Monsters and Myths

They have many names, including Bigfoot…Yeti…and Sasquatch. Whatever you call them, some believe they exist in this area, and an elite some have actually encountered the hairy beasts.

A meeting was held tonight at the Crossroads Branch Library in Cambridge for people to share their stories and to discuss Bigfoot. Doug Waller, the moderator of the meeting, says one sighting in particular keeps him believing.

“The lady that had three different encounters. When she tells the story, you can still see the goosebumps raising on her arm. It traumatized her youngest daughter, who was about six, to the point where she won’t even discuss it now, ” says Waller.

Waller says there have been numerous sightings throughout the state, especially in Salt Fork State Park. Waller says they are smart creatures who don’t want to be found, and you may stumble upon them without even knowing.

“These things have a vertical spine like men, and when you go out in the woods and you have trees everywhere and you see a deer, it has a horizontal spine. It sticks out. Well, if a Bigfoot is in the woods, and he hears you coming and doesn’t want to be found, all he needs to do is stand in the shadows next to a trees. Chances are, you’ll just go right on by, and you won’t ever know it’s there, ” says Waller.

This is the second meeting held by the Southeastern Ohio Society for Bigfoot Investigation. The next one will be held on March 8th at 8 p.m.

whizamfmtv.com/article.php?articleId=23709

I wish sasquatches were real.

Imagine the tourism potential of a bunch of eight- to nine-foot-tall hairy hominids wandering around the province.

Hordes of tourists would pile off planes and cruise ships every summer, determined to snap a picture of the beasts nibbling on cedar bark. Rest stops would sell little plush sasquatches, footprint casts, and clumps of hair. A CD of sasquatch mating cries would be the perfect stocking stuffer for the relative who’s grown tired of whale songs.

Sadly, the sasquatch is not real. It does not exist. There never was, and never will be, a non-human hairy ape that roams the wilds of British Columbia. Except for the last time Robin Williams was filming a movie up here.

The main reason I know that sasquatch, aka Bigfoot, does not exist?

No one has ever found one. Not a live one, not a dead one. No smelly pelts, no missing teeth, not even a scrap of fur. The suspected sasquatch hair found a few years back turned out to be bison hair, when tested.

We’re not talking about a new species of burrowing rodent, here. These are supposed to be one of the largest animals in the province, about the size of a bear, if not bigger. You’d think they’d stand out.

There are several million people in B.C. And a lot of them spend a lot of time hunting, fishing, hiking, and bird-watching in wilderness areas.

Despite the large number of people out in the wilderness, despite the long history of settlement and exploration, and despite the total lack of a bigfoot corpse, some people still believe.

Check out the Internet, and there are dozens of web pages devoted to either proving that bigfoot exists, or to gathering evidence. So you can spend hours reading account after account of some guy driving along a logging road, who saw something big and hairy sprint out in front of his car and back into the bush. This type of encounter, with or without photos or film, can best be described as furry and blurry.

Then there are tracks galore, found in mud, sand, and gravel. You can read about people who heard haunting “vocalizations.” A significant number of these seem to take place near Agassiz and Chilliwack, which suggests that there are some rogue yodellers up there.

I have no idea why people believe in the bigfoot well into adulthood. If I personally saw a big, hair-covered animal darting around in the woods… well, the first thing I’d do is run the other way. But after that, I’d assume it was a bear and I was a little confused about what I saw. Failing that, I’d assume it was a guy in a gorilla suit having some fun with me. Both are well-known phenomena, and a lot more likely than an undiscovered humanoid.

The sad truth is, we’re encroaching ever further into wilderness areas every year.

If sasquatches really existed, they’d probably fill an ecological niche similar to that held by bears. Which means we’d probably see a lot more of them.

They’d be down in the rural garbage dumps, and picking through the trash outside Whistler Village. They would be regularly trapped by Conservation Service officers and relocated after wandering into downtown Maple Ridge. There’d be a few cute baby ones in wild animal shelters, after their mothers had been run over by 18-wheelers. Some idiots would raise them as pets, or shoot them to make into aphrodisiacs.

Frankly, it’s just too sad and sorry a lot for a noble, imaginary animal. It’s far better that the poor things remain fictional. They’d be in trouble in reality.

canada.com/langleyadvance/news/opinion/

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The Lake Michigan triangle is said to have similar characteristics of the Bermuda Triangle and is said to be a place of ghost ships, strange disappearances and even UFO sightings.

“There’s been some strange disappearances out there, there’s been many ships that have been lost that haven’t been found.”

Bill Wangemann is a historian from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He’s spent a lifetime gathering tales about the Lake Michigan triangle.

According to author Linda S. Godfrey in her book ‘Weird Michigan’ (2006), the Michigan Triangle starts from the town of Ludington to Benton Harbor in Michigan; another links from Benton Harbor to Manitowoc, Wisconsin; the final side connects Manitowoc back to Ludington.

