I finished reading the David Paulides book, The Hoopa Project: Bigfoot Encounters In California, Hancock House Publishers, 2008, gifted to me by Investigator "X", and I fully concur with her high assessment of the book. It is a valuable addition to a number of volumes aimed at answering the question: Do bigfoots exist? Even if the other volumes did not exist, this work is convincing enough for any open-minded investigator in answering the question positively.
It is noteworthy that unlike other BF pro-existence studies, this one is based solely on generally misjudged and undervalued anecdotal evidence. Footprints, hairs, scat, DNA, vocalizations, their discussion and analyses are not to be found in this book. The author only gives a short list of such evidence collected in North America. Instead there are many BF sketches done by a forensic artist on the basis of sighting reports by witnesses. And it is just eyewitnesses who are the main characters of the book which is its important and distinctive feature. As a former police investigator, the author is well equipped to understand the paramount role of the witness in our field of study and uses it in a professional way.Some quotations are in order:
"As someone who has interviewed thousands of victimes and witnesses of crimes, I can attest to the importance of proper interviewing techniques. (...) Interviewing witnesses is entirely different than interviewing victims and suspects. The witness usually doesn't have the same vested interest in the outcome of the issue as the victim or suspect. The witness interview can sometimes reveal more information than any interview the investigator undertakes. (...) I've never met anyone associated with a farm mistake a cow for a Shetland pony. (...) I think it's human nature to question, and questioning isn't a bad thing in the realm of life. However, I do believe that skeptics need to rationally analize their questions before leveling them at an honest witness. Most Bigfoot witnesses I have encountered did not approach me; I found them. Most of these witnesses told me they were initially afraid of being publicly ridiculed and thus didn't want their story heard by the masses -- (...) Once witnesses understand that there are thousands of other witnesses to Bigfoot that are just like them, afraid to tell their story, afraid of ridicule and are adamant about what they saw, only then is the story easier to talk about. (...) Maybe society, as a whole, needs to treat witnesses differently on any sensitive issue. Maybe the presence of someone who is interested, trusted and wants to document facts allows the witnesses a certain comfort zone for them to recite their story" (pp.87-89).
Pity these observations and this advice did not exist at the very beginning of BF investigations. Paulides does not collect eyewitness accounts in a usual way and rely on them. He so to speak intensifies them and makes more credible and reliable by asking all witnesses to sign an affidavit, first, and, second, describe the sighting to the artist who makes a sketch of the BF that had been observed. This method is not original, it has been used by others (John Green's so-called classical witnesses William Roe and Albert Ostman, for example, both signed an affidavit), but no other investigator has used this method so totally and consistently. One important for me result of all the BF sketches presented to the reader in the book is that the portraits are, in the author's words, "much closer to a human than most tend to believe." This is in full agreement with the opening new stage of hominology ushered in by 50 Years with Bigfoot. There's no way to associate these sketches and this book with the field of study called cryptozoology. The proper name iscryptoanthropology, denoting the condition and state of researches still prevailing in hominology.
Naturally, we shall never learn how closely this or that sketch depicts any of the sighted BF. The forensic artist Harvey Pratt has doubtless done a great job, yet my impression is he has been more successful in depicting facial features that are close to or coincide with those of modern humans but less successful with features that resemble those of pre-sapiens fossil hominids. The reason is probably in his not being conversant with paleoanthropology. The Patterson film subject's face does show a number of fossil hominid features. And the expressions of BF faces must be a mystery to any artist all his or her life seeing and portraying Homo sapiens faces.
Priority number one on the agenda of hominology is the question of the homin linguistic ability. So I paid special attention to the following tidbits in the book: "It's a common belief among many of the tribes in this area that if you confront a Bigfoot that you should talk to it in your native tongue, tell it to stay calm and then slowly back your way out of the area. The Natives believe that Bigfoot understands their Hoopa language"(p.191). "There are also many documented cases (Pliny McCovey) where the witnesses believe they hear two Bigfoot communicating with some type of language.The language has been described in many different ways, but the consistent part of each story is that one Bigfoot talks, the other listens and then the other talks, very similar to a human interaction. (We have a similar observation by a witness of a vocal interaction of two homins in the Urals. -- DB). If Bigfoot has its own language then it has a higher level of intelligence than many acknowledge"(p.328).
