Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon by Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner

[Explorer]

I recently read the two books available under this title:  volume 1 on Folklore and volume 2 on Evidence.

 

The books compare the narratives of mythologies (faeries, witches, green man, etc.) and of high strange phenomena (aliens, UFOs, ghosts, etc.) to the narratives obtained from high strangeness bigfoot encounters.  The authors find some common symbols and components between the narratives and suggest that the bigfoot phenomenon might be just part of a larger hidden unknown phenomena and might not be a distinct and unique mystery. At the end of the 2nd volume, they say that they don’t know what bigfoot is.

 

The authors are collectors of narratives and not field researchers, so they approach their analysis from the point of view of comparative folklore and not science.

 

After reading both volumes, I felt that I got no new insights.  Most of the high strangeness BF reports presented have been published before or discussed in websites or podcasts.  Moreover, these high strangeness BF reports are not evidence but stories and many of them have not been fully vetted or investigated.  Moreover, nobody really knows the % of high strangeness cases within all the BF cases because BFRO tends to exclude them and people tend not to report them. My guess is that they represent a small percent of the total number of BF encounter reports (but not zero).  Another problem with these high strangeness reports is the classification issue (are people truly encountering a BF or is it some other unknown or mystery that is attributed to BF).   The lengthy narratives presented from folklore and European mythologies did not add any clarity to the BF mystery. 

 

Thus, given all these comparative analysis between BF narratives and folklore, what did I learn that I can apply to field researcher and do things differently?  Nothing really.  These volumes are more for armchair researchers who want to intellectually analyze the BF mystery from a broader literary perspective and place the mystery within a larger unknown and unknowable paradigm (like Jacques Vallee and John Keel did with Ufology).   But they don’t provide any clues, suggestions, or guidance for those who are trying to investigate the mystery (regardless of how strange it is) within the bounds of our current scientific knowledge and practices.

 

If other BFF members read these books and got some insights that I missed and that should be shared with the field research community, please let me know.

[SasquatchTheLeg]

thanks for the heads up.. I had it in my ETSY cart and been looking forward to it ..  guess it's not worth the read  

[Qwerty]

I read both. I felt they were valuable in that they take a look at the phenomenon from outside the relict hominid point of view. I think fresh ideas on a topic that nobody has answers for can only help.