Monsters and Myths

Back in 2005 a ferryboat driver named Bobby Clarke was floating along the Nelson River when something caught his eye on the opposite bank. It was a big black creature of some kind so he took an old camcorder that he kept on the boat and took some footage of the creature. He took a 2:49 video which many people agree on could very well be Bigfoot. Clarke went on to show the tape to friends and alot of the locals in the area and then went onto to sell rights to screen it to “A current Affair”.

Clarke was quoted as saying ” he had been nervous ever since seeing the creature. especially when he takes his ferry over to that side of the river where he spotted the creature”. A Current Affair would launch an expedition to Manitoba to try and locate the bigfoot or sasquatch or signs of its existance but no results were ever published or announced. A few weeks after after the clarke monster sighting was no longer a hot headline the entire magazine would be canceled by fox television.

Here is the Clarke bigfoot footage so you can take a look and decide for yourself !

Here are more video enhancements of the Lake Champlain “Champ Video” taken by Eric Olsen. It is still undertermined what the creature actually is in the video , could this truely be “CHAMP” ?  With more and more stable and enchanced version of the video , you can form your own opinion.

The creature known as Bigfoot, Sasquatch — or Se’sxac among the Coast Salish — is now covering a whole new territory; the Internet.

A Texas man, a self-styled Bigfoot researcher, has posted a video he claims to have taken near Tofino in July 2006.

Claims of the creature on Vancouver Island go back many years, and a Comox Valley man who has researched Bigfoot, John Bindernagel, claims to have found footprints in Strathcona Park near Mount Washington.

Bindernagel, a biologist, wrote North America’s Great Ape: The Sasquatch.

He is concerned that the ability to post videos by anyone claiming it to be a Sasquatch will damage efforts to do genuine scientific research into the phenomenon.

“For me the Internet is a mixed bag, it’s easier to report a sighting, but it’s not vetted very well.”

In 2005 Bindernagel told the Daily News that since 1850 there have been about 100 sightings on the Island. In the same time there have been about 400 sightings in B.C., a number he thinks is low due to fear of being mocked.

Though evidence has yet to surface proving Bindernagel’s claim the Sasquatch is real, he thinks that a scientific approach could prove its existence.

He is now working on a second book about the phenomenon to argue why scientists should give it serious consideration.

He said fuzzy films on the Internet do not help him making that argument.

“The evidence doesn’t get scrutinized objectively,” said Bindernagel. “We can’t bring the evidence to our colleagues because it’s perceived as tabloid.”

One Nanaimo man familiar with most native animals on the Island is Ron Heusen, a senior conservation officer.

He’s never seen anything but bear, elk, deer and similar wildlife.

“The Ministry of Environment through the provincial Wildlife Act does not regulate Bigfoot - it’s not in the Wildlife Act,” Heusen joked.

Though Heusen’s never had a call about such a creature, he said it would be easy to mistake a bear or other animal for a Sasquatch.

“It would be easy to make an honest mistake.”

Source: canada.com

Columbia Police Department is investigating a slew of Bigfoot sightings near the Pearl River, according to The Columbian-Progress.

The police chief indicated he believes it’s a hoax, but it makes you wonder, “What if it’s not?”

The next time I’m sitting in the deer stand and it’s dark and murky, I will probably spot one.

And then like the hundreds of other witnesses to the cultural phenomenon will have no tangible proof, and then everyone will think I’m crazy.

I first learned of Bigfoot while watching TV in my camp amid the swamps. It’s way out there - 30 minutes from the nearest Piggly Wiggly and just one bar with Verizon Wireless. And what pops on the TV, a Bigfoot special. Scared me to death.

I almost forgot about sasquatch (well, minus those beef jerky commercials) until some friends from Columbia were talking about it last week.

And as God as my witness, one of friends went out searching for it last week.

Let me tell you about Laura. I just met her two weeks ago, a friend of a friend. She lives in the outskirts of Columbia, and every evening, she sits on her porch with a cigarette, listening to the cackle of her police scanner.

I knew instantly she was my kind of person.

She didn’t find Bigfoot, but she did discover a track. No lies.

I wanted to make Mississippi famous, something other than Frank Melton stories.

