What turned you on to Bigfoot?

[BigTreeWalker]

I was a voracious reader in the 60's. I got interested in cryptozoology. Then Roger Paterson presented his film in the Columbia theater in Longview WA. I was hooked. Then I read everything I could get my hands on about sasquatch. An experience on the east side of Mt St Helens when some large rocks were thrown at us out of the old growth forest kind of topped it off in the early 70's.

[WSA]

Had a couple of unexplained (rock throwing, stalking) encounters in N. VA, Potomac River vicinity in early 1980's.  I of course had seen the PGF when it was first published, but never connected what I had experienced with anything to do with that.  Fast Forward to getting my first computer and connecting to the intertubes.  I figured I'd look up the explanation of how the PGF was hoaxed...ummm...hmm... Went on to study the sighting data base that included a couple of Class A encounters not far away in distance and time from my earlier incidents.  Read a LOT, kept failing to come up with a rational explanation. Went through a long period of emotional turmoil and soul-searching before having to accept the world as I had known it to exist was based on a faulty premise.  Had to accept it, the facts leaving me no choice.

Edited August 23, 2019 by WSA

[OkieFoot]

Seeing the PGF in the 80's got things started for me. After learning more about the kind of men Roger and Bob were and then reading about how two movie studios watched the film and said they couldn't replicate what was on the film, the idea that the subject on the film could very well be a member of an unknown species that live in the same woods where people would camp, hunt, hike, fish etc. was very fascinating to me. And the fascination has continued after learning more about evidence that's hard to dismiss, such as all the analysis of the PGF subject, seeing track sizes plotted on a graph, etc. 

 

[ShadowBorn]

On ‎8‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 8:45 PM, Bigfoot Gumbo said:

Just wondering what turned you on to Bigfoot? 

It was my curiosity that got me started.

[VAfooter]

I was born and raised in central Arkansas, and spent my formative years just south of Little Rock. I do not really remember what started it all, but I suspect it was newspaper articles that I read back in the late 60's and into the 70's. My parents got the Gazette and I read it every day. Even as a kid, I always read the daily newspaper and found it interesting. It was probably reading the occasional Bigfoot or Yeti article (along with Loch Ness,  the White River Monster, and UFOs as well...) that grabbed me by the back of my neck and would not let go. I cut out every article that I found and kept it in a folder. Eventually the folder became quite thick. Add to that the Fouke monster craze of the early 70's, even though I never associated it with Bigfoot (I know, kind of weird looking back at it...) until much, much later. I graduated from high school in 76, went off to college, and life happened. I thought I was kind of strange for being interested in that sort of stuff anyway. I quit collecting articles and the folder got buried in some box. At some point, probably in the mid to late 80's, I came across the folder, I looked through it, smiled at the memories,  and then tossed it (oh to go back in time!!!). During some computer class for work I was taking in the 97-98 time frame, I was at the terminal killing time while others were working and finishing on their class project. It had Internet access. For whatever reason, Bigfoot popped into my mind. I did the search with whatever the popular search engine was at the time. Lo and behold, lots of stuff popped up. I started reading and I was re-hooked. Been that way ever since. I realized that I was not just one of a few that had been fascinated by the subject earlier in life. It was at that time that I made the connection between Fouke and Bigfoot. So I get that I am not the fastest learner......

 

Looking back on things, I have had a few experiences that might have been BF related, but certainly nothing definitive. More than likely not, but I was totally unaware of all aspects of encounters so did not associate the incidents with BF. I wish I had known and had been more aware of my surroundings at the time. Who knows, I might have been surprised.

 

 

[Oonjerah]

Got hooked on dinosaurs as a kid.  They were awesome!

That led in due course to reading about anthropology. We had a set of 1939 Colliers Encyclopedia. 

There was a page that showed reconstructions of the Neanderthal man, the Cro-Magnon man,  and ...

the Piltdown man ... in the early 50's, the Piltdown man turned out to be a hoax. 

    Somehow, that made it all more interesting to me.

    As for Bigfoot, I had to wait for the PGF;  I was instantly hooked. ...  I have never doubted that Patty was real.

[Quazimoto]

For me, it started with Harry And The Hendersons.  Loved the movie as a kid and it got me interested in the idea of Bigfoot.  I must admit though, that every time I watched the film and got to thinking about Bigfoot, it kinda terrified me, especially when I did so while visiting my Grandparent's house, which was way out in the country up in Wisconsin.  

 

As I got older, I didn't think much on the subject at all.  I was too into other things and far to tragic and morose to worry about some giant ape man running around the woods.  Oddly, it was an encounter with a ghost and a UFO that got me started in on Bigfoot again.  I'd always sorted believed in lots of paranormal this and that, but never got to heavily into it.  Seeing the spirit of a woman in the basement of my house one day got the ball rolling harder as I tried to find a "rational" explanation of what I'd seen.  A couple years later, there were some real strange lights in the sky over in the corn field near our house.  Next day, I hear about some crop circles not more than five miles from my house.  Went out there to look myself and sure enough, real life crop circles.  A UFO researcher came out to the sight and looked it over, determining that there were no obvious signs of being made my humans and believing them to be genuine.  That sort of thrust me into the world of the paranormal full force (have had one other encounter with a UFO since) and got me interested in all sorts of things that we're told aren't real by society.

 

Not sure how, but Sasquatch just sort of became my favorite one out of everything.  I'm into and believe in a number of different cryptids.  Have no doubts about aliens or ghosts.  And dang sure know that there's a lot more to this world and life, death, and the beyond than we're even able to comprehend.  But, for whatever reason, Sasquatch is the thing in that whole mess that just sort of rises above the others a little bit.  Don't know why really, just fascinated with the subject.

[Pdub]

I have to second the Harry and the Hendersons movie as a kid that first introduced the concept to me. Watched the occasional tv show on the subject and always thought it sounded plausible. Had a very strange couple of hours by myself in the BWCA at a very remote lake one summer day in 2007. Thought about that day for a long time before Bigfoot was the only explanation that made sense. 

[Wolfjewel]

Pdub, you’ve got me curious! Can you share with us what happened at BWCA? (And what the initials stand for)