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We do research in the Upstate South Carolina/Western North Carolina/Smokeys region. The only other places online that I have tried to interact with other enthusiasts have been on Facebook groups. That went over about as well as can be expected, and I learned to not put too much out there. Healthy skeptism is good, however I am not trying to prove or sell anyone anything so I don't want to spend all of my time dealing with hostile comments. There is a segment of the population who live to try to prove that people like us are crazy or flat out snake oil salesmen. I will say that I have been perusing the old BFF 1.0 posts that I gained access to with my premium membership, and the forum did seem much more hostile and combative back in the day. I can see where people were ran off. I will say that trying to attract 'professional' researchers could be a double edged sword. So many people who devote a large amount of time to the subject and maintain a web presence use that time and presence to non-stop attack other people in the field. I know that this area of interest attracts tends to attract some less than honest people who are just looking for attention, but some of these researchers have no actual research on their sites...just page after page of who has managed to offend their sensibilities now.

Many of the real researchers here do not post much. We had some that were driven out of the forum by the hard core skeptics I don't know if others look around at times just to see what is going on. If they don't, seems like they have a self imposed isolation going on. Now and then we get Madison/Northwind types that keep things interesting with real field work. When major events happen to most researchers no more than once a decade, it is nice to hear about others having success in the dry spells,.

That's what the people I know who have been on all of those reality shows tell me. Even the Trooper show has an element of that; the Troopers won't bring the filming crew on expected dangerous calls. Once in Wasilla Mrs. Huntster and I had stopped ay Dairy Queen and got Blizzards (with coupons, of course). It was fairly dark out, but the highway lights illuminated the area. I pulled over to a different parking lot which had a better view of Wasilla Lake. A Trooper vehicle was idling with his lights on in the parking lot to the lakeside park a couple hundred yards off, and he had a vehicle in front of him. Suddenly I noticed a guy sneaking up the passenger side of the patrol car from behind, and he had something in his hands. I got out of my car, started running down the hill, and was screaming at the guy. Turned out to be a cameraman filming a scene for the AST reality show.

I think the Dennis Martin case is super compelling. You had witnesses completely unrelated to the search claim they saw a Bear packing something over its shoulder with lots of screaming... Bears do not have shoulders.

Three main theories exist about what happened to Martin.[16] The first is that he became lost and perished from exposure or some other cause, likely during the first night. This is the most probable theory according to park officials.[1] The second is that he was attacked by a hungry bear (or, less likely, a feral pig) and carried off.[5] The third is that he was abducted and taken out of the park by something or someone. His father was a proponent of the third theory.[17] On the afternoon that Martin disappeared, tourist Harold Key and his family, heard an "enormous, sickening scream" and shortly thereafter witnessed a man covered in hair seemingly hiding and carrying something on his shoulder. Park Rangers and the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that there was insufficient evidence to link the sighting to Martin's disappearance, particularly given that Key's sighting was approximately five miles away from where Martin disappeared. The sighting occurred a little while after Dennis went missing. The family also said the person of the woods had something slumped over its shoulder, and the highly visible red color matching the shirt of Martin the day he went missing.[16][5]