Thoughts As To Why Bigfoot Isn't Caught On Game Cams

[Guest thermalman]

Did you happen to notice if Patty was driving the police car?

Edited August 17, 2012 by thermalman

[Guest VioletX]

Been there done that!

Kept seeing a cop car way back behind me for miles late one night.

Finally stopped and waited for him....and waited....walked into the road nothing for miles!

It was just the Men In Black.

[Sunflower]

Drew,

I agree that there is a condition known as "white line fever" someone correct me if I'm wrong..... but that does not account for the thousands of people who have seen them while wide awake, in the daytime, as close as 30-40 feet and those of us that know will never be convinced of anything else. You are doing your due diligence I understand, but you still haven't told us of the times you've been in the woods.

[Drew]

Some of those may have been hoaxes, or standard misidentifications.

And some may have been the result of a hallucination due to Narcolepsy or Sleep Deprivation, drug interactions.

Edited August 17, 2012 by BFSleuth
Deleting quote from previous post

[Guest thermalman]

Just some, right Drew? What about the others? Is everyone nuts in your book?

[Guest WesT]

It's because they each have their own established territory and are hyper aware of their surroundings. They know when something is out of place, or different, from the last time they were through an area within their territory. They don't have to know a trail cams purpose to avoid it.

[salubrious]

A. it is at night on a mountain road, B. He saw the same exact thing twice. C. What he saw that night, might not be exactly the same as what was reported later.

Uh,, not *exactly* the same thing. The second one was smaller, and considerably more agitated. Not sure what the influence of the 'mountain road' might be- are you suggesting that things are different on mountain roads?? This was US hiway 62, a paved major trunk hiway. If I was sleeping, I'd be dead- just look at the Dallas Divide on Google and you will see what I mean.

A & B lead me to believe that this started with a sleep hallucination. Drivers often experience unusual hallucinations especially when tired. A branch blowing over the road looks like a giant bird, or a plastic bag looks like a child running into the road, the fact that it was duplicated a short while later, leads me to believe that hallucination was the start of this sighting. Perhaps there was a branch in the road and the wind was vibrating the leaves, or it was a hay-bale that the little twigs were vibrating, when these sleep hallucinations happen, your brain instantly converts what it sees, into something you can recognize. The second one was probably the same thing in the road, and the brain instantly popped the same image on to it.

Wow- you missed the part where I stopped the truck and sat there with my brights on it?

C- This is where the witness fleshes out the details of the 'sighting', it is not malicious, he is trying to rationalize what his brain made him think he saw. Witness contacts a Bigfoot site, describes what happened, gets affirmations that others have seen this stuff.

Many people think having a sleep hallucination is a sign of mental illness, it is not, it is a sign of being tired, in some cases it is the sign of a sleep disorder. This fear leads people to explore other possible attempts at rationalization before accepting that they might have had a sleep hallucination.

Many truckers, hunters, late-night drivers will experience something like this at one point in their life. Most are benign, but some lead to accidents, when someone drives their car into a ditch, because they were asleep, police officers will tell you that many times the person will complain about something in the road, one story an officer told me of a woman in a ditch, was that she saw a huge truck tire in the road and swerved to avoid it, they searched the road and found nothing to confirm this story. I did a poll on BFF1 that asked how many people here had experienced a sleep hallucination, and it was 30-40% positive response.

ROTFLMAO !

The part that really gets me is how 'your brain instantly converts what it sees, into something you can recognize'. BF?? Really? Something I've never seen before?? no offense, but that is why I'm laughing as I write this What my brain *did* do was make me think there was a reddish pile of dirt in the road and I had plenty of time to slow down, which seemed prudent.

You know, I know exactly what you are talking about- but this was early enough that I was a long way from sleep deprivation. This however is one of the risks of admitting that something like this happened and is why I kept my mouth shut for so long. You see BF: you were hallucinating or you're a nutbag. I know I'm not going to convince you so I'm not going to bother- what's the point?

(I do often wonder why skeptics go to a Bigfoot site just so they can try to explain why BF does not exist- why would they do that??- since you aren't going to convince me of what I experienced and I am not likely to convince you of anything, maybe we could do something interesting and you could explain why a skeptic finds it so important to convince nutbags that BF does not exist. I for one honestly would like to know.)

