Encounters That Go Unreported

[MNskeptic]

What would you guess is the percentage of encounters that go unreported?

My curiosity stems from my perception that a BF encounter is, quite literally, a one in a million proposition. However, if only, say, one in ten are reported then my guesstimate could be radically off. We're assuming, of course, that the encounter is real and not a hoax or mis-ID.

Encounters like that reported by Mike Wooley, for example, are persuasive and believable. He didn't 'come out' for years with his encounter. I wonder how many others are being kept close to the vest?

MNSkeptic

[Sasfooty]

Probably one in 5000 or less are reported to a research organization. That's not to say that they aren't reported to friends or family, but just that they are not made public.

[BobbyO]

There's no real way to work this out, and anything is a guess with no basis whatsoever.

I've never reported mine to any research organisation, but I will to the BFRO one day.

[Guest]

Who could know how many granules of sand you hold in a single grasp of your hand or how many stars there are in the sky? Not that I am an expert, but because there  is no simply no  reasonable answer and I thought the idea behind thought sounds about right. There can be no absolute number for certain questions and Sasquatch reports encounters and I feel they are similar, therefore all we can do is chase the answer in perpetual circles without ever knowing for certain.   

 

As matter of conversation I’ve always thought the number of reported sightings reported by BFRO are woefully low, and I suspect closer representation of the truth is perhaps five or ten times greater than reported, and that’s just what’s reported to them. There are other collection organizations that as well as so the numbers are much greater.

 

I then have to presume the number of sightings and encounters that people do not report to any organization are much greater. The public has been conditioned made to feel foolish for reporting these encounters and ridicule is the single biggest factor for more stepping forward with their experiences.   IMHO

 

 

Edited March 29, 2015 by Gumshoeye

[Terry]

I'd put my money on the non reported sightings as being close to the real deal.

 

t.

[Guest JiggyPotamus]

I have not reported my sighting, and I know there are others in the community who have not done so either. So if you've got people within the community not reporting sightings, and we are the ones who actually are interested in bigfoot, you can imagine how many "regular" people there are who don't file reports. Think of all the reports in the first 90 years of the 20th century, when the internet did not exist. Reporting a sighting was exponentially more difficult as it took much more effort. So one can imagine that the number of sightings was relatively similar to today's sightings, give or take, but there was no way to report them.

 

Maybe someone could devise a way to take data like the number of sightings from past decades, which would have been recorded by individual researchers, and figure out what percentage those few sightings represented compared to how many actual sightings there were, again using modern data to guesstimate the actual number of sightings. And then maybe look at the percentage increase as time went on, and just see where that leads. I cannot see this really leading anywhere since there are no concrete numbers and there will always be a certain amount of guessing, but I think this could at the very least give us a better understanding of "something." You never know.

 

I've seen guesses ranging from 1% of sightings reported to 50%. I definitely think that less than 50% get reported. So if a researcher wanted to work with a number, they should use that. That means that the number of reports we have now should be doubled, at a minimum. This is really pushing it though, considering that this would mean 1 out of every 2 people who have a sighting will report it. Hard to believe, again considering that even some of us on these boards haven't reported our sightings, for various reasons. A number I am comfortable with is about 20%, or 1 out of every five sightings gets reported in modern times. The number of sightings that are reported are bound to increase with time, given the greater exposure the topic has in mainstream sources. If the ridicule would disappear, then sightings would likely grow at a faster rate as well.

 

Here is my current analysis, which is the absolute maximum I can concede. Pre 20th century I would say that less than 1% of all the sightings made the newspaper or were recorded in any manner whatsoever. In the early 1900's I would say that the reported sightings were still less than 1%, considering there were no researchers that I'm aware of. I think that this number remained constant until the 60's or so, at which point the phenomena became a bit more widespread and thus researchers were recording sightings. However, there were still very few researchers, considering that sightings would have been occurring across the whole of North America. So I would estimate that the number of reported sightings during the 60's, 70's, and 80's was less than 5%. I think that this would have climbed slightly during the 90's, with no more than 10% being reported. So while there was virtually no increase during all of those decades, there was a 5% increase during the 90's alone. From 2000 to the present the number of sightings would be less than 20%. You can see that I think the largest jump in the reported sightings would be in the internet years, with the last decade accounting for a 10% jump. Again, I am not working from any data, just estimating what seems logical. Obviously these numbers reflect my belief that sightings are increasing due to technological advances and the ease of modern reporting. I will also reiterate however that 20% is still a lot. So anyway, I think we can safely divide the current number of total sightings by .2, which if we had 5,000 sightings would yield a modified result of 25,000, which represents a more accurate number of sightings. Or just multiply by 5, lol. So 10,000 sightings would yield a modified number of 50,000. I don't know the current total of sightings. I think the BFRO has about 5,000 sightings or so, but I cannot recall.

