Leaderboard

Would be interesting to play the sound that I had on my recording to the person who heard the "trap shutting" and see if that was what he heard. In my case the sound was about 15 or 20 seconds before a deep voice said "too close". I have no memory of anyone saying anything. The sound was like a toilet flushing or a door opening and air pressure equalizing. Had a bit of a metallic clank to it. Reminds me of a submarine hatch opening. I had heard something hit the road behind me that I assumed was a rock falling off the cliff on the side of the road. When I got home, I listened to the recorder trying to hear the rock and figure out where it hit behind me. I heard the mechanical sound then the voice on the recording. I have no memory of either or of any appreciable missing time. I would not ascribe any of the experience to BF. It I pinned in on anything it would be an ET encounter just because of the mechanical nature of the sound.

Slipped my leash yesterday and got out into the field. Talk about social distancing, I never saw another human. The objectives were to visit my old research area and show my companion as many of the contact locations as I could. Both to add context to my encounters and look for any signs of present activities. I pulled into the road leading to the NEON site, and a large sign indicated that the area was now off limits due to the COVID 19 thing. Worried about something getting the virus? I wonder. What was puzzling was that I passed a popular county park getting there and it was packed with vehicles and people hiking around. I nearly blew off the trip but being so familiar with the area, knew a way in, that would not take me near any warning signs. We parked and hiked in. The first location was where I had been subjected to chest beating because I had peed in front of a watching bigfoot. I have mentioned, that after reporting that encounter to the BFRO, I noticed two trees had been marked with blue paint about a month later. When I pointed that out to my hiking companion I noticed for the first time that the paint on both trees had a blue FU. Now I am wondering who did that and what FU means. We slipped around a locked gate and hiked into the area on an abandoned logging road. The next location was the collapsed lava tube and the spring that bubbles out of it. Near that was the log which I was hiking past that got me zapped. A tree had blown down and now rested on top of the rotting log. It is larger than I remember. It is about 4 feet in diameter and a BF could easily have hidden next to it and not been seen. The stick that I had found inside the log and left there was not in it but laying nearby. The log is definitely full of termites. I could see the side of the log full of termite borrows. No indication that it had been messed with further since I had last been there, other than the stick was no longer inserted into it. From that point we went to the location where I got growled at. While there was some down threes when that happened, there were many more there now. When you clear cut, the trees at the edge of it are exposed to unrestricted wind and blow down at horrific rates. Some of the root balls were 20 feet in diameter. After traversing the clear cut, we went into a area where a creek runs downhill in a forested area and I have found many footprints crossing the human trail. Another human had been there recently, but no BF prints. The next location visited was where I had my first encounter. Standing in the same spot, I described the approaching whoops, pointing in their direction, and how I was standing in the trail with no nearby cover to hide behind. I just stood there, expecting to be run over by the producer of the heavy footfalls headed right at me. When I finished telling about the event and we took a different route back to the truck. My companion was surprised that I knew the area so well. On the abandoned logging road, I showed the location where I was hit on the back pack by a rock. The wonderful thing about the area was that is was so active yet was in just a few square miles. I was really lucky to have found it. But at the same time it hurts to have it go inactive. We managed to get back to the truck and be home before night fall.

I definitely know something strange is going on in our national forests. I’m not sure if it’s feral humans or Bigfoot. This is independent of anyone. I definitely know it’s not a bear or hypothermia. So I guess I agree with Paulides on that point. I definitely thought the Ketchum study was a sham. And Paulides could definitely be a snake oil book salesmen. I’m not defending him personally. But some of his cases make the hackles stand straight up.

Again...a fact without much dispute (although a hog at that elevation, and the low density of the population in those years argues against it somewhat) but this theory does not comport with the known circumstances and conditions then existing. This kind of tossing around of limitless and reassuring possibilities is not very useful in narrowing the definition of the occurrence, or others like it. All it serves to do is dissipate the attention given to it and, like I said, reassure us that random, unexplained, uncanny and sudden disappearances don’t happen in the backcountry. Excuse me, they do. I see the missing 411 project first as only trying to establish this baseline reality. I should add too: As someone who used to take week long solo backpacking trips in both the East and West, whenever I could, the reality of this freaks me out especially. But, better to face this and admit it rather than scrolling down the list of perfectly mundane but factually implausible explanations.

I am deeply thankfully that Paulides had the vision to bring these disappearances to the public's attention. Something very odd has gone on and continues to this day. I don't know what it is but whatever is going on is profoundly discomforting. "It was a bear" is silly on its face. Only an uninitiated, metro-urban dweller could confuse the two when the thing is walking or running on two legs.

I have spoken with him a couple of times as well as following his work... and could not disagree with you more. While there might be a couple of cases that could be attributed to Sasquatch predation, the vast majority of them are not related in the slightest to Bigfoot. Nor does he seem to believe so.

He wants to be taken seriously and he puts that image out there?

Sure, Bipedalist..the country is as you say, and I’ve passed through that section over Thunderhead Mt. in winter and summer both. While what you say is undeniably possible, the idea that it happened that way is tantamount to saying, “It was just a bear”...possible, but absolutely out of step with the reported facts. You don’t have to believe that these disappearances are BF related. I am not sure I do. What I do believe is these are not glibly explained by handy and reassuring narratives about accepted and pat scenarios . They make us feel better, but they are not useful for making sense of these kinds of events.