7-12-06

Cryptozoology in General Takes a Hit with this Movie; Post 2

Yes, there is a movie called The Beast of Bray Road. No, I didn't have anything to do with it. Please see the post below.

And nope, I don't care a bit that they made the movie. I am sure many people will be mining the material of my newspaper articles and two books on the subject for years to come.

I'm not even against fictional portrayals of real phenomena. If the screenplay I wrote had ever been made into a movie, I've made it plain it would have been total fiction. But it wouldn't have involved large numbers of slain and ingested townspeople, and I guarantee the good folk of Elkhorn would have come out looking a lot better than they did in this one.

Nothing wrong with a small amount of crypto-oriented humor either.I don't know why people shouldn't have some good-natured fun with a creature that is said to live in their midst. If the local bakery can sell a few werewolf cookies or the newspaper wants to print t-shirts, why not? Humor is part and parcel of how humans cope with the unknown.

But as for the movie (and I do own the DVD), I just don¹t like the stereotype of small town, Wisconsin people the film makers chose to portray. Or the implied association with my first book, which contains nary a gore-filled episode. The worst thing about it, however, is that It sets the study of cryptids even further back in the public image, I think, when every unknown creature is turned into some head-ripping, fearsome monster and the only humans involved, other than perhaps the ³visiting cryptozoologist² in the story, are shown as backwoods ignoramuses.

This attitude makes it so much easier to ignore the next report of Bigfoot, out of place kangaroos, or anything else that doesn¹t fit neatly into known zoological parameters. It isn¹t just the small-towners or so-far-harmless creatures that come out of this with a black eye or severely lacerated midsection, it¹s every serious researcher into the unknown who then becomes laughable by association.

Maybe I should be even more upset about this, but if so, then so should everyone else who cares about Fortean or cryptozoological studies. By all means watch the movie Saturday if you haven¹t seen it, but as I said in an earlier post on Cryptomundo, please go into it with the clear idea that it¹s merely someone¹s idea of gorey entertainment and not a source of truth about any aspect depicted. Believe it or not, there are people out there who have trouble understanding that concept.

7-10-07

No Crypto-angle in Beast of Bray Road Movie on SCI FI This Saturday

Well, it isn't the worst slasher/monster movie ever made, but that is about all I think this movie boasting it is "based on a true story" could claim for itself. A cryptozoological study,it is not. And please let me make it clear again, I had absolutely nothing to do with it, other than inadvertently providing them an already publicized title to use without permission (granted, you can't copyright a title), and the context of a werewolfish creature in the small town of Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

If you enjoy Hollywood depictions of seeing human beings ripped apart, mangled and eaten in as many different ways as possible, you will like this movie. Never mind that in the dozens and dozens and dozens of witness reports I've now recorded from all over Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and other states, not one person has reported so much as a scratch from this creature, although the Manwolf often was in a position to do some harm if it had wished. The standard discovery scenario for the actual creature seems to be startle, intimidate, and escape. Elkhorn did not have a spate of missing persons around the time of the Bray Road reports, either. This is all fictional hogwash in the movie.

I also object to the portrayal of everyone from Elkhorn as beer-guzzling, foul-mouthed, tattooed hicks. Certainly we have people who fit some or all of those categories to some degree, but so does New York City. The typical Elkhornian is just your average, Middle American small town resident. If anything, we are probably more urbane (in the sense of having a population aware of what the urban life entails) than people would expect, since much of the population has come from the Chicago suburbs in recent years. We are located only an hour between the cities of Madison and Milwaukee, and have some of the best schools and restaurants anywhere. This is not Dogpatch. (I know, I know, it's Werewolfpatch. But there's a difference.)

I do understand why someone wanting to make a horror movie about The Beast of Bray Road would want to fictionalize it. It's tough to create horror where there is none. You pretty much have to make that part up.

Predictably, I recommend you read the book and its sequel, Hunting the American Werewolf, instead. I think fact is always scarier than fiction.

6-22-06

Sweet Sweet Bigfoot (drawing copyright Linda Godfrey 2006)

Is Bigfoot a brute or a benevolent "brother?" Although I try to concentrate on sightings of upright canids, people also send me tales of creatures that either they or I are able to identify as more likely to be a Bigfoot, usually due to the size, flatter face, lack of visible ears, primate legs and plantigrade footprints. I recently had two unorthodox encounters reported which may or may not have been Bigfoot, but which were both perceived that way by the witnesses. One encounter came in the form of an empathic impression. Very subjective, yes, but I listen because I've heard the same claim of empathic impressions...that is, messages that are clear somehow without specific words being used....from a variety of Manwolf witnesses, most of whom were unaware at the time that anyone else had ever reported that type of experience. (The Manwolf "messages" are invariably much less pleasant.) Here is the account from the woman who asked to remain anonymous:

My experience was strange. It was early evening. I was in my car, driving home east on Hwy 101 between Port Angeles and Sequim. I was in a reverie state, thinking about a sighting that I had read about that happened along that particular stretch of road several years ago. I was thinking that a sighting made 'sense' there, in that there is a lot of brush and a lot of cover and that it would be easy for something to slip across the road and get down to the beach to look for shellfish. Then, I started to worry about them (sasquatch). There are so many people running around with guns, and I started thinking that while sasquatch were reported to be huge and powerful, that they could have no idea about what guns could do, and that they were really in terrible danger if they were still around. It made me really sad. This is just a synopsis of my mind drift. It takes much longer to write than it did to process it mentally.

