get the puter out instead of the phone so I could type for real. That's a very interesting question. Well, there are a few there. The study of psychology is what I would go for too if I went back to school. I was a sociology major, which can be close to that in that it is the study of people and their social groups. So I will respond with my thoughts from that perspective, and from the perspective of a habituated believer. I still believe, however, but, there are times when I doubted myself. Why the awareness is in all 50 states? I think it was there all the time but all the media coverage, with all of our new technologies, have provided the opportunity for people to talk about it. The TV show brought it to my attention. My sister-in-law was talking about it. When we were camping one time she was laughing about squatch this and squatch that, and I'm like what are you talking about? Squatchy was her new favorite word from the tv show. She doesn't believe in them but had fun using the word all weekend. So I went home and watched the show a couple of times. They weren't finding anything and it all seemed sort of ridiculous to me. So I didn't watch it anymore. Then several months later, a saw some big black thing jump across the road in front of my car just before dusk in May. I'm like, "what the hell was that?" I thought it was a deer jumping at first because that's what they do all the time around here, but then I knew it wasn't a deer and tried to figure out what it was. I landed on the idea that it was a dang Sasquatch! I'm like, no friggen way that's what it was, but that it was it was! I freaked out and called my sister-in-law just after I got the heck out of there. I stayed up all night at my back campfire pit and with my mind reeling. I stayed out there until sunrise. I kept thinking, "really?" There is a sasquatch around here? I must have flip flopped a million times that night. Yes, no way, yes, no way. Whatever. Time to get some sleep. A couple of days later, it was still on my mind, so sitting out on the porch at night, just before I went to bed, I decided to check google to see if anyone else in Ohio has ever seen one. I had always thought that if they existed, they were in the PNW/BC area. But Ohio? By this time, my family was like, what's up with "Hammer?" Everyone was making fun of me, but what I saw was no deer. So google brought up a bunch of stuff for Ohio and I found the BFRO. Oh this was getting interesting. By this time it's about 2am. I clicked on Ohio, then found out that my county, (Holmes), had a report from a 13 months previously, literally one mile from where I saw it! We live in the middle of nowhere. We just got DSL cable here 3 years ago. I read their report and at 0300 I sent out an e-mail to the family titled, "blank if it wasn't a Squach!" I sent a second e-mail to the BFRO to say that I had seen something but wasn't sure what to make of it. I didn't want to write a report at that time. I was already up too late, and frankly, just putting my toe in the water. I had a job interview the next day so hit the hay. The next morning when I was rushing around, I got a call from a BFRO investigator who wanted to know what I saw. I couldn't not tell him at risk of being late. He told me that several other sightings have occurred in this same area over the past 6 months. He called it a "flap." That BLEW ME AWAY! Fast forward a couple of weeks and I had doubt, but no doubt. The doubt comes in when you think about how in the world could this be real? It goes against all social norms. I kept replaying that moment over and over in my mind, searching for another explanation. My brother in law came down for Memorial Day weekend and we were still talking about it. It was still sinking in, but there was a part of me that didn't really want to believe it, or maybe it was a self examination thing wondering if I was losing my mind. But no, I was convinced of what I saw and thankful that others had posted a report that confirmed it for me. I withstood the ribbing from the family, but I'm 48 years old and solid enough in my life, my mind, career, self confidence, humility and general well being, that I didn't care if people made fun of me. Late that night, my brother-in-law made a big squatch call when we were sitting around the campfire. And what came back was crazy! There are no other squatchers here. I believe that I was the first one. He called it again and what came back this time was LOUD and sounded MAD! We looked at each other and I started giggling so hard that I had to get out of my chair. The emotion that I felt was so overwhelming that I just had to connect to the ground below me just to absorb how that sound went through my soul. I was so happy too that I now know FOR SURE that I am not crazy, that they are here. AND I'm not the only one now! It was a great moment! After that however, I started worrying about where it was and how close it was to me. I got scared to go off my porch. It was like being grounded because I am used to prowling around our place at night at all hours of the morning, just having fun outside when I have the time. For a month and a half, I just sat here wondering and listening. I decided to make out that BFRO report because the investigator wanted me to. So I did and as I was typing it in the silence at 0102, I heard a big tree knock. I had never heard one before. The crazy thing about that was that it was from our property, the opposite direction from where we heard the howl a few days before. After that is why I didn't want to go off the porch for awhile. This is a long post, but I wanted you to know for your psychology report, what was going through my mind. There were several times when I felt it would be easier to go back to non-belief and pretend nothing happened, but I couldn't do that. It was nice for a day thinking that my husband's explanation was that it was a bear. I was cool with that. OK, it was a bear. But we don't have bear around here except once in a great while. Maybe it was a bear. I didn't know that bear could leap in the air that high over a road with a 4 foot fence then disappear. If it was a deer, then it was a moose. So how was I now going to enjoy our place here which I have done for 14 years, thinking that there is a SSQ hanging around. Nothing happened for the summer, so I put it to the thought that they were just moving through on a migration pattern. Labor Day came around and we opened up a new campsite on our property at a deer choke point through the trees that we had been mowing. The night before people came, we set up the site and hung out there for a little while. I had the feeling something fierce that I was being watched and found a better place for my camp chair. I hung out there for awhile after my husband left, playing tunes and enjoying feeling free again on our property. I kept the belief that they SSQ existed, but happy thinking that maybe they had moved on, (except for second guessing the being watched feeling). It was a good night and the krewe arrived the next day. We had fun and then