Regal, Dr. Brian. Searching For Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads, And Cryptozoology. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2011. $85.00; 249 pages, hardback: ISBN: 978-0-23011-147-9; no photos or illustrations; chronology; extensive notes; bibliography and index. Palgrave Macmillian, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10010. Telephone: .
When I received a review copy of this important work on the Bigfoot topic three things immediately struck me: not a single photo is in the book and the subtitle: Crackpots, Eggheads. Joking aside, for Bigfooters who are able to afford a copy of this book, many will find that portion of the title extremely offensive and it may be a subliminal sign for potentially interested scientists to steer clear altogether. At $85 per copy (!) in this economy, the buyers will likely be libraries and Wally Hersom! Amazon.com already has a much better price for new copies and I am told a paperback edition will be available soon. We can only hope the publisher will have the vision to include photos in a later printing.
For the most part this book is a historical round up of both the Yeti and Bigfoot and the players, such as John Green, myself and the likes of Gordon “Grover” Sanders Krantz (1931-2002) is noted, which in the case of the late Dr. Krantz you immediately get a feel of where his life is in accordance with significant Bigfoot events, such as the Bossburg incident of 1969. John Napier (1917-1987), the Smithsonian Institution primatologist who had a keen interest in Bigfoot is also noted, but no one is played up with such high regard as Dr. Krantz, who is splashed with the highest regard throughout the pages of this book. Now dead, Krantz is more iconic than gullible.
As an example of his credulity, if you look at page 294 of his Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence republished in 1999, he puts stock in a picture of what is obviously a cardboard cutout, in the image and likeness of the P-G film, flipped from right to left. Grover writes, “The date of its discovery, and its obviously considerable age at that time, probably rules out any imitating of Patterson’s 1967 movie,” and you run for the nearest exit thinking, are you kidding me?
There is a lot of tidbits of new information in this work, some which are new to me. I never knew “Grover” was the nickname of Dr. Gordon Krantz, and he was my colleague for over twenty years. I never knew “Sanderson received $750 for the article.” (His Argosy magazine piece on the P-G film for February 1968, which is now a collector’s item. $750 in 1968 dollars was a huge sum of money). And Joe Davis from the Bronx Zoo “insists that [Ivan] Sanderson never intentionally deceived, but often went off half cocked,” and referenced his work as “sloppy,” something René Dahinden would echo later in life. And that Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) “worked variously as a jazz musician and comic performer as well as a writer.” But Brian Regal’s tome “is unconcerned with proving whether Bigfoot is real or not. I leave that burden to others. I am concerned with what motivates scientists to look for such creatures.” In his introduction he writes, “It is a story about spending one’s life pursuing something and never catching it. It is a story about chasing monsters.”
As he closes out his book he notes, “there are, in fact, few points, techniques, or systematized thought that monster hunters agree on that the historian can use to organize their story. This book represents an attempt to work out and analyze the history of monster hunting that I hope others will follow.”
In reality, this excellent and fascinating book is not just about scientists searching for monsters, but others, called “amateur naturalists” that are looking and doing field work as well. Amateur naturalists be damned, we call them Bigfooters!
In this work the scientists are the eggheads and the amateurs are the crackpots, such as the René Dahindens of the world, and duly noted in the title.
Brian Regal notes, “My original [title] was Crackpots & Eggheads: Amateurs, Professionals and Cryptozoology,” but his publisher had the final say in the matter.
Palgrave Macmillian, how about just Searching For Sasquatch for a title; the subtitle just conjures up images of nuts and lunatics running in the woods looking for monsters.
Unfortunately, this book does have trouble in the fact department. Cliff Crook’s “Bigfoot” photos came to be known as the Wild Creek Lagoon photos, not the “Willow Creek photos,” as noted in this work.
“...in 1978 Grover Krantz helped organize the first scholarly conference on the subject [at the University of British Columbia]. That is just not so. The author continues to fumble with stating that Grover Krantz and Dr. Marjorie Halpin “collaborated” in 1987 on the book Manlike Monsters. That is not so!
As good as some of Regal’s scholarship is, he fails miserably in places. Manlike Monsters was published in 1980 and Halpin’s collaborator was Michael Ames and - Halpin and Ames fail to show up in Regal’s otherwise stellar bibliography.
His chronology is wanting: “1947 Flying Saucers seen over Mt. Rainer...” Who cares, but otherwise important entries: “2001 René Dahinden and Bernard Heuvelmans die.”
Regal’s scholarship rises to its highest level with his extensive use of footnotes and there are 83 footnotes alone in chapter 5: “Suits And Ladders,” (a cool play on words) is about the long and tangled history of 953 frames from a 16-mm film, otherwise known as the P-G film. Regal’s prose is worthy of note: “With this second poor showing [of the P-G film], not only did Life back out of the deal, but its chief rival, Look magazine, which had been waiting hungrily in the wings, lost its appetite as well.”
My interest in this book is very personal, as I have interacted with most of the people mentioned in the book, from Heuvelmans, Bayanov, Krantz and Dr. Jeff Meldrum, who has scant mentioning in the book. It is interesting as well, how this studied group of people talk about one another: “a slimy *******,” one doctor says of another.
There is, as well, a most fascinating behind the scenes look at the Minnesota Iceman. Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans knew in their heart and soul what they were examining in a block of ice was a recently killed “...corpse of a Neanderthal-like man...”
So convinced was Sanderson, he contacted the F.B.I., which was unknown at the time. J. Edgar Hoover & company declined to investigate.
This book is a rare and insightful look by an academic who writes and thinks well. Notes Regal, “Those who searched for manlike monsters in the twentieth century - not as metaphors, but as flesh and blood organisms - have gone largely overlooked by academic historians of science.” In this case “overlooked” is a sugar coated “ignored.” We ignore because Bigfoot was often found on the front cover of the National Enquirer. A lot of work went into Searching For Sasquatch and I give Brian Regal a thumbs up for his highly commendable effort. Greatest drawback of this book: no photos.
Reviewed by the editor of the Bigfoot Times, Daniel Perez
From the current edition of the Bigfoot Times newsletter, March 2011, (www.bigfoottimes.net)
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