The Controversy Returns: First Stick Signs of the Year

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Ever since my book Backyard Bigfoot was published back in 2006, controversy has swirled around the idea that Bigfoot might create purposeful signs using broken sticks. I’ve talked about the phenomenon in print, on the radio, on my blog, and in person to anyone who asks about it. Have I convinced the world I’m right about stick signs and Bigfoot? Of course not. Many people are fascinated by my research, but the world at large – and especially the community of Bigfoot researchers – remain on the fence, at best.

Frankly, I don’t care if everyone agrees with me. And I won’t stop looking for strange things in the woods that comprise my backyard. In fact, just this week I found the first stick signs of the year. I normally found very little, if anything, over the winter. After 2005, the frequency of stick signs has seemed to diminish, as I discussed in my e-book Backyard Phenomena. This year, however, is off to a good start. This week I found four signs that meet my criteria for an unnatural occurrence. They appeared overnight, are composed of broken sticks, are arranged in distinctly unnatural formations, and they occur in areas along game trails and away from trees. In the past, I’ve also found mysterious footprints and  heard strange cries in the same vicinity.

Take a look at the photos, and decide for yourself.

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Mysterious Tracks in the Snow

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The snow is finally melting and the weather has finally warmed up here in the Upper Peninsula—at least until Thursday, when the next cold front arrives. But I digress. Back in the woods, large patches of relatively thick snow linger. Last Friday, in one of these patches I discovered a series of unusual tracks. Not only are the tracks themselves unusually large, but the spacing between them is quite wide. The stride length is, in fact, wider than that of the average full-grown man. The trackway crosses out of the snowy patch as if the animal were just passing through the area, which is a major trail used by the local wildlife.

snowtracksNow I’ve seen many types of tracks in the snow—rabbit, deer, horse, human, etc.—and I’ve seen what happens when those tracks begin to melt. The footprints lose some of their definition, and might enlarge somewhat. For these tracks to have been made by a normal animal, even a bear, would require that melting enlarged each track to two or three times the original size, at least. This seems highly unlikely. All of the tracks look the same size.

What made these tracks? It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Naturally, Bigfoot is a possibility. As with most woodland mysteries, answers remain elusive.

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Where Do Bigfoot Go in the Winter?

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Technically, it’s spring. Here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, like in much of the Midwest and Great Plains, winter refuses to go into hibernation. It’s May and the forecast calls for snow. This never-ending winter leads me to contemplate a question—where do Bigfoot go in the winter?

Of course, nobody knows the answer. There are number of possibilities, including:

  • migration (they head south for the winter), and
  • hibernation (sleeping for  most of the winter, like bears),

SANY0014The trouble with the migration theory is that people do see Bigfoot during the wintertime in northern areas. Also, migration would lead to a larger population of Bigfoot in the south during the winter, which one might expect would lead to more sightings; however, this does not seem to occur. As for the notion of hibernation, I haven’t heard many people talk about it, and I’m not aware of nay evidence supporting the concept. Bigfoot seem to behave more like people than bears. This might explain why the migration theory seems to have become popular with a number of Bigfoot researchers.

There is another possibility, though. Bigfoot might simply retreat into the deeper woods or to underground dwellings (either natural or otherwise). In my own backyard, I’ve found possible footprints, not belonging to a human being, during the wintertime. My e-book Backyard Phenomena and my upcoming paperback book Forbidden Bigfoot include photos of these tracks. I’ve also found stick signs and mane braids in the winter. Both of these are controversially attributed to Bigfoot by some researchers, including me. If Bigfoot are as  intelligent as humans, then why shouldn’t they have figured out a means of surviving the winter without taking off for distant regions or napping the months away?

Ancient humans, who lacked wood stoves and gas furnaces, managed to survive during the harsh winters of northern Europe, Siberia, and other cold climes. Even prehuman hominids, such as Homo heidelbergensis, managed the northern European winters. There’s no evidence they migrated.