Then, (and for some reason it felt like this came from my right, the side of my car that was toward the hills and mountains), a thought broke into my reverie. It was a calm, detached, and very superior sort of thought. Essentially it said something like "Do not concern yourself with this (and a feeling of address like "little one' was implicit in this message). It said "What makes you think that we do not know of your guns? We have known of your guns for many years and we have our ways of dealing with them." Then it was gone. I have never, never, had anything intrude on my thoughts before in this way. It felt like a definite 'message' and the attitude was almost one of superior amusement. I got the impression that this was a being who was very much more developed than I am, that we humans were like children to it. He/She ( it felt androgynous) was serene, detached, and grounded, kind, but condescending in its approach to me. I was riveted by this, came home and told my husband about it, and have never forgotten it.

I know your mind can play tricks on you, but I have a strong sense of a brief but profound 'heart' connection with something completely unexpected and very alien to me. I'd never thought of them as being superior to us; had thought of them as being primitive beings of some sort,forced to eke out a marginal living on the fringes of our ever-advancing real estate developments. I was left with the sense that I should not attempt to reestablish contact, that the message was a response to a spontaneous upwelling of compassion from me, but that to seek contact out would not be welcome. So, that is the story. It is really nothing to talk about because nothing happened, but I continue to have a feeling of having been touched by something. - K.

The second experience happened to the daughter of someone who witnessed a Bigfoot near Marshfield, Wisconsin, several years ago. So she may have been predisposed to expectations of such an encounter. And she admits she was drunk at the time. She had just turned 21, and was out drinking with her younger sister, who stood under five feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds. The 21-year old needed to throw up on the way home, so her sister pulled over and she got out to let nature take its course. The road shoulder sat above a slope, and the young woman lost her balance and rolled to the bottom. She was lying there conscious but with her eyes closed, when she heard and felt some sort of large animal sniffing her from head to toe. She was too frightened to open her eyes, but decided to "play dead" in hopes it would leave her alone. She said it continued to sniff her for what seemed like five minutes or so, and then to her surprise, it picked her up in what felt like very hairy arms and "easily" carried her back up the slope and deposited her on the ground next to her car. When she did dare to open her eyes, it was gone. Her sister did not see it, but did not see anyone else in the remote area, either. Her sister was much too small to have enacted the feat, and the woman was sure the creature that so easily carried her was not human. She had no other way to account for ending back up on the road. "What else could it be but Bigfoot?" she asked.

What else indeed? It's hard to imagine any human sniffing her from head to toe like an animal for five minutes, if someone happened to be wandering in that isolated field in the wee hours of the morning at all, and I doubt a bear would carry her back to her car. She doesn't remember a smell from the creature, but thinks she was partly too "out of it" to have noticed.

The idea of Bigfoot as benevolent older brother is consistent with Native American beliefs. And it's true that if this creature has existed all this time alongside man, it must be both intelligent and familiar with guns. (I've often noted that the Manwolf seems also to be intelligent and aware of what guns are.) Both of these stories remind me in tone of Lunetta Woods' strange "Footprints in the Snow," a book about mysterious footprints and telepathic contacts with Bigfoot.

While it's easy to put both accounts down to overactive imaginations, both occurred in areas with either prior evidence (Bigfoot sightings abound in that area in Washington) or a sighting (the girl's father's much-investigated report). Both women were convinced of the reality of their experiences. And both are consistent with a growing number of other hairy hominoid witness reports which tell of empathic contact. I don't think it's smart to throw away any contact stories out of hand at this point. I leave them in the "extraordinary" file of encounters for now. And besides, it's rather reassuring to think that Bigfoot may actually have a soft spot for us somewhere in its oversized heart.

6-07-06

Post "Armageddon Day" Observations and Giant Fiberglass Werewolf Dreams

First, I have to mention that geocaching.com's King Boreas is off the hook (see post below), they have pulled the plagiarized page with an apology to B&N. I still have no idea how widespread this problem is within the site.

I had been hoping against hope yesterday that someone might report having seen an anomalous creature of one kind or another, just for the fun of having one sighted on the day so many people were having heebie jeebies about, but nothing so far. I did get to interview a Bigfoot witness on 6-6-06, but his sighting was years earlier. Thankfully, it will be another 100 years before everyone gets all worked up over this topic again.

And while cleaning out some files, I found a "blog" column I wrote in 2002 this time of year but never published. It's only remotely related to the content of this website, in its speculation about having giant statues of Manwolves, Bigfoot and other creatures decorating more of the countryside, but I'll put it on another page if anyone is interested. Some people think it trivializes cryptids to make giant statues of them, I think it just brings more attention to the cause.

