Misidentification

[Guest]

I tried them once.

 

I misidentified them as wallpaper paste. And I wish I'd imagined eating them.

 

Don't worry you redeemed yourselves in the culinary stakes with hot/buffalo wings.

 

Now those I miss done right.

 

ROD

Edited April 4, 2014 by Detroit Soul

[WSA]

Some say grits ain't groceries. Well, the instant kind aren't, for sure.

 

I feel ya' Detroit Soul. This must the variant on the hallucination that a retailer gives you "free" stuff after they've milked you sufficiently on all the other frequently purchased and overpriced items.

Poorly prepared (and especially instant) grits have done more damage to the grits brand than anything else.  If you have yankee guests, just make sure to call the grits "polenta." Impresses the hell out of 'em.

Edited April 4, 2014 by WSA

[Guest]

I don't take him for a liar either, but that doesn't necessarily mean his encounter was what he thought it was.

 

These people are also absolutely sure in what they saw, and they all seem pretty genuine-

 

http://www.realfairies.net/forum/faery-encounters

 

I'm sure a lot of them had some kind of weird experience or saw something that looked like a fairy flying around, but that doesn't mean their encounter was really what they believed it to be. Just because you 'know', doesn't always make it so. You're susceptible to the human brain like everybody else.

I agree.

  

Hey now!  Don't be dissin' grits!  Grits are wonderful!!  You just ain't never had 'em fixed right. 

 

There's cheese grits.

Grits n' gravy  (and you can have sawmill gravy, sausage gravy, redeye gravy, etc.)

Grits n' molasses

Grits n' jelly

Grits with sugar

Grits with butter and salt

Grits with cinnamon and sugar

Grits n' syrup

Grits n' strawberry preserves

and on and on.

 

It's like Bubba Blue said about shrimp, there's a bazillion ways to fix 'em.

Amen. And now I want to go to Waffle House.

[JDL]

Someone used the term "reverse misidentification" and resurrected the assertion that more bigfoot are misidentified as people, than people misidentified as bigfoot.

 

I agree with the assertion and I guess the term is as concise and understandable as any other.

 

In every encounter I've ever had, and you can check this for the ones I've submitted on this forum and on the BFRO, my first assumption was not that I was observing a bigfoot.  My first mental identifications were:

 

a.  That I was looking at a big (eight and a half foot) black (pardon me, African American) hobo (pardon me, homeless person), wearing a pilfered (hobos can't afford ski suits, right?) black down ski suit with the hood up (sized just for him) in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of August in the middle of nowhere.  It was only after realizing that the ski suit was actually full body hair that I decided he wasn't a normal man.  Even then, I mentally classified him as some sort of freakish man, because I had no frame of reference for him, never having heard of anything like what he was.

 

b.  That feral dogs had pursued a man a couple of weeks later into my back yard.  It wasn't until the encounter played out that I realized it couldn't be a man and began to wonder if it was the same thing I'd seen two weeks before.  Still didn't know what the heck it could be, though.

 

c.  That the very tall people we would see on occasion silhouetted on the hill above our home to the East at sunset were just people.  Sometimes one, sometimes two (at the age of 13 I thought they must be Nordic because they were so tall) and sometimes both with a couple of kids who bounced around among the boulders for all the world like playing chimpanzees.

 

d.  That I was chasing a kid that had been throwing pebbles at me from the mouth of a draw.  It wasn't until I caught up and saw its hairy brown backside that I realized that the four foot tall kid, wasn't a human kid (I had accepted the probability that they weren't the same species as us by that point).  I went on a little further, then thought to myself, "I'm chasing something's kid."  Something I already knew was quite capable of overpowering me, and I didn't want to give it a reason.  It was still only something, because I still didn't know what it was.  All I knew was that it wasn't human.

