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Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 26th, 2008
I may be open-minded about Sasquatch, but I’m without mercy, no matter what the excuses, about molestation.
Investigate Further: Molester Blames Bigfoot »
http://forum.hancockhouse.com/article.php/20080308173858430
Bill Green's new website:
Bill Green, Bigfoot Resercher. - Home
Joe Beelart's Research Notes:
Bigfoot - Sasquatch Field Notes
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 25th, 2008
Ohio has a secret, which has been revealed a bit. A secret tree, that is. The state has kept their secret for seven years. They retain part of the hidden knowledge about the above pictured tree, because they aren’t telling anyone where it is located.
This Ohio treasure’s existence was closely guarded until […]
Investigate Further: An Old Chestnut »
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 25th, 2008
A character actor of some note, Brian Wilde, 80, passed away on March 20, 2008. His appearance in a long forgotten film is to be recalled.
Investigate Further: Night of the Demon Remembered” by Loren Coleman">Night of the Demon Remembered »
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 24th, 2008
The envelope please….
Investigate Further: Zorgy Awards Announced »
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on March 24th, 2008
“First, there was the name. Tom Slick. It sounds daring and adventurous, like Clutch Cargo, Johnny Quest or Indiana Jones. That trio of heroes are each fictional but Tom Slick lived in the real world, even if he spent a lot of time and money looking for creatures that many people believed to be unreal.”
Investigate Further: Texas Trails: A Millionaire’s Quest »
Byrne's Bigfoot Part 3:
The Quarry
by Greg Long — April 1, 1996
Vancouver — After a brief period of freedom, the Chehalis Indian reservation near Harrison Lake is again being harassed by Sasquatch, the strange hairy giants of the mountains who have been particularly active this year.
Mrs. James Caufield was washing clothing in a rivulet when she heard a buzzing sound. At first she thought it was a humming bird hovering over a flower.
"But it was no bird," reported Mrs. Caufield. "It was the most terrible thing I ever saw in my life — a huge man covered with hair from head to foot. He was only a few feet away from me, and staring at me.
"I knew right away he was a Sasquatch and turned my head, for the Indians say that if Sasquatch catches your eye you are surely in their power. I backed away, hiding my eyes, and fell into a tub of soap suds. When I had recovered my balance the giant had disappeared."
Mrs. Caufield says that the Sasquatch was more than six feet tall and of unusually large proportions." - Toronto Daily Star, May 28, 1934
We've entered the final hour of our interview with Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Research Project. The phone has stopped ringing. It's still a gray day outside with remnants of hard-packed snow on the ground.
Somewhere in the woods that start immediately across the highway, beyond the confines of Byrne's headquarters, Bigfoot could be walking right now.
What exactly, I asked, is this thing you're seeking?
"The creature stands between six feet and seven feet tall," Byrne said, "and has hair that's either black or dark brown.
"The creature has hair all over except the palms of its hands and the soles of its feet, and face. The hair is thick and flowing, perhaps on the back of the head here, and covers its whole body.
"It's hard to estimate, but Bigfoot might be 300 pounds; witnesses say 500 to 800 pounds, but I don't know. But 500 pounds is not impossible because an adult gorilla is — if he stands up and he's under six feet — weighs 500 pounds. Bigfoot are obviously heavy.
"The creature looks like a large, bipedal primate walking upright — massively built, with arms the same length as human arms, not like a gorilla's arms. The creature has huge shoulders and a very short neck, as if it has no neck."
Byrne touched his forehead. " It has a ridged head — a ridge of some kind. A creature this large probably eats herbivorous matter, probably foliage, reeds, bark, grass." Byrne touched his jaw. "If it was herbivorous [Byrne has concluded that Bigfoot is omnivorous, eating both vegetation and meat], it would need big muscles here, in the jaw, just as most animals who are herbivores have big muscles. Big muscles need an anchor line for the tendons to hold them. You see this in gorillas and to some extent in orangutans." And, therefore, Byrne said, this would account for the ridge on its forehead. "A ridge to hold the tendons for the muscles of the big jaw."
Byrne warmed up to the subject; speaking as if he has observed the creature everyday.
"People describe the face as strangely human. We're getting these reports again and again. It's a strangely human face, a slightly ridged face. A straight nose; large eyes; big jaw; big mouth; eyebrows; eye ridges that protrude a little bit more than they do in the human face. 'That thing looked human to me,' people say."
Usually the creature is observed as a single individual, although there are a few cases of Bigfoot in groups of two, three, or four. Bigfoot is seen at night or early in the morning. If the creature is seen during the day, Byrne believes that this is the result of it being disturbed by humans.
I was bothered by the fact that Bigfoot was usually seen alone; if it had human characteristics, surely it would be more familial. Byrne had obviously given this some thought.
