When I was nine years old I had a daily routine that included going to my grandparents? house after school. My grandpa would be sitting on the couch watching television. I would go get a board game, usually checkers, and he and I would play. While we played, he would tell me stories of the many outdoor adventures that he had in the old days. I remember one story in particular. The story was about him and some of his friends. In the winter of 1956 they were out raccoon hunting, which was a common practice back then because raccoon skins brought in twenty-five dollars a piece. That was quite a bit of money back in the fifties. Back then, many people trapped and hunted for a living.
As my grandfather was walking along he heard something running in his direction. Grandpa stopped and listened to the leaves crunching as the animal got closer and closer. This thing appeared about twenty yards directly in front of him. Grandpa said that he thought it might be one of the many hermits that live in the hills where they were hunting. He said that it looked just like a man standing in front of him. My grandpa said that this ?man? stunk horribly. My grandfather was armed with a twenty-two caliber rifle and was not scared of anything. He told me that he was terrified when this creature started slowly walking toward him. At about the time it started approaching him, my grandfather?s hunting companions called out for him. He said that the creature took off down the hill through the thick undergrowth when it heard the other men. To this day, my grandpa swears that what he saw was not a human. He said that it was a large, stinky, man-like creature that scared him more than anything has ever scared him in his entire life.
Reports like this are abundant in North America. Legends of a big hairy wild-man, known as Bigfoot, have been around for decades. Many people object to the creature?s reality. The question on hand is not whether it is real, but whether we have looked at the evidence supporting the existence of the creature. People should open their minds and admit the possibility that Bigfoot may exist.
Bigfoot is a creature that is said to be manlike in build. They have been reported to measure from five to nine feet in height and are said to be bipedal; that means that they walk on two legs like us. Bigfoot is said to be covered in hair from head to toe. The hair is said to be long and its color has been reported to be anywhere from black to a rusty red. They have a terrible odor that has been reported to be a mixture of a skunk and rotten eggs (Stocking).
There have been sightings of these creatures in forty-seven of our fifty states. Hawaii, Delaware, and Rhode Island are the only states that haven?t reported sighting any Bigfeet. Even with all of these different sightings in all of these different states, the descriptions of the creature are all eerily similar (The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization). If all of these sightings aren?t really sightings then how can the descriptions be so similar?
The consistency of description makes the existence of this creature seem very real. If features of an animal are said to be the same among a large number of people then many people will accept this as a rule. Why should Bigfoot be any different?
People might say that the stories about Bigfoot are similar because all of the people that reported sightings have heard about the animal and know what to say to make the animal sound like the rest of the sightings. The truth is that many of these sightings were reported by people who thought that Bigfoot was an unrealistic legend that couldn?t be real.
Orvile Scoggins is a Fouke, Arkansas resident who didn?t believe that Bigfoot existed. Another Fouke resident, Billy Williams, is one of Scoggins?s friends. Williams said that Scoggins always made fun of the people who believed in Bigfoot. On November 27, 1973, Scoggins said that he and his son saw the creature in a cow pasture. He said it was walking on two legs like a man and was covered in black hair (Arkansas Gazette). Scoggins thought Bigfoot was a silly rumor. Yet, he still reported its features the same way as most other sightings. Some of these sightings have been caught on video.
There have been many tapes that have shown the creature in the wild. To the general public, all of these videos are hoaxes. If all of them are hoaxes then how can the skeptics explain the detail and knowledge of anatomy that the hoaxers must have had? The most famous of these incidents happened in 1967. Roger Patterson filmed a large ape-like creature walking along a riverbed in Bluff Creek, Washington (Life). If this was a hoax, it was a good one. With the exception of its face and hands, the creature was covered in thick black hair. In order to hoax this Bigfoot, the hoaxer must have had a suit that mimicked the muscles moving under the hair. The hoaxer must have also been very stupid because Patterson had a loaded .270 rifle with him and could have fired a shot at what he saw.