[indiefoot]

Do they use language? If so what for? Do they discuss those little boxes that flash when deer walk in front of them? They flash on the deer and then the hunter comes back and shoots the deer, hmmmm.

For every one put up by a BFer there are 1000 put up by hunters, what do you think they might get out of that? Could be something to avoid maybe.

[Guest BFSleuth]

Drew, while I laud your attempt to explain salubrious's sighting within your framework of BF being a "construct of the human mind", it stretches credulity far more than his sighting report IMHO. Attempts like this to "explain away" a witness report like his tend to become more convoluted and unbelievable than to consider the simpler idea that he saw two BF sitting in the road. Simpler explanations are most likely the best explanation, borrowing from the concept of Occam's Razor.

Putting myself in salubrious's shoes, being sleepy would not become an issue the moment I was stopped with my high beams on within 10' of a huge animal in the road. If this was a fleeting sighting, then your posited hallucination induced by sleep deprivation might be worthwhile. But this was an up close, detailed, and lengthy sighting with a wide awake and elevated heartbeat state of mind. Sleep or hallucinations had nothing to do with it. Once the issue of possible hallucination is moot, then the idea of rationalization is moot.

While I'm certain some BF sightings could be written off by hallucinations or misidentifications, salubrious's sighting isn't one of them.

[Drew]

Where did I say you are a 'nutbag'?

I am saying that 'Claiming bigfoot is a response used to rationalize to the witness, that he is not a nutbag.'

I said a hallucination does not make you a nutbag

Most witnesses have a perception that a hallucination makes you a nutbag.

The denial about themselves having a hallucination leads them to try to find an answer that is accepted by others. In this case BIGFOOT.

Attempts like this to "explain away" a witness report like his tend to become more convoluted and unbelievable than to consider the simpler idea that he saw two BF sitting in the road. Simpler explanations are most likely the best explanation, borrowing from the concept of Occam's Razor.

So you are saying it is more likely that

He saw a creature, that: does not- poop, eat, get hit by cars, get caught on game cams, fall off cliffs, leave fossils, but does- look in windows, grow to 9' tall x 6' wide, steal food, porpoise for salmon, scavenge parking lot dumpsters, and squats (in pairs) in the middle of 'a paved major trunk hiway', and to add, doesn't get up and run when a car approaches it.

than

he simply had and misinterpreted a well-documented human phenomenon; sleep hallucination?

Tell me again how Occam's razor works.

Bigfoot can sense gamecams, but when a 4000 lb car approaches it on a paved highway, it just sits there while you drive around it?

Edited August 17, 2012 by Drew

[Guest MikeG]

I don't agree with you Drew in a number of respects, but that clear concise and logical post just earned you a +1 from me.

Mike

[Drew]

Just some, right Drew? What about the others? Is everyone nuts in your book?

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The hyper-defensiveness about a sleep hallucination exhibited by Bigfoot proponents. I did not say a hallucination means you are nuts, the only people who say I said that, are Bigfoot proponents. Everytime I bring up the reality of sleep hallucinations, people here try to beat me down with "Oh so we are nuts?", and things like that. I am specifically saying you are not 'nuts' if you have a sleep hallucination, I even go on to say you are tired, or have a sleep disorder, neither of which means you are nuts.

This hyper-defensiveness about sleep-hallucinations is what drives witnesses to seek out others who have experienced the same thing, and have what they think is a real-world explanation for it.

[Guest]

I admit, dreaming is a powerful thing. Esp when you are in a pre-sleep state then wake up suddenly. All that seratonin washing around in your brain creating hallucinations. But surely this must account for a minute % of sightings. Most sightings occur during the daytime don't they?

[Drew]

I'm not saying it accounts for all sightings or encounters, but there are certain sightings that when I read them, I immediately focus on this explanation. The one with the guy in the tent, and something was pushing on his chest, Salubrius' because of the driving at night, I'm not saying it was Narcolepsy, but it is likely that it was a sleep hallucination. Another is the one in Washington or Oregon last year where the person thought Bigfoot had shot him with Infrasound, and he collapsed. This is indicative of Cataplexy.