"When we see one, that doesn't mean there isn't another one a hundred yards away moving through the brush. Look at the forest here — you can see 100 feet and that's it. Many animals are single. For example, the gibbon, the Asian ape. If you see two gibbons together, they're either mating or it's a female with a young one. It's a solitary animal. Orangutans and gorillas are solitary animals. Tigers are solitary. In November and December they mate, and they start calling. They'll call across two to three miles, you'll hear them. The males call, the females come in, and they mate."
Byrne cautioned me. "Bigfoot may mate, reproduce, and perhaps go their ways. But we speculate, there are a lot of areas of speculation with Bigfoot. When we say they're nocturnal, we speculate they're nocturnal."
If tigers call across miles, then could Bigfoot? I wondered.
"It was a kind of screaming roar. A powerful sound, a tremendous sound."
"We hear two sounds repeatedly. One is whistling, very powerful, high-pitched whistling. The other is the scream, which I think I've heard. In all my contact with this thing, all I've got is the scream, and that's all. I was camping, and it was two o'clock in the morning. And there were two screams. It was an incredible sound! It was a kind of screaming roar. I can't even attempt — It lasted about five seconds, and there was a second one lasting about five seconds. A powerful sound, a tremendous sound. And I know the animals in the Pacific Northwest fairly well here. The big animals are bear, elk, deer and mountain lion — those four animals. None of them makes a sound like this."
Bigfoot also has an odor, an unmistakable odor.
"It's possibly glandular."
Byrne described how gorillas and elephants emit an odor when they are agitated, threatened by man. "Have you smelled the smell of fear? Have you ever smelled someone who has been really nervous or frightened? There's a definite smell there, from under the arms." Byrne talked about hunting Himalayan goats. "You've heard the expression 'smells like a goat'? If the wind is right, you can smell them from 300 yards away, a tremendous smell. Powerful; goats really stink.
"Diane Fossey [famed gorilla investigator] encountered a wave of odor [when gorillas were agitated and charged]," Byrne said. So, Bigfoot's odor might be a physiological response to human threats.
This seemed reasonable to me. But why would a creature that was reportedly so elusive, so resistant to photographs or capture, even allow its self to be seen, especially on roads — I heard of such sightings.
"Inability to judge the speed of a modern vehicle. I've just been driving in Nepal, and you have to watch Nepalians on the road because they're not used to vehicles yet. You're driving 20 miles an hour, and a hill man will walk straight up to the front of the car, and he stops and he looks at you. He'll walk straight into you. He has no idea of speed. Bigfoot gets caught in the road, caught in the headlights."
"A creature more man-like than ape-like possessing unusual intelligence but prone to occasional detection by humans"
Byrne painted a fairly detailed picture. A massive, inoffensive, shy, and non-aggressive bipedal creature with superb visual proficiency and highly developed hearing. A creature more man-like than ape-like possessing unusual intelligence but prone to occasional detection by humans, however fleeting the observations. With at least a hundred credible accounts in the Bigfoot Research Project's computer, why did the skeptics still doubt?
"The complete die-hard knows nothing about the subject, has read nothing, has done no studies, and is not going to."
"With an absolute die-hard skeptic, you aren't going to get anywhere," smiled Byrne. "The complete die-hard knows nothing about the subject, has read nothing, has done no studies, and is not going to. They [Bigfoot] don't exist, that's all there is to it.
"The skeptics we see have four areas of argument that they continuously come up with.
"The first is how come with all the people living and searching, all the scientific institutions, the expeditions, and so on, no one has found one until now? Our answer is that there haven't been any expeditions. There hasn't been any professional searching. No one has done anything. The great institutions, like the Smithsonian, the National Geographic, haven't even touched it.
"The second question is, 'How come there are no carcasses, no bones?' When things die here in the Northwest, it's just like East Africa, it's just like Asia — they disappear almost immediately. They're eaten quite naturally by other animals, by bears and so on..."
"Three weeks ago when I was in Nepal I was looking at the carcass of an elephant. It was probably a 10,000-pound elephant. It had been dead for a week, and there were only the bones left. Ten thousand pounds of elephant, and the hyenas were working on the bones, coming at night and chomping them up. This is the way everything disappears.
"We lost a young man by the name of Cory Fay 20 miles from here in October 1993. He just disappeared. In October 1994, they found his rifle propped against a tree. They did a search, and all that was found were some tiny splinters of bone and a piece of his shoe. Everything else was eaten. The great garbage man out there in the forest is the bear. He can home in on a decaying carcass from half a mile away.
"The third argument is, 'It's a man in a fur suit.' The man in the fur suit jumps out on roads, goes boo to people, runs through the forest. That's a little bit unacceptable to me because of the historical record. We've got reports going back to the 1700s.
"And the fourth argument is that people are hallucinating; people are just hallucinating. So we say, 'Right. All the people up and down the Cascades here are hallucinating when they see one. But what's wrong with the people over in eastern Oregon? Why aren't they hallucinating? [There are few reports of Bigfoot from eastern Oregon.] What's wrong with the people up and around the Olympic Peninsula? A marvelous area for Bigfoot. There's something very strange about the people out there on the Olympic Peninsula — they aren't hallucinating, they should be.'