 

e.  That I was looking at a hillbilly woman with unkempt hair, wearing uncured dear hide pants and poncho, crouched on opposite bank of a small lake (little more than a big pond) from me watching me fish.  It wasn't until she moved her hair covered upper arms away from her (ample doesn't do it justice) hair covered chest anatomy, that I realized she was "one of Them!".  As she stood up, it was clear that she was pregnant.  When I waved at and called to her and started across the dam to her she turned carefully, then scoot ed right up a steep deer trail out of sight.  I got to where she had been watching me and thought "She's clearly a fine female specimen of whatever they are, and pregnant, which means there's a male, and he's probably not going to appreciate my 14 year old 'good will' (I really just wanted to get a closer look at her chest)", so I went back over to my fishing spot.

 

f.  About fifteen minutes later, "people" knocking on trees stalked me, two watching me from fixed positions, and the third maneuvered from the other side of the lake, where the female went, around the far end of the lake, into a copse of trees behind me.  When the forest went silent, I walked up to the campfire, picked up the ax, then faced the "guy" hidden in the copse and asked him if he needed help.  He didn't respond so I told him if he didn't need help, he should leave me alone.  Then I went back to my fishing spot (still carrying the ax), and ignored him.  The sounds started again shortly after that, but he left behind one massive stinking pile of human looking scat, though several times the normal volume, where he knew it would be found.  I figured it was more of them.

 

g.  The night of the following day, our puppy woke me, trembling against my head.  Groggily, I noticed that someone was sticking a very heavy tree limb perfectly level with ground almost six feet into our tent.  When I said "Bo?", whoever it was started to withdraw the limb, and I noticed that the joker had stuck a gorilla glove on the end of it.  As this happened the puppy passed in front of my face and burrowed into my sleeping bag.  In the time it took the puppy to pass in front of my eyes, the limb was gone.  Still groggy, I thought I was imagining things and settled back down, thinking the puppy was just trembling from the cold - until I realized that my exposed shoulders were not cold.  Then I was wide awake, and when I noticed a massive shadow crouched just outside the tent at my feet, pushed myself up on my elbows and had a looong staring match with a massive, motionless shadow, during which I wracked my brain for what it could be other than one of "Them".  I decided that the lake was reflecting light from the full moon and casting the shadow of a boulder on the tent, then stared at it longer while I got comfortable with that explanation, then laid back down.  Just as I relaxed, it stood up and walked around and past the tent, passing in front of the full moon as it was about five feet away.  Judging from the shadow it cast on the roof, it must have been at least nine feet tall.  So I decided it was one of "Them". 

 

h.  Same location as above, a wide variety of hoots, howls, whoops, and other vocalizations that we'd heard before camping at that site, and which persisted over the nine days we were there on that trip, that I had always before assumed were birds or other animals, but which I now began to associate with "Them."  One vocalization in particular sounded like a loose fan belt without the engine noise, a rapidly repeated high pitched screeling, was coming from a stand of Scottish broom.  It was pretty clear that the "person" emitting the call was trying to scare someone away from food they were cooking.  I approached the stand, and the calls stopped.  I STILL didn't know what they actually were until later that summer when I picked up a tourist pamphlet in Oregon, that reprinted the Army Corps of Engineers write-up on them.  Now I had a name for them and a description of them that matched what I had been encountering.  It was actually a relief to have a third party frame of reference, and an official Federal government one, at that.

 

i.  Northwest of Pyramid Lake, when one crested the low ridge less than 100 yards in front of me, my first thought was, "Wow, that man is huge!", Then "No, those scrub pines must be shorter than the ones right here", then I looked up at the scrub pine nearest me, then back over to the ones he was walking past, and thought "No, he really is that tall!"  Then excitedly, "It's a bigfoot!"  Because now I had a frame of reference.  At that point my brother moved up to the top of the knoll next to me and the bigfoot noticed his movement.  I could see him tense, then look for cover while slightly increasing his speed, then almost immediately pick out an eroded wash directly in front of him about 75 feet away and slow back to his normal pace (I think I actually saw it before he did and expected him to dive for it since he was not dashing back over the ridgeline).  We watched as he walked up to it and appeared to be stepping over it to continue on, then simply dropped into it, folding his body as he did so.  Then he peeked at us and watched us.  I still initially thought it was a man in this encounter, but having a frame of reference, was able to resolve the inconsistent morphology more quickly to recognize it as a bigfoot even before the evasive behavior.