So, migration is not the only option—or even the most plausible one. Perhaps the patterns of human behavior, sans modern technology, can tell us more about Bigfoot behavior than studying living apes can.

Bigfoot and the Adventure of the Messy Molecules

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For the most part, Bigfoot research involves collecting sighting reports. An awful lot of Bigfoot researchers shy away from expressing any opinions or theories about the creatures they study. At best, they might say they believe Bigfoot is a real animal, not a myth or delusion. Yet everyone has an opinion, whether they want to risk verbalizing it or not. Forming opinions—good or bad, right or wrong—is a part of human nature.

So what is Bigfoot? Ape, hominid, human, alien…Before we can answer that question unequivocally, we must first understand our own origins. We know where human beings came from, right? Well, maybe not.

Information about human origins comes from two sources—fossils and DNA. Fossils are rarer than most people think. A fossil is any remnant of a long-dead living thing, from bones to feces to impressions of body parts, that scientists unearth from the ground. The youngest fossils date back 10,000 years. The process of fossilization alters the chemistry of the carcass by adding, taking out, or substituting minerals. Other kinds of remains, such as mummies, are not technically fossils.

Now consider that scientists estimate upwards of 98% of all the species that have arisen in earth’s history have gone extinct. The fossil record preserves an estimated 10% of all species that have ever lived. Of the species we know existed, those named in our taxonomy of the natural world, over 80% coexist with us today. Thus, the fossil record contains a mere fraction of the life-forms that once populated this planet.

OrrorinWhen it comes to putative ancestors of modern humans, the fossil record is even scarcer and the fossils themselves fragmentary and incomplete. For most of the species designated as human ancestors, the evidence for their existence consists of incomplete skulls and perhaps a few isolated bone fragments from the rest of the skeleton (see the drawing at left, which shows the evidence for the species Orrorin tugenensis). The fossil record provides nothing close to conclusive proof of how modern human beings arose.

Now consider the DNA evidence. Scientists have used the DNA of modern humans to construct a molecular clock that supposedly lets them count backward to any moment in the genetic history of our species. The molecular clock is supposed to tell us when specific mutations first appeared. This timeline is then used to calculate the dates of watershed events in human evolution.

When did the hominid branch split off from the trunk of the primate tree of life? When did Homo sapiens diverge from all other hominids? The molecular clock supposedly gives us these answers. The problem is, the DNA evidence often contradicts the fossil evidence. The molecular clock spits out dates that are much more recent than the timeline suggested by the fossils. This discrepancy brings up the major fault of the molecular clock. It relies on the assumption that mutations occur at a regular (i.e., clock-like), predictable rate.

This is hardly the case, however. Recently, two geneticists in England published a paper suggesting that the molecular clock may be off by half. Their study compared the DNA of modern human parents and their children to determine the speed at which mutations occur. Their research pointed to a far slower mutation rate, meaning that the molecular clock may need some serious recalibrating. For instance, as currently calibrated the molecular clock pinpoints the moment modern humans first left Africa 60,000 years ago. The newly proposed mutation rate would push back the human diaspora to 120,000 years ago—a date that meshes with the fossil record.

Yet even the newly calibrated molecular clock, if it becomes widely accepted, relies on the same assumption as the original clock. It assumes that mutations occur at regular, predictable intervals. Is this true? No one knows.

The vagaries of the fossil record and the DNA evidence makes the tale of human origins just that—a tale, a lovely little story. Despite centuries of intense scientific discussion and debate, the mysteries of our own origins still elude us.

And the mysteries of Bigfoot’s identity and origins are even more enigmatic.

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References

Sharpe, Katherine. “Turning Back the Human Clock.” Archaeology, 66(1), p. 21.