 

But there is one important thing that should not be overlooked, and that is a total number of sightings means all sightings, no matter the year. So you've got reports spanning hundreds of years. This is fine if we are talking about an average percent increase until modern times, but remember that it is highly unlikely that a similar number of sightings would have been reported many decades ago. So if we say that 20% of sightings get reported in modern times, and do our calculations based on this number, it will be wrong considering that less than 1% of sightings would have been reported up until the mid 20th century. What does this mean? It means that any final estimate of the total sightings will have to be greatly increased beyond 20%, as long as we hold the number of unreported and reported sightings fixed for all those past years. Which is a problem in itself, considering that sightings increase as the human population and sasquatch population increases. Many variables could be considered, which just compounds the difficulties, aside from the fact that we are just guessing in the first place!!! Re-reading the last few sentences I can see that they are confusing. If anyone doesn't get what I'm saying then don't feel bad, because I wrote it and it confused me upon reading it again.

Edited March 29, 2015 by JiggyPotamus

[VAfooter]

Bobby you are absolutely correct, and my guess is maybe 1 in 100 are publically reported. Just a gut feeling though.

 

 

Jiggy, last time I looked BFRO had about 50000 reports in their database, and some 10000-12000 are public.

[Guest Rex]

Probably one in 5000 or less are reported to a research organization. That's not to say that they aren't reported to friends or family, but just that they are not made public.

 

 

I can agree with this.

 

The VAST majority go unreported, for many reasons..  first and foremost because people don't like being ridiculed.. in any setting for any reason.

[Guest WesT]

Bobby you are absolutely correct, and my guess is maybe 1 in 100 are publically reported. Just a gut feeling though.

 

I agree with Bobby's assessment as well. As you probably already know, here in the western part of our state there isn't a local organization to report a sighting to. And we just don't talk about things like that 'round ere'.  1 in 100 seems reasonable, but on a regional level the number may be higher like 1-200 to 300 for my region, maybe more. Really hard to say for sure. But yeah, I know of 5 unreported sightings just off the top of my head.

[Guest ChasingRabbits]

I've never had a Bigfoot sighting. However if I did, I most likely would not report it because I wouldn't want people to think I'm a nut. but I would discuss it with people who are interested in and open to the idea of Bigfoot.

[Terry]

If I came across an 8 foot tall, hairy creature standing there 20 feet away and looking at me and there was absolutely no doubt what it was, I'd tell everyone I know.  I'd contact those very few in the bf world that I admire and i'd tell them too.  If the press found out and wanted to interview me, I'd tell them as well.  All because I knew without a doubt that it was out there and there was such a thing.  I wouldn't attack or get angry at those on a forum such as this who didn't believe me or who were skeptical because I would understand where they were coming from.  Then I'd say to myself holy sh*t, there IS such a thing and I gotta start apologizing!  

 

t.

[MarkGlasgow]

Just wondering if the recent glut of BF related TV shows and documentaries would make folks more inclined to make a report.

I guess we should also factor in that once that initial reticence is overcome, it's much easier now to track down and contact your local researcher.

Email and internet also helps those who don't want to discuss their encounter face to face or via telephone, which was of course the historical way of logging these details.

[BobbyO]

As far as the BFRO releasing reports publicly Mark, there's actually less believe it or not int he years since they started that show.

Whether there's more reports actually getting made but they're weeding them out in to rubbish or not I don't know, bit they're releasing less than previous years before the show, I know that much.

[Guest]

At lease 100:1 and probably closer to 500:1

 

would be my guess...

[coffee2go]

One way to get a rough estimate is to do a survey.  If anyone on these forums goes to, conducts or knows someone who conducts sasquatch/bigfoot seminars they could ask the attendees (assuming the audience is made up of honest people).    If you can get a sampling of 50 or more people who say they have seen one then the next question would be "how many of you reported it?"  The number of attendees would need to be quite a few to make this work and the larger the sample the more accurate.  It would also be helpful if the seminar was in a state that has a lot of bf activity.

 

To make it anonymous, this could be done on a questionnaire with those two questions asked.  You would ask all attendees to answer the questionnaire even if they had not had a sighting.  My assumption is if you are attending this type of seminar you would get more people who had sightings than randomly asking 500 people on the street the same two questions.

 

By reported, you could add "other than family and friends" or whatever other wording would be appropriate for this survey.

Edited April 1, 2015 by coffee2go