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The whole "the Bigfoot were just concerned and trying to help" meme really bothers me. I think it more likely that they thought she might have been loading food in the jeep. If Bigfoot were universally hostile I'd be dead. But I don't think they are universally benign either. I've caught one in the act of trying to steal a puppy from our tent. And the location where that happened in Nevada County, California is in one of Paulides' clusters. I know that there have been accounts of life-saving acts by Bigfoot, but there are also accounts of probable predation by Bigfoot. They do, by many accounts, seem drawn to human children and I've experienced this. Their lurking behaviors may be benign, but they are also creepy, the acts of the ultimate boogeymen. Boogers? Many NA described them as predators, kidnappers, etc. I'm not inclined to leave the vulnerable untended in their presence.

Dear heart, you are projecting. You feel fear in your heart, so you see fearful things all around you, and then you think you need to be constantly on guard. It's a vicious cycle. You create the things you're afraid of, and then feel justified in feeling so afraid, creating even more fearful things. You need to stop entertaining fear so much. I will say that you have managed this fear really well, all things considered -- better than most. You could have gone in a very different direction, with all your experiences. But you didn't. You have shown people that the BF are NOT killers; that they are human in their behavior, their bearing, and pretty much all other things. For this, I and others -- including the BF themselves -- are very grateful to you. But there is always more to do. I remember your talking a few years ago about how hard it is to trust the BF, because after all, it's so hard to trust even your friends and neighbors; and I remember thinking (and I think I actually wrote it in a post, too), "Oh dear. This person doesn't even have actual human neighbors he can trust? He's worried about PEOPLE, too? No wonder he can't imagine coexisting peacefully with the BF." You need to go inward and soften your heart. You need to trust a little more. And then you will see that there is more out there to trust! And THAT will become a "cycle", but it won't be a vicious one this time. It's so funny that you mention the BF who tried to "steal" a puppy from your tent. I was just talking with someone about a very similar incident, which ended completely differently from how you imagined yours would end. So, I now know to ask: How do you know your BF was going to "steal" the puppy, and not put it back? Many BF like puppies for the same reasons we do -- to play with them. But that doesn't mean that that particular BF was not going to return the puppy. Do you understand now about projecting? You think you know what that BF was going to do, but you actually didn't know. You filled in some blanks in some unknowable future, pretending you knew that future, and scared yourself with what you put in the blanks. Next time, you can have a conversation with that BF about your concerns, instead of thinking you know what he (or she) is going to do. "Their lurking behaviors may be benign, but they are also creepy." Why are you choosing to categorize "benign behavior" as "creepy"? You could as easily say, they were being "respectful". They might be trying to respect your privacy and your boundaries, while still trying to get to know you. Or maybe they are being "wary" -- wanting to be more visible to you, but afraid of how you might respond to them if you felt frightened (since humans are so aggressive and reactive). See how this works? If you have the compassion and understanding to get to "benign" (and yay for you, for getting there), then you have the necessary compassion and understanding to transmute "creepy" to something more appropriate; something less judgmental and fearful; and therefore, something likely to be more accurate. You're pretty much there, JDL. You just have to stop worrying so much, and trying to justify that worry. The more you justify it, the more you will be a prisoner of it, and the whole point is to break free of worry -- not to feed it and give it strength.

I'd like to see it if you do come up with a link pertaining to Lucas and possible BF experiences or even claiming it was a basis for Chewey. Not to further discuss it here but because I'm a bit of a Star Wars nerd.

Ive looked, and my link is what Ive come up with..... I have found no such interview that has Lucas proclaiming he played with Bigfeets as a child. Im going to post the paragraph this time..... . The character of Chewbacca was inspired by George Lucas’ big, hairy Alaskan malamute, Indiana. According to Lucas, the dog would always sit in the passenger seat of his car like a copilot, and people would confuse the dog for an actual person. The dog was also the inspiration behind the name for one of Lucas’ other creations, Indiana Jones. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "People would confuse the dog for an actual person". People.....not Lucas. Their observations inspired him to create a man/dog character that was also Han Solos co pilot seating in the same spot as Indiana. It could not be plainer.

