Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre(41)
The problem was that sightings peaked in the late ’60s, early ’70s, which was, coincidently, the dawn of public mistrust. We’re talking Vietnam, Watergate, “do your own thing” counterculture. Now, I’m not saying any of that was bad, especially in a democracy. You need a healthy degree of critical thinking. You need to question authority. But Bigfoot came along just as everyone started questioning everything, including academia. This was a time when university profs were getting hit from both sides; the right with their creationist agenda, and the left who’d suddenly realized the connection between science and war. The upshot was that already cautious PhDs got even more skittish about their grants and tenure.
Which led them to drop Bigfoot right into the “crackpot” files. Where it has stayed till…yeah…till this day…even with what’s happened…which we’ll get to.
There’s a big reason Uncle Sam hasn’t released a full report on Greenloop. But…
Holds out her hands like a traffic cop.
“One thing at a time,” as Ms. Mostar said.
Point is, public skepticism dissuades qualified experts from searching for physical evidence, and lack of physical evidence only fuels public skepticism.
Which is why the burden of proof has been mainly left to amateur adventurers who either never find anything or make it worse for themselves like that time with the FBI.*1 You know about that, right? Came out a couple years ago? Some whack-job group in the ’70s pressured the Bureau to test a hair sample they collected and the sample turned out to be a deer. And it’s those kinds of public, Al Capone–vault fiascoes that keep credible eyewitnesses from going public. And I’ve talked to more than my share of eyewitnesses. In this job, you get a lot of folks who are sure they’ve encountered something. Not hoaxers. They don’t come to us. They go to the media. That’s where the money is, and fame. All that shaky footage that shows up every now and then. The most famous one, the “Patterson-Gimlin film” that gave us the image most people associate with Bigfoot…Roger Patterson claimed he was out there getting ready to make a Bigfoot movie and just “happened” to run into the real thing. Really?
No, the folks I talk to, I believe them, or rather, I believe that they believe themselves. But like Mrs. Holland said, “Knowing you saw something is different from knowing what you saw.” That’s why, even now, when I think about one of those BS documentaries from my childhood, I still believe the guy who passed the lie detector test. He wasn’t acting. He really thought he saw it. They all do.
Remember, I’m from the Southwest, where it’s, like, UFO central. If I had a nickel for every time somebody said they saw lights in the sky…and they do. I’m sure there were lights in the sky, and I’m sure they were sure those lights were coming to give them an anal probe. If you gave them all polygraphs, asked them, under oath, what did you see, or hear…
You get a lot of those too. Hearing stuff. Noises in the night. Footsteps or breaking branches, or that grunt. A couple times, I’ve talked to folks who’ve sworn they heard or smelled something. I’ve had several hikers or campers who’ve consistently reported that refuse and spoiled eggs odor. I might have smelled it myself, that time when we found the dead deer.
A thumb over her shoulder to the map.
Maybe that was it, or maybe it was just us hoofing it for three straight days without a shower. I don’t know what I smelled but I know that I smelled something. I trust my nose, ears, eyes. But my brain…
I think the human mind isn’t comfortable with mysteries. We’re always looking for answers to the unexplained. And if an answer can’t come from facts, we’ll try to cobble one together from old stories. If we’ve heard about UFOs when we happen to see a light in the sky, or a Scottish lake monster when we happen to see a ripple in the water, or a giant, apelike creature when we see a dark mass moving among the branches…
That’s why I dismissed everyone who ever reported anything to us. Even the credible ones. And by credible, I mean embarrassed. They didn’t want to be there. They didn’t want to look crazy. They always asked to speak to me in private, remain anonymous, make sure that they weren’t being recorded. They were almost positive that their minds were playing tricks on them. They didn’t want to believe it.
She sighs.
I should have believed them. Each time I almost did, because once they started talking, the doubt fell away. I should have followed up every time someone looked me straight in the eye and said with confident clarity…
JOURNAL ENTRY #10
October 9
I saw it!
I don’t know what woke me up tonight. A sound, or the outside porch light flicking on. It wasn’t ours, not at first. The Perkins-Forster house, shining up onto the ceiling above my head. I got up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and crept to the back window. I didn’t want to wake up Dan. He has a lot to do tomorrow. Village handyman. That’s why I didn’t risk opening the back balcony doors.
But just looking through the window, I could tell that something wasn’t right. Their compost bin had been knocked over, which was weird because they’re supposed to be animal proof. They’ve got these deep stakes that go way down into the ground. And the lids are locked with twin rotating levers. The lid was unlocked now, or wrenched off. I could see it lying near the overturned bin among a carpet of scattered trash.