Shiel, Lisa A. The Evolution Conspiracy, Vol. 1: Exposing Life’s Inexplicable Origins & the Cult of Darwin. Lake Linden, MI: Slipdown Mountain Publications, 2009. <http://www.jacobsvillebooks.com/nonfiction/EvolutionConspiracy.php>

Sightings, Bigfoot Researchers, and the Trouble with Human Beings

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Human beings are weird. I’m not one of those people who hates the human race and thinks the world should be wiped clean of Homo sapiens. On the contrary, I like people. But sometimes, we humans display some…quirks that make Bigfoot research far more complicated than it should be. In a perfect world, humans would have on trouble divorcing their personal experiences and pet peeves from whatever field of research or work they choose to undertake. Unfortunately, the world is far from perfect—and so are human beings.

Take Bigfoot research. The endeavor sounds relatively simple—collect sighting reports, interview witnesses, collate the data into some kind of database or information management system and analyze the data for patterns, reach tentative conclusions based on the data, and repeat the process as needed. Scientists like to pretend that it’s possible to be utterly objective when studying something. Many Bigfoot researchers clearly think of themselves as amateur scientists. The problem is, it’s nearly impossible to be completely objective. Our personal biases often creep into our behavior, no matter how hard we try to block them.

I call this experience bias. I wrote about in my book Top Secret Sasquatch. Basically, experience bias means that your personal experiences influence your opinions and actions. I’ve used the term experience bias most often to refer to researchers who seem incapable of believing anything that hasn’t happened to them personally. This leads to a knee-jerk reaction of “that’s crazy!”

Scientists do their best to minimize their bias, by employing various guidelines procedures. In Bigfoot research, the problem seems even more pervasive—and it seems like most researchers either don’t recognize their own bias or don’t consider their predispositions to be biases. This is weird, n’est ce pas? It’s easy to ignore your own biases and merrily skip along as if you are perfectly objective in everything you do. That’s called denial, folks. But the second situation, wherein the researcher thinks their behavior is objective and acceptable, is the weird part.

Consider these situations a Bigfoot researcher might encounter:

  • Witnesses who report ongoing encounters or multiple sightings
  • Discussion of the possible Bigfoot-UFO connection
  • Discovery (by witnesses or other researchers) of new types of phenomena possibly related to Bigfoot
  • Labeling of Bigfoot as paranormal
  • Witnesses who report finding footprints on multiple occasions
  • Disagreement from other researchers

Experience bias comes into play quite often in these situations. Take the first one. Witnesses who report ongoing encounters or multiple sightings are often dismissed as either lunatics or hoaxers. Yet an awful lot of Bigfoot researchers claim that every time they go out into the woods (usually a state/national park), they have some kind of Bigfoot experience—everything from direct sightings to strange screams, footprint finds, or the feeling that “something” was watching them. More and more often, it seems, they claim to have “proof” in the form of infrared video or still images showing a white blobby thing behind some trees.

If a witness came forward with that evidence, they’d laugh in the person’s face. Experience bias means the researchers are incapable of even considering the veracity of something that did not happen to them personally.

Photo (c) Copyright 2006 by Lisa A. ShielWhat’s the lesson we should learn from experience bias? Before dismissing anything—whether it’s a witness or a new theory about Bigfoot—stop to think about why you’re really trashing it. Could your personal biases be triggering a knee-jerk reaction? This only works, of course, if you undertake an honest appraisal of your own attitudes. It’s hard. It’s not fun. But if you strive to become an ethical Bigfoot researcher, you should do it anyway.

Doing the right thing is usually an uphill climb.

Bigfoot and the War of Words

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Paranormal. Flesh and blood. High strangeness. Animal. Apparition.

These terms and others like them crop up quite a lot in discussions of cryptozoology. They are generally used as verbal arrows, shot back and forth between disagreeing parties. Recently, Nick Redfern posted an entry on the Cryptomundo blog that got me thinking about this war of words once again. Nick was talking about cryptozoology in general, but I will focus on Bigfoot, the cryptid that seems to attract the most controversy.

In the field of Bigfoot research, people often talk about the two camps—paranormal, and flesh and blood. The paranormal camp believes Bigfoot is a nonphysical entity with supernatural abilities, whereas the flesh-and-blood camp believes Bigfoot is an undiscovered species of primate. That’s how the camps are usually characterized. But this “two camps” mentality leads to problems.