Incidence of Narcolepsy with Cataplexy is 1 in 3000 people, it is unknown how many people have Narcolepsy without the cataplexy.

Hallucinations can accompany sleep paralysis or can occur in isolation when people are falling asleep or waking up. Referred to as hypnagogic hallucinations when occurring during sleep onset and as hypnopompic hallucinations when occurring during waking, these images are unusually vivid and can be frightening. Most often, the content is primarily visual, but any of the other senses can be involved

You might say, 'but that is only when waking up or falling asleep', the thing is, people with Narcolepsy tend to fall asleep for very short periods of time, even during the day.

Involuntary sleep episodes are sometimes very brief, lasting no more than seconds at a time. As many as 40 percent of people with narcolepsy are prone to automatic behavior during such “microsleeps.†Automatic behavior involves performing a task during a short period of sleep but without any apparent interruption. During these episodes, people are usually engaged in habitual, essentially "second nature" activities such as taking notes in class, typing, or driving. They cannot recall their actions, and their performance is almost always impaired. Their handwriting may, for example, degenerate into an illegible scrawl, or they may store items in bizarre locations and then forget where they placed them. If an episode occurs while driving, individuals may get lost or have an accident.

http://www.ninds.nih..._narcolepsy.htm

If there are 1 or 2 million people out there in the U.S. with undiagnosed Narcolepsy, then how can we know for sure how many sightings can be attributed to Sleep Hallucinations? How many sightings are there each year? The other thing is, that being extraordinarily tired can lead to the same effect. I believe that some of the BFRO expeditions play on this factor. They keep people up, hiking around all day, then tell stories until late at night, someone falls asleep and has a sleep hallucination, of course, due to the fact that they just spent 12 hours talking about nothing but Bigfoot, the hallucination is going to involve that. The next day, when the person recounts it, of course the explanation is BIGFOOT MAN!

Which leads to the possibility, that Bigfootry attracts people with undiagnosed sleep disorders. Logic being, that the victims have a higher incidence of seeing something which they attribute to Bigfoot, thus these people join the same groups and frequent the same circles. Everyone involved that has experienced it, is supporting each other in that they all agree it was a living breathing creature, which unfortunately no one can put a finger on.

Edited August 17, 2012 by Drew

[Guest BFSleuth]

So you are saying it is more likely that

He saw a creature, that: does not- poop, eat, get hit by cars, get caught on game cams, fall off cliffs, leave fossils, but does- look in windows, grow to 9' tall x 6' wide, steal food, porpoise for salmon, scavenge parking lot dumpsters, and squats (in pairs) in the middle of 'a paved major trunk hiway', and to add, doesn't get up and run when a car approaches it.

than

he simply had and misinterpreted a well-documented human phenomenon; sleep hallucination?

Tell me again how Occam's razor works.

Bigfoot can sense gamecams, but when a 4000 lb car approaches it on a paved highway, it just sits there while you drive around it?

I think if we disregard the boldfaced portion of your option (the part that salubrious is not claiming) then we come closer to the correct question for a choice. He reported seeing first one BF, for an extended period at close range, then shortly later another BF in the same kind of sitting position in the road.

versus

He must have hallucinated a very detailed and vivid experience and added to it by later confirming it with a BF expert.

To me the choice is to go with the less convoluted option, that salubrious saw two BF sitting in the road, without adding all that stuff that he didn't say or claim about the experience. By adding all that other "stuff" you are hoping to stack the deck to make sure you personally make the second choice. That is disingenuous.

I understand what you are saying about hallucinations and that you are not making any claims about salubrious being 'nuts' or anything like that. What you say is true, that a large percentage of people can and do have fleeting hallucinations or even lengthy hallucinations with sleep deprivation. In fact the APA had to issue an injunction against sleep deprivation study decades ago when it was found that real and lasting psychological damage can result.

However, I do think that the "construct of the mind" argument is often carried to an extreme in order to avoid giving credence to witness reports. With apologies to salubrious, I brought up his report as an example of a detailed, lengthy, and close range encounter with not one, but two large BF sitting in the middle of the road. As such it stretches the "construct" theory to the point of being such a stretch that it snaps.