"And the fifth argument — and it's not a very good one, is: 'It's some kind of vast conspiracy of lies amongst people; there's some kind of secret society, or something.' That doesn't hold up because 99.9% of the people we've interviewed don't know anyone else who has seen one. Certainly none of the people we've interviewed know each other."
Despite these arguments to counter the skeptics, Byrne admits that there is no material evidence. "There is none. There are no bones, there are no feces. There's no hair. Nothing. I think if there was, we would know about it."
However, Byrne puts stock in other forms of evidence: old newspaper accounts going back to the 18th century and journals and letters written by missionaries and miners; Indian stories of Sasquatch; footprints (14 to 15 inches on average); the sightings; and the 1967 Roger Patterson film. This short piece of 16-mm film (990 frames), shot in northern California in October 1967, shows in daylight a tall, extraordinarily muscled, hairy man-like creature striding across an open field. Byrne has driven 5,000 miles over the years investigating the case and believes the film is of a real Bigfoot. "We think it's real, and it's universally dismissed by science, with the exception of one or two scientists. When I went to the Smithsonian years ago with a copy of it, they said if they [Bigfoot] are there, we would have known by now, we would have had one by now. I said, 'Well, did anybody go and look?' 'No, we don't go look because nothing like that exists.'"
Byrne remains undaunted. I collected my recorder up, and before leaving, Byrne showed us photographs of prints. In 18 months, funding for the Bigfoot Research Project will run out; funding may or may not be renewed. Is he frustrated by the lack of definitive evidence?
"There is an area of frustration, which is, when are we going to make a finding?"
"No, I'm not frustrated. There is an area of frustration, which is, when are we going to make a finding? Will it be another 10 years? With my age, I don't have another 10 years. In the 1960s the whole of my life stretched before me. But it's the excitement of the challenge that pushes aside the frustration."
And Peter Byrne started talking about a new set of dart guns that the Project recently bought to help secure the blood and tissue sample of a Bigfoot. "It has a dart that has a little barrel; it penetrates into the animal about a quarter of an inch. It seizes blood and tissue inside the tiny barrel, and then falls out. We only need a tiny amount of the DNA. We had tranquilizing equipment for years, but were afraid of using it because you can kill a wild creature very easily. So we bought this. It's actually safe, and now they are using it for elephants."
Somewhere out there, in the wilds of the Cascades, in the shadows cast by daylight, something huge, human-like, and stealthy rests. As the shadows lengthen, and the sun drops behind the peaks, it rises and begins moving under cover of the night.
To report a Bigfoot sighting, write or call:
The Bigfoot Research Project
Box 126
Mount Hood, Oregon
800/244-3668 or 503/352-7000
Byrne's Bigfoot Part 2:
High-Tech Pursuit
by Greg Long — March 18, 1996
There is lately arrived in France from America, a wild man, who was caught in the woods, 200 miles back from the Lake of The Woods, by a party of Indians; they had seen him several times, but he was so swift of foot that they could by no means get up with him. He is near seven feet high, covered with hair, but has little appearance of understanding and is remarkably sullen and untractable. When he was taken, half a bear was found lying by him, which he had just killed. - January 4, 1785, London Times
It is this type of historical datum that keeps Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Research Project, in pursuit of one of the world's most popular mysteries. Bigfoot. Is there an as-yet unfound, large, hair-covered hominid roaming the Pacific Northwest?
Not only would Byrne like to know, but so would the supporters of the Academy of Applied Science, which is funding the search. The Academy is partly funded by such notables as Francis Davis, the inventor of power steering, who left the Academy $10 million; or Harold Edgerton, the creator of strobe lighting who held 50 patents on same.
"Lately, the phone at the Bigfoot Research Project has been ringing 3,000 times a month."
Byrne freshened our coffee cups as we sat in the dining room of the combination house/offices of the Bigfoot Research Project near Mount Hood, Oregon. It's clear that Byrne has plenty of resources to pursue the quarry. The best way (Byrne concluded after years of fruitless trekking through the woods) is to use high-tech methods. The front line component is data gathering. With the phone number 1-800-BIGFOOT in place, Byrne has a pipeline to the public. Lately, the phone at the Bigfoot Research Project has been ringing 3,000 times a month. Many of these calls have been crank calls, mostly from children who just before 8:00 a.m. before going to school, or at midday break, decide to bark, yap, howl, and scream into the phone. "It's got me! It's got me! It's eating my dog! It's got my grandmother" These calls are instantly rejected.
Ads running continuously in small weekly newspapers up and down the Cascade Mountains, northern California, and British Columbia — all the way up the coast to the southern border of Alaska — generate the phone activity. "The pattern that is producing evidence is the mountain chain," Byrne said, and so the ads are concentrated along the chain.