First, it creates an either/or situation with no middle ground. This in turn fosters hostility between hard-line researchers on either side, those who willingly ally themselves with one of the two camps. These hard-liners then lump every researcher they disagree with into the opposing camp, often misinterpreting (deliberately or out of ignorance) what the other researcher believes. This behavior seems to plague the so-called flesh-and-blood camp to a greater degree than the so-called paranormal camp. Why? Because most of the researchers in the paranormal camp are in that camp to start with because somebody else shoved them there. After all, the whole “two camps” thing got started because some researchers began looking into sightings involving UFOs, disappearing Bigfoot, and similar strangeness.

P6216598Second, The “two camps” mentality makes a false assumption—that Bigfoot is either flesh and blood or paranormal, but it can’t be both. This is utter nonsense. As I’ve explained before (especially in my book Creature of Controversy), the word paranormal does not mean “involving ghosties, ghoulies, and astral-projecting weirdos.” Paranormal quite simply refers to anything that science cannot explain. I would expand this definition to say that the paranormal encompasses any phenomenon that science cannot explain because a) scientists have no interest in exploring the topic except to debunk it, b) the fleeting nature of the phenomenon makes it difficult or impossible to apply the scientific method, or c) the phenomenon exhibits traits that seem to contradict current scientific knowledge.

Cryptozoology is a field of paranormal research.

I can already hear a horde of self-proclaimed cryptozoologists out there exploding into apoplectic fits. Yes, folks, I labeled cryptozoology a paranormal field. Now, cryptozoologists like to include creatures such as the coelacanth (a very big fish) in the realm of cryptozoology, but this is disingenuous. The coelacanth was known to have existed but thought to be extinct, until living examples were found. A supposedly extinct creature that is found to be living is completely different from a legendary creature never definitively proven to exist and that remains unrecognized and scoffed at by the majority of scientists.

The coelacanth is not and never was a cryptid. Bigfoot is.

How do I know this? First, coelacanths have always been recognized by science as legitimate animals. Bigfoot is not. Second, cryptozoology is not recognized as a branch of science. It is a hobby. And it is paranormal research. I don’t say this to denigrate cryptozoology. I say it because it is true. Only by accepting the true nature of our research can we—those of us who study Bigfoot and other mysteries—have any hope of understanding the phenomena we study.

Folks who label themselves “flesh-and-blood” researchers want to ignore sightings or evidence that points to Bigfoot having traits that fly in the face of the just-an-ape hypothesis. They cherry-pick the data they display on their websites and use to reach their conclusions. They tell witnesses who’ve had UFO-related sightings to buzz off. The same goes for witnesses who’ve had ongoing encounters.

Admittedly, UFO-related Bigfoot sightings are not common. But they do occur. It’s highly unscientific to throw out those sightings simply because they don’t fit into preconceived notions about the nature of Bigfoot. It’s far more honest to include those sightings but state that you don’t know what to make of them.

The point is this: Ditch the “two camps” idea. Don’t cherry-pick your data. Be honest in your research and look at the whole picture, even if parts of that picture disturb you. Bigfoot research is not a war with opposing sides. It’s a field of study. It’s time researchers started acting like adults and stopped shooting verbal arrows at each other.

Live and let live.

The Mystery of the Footless Fence Breaker

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About three weeks ago, I discovered a little mystery in my horse pasture. The fenced pasture is mostly wooded with open areas spread throughout, including an open field behind the house. The path of my morning walk takes me along the fence line. The fence itself consists of two strands of barbed wire with a single strand of electric tape along the top. Most horses respect barbed wire, but a certain young palomino who shall remain nameless (Dooley!) insists on leaning over the fence to graze—hence, the electric tape. I guess Dooley believes in the old saying about the greenness of grass on the other side.