went canoeing on Saturday. Later that night, I wanted to show all the city folk how we can see the Milky Way here, so we marched out into the field and were star gazing. I found out a few days later that the new girl in our group was watching a SSQ watching us in the field. It was foggy but she said that she watched it for 7 minutes and tried to get our attention to look at it, but we didn't really pay a lot of attention to her because when our family gets together, it's hard for shy people to be heard. She thought that we were playing a joke on her, but it freaked her out she said and went back to camp to feel safe. I noticed her acting weird, but just figured that she was a city girl afraid of the country. Just then a big coyote group started howling. It was after she heard that my post went up on the BFRO that she spoke up about it and drew a picture of what she saw. For a long time I was just sick that I didn't listen to her better so we all could have seen it!!! It just goes to show you that you have to listen to the quiet ones because they have something to say. There was no going back on my belief about this thing, and now I grounded myself back on the porch even more than before because now it was in my back yard!!! There was a whole mind screw time period that followed that. I can't deny that they are here and now the whole reason why we have this place is nearly ruined because I can't enjoy the freedom of it now knowing that a big unknown creature is occupying my space. Yes, I guess part of it was that human wants her turf and now I have to share it with a creature I know nothing about but shows up when we cook food in the smoker or on the grill. So that has taken several months of research and asking questions of all you good people to come to some sort of peace with it all. I believe that I have achieved that peace of mind, or whatever you call what I think about both of us living here. I do still listen to people's opinions that they are not to be messed with, so I don't call it, wish them not to scare me, and declare that peace is the word here. I don't want to give up our place, but being aware of them now has really taken my life on a whole new tangent. I am not so old or closed minded to think that I don't know everything, so I while I know what I don't know, at least I know that much. Will I ever go back to non-believing? No way. Why do you say that some have come full circle from believing to not believing? Who would do that? The only reason that I can say for me, is that a time would go by when things were quiet, like a month or so after the Labor Day sighting. I would think, "are they really here? I know they were, but are they still here now?" Then I would get a rock thrown at the house right where I would lay. That happened in three different places on our house. I would hear tree knocks, saw some eye shine / glow on the hill, and have heard other strange sounds. It was a bunch of maybe stuff, but it keeps adding up. Every time I think about how hard it is to believe that all this is happening, something else would. It would be something that was just on the edge of finding another explanation, but always seemed to come around to the fact that the chances were good that it could be my first thought that it was a SSQ. I thought for a time this fall that it was in my head so bad that I just wanted to get away from it and I couldn't. It wasn't fun and we actually talked about selling the place for a couple of weeks. It was great to get up to our second home in Cleveland and know that it wasn't around, but then I'd come back home and something else would happen. I couldn't get away from it. I had to make a stand and find some sort of peace with it all. Someone here told me to talk to them. So I did. I felt silly doing that but it seemed to work and I don't get scared as much any more. From a psychology standpoint, I don't care if "they" "heard" me, it made me feel better and I actually had a peaceful feeling again. I got a lot of great information from new friends that I met here and I am very grateful to them. The only reason that I could think that someone like me having these experiences here would go back to non-believing is that they were in complete denial and wanted to go back to the happy life they perceived before they saw SSQ. But naw, they would always know down deep what they saw, heard, experienced and felt. Maybe they would have someone actually prove that what they saw and heard etc. wasn't ssq, that it was something else. I saw a distant neighbor Sunday night at the American Legion in town and asked him if he was out howling for Sasquatch last Memorial Day weekend at 0130 when it was 35 degrees. He looked at me and laughed like I was nuts. I laughed back and said, "Good to know. Keep your ears open." Back to your PHD question, do people say that they saw SSQ and then turn around and deny it later? Sure. I'm guessing that it was for them fashionable to do that at the time. One can get a lot of attention when one says that they saw SSQ. Believe me, I know. But the attention that one gets isn't for the most part positive. You can take a stellar reputation and blow it out of the water and get accused of smoking funny cigarettes. I don't care, let them think what they think and move on. Kind of like when I saw the TV show. It's not for me, so move on. Now, of course, I have watched every episode and have found some good information there. I believe in Moneymaker, Bobo, Cliff and Renae. Their experiences may be different than mine, but there is good info there and it has helped me understand a bit about this crazy unknown phenomenon. I am grateful for that show. It helped me become aware of what is happening here. If it weren't for the BFRO, I wouldn't have the answers that I do now. I will admit that if it weren't for them, my brother-in-law may not have called to it either and we wouldn't have heard that massive response. I may not have paid as much attention to sounds around me. I may not have not stopped, looked around, and found out what's going down. I can certainly appreciate those that want to go back to what it was like before they knew SSQ was around. I long for those days at times, but now maybe I think that it's cool to have them here except for when they scare me. So far, they have been very cool though. Thank you for your indulgence in my lengthy epistle. Being a liberal arts major, I can write a 10 page paper easily. But I wanted to answer your question as honestly as I could. Thanks, Hammer P.S. Sometimes you just have to love the one you're with. P.P.S. It's great to be outside all afternoon in this nice weather. What a beautiful break to be sweating in the sun walking through nature. It's a beautiful 50 degrees out here after a high of around 70. A major snow / ice storm is supposed to hit tomorrow morning and it's going down into single digits tomorrow night. So I'm out here enjoying it now!

Well, I think the point of photos is that nowadays they are too easily manipulated. Here's a pick of a walnut beetle. They're pretty tasty.