The reports that make it through are screened. "We discount people who've had 10 sightings. We thank them nicely. People just don't see Bigfoot 10 times. If it's running, we get suspicious. No one has ever seen one run; or appearing in the window — these things don't come and appear in windows anymore than would a mountain lion come up and put its paws up. Someone has seen something on a ridge 400 yards away. 'What color was its eyes?' 'Blue.' Well, you can't see the color of eyes 400 yards away. If it's 13 feet tall — that's it. We don't want to talk to them."
Some witnesses simply misidentify objects or animals. "People driving at night," Byrne mused. "They're thinking about Bigfoot. They've just seen Unsolved Mysteries, and a stump flashes by. And they say, 'Oh, my God, what was that?' By the time they get home, it was Bigfoot. Or people see a shadow in the forest and begin thinking, 'What did I see? My goodness! That was seven feet tall!'"
Or people misidentify bears, or — Byrne chuckled — cows. There was the couple who misidentified a cow in broad daylight. Byrne rushed to the scene across the Columbia River. "There were its brown, huge eyes staring at them," he smiled.
"Witnesses are asked about 100 questions."
Seventy-five per cent of all raw reports are rejected; of those, 25% are misidentifications. If the report passes the screening, and it's a good report, Byrne or one of his four associates, will interview the witness in person. The interviewer takes along three questionnaires: sighting; footprint find; and sounds, smells, and object throwing. Witnesses are put through about 100 questions.
"We sit with the witness across the table. We go through the questions. What, where, when, what were you doing there? How much reading have you done? Have you ever seen one before? What are the plants in the area? The temperature? When we're finished, we thank them. We do our own assessment based on what we see and they've told us. If it's credible, it goes into the computer. We have about 105 sightings [as of February 1996]. It's very little considering three and a half years of searching. But the sightings that are in there, we're satisfied they're credible. We're satisfied people did see something."
Human resources are another component in the search. The Project has associates who are ready to spring into action and travel to the scene of a sighting if its a few hours old. If the sighting is far from the Project, Byrne can turn to a 62-person volunteer team on call day or night. The volunteers are outdoors people — men and women — who are fascinated with the subject. "We may call them at 2:00 in the morning, and if you have 62 volunteers, and you call them, 30 will be working, 10 are going to be sick, so we might get 15. "
In addition, Byrne has two helicopters on standby to work with the team. One is a personnel helicopter, the other carries an infrared detection system on board. Byrne also has a team of six professional trackers, who are ex-policemen and ex-border patrolmen. "One of them," said Byrne, "is probably the best man in America right now."
A board of advisers composed of 10 professionals rounds out the team. The advisers include two anthropologists, a surgeon, an expert in forensic imaging, a senior policeman. Byrne is prepared to hop on a plane and travel if necessary. But the computer remains his best tool for uncovering Bigfoot.
Unfortunately, the most recent legitimate sighting the Project has in its computer is 31 days old. "It's a real problem," said Byrne. "After 31 days, footprints are gone, signs are gone." In addition, of the 105 sightings in the computer, only 14 have been collected since the inception of the project in 1992. All the other cases are 10 to 50 years old.
"Sightings are extremely rare," Byrne said matter of factly. "I'm three and a half years into this project, and none of my staff has seen a single thing, a single footprint. And I haven't seen a single footprint for five years myself. I saw something five years ago."
So Byrne relies on the "geotime" patterns that analysis of the computerized data reveals. Patterns of time and place that might show where Bigfoot potentially will be at a certain time of the year. The sighting belt that runs down the Cascades is the focus.
"But we don't see Bigfoot yet in relation to seasons," Byrne cautions. "We've had sightings in northern Washington, the coldest state in the winter at 20 below; and sightings in California, the hottest day of the summer. It would be great if they went south in the winter and north in the summer. We don't see that. But the movement is up and down, north and south, and that's because of the shape of the mountains, the shape of the Cascades."
Byrne went on: "Bigfoot don't come out in the open. Like many creatures, they need cover, so they use this covered passage [the Cascades], north and south. They're in this area because it provides them with food, water, cover, and space."
Byrne remains optimistic, despite the three-and-a-half- year passage of time as director of the Bigfoot Research Project. No photographs, no blood and tissue samples. Not yet; the computer hasn't produced the definitive geotime pattern. "But we think by the middle of the year," Byrne's eyes brighten, "they may, and we have some electronic surveillance gear which we're going to put out at that time."
Somewhere in the dense forests, out in the trackless wilds, Bigfoot moves.
To report a Bigfoot sighting, write or call:
The Bigfoot Research Project
Box 126
Mount Hood, Oregon
800/244-3668 or 503/352-7000
Byrne's Bigfoot Part 1: Peter Byrne's Great Search
by Greg Long — March 4, 1996
"You know, the walk was beautiful," said Peter Byrne, sitting straight in his hard-backed chair. 