On this recent morning, as I walked my usual route, I noticed that a section of the electric tape was hanging low, stretched out as if an animal had run into it. The stretched-out section lay right at a corner, where the fence makes a ninety-degree turn. At every corner, two separate lines of electric tape are joined with a metal connector. As I continued walking along the fence line, I suddenly realized that the next section of electric tape was completely gone. It hadn’t gotten stretched out so that it hung very low. The entire 300-foot section had been torn from the fence and was nowhere in sight.

I searched along the fence line but found only one set of tracks, where a horse walked parallel to the fence. There were no other tracks anywhere near the fence on either side. Mystified, I continued walking along my usual path. Where had the electric tape gone?

etape-fenceAs I reached the edge of the field, I opted to turn away from the fence and take a shorter route down an old two-track. On that track, some 150 feet from the fence, I found the missing section of electric tape (see photo at right). It appeared to have been dragged there. The trailing end of the electric tape was caught on the branch of a pine tree. Once again, however, I found no tracks of any kind in the vicinity.

The electric tape is 1 3/4 inches wide. It’s tough stuff. Yet something had torn a 300-foot section of the tape right off the fence without leaving any tracks. At first, I thought one of the horses must’ve gotten stuck in the tape. But on closer examination, the horse tracks did not bear out this theory. If a horse got stuck in the tape and ran away, yanking on the tape so fiercely that it tore completely loose of the fence, the hoof prints should’ve illustrated a struggle followed by a flight. They did not. The horse had simply moseyed along the fence line. I found no hoof prints anywhere else. It looked more like the horse had been checking out the fence after the tape was torn free. Whatever had wrecked the fence, it either didn’t have feet or it didn’t walk on the ground.

Now I have game cameras posted in the woods—not for hunting purposes, but simply because I like to see pictures of the wildlife. The cameras take videos. When I got back to the house, I watched the videos from the camera posted in the middle of the field behind the house. A series of videos showed the horses staring intently in the direction of where I had found the missing electric tape. In the first video, a strange noise can be heard in the distance. The video suggested to me that neither of the horses was the perpetrator but both of them saw the footless fence breaker. The video also showed that the fence-breaking incident probably occurred in the middle of the night.

So now I have a mystery. What could get caught in the fence and be strong enough to tear the electric tape loose, but leave no footprints? I will never know for certain. I have, however, come up with a theory. I have heard and seen owls in the area. Here in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, we have both barred owls and great horned owls. Owls are very strong, and great horned owls are renowned for the superior strength. A great horned owl can grab a porcupine! Certainly, an owl would possess the strength to tear the electric tape from the fence—without leaving any tracks on the ground.

The electric tape seemed to have been dragged through the trees, where its tail end got stuck on a pine tree. An owl could’ve gotten its talons stuck in the tape and tried to fly free of it. This would explain the tape being stuck on a pine branch. Finally, the owl must’ve freed itself, dropping the tape along the two-track. I suspect an owl swooped low, perhaps attempting to catch a smaller bird (they often sit on the electric tape), and then the owl got its talon caught in the tape. Only a bird could struggle with the tape but leave no tracks on the ground. Maybe it landed in the pine tree, where it fought to shake off the tape.

The exact chain of events is impossible to determine. To my mind, though, an owl seems the likeliest culprit.

What do you think?

The Etiquette of UFO Sightings

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A strange object has just appeared in the skies above you and looks as if it will land any second. What should you do? Perhaps more importantly, what should you never do? In the spirit of lightening up about ufology, I present twin top three lists — what to do and what to avoid if you spot a UFO.

Top 3 Best Ways to React to a UFO

  1. Clap your hands. The aliens inside their UFO probably can’t hear it anyway, so go ahead and express your joy!

  2. Get out your Reese’s Pieces. Hey, if it was good enough for ET in the movie, surely the real ETs will love it too!

  3. Roll out the red carpet. They’ve come from another planet—welcome them in style!

Top 3 Worst Ways to React to a UFO

  1. Run away screaming. You’re representing Earth, show a little backbone!

  2. Flash your car headlights at the UFO. Great, visitors from another planet show up and you blind them—good job!

  3. Shout “Welcome, little green men!” Don’t assume ETs share your sense of humor—if they take offense, you could get vaporized!