Priority number two or number three, which can become number one when the questions of BF linguistics and taxonomy are answered, is their so-called higher sensory perceptions. There are a number of references to this phenomenon in this book but only in one specific way: witnesses report having had a feeling of being watched before seeing a BF or while staying in the area of supposed BF presence. Reporting of this phenomenon has been registered in homin habitats around the world. What is more telling and impressive is the sensation of sudden great and uncontrollable fear sometimes felt and reported by people who enter the area of homin presence. This aspect of the phenomenon is not reported in this book, but we have such reports in Russia not only from casual witnesses, but also from our own field investigators. The telepathic aspect of hominology may be a key to the nature of homins, and therefore seeking and gathering information on this subject is of great importance.
Another enigma of hominology mentioned in the book concerns the so-called "little people". "Little people in the Indian culture live in the hills surrounding the reservation. They are extremely rare, hardly ever seen and considered sacred". (p.222) "Stories about little people are not confined to the region around the Klamath and the Trinity, but are throughout Northern California"(p.223). "... a 'little person', a being that has been described by many Native Americans as small humans that live in caves and underground, and come out at night to roam the forests of Northern California"(p.12). "I asked them both to explain who 'little people' were. They looked at each other with stern expressions and said that were told by tribal elders that they were not to talk about this. (...) Both confirmed that medicine people inside the tribe still have contact with the little people. There are nearby mystical mountains and caves that are sacred and these are the locations where the little people live and where they came from. These locations are hidden and secret"(p.57).
Ivan Sanderson, in his Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come To Life, 1961 (my edition 2006), mentions "little people" in the same area of Northern California (p.137). He also offers a report referring to "the Little Red Men" of the Mississippi Delta (p.96). There are historical reports of hairy "little people" in Western Europe, modern reports from the Caucasus, and Australia. Orang Pendek of Sumatra may be of the same category. "This is a very widespread myth that crops up all over the world about fairies, pixies, and suchlike little folk"(Sanderson, p.137). What is it, homin pygmies, or the young of the homin giants, or both? We haven't even commenced to unravel the mystery.
I happen to be well familiar with the geography of the region described by David Paulides. Thanks to John Green, I attended the 2003 International Bigfoot Symposium in the town of Willow Creek that "has made itself the Bigfoot capital of the world"(p.31). It was in this wilderness area that giant fooprints were found by road builders and the name Bigfoot was coined in the 1950s. And it was this town that Patterson and Gimlin reached first when they returned to civilization from Bluff Creek with the Bigfoot documentary in the bag in October 1967. On September 14, 2003, together with other symposium participants, I enjoyed the ride and visit to Bluff Creek and the spot where the historic documentary was taken. After the conference, at the kind invitation of Doug Hajicek, I spent ten days traveling with his TV team which was interviewing and filming BF eyewitnesses. One of them was a young biologist who encountered a BF in 2000 but did not inform his superiors out of fear for his reputation. I visited the Yurok Indian Reservation, Redwood National Park, the ocean coast, sighted seals, sea lions, foxes, deer, various birds. With members of the team, I went up and down the Klamath River in a motorboat, and twice saw a black bear startled by us and running uphill on the bank into the forest. In short, I witnessed and admired there magnificent landscapes and abundant wildlife.
No wonder, the area is still a BF habitat. Being omnivorous, homins survive where bears do. The abundance of bears in this area indicates sufficient sustenance for BF as well. Paulides confirms "a correlation between the number of bears in a specific area and the number of Bigfoot", saying that in this area the connection is "compelling"(p.72).
Among BF animal foods the author mentions first of all deer and fish, among plant foods blackberries, acorns and mushrooms. The latter two items are an addition to the list of "Indicated Diet" given by John Green in his big volume Sasquatch (p.491). Mushrooms were also indicated to me by Investigator "X". Regarding BF diet, I remember having been impressed back in the 1960s by reading in John Green's On the Track of the Sasquatch this observation by the witness William Roe: "Reaching out its hands it pulled the branches of bushes toward it and stripped the leaves with its teeth. Its lips curled flexibly around the leaves as it ate"(p.11). Paulides lists a similar observation by a witness: "She said it appeared to be eating a fern. The creature would grab a piece of the plant and then drag it through its mouth in an apparent attempt to eat just the leaves, or taking the moisture off the leaves" (p.230). In Sasquatch John Green presents another case of BF "eating leaves off a willow bush" in the spring of 1968 and in November that year two BF were seen "pulling up and eating water plants" in a creek (p.425). In Year of the Sasquatch, Green offers a photo of "Tracks in deep snow at Estacada" and writes that "every time the tracks passed one of the scattered spruce trees, all the new buds were stripped off the tree to a height of five or six feet on the side of the tracks"(p.52). This shows how thoroughly and intensely homins utilize natural food resources, including those ignored by humans. The secret of their survival is not only in Herculean muscles, but probably even more in omnipotent stomachs.