"It was a kind of a flowing walk, a beautiful, smooth, flowing walk these things have — like this!"
And Peter Byrne, world renown Bigfoot researcher, former big game hunter, and adventurer, stands and attempts to duplicate the majestic motion of Bigfoot, the large, hair-covered "hominid" that purportedly inhabits the Pacific Northwest. Byrne has heard of this unique characteristic — the flowing walk — many times over the years. This time, the report came from an elderly man who had kept his sighting private for decades, from fear of ridicule. The witness is only one of many who have approached Byrne at the Bigfoot Research Project near Mount Hood, Oregon — or by dialing 1-800-BIGFOOT. Yes, it's a real number, and witnesses can reach Byrne or one of his staff 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Byrne's blue eyes light up, his normally mild Irish voice (he sounds more British than Irish) rises a notch in excitement as he paints a picture of the fascinating creature he has pursued over the span of 35 years.
"The head doesn't seem to go up and down. We think there's a reason for that, something to do with the knees. The other thing the witness said was, 'It had no neck.' The head is set right down — the neck is extremely thick and short."
Byrne, at 71, is an energetic, wiry man. With a sharp nose and weathered face, he sits with erect bearing, an ascot neatly tied around his throat. His gestures are measured, his phrasing precise, with nary a misstep, in clear, modulated tones.
The man's sighting of the Bigfoot in flowing stride made for a good case, Byrne said. This is saying something, for there aren't many sightings that can withstand Byrne's rigorous criteria. After three and a half years, only 105 sightings have made it into Byrne's computer. And of these, only 14 have been investigated since the Project's inception in 1992. The rest are from witness accounts up to 50 years ago.
The Bigfoot Research Project is funded by wealthy businessmen of the Academy of Applied Science in Boston, Massachusetts (the same organization that has funded Loch Ness monster research). With sorely needed funds — always plaguing the Bigfoot field — Byrne now has the means to finally solve, he hopes, the Bigfoot mystery.
"We want to prove that the things exist by finding one. There are various ways in which one could be found, using the word 'find' very broadly. We could find a carcass of one that has died of natural causes, which would be wonderful, which would be marvelous. It would be irrefutable proof.
"The next thing to that would be to encounter one and hold it in some way — I don't mean capture it — and get still pictures, video, and blood and tissue samples. And that's pretty much it. We are against killing one, or shooting one, or capturing one. Finding a carcass would be very, very lucky."
Why would such a fluent, obviously intelligent man such as this, in the final years of his life, continue to search for something that many in the world consider the product of highly imaginative minds? For Byrne, it started after World War II, with the gradual peeling away of his initial skepticism.
Byrne had served four years in Southeast Asia in the British Royal Air Force in Air Sea Rescue. In 1947 he came home to Ireland, but in just three short weeks was on a ship heading back to Asia to join the British Tea Company. For five years he worked on tea plantations in Bhutan located near the Himalayas. There he heard of tales of the Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, another of the world's great mystery hominids. Curiosity got the better of him, and soon Byrne was hiking into the mountains, looking for tracks. Later, he led a small expedition on a search using sherpa guides. One time he found unexplained footprints in British Sikkim (between Bhutan and Nepal).
In 1952 Byrne began running commercial hunting safaris. In 1956, while in Sikkim, Byrne saw campfires in the distance, and approaching, he met an expedition on its way into the mountains. Among those he met was Tenzing Norgay, the famous sherpa guide of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb Mount Everest. Sitting around the campfire, Byrne and the men talked of "metah-kangmi," the "foul smelling man of the snows," Yeti. Tenzing told Byrne that a rich Texan named Tom Slick had visited Tenzing's house in Darjeeling looking to plan a big expedition. Tenzing urged Byrne to stop by his house and get Slick's address from Tenzing's wife. Byrne did, writing Slick and finally meeting him in January 1957.
Slick funded three Yeti expeditions for Byrne in Nepal — in 1957, 1958, and 1959. At the end of the third expedition, Slick invited Byrne to look for Bigfoot in northern California; there had been sightings near Willow Creek.
Byrne was frankly skeptical. The Yeti of Nepal was reported to be a small creature, anywhere from 5' 2" to 5' 11." "I was skeptical when I first came to America in 1960. I was skeptical that something like Bigfoot could exist. Especially when witnesses said it was seven feet tall and weighed 500 pounds. Why, this was ridiculous!"
From 1960 to 1961, Byrne investigated Bigfoot sightings near Willow Creek at Slick's expense. But a plane crash took the life of Slick, and Slick's estate decided not to further Byrne's work. In 1969 Byrne met Robert Rines of the Academy of Applied Science, and interested in Byrne's work, funded Byrne for nearly 10 years (Byrne also used his own money). From 1970 to 1979, Byrne ran the Bigfoot Information Center in The Dalles, Oregon.
"More than anything was the sincerity of the eye witnesses."