I called CNN; no bites. I called Fox News; they said they couldn’t cover it because it could mock their viewers.

So, I decided I would write about it.

You may think I am kidding about the whole thing. No, it’s on the Progress’ Web site now. And even better, the police chief said “an out-of-state organization had visited the area with specialized equipment for primate study and had found no evidence of anything unusual.”

I know what you’re thinking; I looked into the matter.

All Fritscher family members are accounted for, and none have passed through the Columbia area. I have some beastly aunts and uncles - quite possibly science’s link between us humans and the homanids.

During my research of Bigfoot, I stumbled upon some nifty facts (all from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization):

FELTON, Calif.,- Deep in the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains exists a place where a legend  lives.

In parts of the world it is known as the Yeti, in others it’s Sasquatch, but just about everyone at some point or another has heard of Big Foot.

The question is, does Big Foot really exist in the Santa Cruz Mountains?

Perhaps one location that you can find the answers ist the Big Foot Discovery Project Museum located in Felton. Operator Michael Rug has devoted the past 50 years in researching the elusive creature. After having experienced a sighting as a child he says they can and do exist.

“We’ve had about four dozen reports come in, and I’m quite confident that some of those are bogus. Some people are seeing black bears and mistaking them for big foot, some people are not seeing anything at all, it’s there imagination getting carried away, and we’ve even had a few hoaxes pop up. To me that means we have a genuine subset of the big foot phenomenon right here in Santa Cruz,” says Rug.

When asked what he thinks of people who do not believe there is anything strange living the Santa Cruz Mountains, he says: “I say to people, try to put yourself in my shoes. You see something, it registers in your brain with your two eyes, and it says there is a large bi-pedal primate walking through the woods.”

Source: kcba

This video is being looked over and diagnosed by people everywhere. Many think that this could be actual video footage of the famous lake monster of Lake Champlain ” Champ”. Some others are more sceptical and believe it is more likely a moose or some other animal. Here is the video in a more stable and even an enhanced version for you to decided and form your own opinion.

Enhanced Version

PORT HENRY — A Vermont man shot a cell-phone video that some people are calling a new sighting of the legendary Lake Champlain creature, Champ.

Eric Olsen, 37, a Web site developer and musician in Burlington, posted the two-minute video on YouTube.

He said he shot it Sunday at about 5:30 a.m. from Oakledge Park near the Burlington waterfront.

The blurry clip shows a swimming animal raise its head above water several times, then drop from sight.

Although many people are saying the creature could be Champ, Olsen isn’t one of them.

“I put this up because it was strange, not because I think it is Champ,” he wrote in his comments on YouTube. “I shot this video, with cellphone, of something in the lake at Oakledge Park on Sunday.”

Olsen doesn’t have a listed phone number.

He asked YouTube users if anyone else was in the park and saw the creature.

“Was anyone else out and about around Oakledge on Sunday just after sunrise who saw this as well?”

But after 73 postings, mostly from people who think he saw Champ, Olsen disabled YouTube’s commenting capability for his video.

A comment poster using the name “talkinglake” was enthusiastic about the video.

“Looks Champ-like to me! And some who have seen such sights in the past were alarmed that our creature had died, but maybe life lives on! Yay. Cool vid.”

Some users commented that Olsen had only joined YouTube on May 16 and had posted just three other videos.

But by early Wednesday, there had been more than 36,000 viewings of the video, which Olsen named “Strange sighting on Lake Champlain.”

One of those was Joe Nickell, a cryptozoologist in Amherst, who told the Associated Press he believes that the creature was a young moose swimming in the lake.

Ellen Marsden, a biology professor at the University of Vermont, agreed with Nickell, telling the Burlington Free Press she thinks the animal could be a young moose in distress.

Olsen admits he doesn’t know what it was.

Tracked down by a reporter for the Free Press, he told the paper, “It struck me as something that was long (and) that it didn’t have much girth.”

The Free Press contacted its own consulting cryptozoologist, Loren Coleman of Portland, Maine, who said a laboratory analysis would be necessary.

“The film needs to have a formal forensic analysis performed, to break it down frame by frame. It needs to be looked at very seriously.”

Cryptozoology is the study of legendary or mythical creatures.

Since the Vermont-based Champ Quest group became inactive a few years ago, there has been no central clearinghouse for Champ sightings.