It's a striking feature of hominology, not yet generally realized, how similar subjects, objects, and conditions of this research are in America, Russia, China, Australia....
For reasons of space, I'll touch here only on the situations in Russia and America. On my first expedition to the Caucasus, I was very surprised to learn that the locals casually used such mythological to me names as "devils" and "goblins" to indicate the living subjects of my interest. And with surprise, but already not so great, I heard a school teacher in the Yurok Indian Reservation say that in their tongue Bigfoot is called Creek Devil. She said their custom is not to whistle in the forest so as not to invite the Creek Devil. Exactly the same custom exists in Russia concerning our Leshy (wood goblin). One of the first witnesses I interviewed in the Caucasus told me that the almasty he sighted stood motionless for a very long time. And in The Hoopa Projectwe read: "It appears that Bigfoot has developed a life maintenance strategy of concealing itself in the landscape by staying motionless. This is a recurring theme in sighting reports" (p.153). Michael Trachtengerts includes in this strategy also two instances known to us of BF staring at you with unblinking eyes.
During his visit at the Hupa Tribal Forestry office, Paulides was introduced to an individual from the forestry group. "This person had spent his entire life in the Hoopa area and truly didn't believe in Bigfoot. He explained that he had spent countless hours in the most remote regions of the reservation and he had never seen any sign of the creature. (...) Just as this individual was letting me know his ipinion, another forestry employee heard our conversation and started to level the same opinion my way. Both individuals were polite and professional, but true pessimists on Bigfoot" (p.103). I found myself in a similar situation visiting the office of a big wildlife preserve in the Caucasus. During my talk with the administrators and employees, one person said he didn't believe in any "wild men" in the Caucasus because he had traveled and hunted all over its regions but had never met any "wild men". I've heard this argument a countless number of times. Actually, in any homin habitat only a small minority among the locals claim to have seen the hairy bipeds one or more times, while the majority haven't seen even once. "Some Native people don't want to admit they saw Bigfoot, some are eager to talk about it and others brag about it" (p.279). This is true of homin habitats in Russia as well. I could go on and on about similarities in hominology research in Russia and America but it's time for me to wind up.
I noticed two little discrepancies in the text of The Hoopa Project that should be corrected in the next edition.. On p. 283 it is said that a sighting happened "in the early evening", while on p. 285 the same sighting "occurred in the morning during daylight hours". On pp. 54 and 305 we read of "the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bluff Creek video". There was no video in 1967.
The author writes in conclusion: "I believe that the time has arrived that legislators in the state government need to stop avoiding the obvious. Bigfoot exists, it has existed for tousands of years and we need to protect it" (p.329). "Pass Bigfoot legislation today" (p.331). Such insistence and assertiveness on the part of a BF researcher in America are unprecedented and highly commendable. But for them not to be mere rhetoric, a major condition has to be fulfilled. In former centuries legislation had to be approved by the Church. Today no legislation can be passed that contradicts the views of the scientific Establisment. Let there be no illusions on this score. So Bigfoot can't be legally protected without change in the views of the academic conclave. I see no other way of achieving this goal than creating an academic establishment of our own. Steve Summar states aptly and forcefully that "The true nature of the 'North American Aboriginal Peoples' (as he calls Bigfoot) is discovered and observed in the field, not the ivory towers of academia". That is correct. There are several groups of researchers known to me who are working diligently in the field, those of Janice Carter, Steve Summar, Adrian Erickson, Dave Paulides. There are certainly others. But their work is not coordinated, their information is not regularly exchanged and processed, and, worst of all, there are no links with and no impact on the scientific community. So what we need is not an ivory tower of academia, but a little modern office on a university campus, staffed with a couple of academics, publishing a scientific journal to record and report our progress. That's the way step by step to win over the mainstream. All who agree with me, do all you can to put this idea into practice.
Dmitri Bayanov
International Center of Hominology
Moscow, Russia
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