By now Byrne was convinced of the existence of Bigfoot. Over the years, he had come to believe in the eye witnesses. "I think more than anything was the sincerity of the eye witnesses — country people who were basically decent, nice people who had no motive to lie, no motive to fabricate evidence, fabricate a story, absolutely none."
In addition, it was the famous 1967 Roger Patterson film showing a huge bipedal, hairy creature in broad daylight in northern California, the many historical reports going back to the late 18th Century, and the footprints.
The Bigfoot Information Center finally folded. "Frankly, I spent too much time lecturing and writing to keep it going," Byrne admitted. Now, after years of searching, and years of performing research on a shoestring, Byrne has the financial backing to do the type of research that has always been needed.
"We don't do much field work. It's just non-productive. We used to do an awful lot of hiking in the 1960s. My God, we used to hike 20 miles a day in the back country." But nothing of any great value was discovered. "Field work is just too non-productive."
Instead, Byrne is relying on careful assessment of data cautiously collected and analyzed mostly through his 800 number. The hope is that the patterns revealed in the data will point to the likely geographic location of Bigfoot, and the likely time of its appearance. He is optimistic.
"We think that by the middle of this year [1996], maybe into the fall, the computer data may show a definitive pattern. We have some electronic surveillance gear which we're going to put out at that time."
There is an air of gentleness to Peter Byrne. The idea of a Bigfoot hunter concocts all kinds of notions: of big burly men with beards with powerful guns. One would guess that Byrne has seen enough of animal killing. By his own admission, he ran safaris for 18 years in Nepal. Today, he divides his time between searching for Bigfoot and supporting the causes of conservation. He wrote a book named Tula Hatti , The Last Great Elephant. "While on safari, I kept bumping into this elephant. I saw how big he was, so I did a measurement on him — I found he was one of the largest elephants of all time in Asia." So Byrne went to the Nepalese government and convinced them to protect it; Byrne promised he'd write a book and try to produce a short documentary. The government protected the elephant, and Byrne made a movie with PBS.
Byrne's latest work in progress is a book "about the people I used to take on safari. No one wants to read about blood and gore any more. A lot of people go on one safari and come back calling themselves Big Game Hunter. We used to called them "collectors." It's a slightly derisive term and the book is called The Collectors . It's about people reacting to big game and panicking and how they behave."
Byrne's adventures today are non-violent. "You're a maniac to go out in these woods," he gestures at the forest outside his house. "Have you seen the pickups with guns, you know in the back windows? There are people here, mostly young fellows, who say, 'If I see it out there, I'm going to shoot it. I'm going to haul it in and I'm going to sell it to the Smithsonian and make a million dollars.'" He smiles grimly, "You know, marvelous concept!"
For Byrne, the non-violent way is the right way. He would be happy if he could just see Bigfoot — he never has.
"But just to see one! ... It would be quite incredible."
"I think of the impact of actually seeing one of these things, and with a lot of my associates in the Bigfoot field, they say, 'Well, to hell with the publicity, the hell with what happens and what we can do. But just to see one!" That's what they want and I think there's a lot to that. It would be quite incredible."
A message from Peter Byrne (144K each). 
(Real Audio 3.0)
To report a Bigfoot sighting, write or call:
The Bigfoot Research Project
Box 126
Mount Hood, Oregon
800/244-3668 or 503/352-7000
Larry Lund, Sasquatch Sleuth
by Greg Long — February 1, 1997
I'm a tall person, so I had to bend slightly as I entered Larry Lund's basement office in his house in Vancouver, Washington. It wasn't just the low ceiling; it was also the hundreds of different colored caps Lund has collected over the years. They hang down from the ceiling in rows. I was more comfortable sitting down in a chair behind one of Lund's two desks that face his television, VCR and glass case holding Bigfoot casts and popular art works depicting Bigfoot. It was a cozy Saturday afternoon down there in the basement. I wouldn't breathe the chilly winter air outside for four hours.
Lund is not just a collector of caps. He is known more for the Bigfoot information he has collected over the past 34 years. His 
office is crammed with Bigfoot books, files, video documentaries, posters, drawings, photographs, and plaster casts of the big feet. Since he was 16, Lund has passionately pursued Bigfoot. Along the way, he has kept his head about him. Perhaps that is his most fascinating feature: a stable, cool head. No mean feat in a field that is often volatile, acrimonious, and controversial. Lund is known by his peers as the "Sasquatch Sleuth." His grasp of Bigfoot facts is formidable; and Lund is respected for his level-headed and conservative approach to evaluating Bigfoot evidence. He also re-investigates old cases, and goes behind the scenes of the public exterior of the Bigfoot field to expose fakery and misinformation. Peter Byrne, Director of the Bigfoot Research Project near Mount Hood, finds Lund a trustworthy and hard-working lieutenant.
"How can you be an expert in something you can't prove exists?"