Next time a strange light pulses in the sky, or a saucer-shaped object flits past you, remember these lists and take heed. You could become our planet’s ambassador to… wherever.

Oh, and if you see a book called “To Serve Man”—feel free to run screaming!

When Strange Thoughts Come Knocking…Let Them In!

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You would think paranormal researchers would have open minds. I mean we research things like hairy bipeds science tells us cannot exist and alien craft science tells us cannot exist. We get scoffed at, laughed at, ridiculed, and attacked. So we should be tolerant of new and different ideas. If only!

Too many paranormal researchers despise new and different ideas. They have their pet theories, and they cringe at the notion of considering new ones that might threaten their favorites. At the same time, these researchers bemoan the way mainstream science refuses to consider that Bigfoot or UFOs might exist.

Research cannot advance without new ideas. We should embrace, rather than fear, ideas that question or debunk our current theories. Try this: Once each day, give a new idea a chance. Explore it, examine any evidence associated with it, let it rattle around in your brain for awhile. Don’t dismiss the idea in five minutes. Give it a chance to grow in your mind. Maybe you will realize the idea is bunk. Maybe you’ll find a measure of merit in it. You’ll never know unless you try.

A new idea is knocking on your door. Let it in!

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”—Aristotle

December Horses: Miracle or Serendipity?

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Three years ago, two events occurred — one sad, one happy. Both were unexpected, though in different ways. I’ve lived with horses most of my life, and naturally all of them eventually die. Sometimes you see it coming as you watch the animal slowly decline in health, but other times the death is sudden and unexpected. This is what happened in December of 2009.

One of my horses, a thoroughbred named Hank, seemed fine one day but was dead the next. Maybe his heart gave out, but I’ll never know for sure. When Hank died, he left his best buddy Joey all alone. Now Joey had spent nearly all his life living with other horses, so the abrupt change in his life was severe. I could hear him out there all night running back and forth through the woods whinnying, probably looking for his deceased buddy. Joey was miserable.

He needed a new buddy.

Finding a horse to buy in a rural area can be time-consuming and expensive. The old rule of supply and demand kicks in, and with demand higher than supply, the prices go up. A lot of horse people live in this area, but not enough to tip the scales of supply and demand in favor of the buyer. Horse-for-sale ads in the feed store asked for high prices. I despaired that Joey might not get a new buddy.

That’s when the second unexpected thing happened.

A search of the Internet turned up a site for a horse farm about three hours away from where I live. One of the horses listed for sale on the site seemed perfect — a palomino yearling named Dooley. The asking price was astonishingly affordable, especially considering the much higher prices in my local area. Dooley was purchased over the Internet, but how long would it take for the seller to deliver him? This happened on a Saturday, late in the afternoon, and it seemed unlikely Dooley would arrive before the next day. Joey would suffer another night alone.

But that’s not what happened. Coincidentally, some folks had just arrived at the farm to pick up the horse they’d bought. They just happened to live in my area — and their trailer had space for Dooley. And so, just over three hours after being purchased via PayPal, Dooley arrived in the midst of a snowstorm. It was almost as fast as ordering a pizza!

Dooley arrives (photo © copyright 2009 by Walt Shiel)Dooley spent the first night in the fenced-in yard around the house, which shares a fence line with the horse pasture. Joey was so thrilled to see another horse that he kept leaning his head as far over the fence as possible to sniff and nuzzle his new buddy. Joey and Dooley became instant best friends. They’ve been together ever since, and even though Dooley has grown bigger than Joey, Dooley still looks on Joey as his protector and surrogate daddy. They’re always together — playing, grazing, or napping in their barn.

Just five days passed between Hank’s death and Dooley’s arrival. I thought Joey would be alone for months, yet all the factors clicked into place in precisely the right manner and at precisely the right time. Was it pure luck? Serendipity? A minor miracle? Whatever the cause, this true story serves as a reminder that sad events can sometimes trigger unexpected happiness. Just ask Joey. .