There have been hundreds of eye-witness accounts of the creature. There were one hundred and forty-two reported sightings on one webpage (Encounters and Sightings). One of these eye-witness accounts told of five men who were attacked by these creatures in a hunting cabin in 1924. Fred Beck said that he and four of his friends were hunting at their homemade deer cabin in Washington. While they were out hunting one of his friends saw a big hairy creature. The man claimed to have shot the creature and then ran back to the cabin. Beck said that on the first night at about twelve o?clock, they were awaked by huge apes beating on the outside of their cabin. The men reported that rocks were hurled at the cabin during the incident. Beck said that the attack went on all night. Beck stated that he and his companions all agreed to leave the next day. (Beck) All eye-witness accounts are not reliable. Some of them are made up just for the fun of it. We do, however, have to look at all of the evidence when we talk about the existence of Bigfoot.
Some of the eyewitness accounts cannot be proven to be hoaxed. Generally, people talk about how fake these sightings are because they don?t want to believe that this creature could exist. Many people think that sightings of the creature are just made up by crazy people seeking fame. Their minds are closed to any such eye-witness accounts. Although there are other explanations for all of these sightings, they can?t be proven to be reliable.
Maybe there is a secret group of people that are highly trained in anatomy and they are dressing up in their ape-like suits and running around in the woods risking their lives in order to promote the legend of Bigfoot, but I doubt it. We cannot dispute the fact that some of these sightings probably are made up. However, what took place in 1924 was seen by not only one man, but by five men. Beck and all of his friends swear that the ape canyon storie is true. Five grown men were scared to death by creatures that they didn?t think were real.
There is an abundance of physical evidence supporting the existence of Bigfoot. Many unexplainable footprints have been documented. Some of these footprints may have been hoaxes, but some of the footprints are hard to come up with a solution for. In fact many of them haven?t been proved to be any known animal. Some of these Bigfoot tracks are hoaxed, but some of them would be tough to hoax. Some of these tracks stretch on for miles. There are not many people who would walk for miles in rugged terrain to promote Bigfoot.
Skeptics still insist that all of these tracks are hoaxed or they are just a deformed animal making tracks. It would take a skilled person to hoax tracks that stretch out for miles across rough terrain, but it could be done. We have to understand that many of these people don?t have anything to gain from this, besides getting laughed at by the skeptics who don?t believe in Bigfoot. Most of the people that think Bigfoot is a real animal are labeled by society as crazy.
Footprints aren?t the only thing that Bigfoot has left behind. In July, 1975, a strange hair sample was found that was sent to the FBI for analysis. The test tried to match the hair with an animal. The results stated that the hair belonged to no known animal (Recognition at Last). The things that we can plainly see can?t be overlooked. The physical evidence such as hair samples that can be tested with modern techniques is hard to dispute. Hair cannot be hoaxed with some type of synthetic fiber. The technology in the field of hair analysis is much to advanced. If hair was found, then it came from an animal that science has not yet discovered. If the hair sample tested can?t be identified with any known animal, then there is an animal out there that we have not yet named.
Even though skeptics don?t believe in this creature, they can?t prove that the creature is a fake. Try as they might, no one can. It is wrong to say things that can?t be proven to exist should be considered fake. Just because many people in Arkansas have never seen a lion doesn?t mean that lions do not exist. This kind of reasoning is the same as the reasoning many people use when they are talking about Bigfoot. We can?t make such a hasty generalization. This approach is wrong and it should not be considered reliable.
The scientific community will not be convinced that Bigfoot is real until they have a corpse. Science is based on facts and the only way Bigfoot?s existence can be confirmed for sure is to have a body. If science didn?t rely on facts, it would be useless to us. The fact is scientists don?t have a Bigfoot corpse. It is their jobs to rely on facts and facts only. However there is information about Bigfoot out there and most people choose to overlook it. We can?t overlook evidence and then argue that Bigfoot is not a real animal.
To many people, the legend of Bigfoot is nothing more than a fairytale. They rely on what others have told them and not on the evidence presented for the creature?s existence. Many of these same people do not even consider the possibility that the creature might exist. This is not a question of whether Bigfoot exists. However, I do want people to open their minds. We have to open up to the possibility that the creature known as Bigfoot may actually exist.