"I don't ever think of tracks as proof," Lund says quickly. (Talkative and open, Lund rattles off information like a rushing mountain stream.) "There's no way of proving that it [Bigfoot] is real [from a track]. I've read the reports, examined tracks and hair. I've done the research. I never say that there is a Bigfoot out there, and this is what he looks like, and this is what his footprint looks like. I don't know. I'm not an expert. I am an authority. How can you be an expert in something you can't prove exists?"
Perhaps Lund is too humble. He has found what certainly appear to be Bigfoot tracks. But he emphasizes that there is always the possibility that the tracks aren't genuine; that they could be hoaxes or mistakes. His first find was in 1974. He had been pursuing evidence for 11 years. He was with a friend in the Windy Ridge area near the Ape Caves and Mount St. Helens, a place known for Bigfoot reports. On a bare game trail he found an hour-glass-shaped footprint. The single track was 14-1/2 inches long and five inches wide at the heel. The print was lightly pressed into the soil. Twenty feet behind the track in the middle of the trail was a mark in the ground as if made by a heel; or could the hole be from a rock that had dislodged?
For four and a half hours, Lund looked for more tracks. He found none. In reflecting back, Lund regretted not taking a photo (his camera was in his vehicle). He explained his odd behavior as that of a novice; he wouldn't make the mistake twice. In any event, the photo may have shown little or nothing; the print wasn't pressed deep into the ground. That wouldn't be the case four years later.
In 1978 Lund received a lead on Bigfoot tracks above Yacolt near Battle Ground. Lund followed instructions and at the site found a series of deep marks running 52 inches apart in the soft, dirt slope at the bottom of a natural landing where loggers stack cut trees for hauling. The otherwise smooth slope was torn up and suggested that something had walked along the slope at an angle and up onto the landing. Lund counted 38 tracks, but there were no signs of toe "push-off" to persuade him the tracks were from Bigfoot.
But on the landing above, he found a line of seven clear Bigfoot-appearing prints. The prints were 11 inches long and five inches wide at the heel and bore a close resemblance to the classic Bigfoot tracks he had seen in the literature and in plaster casts. Lund pored over the area around the tracks and could find no broken grass or other signs of disturbance in the soil that might have suggested a hoax. Yet Lund had doubts. The find had been reported in the papers earlier; a man had phoned Lund giving Lund what seemed too-precise instructions of how to find the tracks.
If the toes had been in the same position in each track, he would have suspected a hoax.
Then, in 1985 he felt better about a third find. Near the Swift Reservoir near Mount Adams, he discovered three tracks on a dirt trail amid moss-covered boulders. Two of the tracks weren't clear; the third was "pristine." In studying all three tracks, he noted that the toes on each foot were in a slightly different position. If the toes had been in the same position in each track, he would have suspected a hoax. (Hoaxers use wood or plastic cut-outs and press them into the ground; the results are tracks that are precisely the same.) This third find was convincing and strengthened Lund's belief that there very well could be something called Bigfoot.
In 1991 Lund was impressed even more. Two loggers (one named Pat Kelly) found tracks near their logging job near Astoria, Oregon. Lund got to the tracks two days after they had been discovered. He saw approximately 300 tracks over 1,500 feet of a steep, rocky ravine. Luckily, loggers had protected several with cardboard. Two of them were on the side of a road. Lund made casts of them. The tracks were impressive: 17-1/2 inches long. Lund found it difficult to believe that hoaxers would have gone to all the trouble to make 300 tracks over rugged, "nasty" terrain.
Lund dropped two immense basketball shoes on the desk in front of me.
Lund dropped two immense basketball shoes on the desk in front of me. "These are Shaquille O'Neill's shoes," Lund said. Nike had given the shoes to Lund. I stared at the 20 triple-E shoes. O'Neill now wears size 23, Lund said. Lund nodded at the shoes. "Sure, there could be a creature seven feet tall," he said. O'Neill was a human giant, so why not a creature reportedly as big as Bigfoot? But a creature standing eight to 10 feet tall? Lund had heard such reports. If Bigfoot was that tall, surely there would be more reports of such a towering animal; an observer couldn't miss him. But real sightings of Bigfoot are rare. No, Lund said, reports of a gigantic Bigfoot were untrue or exaggerations.
Lund only considers a fraction of the stories he has heard as being evidential. He has nearly always found that when called to the scene of alleged Bigfoot tracks, the tracks are either those of known animals are too poorly defined to be recognizable. The potentially good reports are few. Once screened by Peter Byrne or famed investigator Rene Dahinden, or by Lund, the number of potentially useful cases dwindles to two or three a month. Nine out of 10 field investigations turn up nothing. At times, Lund experiences "Bigfoot burn-out." But when he receives a call, how can he ignore it? "I have to go to the scene," he said.