 

j.  Six years later, as a Second Lieutenant commanding the Post Guard at Fort Lewis, I heard the screeling described above again one night.  At first I thought it was squeeling tires, though, because it was coming from the assault airstrip where I had two guards posted to keep the kids from nearby towns from drag racing on it.  So again, I didn't immediately think "bigfoot!".  As we continued to drive to the airstrip and I listened, I began to recognize and had my driver stop and cut the engine.  The screeling continued, with no associated engine noise.  I asked my driver if could hear any engines and he said "No".  I said, "Rettig, do you know what that is?"  When he said "No" again.  I said, "That's a bigfoot".  He was skeptical.  We started the jeep and the screeling stopped as we came adjacent to the woodline and drove around the airstrip to the guard post.  The two guards, detailed to me from the Finance company, were scared out of their wits.  I thought one was going to crawl into my lap.  They had been cooking and eating C-ration ham slices and it smelled great (they couldn't operate the doggone PRC-77 radio I gave them, but they sure as hell had the creature comforts figured out).  I asked them if they'd seen anything - no.  Asked them how long it had been going on - almost immediately after they started cooking.  Then they asked me, "Sir, what do you think it was?"  I told them it was probably just someone messing with them (a truth that allowed them to settle down), but I would go check it out.  We drove over to the woodline, but couldn't find anything in the dark, even with the headlights.  So here, again, I first thought it was something prosaic, then eliminated that based on circumstances to revise my assessment to bigfoot.

 

k.  Over twenty-five years later on I-78 I noticed two bright red reflectors that appeared to be mounted on a highway sign ahead of me.  As the car ahead of me passed the sign, it swerved and slowed down, then sped up again.  As I approached it, I thought, "Ok, local high school kids have mounted reflectors on a nine foot tall bigfoot silhouette with legs below the sign, head above and to the left, and hands clutching the top and left side of the sign collectively.  Heck, they even have its legs positioned so that it looks like it is about to push off of the slope and cross the highway, Cute."  Then as I continued to look at it while passing, it was three dimensional instead of two, and it turned its head to follow me as I passed, the reflectors (eyes) no longer shining red..  I can't rule out an animatronic hoax, but there weren't any engineering schools nearby, so I conclude that this was most likely a bigfoot.

 

So my point is that in every case, in every encounter, I first assumed that what I was seeing or hearing was not a bigfoot, but something else.  It wasn't the other way around where someone says, "There's a bigfoot!", and it turns out to be something else.

Edited April 4, 2014 by JDL

[the parkie]

Back in the 50's when I started school we would often have to recite "Red lorry, yellow lorry". At the time I assumed it was to further a child's grasp on the English language but now realise that at a time of communist threat it was really a device to weed out very small Chinese spies.

:-) Excellent! Plussed...

A belated welcome to the forum Rod from another in the UK.

A lion in a chippy, who would have thought it? Did you positively identify it as a male or had someone just dropped two of their pickled eggs and a gherkin?

I'm also reminded of the irate chip shop customer complaining to the owner:

- Was this fish cooked mate?

- Yeah, why?

- It's eaten all the effin' chips!

Edited April 4, 2014 by the parkie

[Guest]

Hello "The Parkie" and thank you.

 

Interesting site. Some of these guys must be crazy. Cougars and bears in the woods whilst all we have to worry about is the occasional vole on steroids. You have to question their judgement though. This Coonbo gentlemen seems to be highly respected and yet he thinks grits are edible.

 

I've no idea what sex it was although as it didn't pay for the chips I'm assuming it's female.

 

At least now someone to probably agree with me that the chances of seeing that here were less than someone seeing a bigfoot over there. I still get people not believing it. Their loss - they don't get to hear about the aardvark in the chemist's.