Last summer, there were few reported sightings of the legendary lake monster.

Its first sighting was in 1609 by French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who noted in his diary that he had seen a “sea serpent.”

Hundreds of Champ sightings on Lake Champlain have been reported over the years, most from Bulwagga Bay in Port Henry and Button Bay near Vergennes, Vt.

Former Champ Quest Director Dennis Hall had shot video of a large creature swimming in Button Bay.

The most famous Champ photo was taken in 1977 by Sandra Mansi, now of Bristol, Vt. That photo of a long-necked creature was published in the New York Times.

Many people believe Champ is a large sturgeon, while others think it is a genuine prehistoric throwback, maybe a plesiosaur.

Whatever the animal was that Olsen saw, he told the Free Press that he never saw it leave the water.

He said he stopped filming after two minutes because his cell phone was running out of memory.

Watch Video here

Strange sighting on lake champlain

Source: freepressrebulic

For many in Hoopa, Bigfoot is a reality of the inland valley — one that several residents have experienced through first-hand encounters.

Those encounters — profiled in David Paulides’ “The Hoopa Project: Bigfoot Encounters in California” — point to evidence bolstering the existence of the large human-like creature.

The book, a collaborative effort of the North American Bigfoot Search, is based on a numerous interviews conducted in 2004. But, the catalyst goes a bit further back.

In a telephone interview from his Los Gatos home this week, Paulides said the organization began when a group of business acquaintances were sitting around a table one day and began talking about strange occurrences in the woods.

”That was the catalyst for us to talk,” he said.

The search and the organization evolved slowly among the tight-knit group, the author said. With a combination of time, resources and well-honed investigative skills, the colleagues began by noting all of the Bigfoot sightings on a map of the Pacific Northwest — a realization that led to the publication of a map showing those sites and noted that a predominant number of sightings had been reported from Northern California.

Those sightings, however, weren’t enough to immediately sway the author, a veteran of 20 years as an officer and investigator with the Los Gatos Police Department.

”I was open to the idea,” Paulides said, “but I was pessimistic.”

Even after the numerous interviews, Paulides said he couldn’t swear to a 100 percent belief in Bigfoot’s existence, but the scale weighs heavily in that direction. Paulides pointed to the time it took longtime resident Al Hodgson — who has been looking into the existence of Bigfoot for some 60 years. Three years ago, Paulides said, a member of Hodgson’s church, a woman he knew could tell nothing but the truth, confessed that she had seen Bigfoot. It was that confidence that swayed Hodgson.

That’s not to say that Paulides doubts the words of those he interviewed.

”I believe everybody in the Hoopa project that was interviewed was telling the truth,” he said.

Each of those included in the book signed an affidavit attesting the truth of their statements.

Even those who held no cotton to the very tall biped’s existence.

Michael Mularkey, then manager of the Ray’s Food Place in Hoopa, recounted an early-morning sighting during the commute to work from his Willow Creek home.

”Michael was approximately 15 minutes into the drive when he entered Hoopa and an area of the highway that parallels Shoemaker Road,” Paulides wrote. “He had his headlights on and was traveling approximately 40-50 mph when he saw a huge creature standing on the roadway near the computer shop. He immediately slowed when he saw the hairy beast standing on two feet. Michael said the creature was covered in reddish-orange hair or fur, except under its arms, and was standing on two feet. He stated that the creature did not have a snout like a bear, but had a flat face like a human or ape. He said he saw the creature take two giant strides, 6-8 feet each time, as it walked across the roadway and attempted to partially hide behind a large tree on the eastern side of the road. Michael said that he continued to slow his vehicle to get a good view of the creature. He said that it could not get completely behind the tree, and appeared to be looking at him as he continued driving. Michael said that as the creature was looking at him, he could see that its eyes seemed to be almost glowing yellow. He continued his journey to Ray’s and told a few friends about what had happened later in the morning.”

Thus a doubter was converted.

”Michael said he was the ultimate skeptic about Bigfoot being a living mammal,” Paulides wrote, “but no more. He stated, ‘I know what I saw and it was not a bear, it was Bigfoot. Those eyes were unreal, I’ll never forget its eyes or its size’.”