But the legend doesn’t end with sunken ships; nearly 40 planes have disappeared over Lake Michigan too. Probably the most famous is northwest airlines flight 2501 that took off from New York City headed for Minneapolis in June of 1950 and plunged into Lake Michigan just off Benton Harbor. No one survived.

Then, there are the sightings of UFO’s and other strange anomalies in the sky. In fact there have been so many sightings of strange objects and phantom planes that the Federal Aviation Administration created a special lake reporting service to catalog the reported sightings.

And yet still, thousands make the journey through the Triangle every season.

Captain Kevin Fitch of the Badger Ferry has been sailing Lake Michigan waters for nearly 30 years, “I’ve heard of it, I don’t put a lot of faith in it but I have heard of it. Little bits and pieces here and there.”

He says in the thousand trips he’s made across the lake he’s never seen anything strange. “I can’t think of anything that didn’t have an explanation of some kind.”

So Captain Fitch continues to guide the ferry through what Wangemann says is considered the most dangerous part of the triangle.

“There’s dozen’s of these stories about different things that have occurred out there and people that have been lost and sailors that have disappeared off of ships and some people claim that there is something supernatural going on out on the lake,” says Wangemann.

The wreck of the schooner Rosa Belle and the loss of 11 crew members and passengers, all members of the Benton Harbor cult House of David, shocked the nation in the fall of 1921. The wreck was discovered on Oct. 30, floating upside down by the Grand Trunk car ferry Ann Arbor No. 4. The captain of the ferry said it appeared as if the schooner had been in a collision with another vessel. But no other ship was found to have been in a collision that week. The aft section was smashed, the cabin was wrenched away from the deck and the ship’s rigging was floating loosely about the hull. The mystery of what happened to the Rosa Belle was never solved.

Strange too was the fact that it was the second almost identical wreck for the Rosa Belle. The vessel capsized in the same area and drifted ashore near Grand Haven, Michigan, in August, 1875. Ten crew members were lost. The wreck was recovered at that time and rebuilt.

Among the strangest of the mysteries was the disappearance of the schooner Thomas Hume, which disappeared without a trace in a Lake Michigan gale on May 21, 1891, while sailing empty from Chicago to Muskegon, Michigan to pick up a load of lumber. Seven sailors, including Captain George C. Albrecht, were lost with the ship. Even though the lake was searched thoroughly, not a stick of lumber or piece of flotsam from a wreck was ever found. Old sailors speculated that the Hume, a wooden vessel, could not have sunk without some wreckage floating away. To this day, the Hume’s disappearance remains unsolved.

One of the most famous stories of disappearing crew members includes the freighter O.M. McFarland.

In April 1937, Captain George Donnor was heading to Port Washington, Wisconsin, “He decided to retire to his cabin for a nap, and he gave orders to be aroused about 6pm. And they went to his cabin and he was gone. The story was the cabin was locked from the inside and nobody knows what happened to him till this day,” says Wangemann.

During the time of Captain Donnor’s disappearance the McFarland was crossing through the nexus of the Lake Michigan triangle along the same course of the Badger Ferry.

As the Badger Ferry continues on its journey, passengers are unaware of what might lurk in the deep lake waters. John Fangman: “I know there’s a lot of mystery about the great lakes and legend and folklore.”

Bill Wangemann says there are some tails of sea monsters. “Many years ago there were people that swore they saw sea monsters on the shore here,” says Wagemann.

And some of the witness have quite a bit of credibility, “A Catholic priest went for a walk he saw this beast on the shore he said it was big and the color green,” says Wangemann.

Sea monsters, ghost ships, disappearing planes and crew members, unidentified flying objects. It’s the making of a good science fiction movie or a good legend.

Either way it certainly gives you something to think about as you look out onto Lake Michigan wondering what secrets she’s keeping in her deep dark waters.

naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/01/lake-michigan-triangle-mystery.html

Hong Kong - A UFO group in Hong Kong has condemned the city’s largest university for cancelling a course on ufology because, it said, of faculty objections to the subject.

The course was set to begin last September as an optional subject for University of Hong Kong students in a joint project between the university and the Hong Kong Institute of Ufology, local newspaper Apple Daily reported on Monday.

The course was delayed and discussions were held on offering it at a later date after some academics expressed reservations about its content, Moon Fong, a committee member of the institute, told reporters.

“Some members of the university’s science faculty were concerned that the course would present only the views of the UFO experts,” Fong said.

“But we believed that they were just worried about the possibility of ufology becoming a mainstream discipline at the university,” she said.

Fong said her institute was disappointed to see the course dropped and said it amounted to a suppression of ufologists, which she said was a common problem at academic institutions overseas.

However, Albert Chau, the university’s director of general education, said the cancellation had not been caused by any form of pressure from other faculties.

“Some colleagues suggested that there were different ways to look at the subject. We decided that the suggestion was a good one and that there was a need to reorganise the course,” he said.

Chau said that they were still holding discussions with the institute on the course. But he added that he was not sure when or in what form the course would be offered to the university’s students. - AFP

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