 

I was making a serious point though. You know that if I reported same thing in woods round here I would get a negative response. Just googling before and to "Big Cat Sightings Lancashire" I got a link to police probe re 26 sightings in 5 years from the Westmoreland Gazette. I'd copy n paste link but it doesn't seem to work for me on here.

 

Not that I see any "crypto" element in that. Pets and safari park escapees perhaps ? There's ligers and tigons so I assume other breeds may be able to produce hybrids.

 

Hope I can contribute to the site in a small way. I was going to put forward my views on the Lone Ranger and Sasquatch but luckily I noticed the topic was about psychic rather than sidekick bigfoots.

 

ROD

Edited April 4, 2014 by Detroit Soul

[Guest WIKayaker]

JDL:   All of your examples are exactly what I am talking about. Thanks for sharing!  (Post #34)

 

There could be thousands of encounters that are never, ever recognized as such. That's the real misidentifcation.

 

This is far more likely because it is a not-unusual-to-be-seen "human-like" shape. Not a four legged animal "shape" that gets our attention more.

 

Just my opinions. I know nothing!

[JDL]

Skeptics also fail to make a distinction between distant, fleeting glimpse encounters and close, prolonged encounters.  The longer you have to study something, the less chance there is of misidentification.

[Guest]

JDL:   All of your examples are exactly what I am talking about. Thanks for sharing!  (Post #34)

 

There could be thousands of encounters that are never, ever recognized as such. That's the real misidentifcation.

 

This is far more likely because it is a not-unusual-to-be-seen "human-like" shape. Not a four legged animal "shape" that gets our attention more.

 

Just my opinions. I know nothing!

That's certainly something to consider, but how would you even go about figure out which is actually something else and which is Bigfoot dismissed as something else?

Edited April 4, 2014 by Leftfoot

[Guest]

Skeptics also fail to make a distinction between distant, fleeting glimpse encounters and close, prolonged encounters.  The longer you have to study something, the less chance there is of misidentification.

It should go without saying that I'm a hopeful skeptic, meaning that I believe it possible Bigfoot exists but reserve concluding that they do without reliable evidence that they do exist. Eyewitness testimony is not, in any sense of the word, reliable.

Admittedly I'm far from familiar with each and every eyewitness testimony, but just because they have had a prolong encounter doesn't make their stories any more likely than witnesses who only catch a glimpse. I myself had an encounter the last time I went hiking when I saw a shaggy, upright figure passing between trees. Despite personally being aware of the mechanics of it my brain was already filling in details even as I took another look and came to the realization I was seeing a man in a ghillie suit, with a riffle strapped to his back.

I had no idea that there were even any hunters in the area, but you can bet your life I was out of the woods as quick as was possible.

[salubrious]

Skeptics also fail to make a distinction between distant, fleeting glimpse encounters and close, prolonged encounters.  The longer you have to study something, the less chance there is of misidentification.

 

During my encounter I think maybe 30 seconds went by while I sat there in my truck debating my options. But the encounter was such that I really can't say exactly how long I was there. Long enough though that I was easily able to verify that my initial impression, a large pile of reddish dirt, was entirely 100% wrong...

[Drew]

Any chance you were asleep in your truck, and dreamt the whole thing?

 

I have dreamt entire worlds that seemed real during a 10 minute catnap at work.

[Guest]

I once had a waking dream that there was a moose outside my balcony window. On the second floor. In Kentucky.

I, none the less, checked for it when startled awake.

[salubrious]

Any chance you were asleep in your truck, and dreamt the whole thing?

 

I have dreamt entire worlds that seemed real during a 10 minute catnap at work.

 

No- and that is pretty funny

 

If I had really been asleep I would not be here now to write this, as it was on a trip from just north of Delta, CO to Telluride. The trip takes about 2 hours or so. If I had fallen asleep I would have gone off the road- they are not exactly straight in that part of the world...

[Guest DWA]

I am not sure that I have read three bigfoot reports that could be chalked up to innocent misidentification.  It's all down to:  instantly-hospitalizable,, cannot-be-allowed-out-of-bed mental or sensory malfunction; plain **** lie; ...or what the witness says they saw.