Paulides’ book is full of illustrations of Bigfoot, drafted from discussions between those who reported seeing the creature and longtime forensic artist Harvey Pratt, who Paulides hired to visually chronicle the Bigfoot encounters.

Nearly all of those drawings share many similarities, although Paulides said none of the sketches were shared among those who were interviewed.

”Nobody saw anyone else’s sketch,” he said, noting that all were kept concealed until the book’s publication. The consistency is that all but one show a lack of facial hair.

”We never thought it would be like this,” he said, “We thought it would be more ape-like, more gorilla. That’s completely not the case.”

”The Hoopa Project: Bigfoot Encounters in California,” is available at the Bigfoot Museum in Willow Creek and the Bigfoot Bookshop in Salyer, as well as online through Amazon.com.

Source: times-standard

The flooding rains which have ravaged the east coast of Australia over the past week have left a trail of misery for many, but for one man their aftermath provides a rare opportunity to attain elusive evidence of Australia’s most famous mystery animal.

In the wake of south-east Queensland’s record-breaking floods, Tim the Yowie Man, Australia’s leading mystery investigator, has raced from his national headquarters in Canberra to the Gold Coast hinterland in an attempt to find conclusive evidence of the yowie.

“Historical records indicate that there is a direct correlation between significant rain events in this part of Queensland and the sightings of Australia’s fabled yowie,” explains the purveyor of all things mysterious.

“The soaked soil and muddy bogs created by the heavy rain is more conducive to animals, including yowies, leaving their footprints,” further explains the Yowie Man.

“Rain to the extent experienced up here in the last week would make a large hairy bipedal hominoid creature very uncomfortable and potentially force it into areas it might not otherwise frequent,” says the crack cryptonaturalist.

Tim the Yowie Man has set up camp in the village of Springbrook which has earned the title as yowie capital of Australia for its steady stream of reports over especially the last fifty years, including an alleged sighting by an Australian politician and one of the few alleged yowie encounters that has involved violence.

“It’s certainly a hot-spot for yowie activity and now immediately after the rain is historically a good time to hunt for evidence of the creature – I’m quietly confident of finding some sort of evidence such as hair or footprints of the mystery beast.”

“If I’m really lucky I may even get to see one,” hopes the Yowie Man.

Source: allnewsweb

The remains of a Loch Ness-style creature that lived in the English Channel 200 million years ago have been found on a beach.

Archaeologists have spent months piecing together dozens of old bones found encased in limestone on Britain’s Jurassic Coast by a fossil hunter.

After nearly completing the jigsaw-like puzzle they have disclosed that the skeleton, which is 70 per cent complete, is that of a 12ft long plesiosaur.

The marine reptile resembled the Loch Ness monster with its long thin neck and tail, four large flippers and razor-sharp teeth.

Plesiosaurs existed during the Jurassic period 150 to 200 million years ago when what is now the Channel was a shallow, tropical sea.

Detailed examination of the bones revealed teeth marks from where a predatory dinosaur would have feasted on the carcass of the “lake monster”.

Richard Edmonds, science manager for the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site, said: “They are rare. There are only 10 known examples of complete or even partial skeletons of this species.

“I have been doing this for 30-odd years and I have only ever found the odd bone.”

The remains were discovered by Tracey Marler under rocks on Monmouth Beach near Lyme Regis, Dorset.

She first found a single bone in limestone. She and partner Chris Moore, an expert in fossils, returned to the scene and they found four more bones.

After further excavation about 150 vertebrae bones and parts of its skull and jaw which had one tooth in it were uncovered.

“It came out in pieces but you could clearly see how it looked. The tail bone was in position,” said Mr Moore.

“Some of the back bones were completely in place where they should be and the neck bone was there as well. You could see some of the bones had actually been chewed up a bit.

“There are teeth marks and you can see how the skeleton had been torn apart by some other nasty marine reptile.

“Plesiosaurs lived in shallow, warm tropical seas. They had long necks and sharp teeth and would have chased after and eaten fish.

“Their predator would have been the ichthyosaur which was carnivorous.”

Natural England worked closely with the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site team to carefully extract the fossils.

It is hoped the skeleton will go on public display at the Lyme Regis Museum.

Source: sanfranciscocronical