Please keep sharing Maggie

Cool, Twist. That would be awesome, if you took that on! And you would have fun. MK is a verrrrry interesting dude, with lots of great information -- not all of which gets as widely disseminated as one might expect (this particular thing being a case in point). And not to be argumentative, but the tall, hairy hominid I saw looked nothing like Chewbaca. People who have sightings are often deeply affected by them and have sharp memories of what they saw....

Everyone just take a deep breath here and try to stay on track, OK? There are a half dozen BFRO reports that describe Sasquatch as looking like Chewbacca so 'Matilda' even as the hoax it's purported to be does not account for the other reports and Chewbacca comparisons. BFRO report numbers 856, 2995, 6643, 7519, 9315, and 21850. Read up and see for yourselves that according to these reports Chewbacca LIVES And now, back to your regularly scheduled program (Writing this while sitting in a beautiful state park in northern Indiana and looking up reports in a couple of databases for the area. Gotta stay sharp ya know)

If George Lucas himself claims it was his dog that inspired the character, what is the argument?

Awesome, hiflier! Glad you're keepin' on keepin' on. And I will try to find that MK Davis interview for you. George Lucas' emails were not the focus of the interview, so it will be hard to find, but I'll keep looking. As for Chewbaca being based on Lucas' Alaskan Malamute, the article cited up-thread indicates that the dog's behavior influenced the Chewbaca character, not its appearance.

The inspiration for Chewbacca was none other than Lucas's own Malemute dog. http://mentalfloss.com/article/56801/15-chewbacca-facts-honor-peter-mayhews-birthday

Far fetched? Why? Lucas did not have a single sighting. He had multiple encounters as a little boy. He would spend hours on end, many nights in a row, in the company of the BF. I don't think it's at all surprising that such intense, prolonged experiences would indelibly imprint upon his mind the image of their faces. As for losing credibility in the eyes of a skeptic, I'm at a loss as to why anyone would care about that. Why would you let people who are less knowledgeable than yourself, and certainly less open-minded or curious about the world, dictate what you say or think about that world, or pass judgments on your experiences of it? That's a kind of enslavement. It's not a good idea to limit, confine, or distort your own opinions and explorations because of somebody else's incapacity. Don't hide your light under a bushel! Sing out. Shine on. hiflier, your entire post was very interesting, but I was especially intrigued by the part I've quoted here. It didn't make sense to me that Sykes would make a statement so definitive -- the sample was "not a human, not a bear or anything else we have so far been able to identify" -- and then decide somehow that it WAS from a bear. So I decided to do some legwork of my own. I have to report that I can find nothing to support the sentence at the end of that post you found (the sentence you bolded). I can't imagine where the writer got that information. I did, however, find the documentary from which that Sykes quote was taken (and many people have referred to it since). Here's a link to the relevant snippet of the documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bok3PXOen7E And here's a link to the documentary in its entirety (it's called "Yeti: Hunt for the Wildman"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idw0JbSYwlA Nowhere can I find anything that says that, subsequent to the airing of that documentary, further study was done on that particular hair sample, and the hair was found to be from a bear. (The description below the documentary snippet mentions an earlier study of a different sample that DID return that result; but the sample that Sykes thought was so mysterious did not, from what I can tell, ever get identified as "bear".) I'm not sure what any of this means, but I thought I would throw that out there. I know that Sykes started 'down-voting' many other samples more recently, in the past few years; I just can't find any evidence that he ever definitively 'down-voted' this particular one.

I'm a believer but when it is argued that Matilda looks just like a known Chewbacca mask because George Lucas had a sighting...and was able to get a costume designer to identically copy his sighting from childhood to a Hollywood costume years later.....seems a little far fetched, doesn't it? It's arguments like these where I think we lose a little credibility in the eyes of the skeptics.

Rob Lowe has quite the video collection as I understand it.

The idea that there might be a hidden race of beings somewhere between man and gorilla, it doesn't get any better than that.