6-05-06

Geo-Crypto Plagiarism: The Bogus Beast of Shadow Creek Road

Geo-caching is a wonderful family activity. In fact, I think is one of the best things to come along since sliced frozen bagels. For the uninitiated, participants use GPS coordinates to locate treasures hidden on accessible properties, then either record or replace the treasure with one of their own. One of the main supporting sites is at www.geocaching.com. But thanks to an alert friend, I discovered that this site contains a whole page that completely plagiarizes my Beast of Bray Road story in Weird Wisconsin, Your Travel Guide to Wisconsin's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Not only did they cob the article, word for word (except for place names), even keeping actual witness names, they used my original drawing of the Beast AND a photo of the Bray Road road sign, even though this is supposed to be on a street called "Shadow Creek Road." See http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=270971

The story was submitted by a user with the screen name "King Boreas." This guy is obviously king of nothing except out and out plagiarism. Since he seems to have a bent for crypto-hunts, and no scruples against stealing the words and images of others, I would urge anyone with published stories about real places to examine his other offerings on the site. As for the lifted Beast prose and pix, the matter has been passed on to the legal department of my publisher, Barnes & Noble. I bet they have a few more lawyers than either geocaching.com or good King Boreas.

5-30-06

Bad Hair Day Bigfoot Draws Opinions

After I posted the story below with my drawing of witness Matt Wakely's strange hominid seen in SE Walworth County last fall, Lore Coleman was kind enough to post it on his Cryptomundo blog as Wisconsin Bigfoot's Bad Hair Day. This in turn was listed on today's coasttocoastam.com Hot Stories. Readers of Loren's blog have chipped in with many interesting opinions. Loren himself suggests that this creature might also be catalogued as a variant of the Marked Hominid category, which I agree is possible. I think that one of the best likelihoods of those suggested is that Matt Wakely spotted a juvenile Bigfoot, perhaps at the tender age akin that that of teenage human males just before shaving becomes a daily necessity. The facial fur would not yet have filled itself in, other hair growth patterns may still be emerging to conform to those of typical adults, and the relative slimness of the body could simply be an adolescent build.

As for resemblance of the face to a human, I would suggest taking a glance at a computer simulation of the Patterson-Gimlin film face that shows what this creature would look like without its fur. From work done by Doug Hajicek and others at Whitewolf Entertainment, see the Bigfoot Goes Digital page. Wish I had seen this earlier myself, but just recently learned of it!

Kissin' cousins, all of us, perhaps!

5-28-06

At Play in the Fields of the Beast - Manwolf, Bigfoot, and Erectus Hominid too?

Although the story of Matt Wakely's creature sighting on White Pigeon Road and Hwy. B in SE Walworth County last fall made it into the Hunting the American Werewolf book, I regretted that I was not able to get a witness sketch from Matt in time for publication. Just this week I amended that error, and sat down with the polite 22-year old at the home of his mother, Jacqui, who first told me about Matt's sighting. Between his own partial sketches and a drawing I did at his direction, I was finally able to come up with the creature below, which Matt says matches what he saw. One caveat, he wasn't able to see the feet, especially the one on the ground, very well, so I had to guess at those. But he had a very good look at the rest of the creature, since it was a rare daylight sighting, and he was going very slow due to making a right/angle turn at the intersection. It watched him go past, its right foot resting on top of a tombstone, and he was able to see it from several different angles. He is very adamant about the length of the hair and its distribution. He said the skin was bare on part of the face and on the pectorals, and appeared to be the color of a "well-tanned" Caucasian. The fur was "milk chocolate" brown. He could not see genitalia, but noted the lower trunk area was thickly furred. He immediately called his mother on his cell phone and told her he had just seen a "caveman." The creature was standing in an old settler's cemetery, which was backed up on two sides by mature cornfields, with another field across White Pigeon Road.

I'd like to make it very clear that this is NOT the creature known as the Manwolf or the Beast of Bray Road. To compare, look at the new witness sketches by the 47-year old registered nurse from her 2004 Bray Road sighting that I just learned about this week (see entries below). The legs are very humanlike, not canid, the arms are much longer than a human's but definitely not canid forelimbs, and the face is flat and somewhere between apelike and human. I could get more technical with pongid and homonid anatomical terms but will save that for elsewhere...I think the picture tells it best. Matt described the creature's mouth area as "pushed out something like a chimp's, but not as rounded." Below are Matt's own sketches of the head.

This creature is also different from the witness sketches by Judy Wallerman and David Pagliaroni, who both drew very classic Bigfoots with the usual "cape" of fur touching the shoulders, not wild-haired like the above creature (which Matt estimated at 7 feet tall). It does resemble Coleman and Huyghe's The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide's Erectus Hominid, I think, except for what Matt calls the "80s big hairdo."

I want to emphasize I find this witness very credible, and he has even offered to take a polygraph test for a TV show that I'm working with right now. I think that he if had been prone to make something up, he probably would have described something more in conformity with the other two creatures that have already been reported. And I should also mention that this sighting was very close to the Powers Lake area where the most recent incident, only a few weeks ago, happened. But what that witness saw sound more like the Manwolf.

The puzzle continues.