Monsters and Myths

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

Last year when a couple of Georgia men claimed to possess a Bigfoot body on ice, a surprising number of news outlets covered the story. CNN and CBS, National Geographic and Scientific American interviewed Bigfoot “experts,” such as members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization — experts more likely found on “Monsterquests”, a TV show that covers werewolves and vampires. Plenty of readers expressed their outrage on comment boards. “Were you recently purchased by the National Enquirer?” wrote one reader to Scientific American. Another wrote, “This is far beneath what I expect to read about in SciAm.”

Of course, it isdoubtful the reporters believed the story, even before Sasquatch researchers pointed out that the body lacked muscle tone and that its hair samples burned like plastic. (It turned out to be a sloppy hoax involving a gorilla suit.) Sasquatch, of all legendary creatures, has become a cliché of the absurd, and with good reason. The idea of a 7-foot-tall unknown primate skulking around the ever-shrinking wilds of the United States sounds as far-fetched as a
farmer being abducted by aliens in the cornfields of Kansas.

But science journalists entertain the Bigfoot story (even with a wink) because discovering a new and shockingly strange animal in the farthest reaches of the wilderness remains possible. Today, amid the drumbeat of bad news of species being driven to extinction, scientists are discovering more new species — both curious and commonplace — than in any time in history. As recently as November, excited anthropologists found a pygmy tarsier in Indonesia, a spooky gremlinlike primate, the size of a mouse, not seen since 1921.

That means some of the most respected scientists in the world cannot help having an open mind when it comes to the zoological unknown. And a few fringe scientists, known as cryptozoologists, are actively in pursuit of beasts of lore on the outside chance that they may not be figments of our imagination.

Technically, cryptozoology is the study and search for bizarre or legendary creatures, known as cryptids. There are the classics: the Loch Ness Monster, Chupacabra, the Yeti. But there are many that are not as well known and not as unbelievable, like the Buru, a slinky 10-foot-long reptile that the Apatani, a tribal group in India, claim to have seen, or the Orang pendek, an upright gibbonlike creature said to stroll like a human in the forests of Sumatra.

The hunt for cryptids isn’t just quixotic. It’s motivated by the same ambitions that have led to key zoological discoveries. You might even say cryptid hunters keep warm that place in science whereanything is possible. And it’s from that place where some of the most astounding advances in the sciences are derived.

At the turn of the 20th century, for instance, the Mountain Gorilla and theplatypus were thought to be legend or hoax. Pearl fishermen of Indonesia told tales of enormous prehistoric-like creatures on a remote island; the stories turned out to be real and the animals were named Komodo dragons. (An animal, even today, has not been “discovered” until a bonafide scientist says so, no matter how many locals claim its existence.)

More recently, new animals are turning up at a rapid pace. “In the last 25 years, the number of species known to share the world with us has grown by 25 percent,” says Bruce Patterson, a curator of mammals
at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. “This is a remarkable level of discovery, and a remarkable statement of our current ignorance about the other forms of life we share the planet with.”

Most of these animals are much smaller than a Loch Ness Monster; most are plankton, insects, small fish and amphibians. But a few new mammals are discovered every year. While rats and bats are the most common finds, some big surprises have turned up.

“The third largest land mammal in South America, the Chacoan peccary [which looks like a furry boar], was thought to be extinct for tens of thousands of years until it was discovered in 1972,” says Patterson. In 1992, the Saola, a 200-pound deerlike bovine(cow family!), was discovered in Vietnam. “It’s a beautiful little thing,” says Patterson of the Saola. “Maybe 1,100 of them known to exist in the world.”

A few years ago, he adds, “I think the most remarkable new mammal discovered was the Laotian rodent.” The Laotian rock rat, a squirrel-size, bushy-tailed rodent with a football-shaped head, was discovered in 1998. “It was found to belong to a family of animal that was thought to have gone extinct 11 million years ago. It is the only living representative of an otherwise extinct family.”

Animals like the rock rat — once thought to have been extinct — are known to biologists as Lazarus species, and are quarry for both cryptozoologists and run-of-the-mill zoologists. Most people are familiar with the story of the ivory-billed woodpecker, a large and colorful bird thought to have been lost forever that may or may not have been found in 2004 alive and flapping in the swamps of Arkansas. (This now-legendary species comes complete with its own controversial video footage, rather like the famous Patterson-Gimlin Footage of a trudging Bigfoot.) In 1938, the coelacanth, a large fish that tends to dwell in deep-water caves, was found to be alive and flourishing. Ichthyologists had assumed it died out around 65 million years ago.

A find like the ivory-billed woodpecker or the coelacanth propels its discoverer to the top of his or her field, so the search for the oddest of creatures can be a long shot worth pursuing. Ian Harrison, a freshwater fish expert at Conservation International, has been hunting his own mini Loch Ness Monster, a hideous-looking fish called Rhizosomicthys totae, fondly known as the fat catfish.

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