And what about reports of Bigfoot and UFOs? What about the theory that Bigfoot is an interdimensional creature, even a spirit? Lund granted that most of the tracks he finds begin and end in a confined area; or investigators have found only a single print, as Lund did in 1974, making tracking of the creature difficult if not impossible. Tracks start, then stop. "I run into this all the time," he said. There are two explanations, he said. Either the tracks are fakes (tired, the hoaxer made only one or a few prints). Or, more tracks can't be found because Bigfoot enters brush or rocky terrain, leaving no tracks behind. The fewer the tracks, the less convinced Lund is that the track is of a real Bigfoot. Lund will always check for fakery when he finds only five tracks in a row.
What about dermal ridges? Grover Krantz, Bigfoot researcher at Washington State University, has claimed that the dermal ridges (the tell-tale whorls and patterns on toes and fingers) on a print from an alleged Bigfoot in the Blue Mountains is positive evidence that the track on which it appeared is authentic. Lund disputed this. Joel Hardin, a professional tracker associated with Byrne's Bigfoot Research Project, looked at the ridges and declared them fake.
"He wasn't a police officer as he claimed," Lund smiled.
Lund popped a video into his VCR. He played segments of documentaries, of which he has participated in several. He had little praise for the statements of some alleged Bigfoot investigators who spoke on camera. He declared one Bigfoot investigator a liar. "He wasn't a police officer as he claimed," Lund smiled. "This man is an academic. He has studied Bigfoot for only one year, and he claims he knows everything about the subject." He slipped in another cassette. We watched part of a Sightings feature on Bigfoot. Lund pointed out how the Sightings producers purposely blurred telephoto footage of two hikers in a snow field on the side of Mount Hood and selectively edited Byrne's on-camera narration that he was looking at two "primates." "Sure," Lund told me, "two human primates, but not Bigfoot." Byrne was outraged at the distortion. Byrne and Lund conferred. They swore they would never participate in a Sightings show again. Byrne phoned the Sightings producers and lambasted them.
If there was so little good, reliable information in the Bigfoot field, why does Lund continue on? He popped in a video and ran part of a story on the recent discovery of the vu quang ox in Thailand. The strange deer exhales through gills in its head. I stared entranced at the strange vibrating flaps on the side of the Bambi-like face. Lund told me that the panda bear was only discovered in 1936; that 50 to 60 new insect species are discovered each day. "Ridiculous," he said, "not all the animals of the world have been found."
"Have you ever seen God's tracks?"
But how could Lund put as much time and effort as he did into believing in something he has never seen? "I say to people," Lund said, "'Excuse me, are you religious?' 'Well, of course.' 'Have you ever seen God? Have you ever seen God's tracks?' 'What?' 'Have you ever seen God's or Jesus's tracks?' 'No.' 'But you read a book, and you believe, because that book tells you this. By God, he's there!' Well, I've read a lot of books, seen a lot of casts, a lot of droppings, a lot of hairs. I think he's there."
Lund's belief was acceptable to me. Perhaps because he has also had a UFO sighting. In 1977, while living out in the country near Vancouver, he, his family, and his neighbors watched three dark triangular objects with a bluish-white light on the front of each pass silently from the north over their houses. Two of the triangles peeled off toward the southwest and the southeast leaving the third triangle to head south toward Portland. A phone call to the Clark County sheriff's office routed Lund via an 800 number to a lieutenant colonel with the Air Force in Seattle. The official said that two-and-a-half hours before Lund's call, the objects had been sighted above Vancouver, British Columbia, and were tracked on radar as they moved south. The UFOs disappeared over Portland. "We just don't know what they are," the officer said. "It was odd," Lund said. "Why would the county sheriff reroute me to the Air Force? How would the sheriff know in advance? The officer talked freely and down to earth."
 | "Could Bigfoot be from outer space? Could Bigfoot float off the ground?" Lund asks. "I don't completely discount it. Inside I feel anything's possible. But when it comes to that supernatural stuff, I cut it off consciously. We need a carcass. Nothing is going to prove it [that Bigfoot is real or what Bigfoot is] without a body, or a body part." |
So, Lund simply keeps on. "If you don't go, the witness could be the person who really had the evidence." Larry Lund smiled. He has to keep searching; he has to respond to the next phone call. "In the end, you have done what you could. You've done everything possible. You've looked at every piece of thing there is. You've done what your friends and peers expect out of you."
And the search continues.
For information on Bigfoot and to discuss Bigfoot videos, Larry Lund can be reached at:
Larry Lund
4019 N.E. 54th Avenue
Vancouver, Washington 98661
Phone: 360/695-5609
May 30 2004, 11:24 PM. Larry Lund simply has a museum's worth of material in his den. There are display cases full of Bigfoot memorabilia... tugboatwa ... www.bigfootforums.com/lofiversion/index.php/t5353.html - 23k - More results from www.bigfootforums.com » |
Lawrence Gene Lund (b. April 1st, 1947) is an American bigfoot researcher from Vancouver, Washington. His interest in the bigfoot mystery began in the ... www.squatchopedia.com/index.php/Larry_Lund - 12k - |
