The Best of Ellijay, Blue Ridge & Jasper Funpaper issue 7 | Page 43

ow "Big" is Bigfoot? REAL big!
HUGE! Almost as "big" as The Beatles and he's been around for centuries, even longer. Google The Beatles
yand you'll get "About 241,000,000 results". Now Google Big Foot and get
about 145,000,000 ...Sasquatch
10,900,000 ...Yeti 52,600,000 ... Abominable Snowman, about 1,170,000 results and he blows away the Loch Ness
Monster coming in at about 3,940,000 results. There's Bigfoot chatter all around
the globe and it seems to have been going
on as long as we humans can remember
handed down in the form of tales and legends from before they could even be written down.
He's a movie star! Remember
"Harry & The Hendersons"? The movie
info website www.imdb.com lists 63 titles
under "Bigfoot" and another 24 under
"Sasquatch". As part of my preparation
for this article I rented "Bigfoot" the
original Syfy Channel production from
Ingle’s video store. It was the documentary I hoped it would be, though, I guess
its stars Danny Bonaduce (Danny Partridge), Barry Williams (Greg Brady) and
Howard Hesseman (Johnny Fever/ WKRP)
should have been my first clue!
He’s a TV star! Animal Planet's
"Finding Bigfoot" series is about to launch
its third season!
I myself, am skeptical. Like many, it
seems to me that after all this time... someone.. would have snapped a clear, identifiable picture of the creature yet all we have
are what local Bigfoot researcher Steven
Monk, director of the Georgia Big Foot Society (www.GeorgiaBigfootSociety.com) calls
"Blobsquatches", you know, those fuzzy,

H

grainy, photos that kinda/sorta looks like
something like what you think Big Foot looks
like off in the distance seventy-five percent
concealed by trees and brush.
As Paul Simon sang in "The Boy In
The Bubble"... "These are the days of miracles and wonders.... of lasers in the jungle.. of
the long distance call.... of... staccato signals
of constant information", yes these are the
days of high-tech solutions to old problems,
solutions like "Trail Cams". Google "Deer
Cameras" and get About 9,730,000 results.
Just go to www.TrailCam.com and take your
pick, there are many models to choose from.
They are cheap, digital, easy to use, and triggered by motion. They take crystal clear pictures day or night and some have multiple
shot or even a "burst mode" which takes a
rapid-fire sequence of photos, some even
take video. On these sites, www.trailcampro.com for instance you'll see samples of
crystal clear, multi picture sequences of deer
on the trail, (Go to:
http://www.trailcampro.com/samplephotos/R
econyx/RM45_Buck_800x600.gif) so why
haven't we been able to get anything better
than a "Blobsquatch" in the decade or so
that this type of technology has been available? Just say'in...
Of course, that's not to say it's not...
possible.... that they exist. I'll keep an open
mind and for good reason. New species are
discovered all the time, species that have
lived on this planet with us for very long periods and yet have gone previously undetected. Much more to the point, there have
been cases where creatures thought to be extinct for millions of years have surfaced, literally in the case of a fish
called a Coelacanth known
to have been around for
400 million years or so but
thought by scientists to

have gone extinct 70 million years ago... uh...
that is until fishermen off the African coast
caught one... alive... in 1938. So I guess it's
hard to say Big Foot is not... possible.
But then again, there's good reason
not to believe. Hoaxes, lots of them. One
huge and very infamous one was (almost)
pulled off right here in Georgia and hit the 24
hour news cycle back in 2008. The website
www.bfro.net/hoax.asp gives all the dirty details regarding "The 2008 Dead Bigfoot Hoax
from Georgia" and it sure does Bigfoot research and researchers no favors. The site reports "The Georgia Hoax was the biggest
bigfoot story of 2008. The story was followed
by a few thousand newspapers around the
world, including every newspaper in the English speaking world." Wikipedia explains that
two Georgia men claimed to have a dead Bigfoot body frozen in a block of ice. They got
$50,000 advance money from Searching for
Bigfoot, Inc but when it was thawed out it
was found that the hair wasn't real, the head
was hollow and the feet were made of rubber. As Dr. Phil often asks... "What were they
think'in?!!!!
Sadly one attempted hoax went
horribly wrong this August when a man in
Montana dressed in a Bigfoot costume was
run over and killed after being hit by two
cars while crossing a highway. There were
and probably will be many more.
True or not "Big Foot Mania" is
every bit as real as was "Beatlemania" and it
has been going on longer and there's no end
in sight. Countless websites and forums can
be found. (http://www.
bigfootevidence.blogspot .com/) There are
Bigfoot Research groups in many of the
United States and all around the world. The
Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot is
packed with information citing information
from many of the books that can be found on
the subject. An Amazon.com search brings
up 6,591 results, book after book, video after
video. There's even Bigfoot toys! Fisher-Price
makes a remote control, talking "Bigfoot
Monster" that can even play ball
with your "little monster"!
I recently met up with local Bigfoot
researcher K. Steven Monk, director of The Georgia Big Foot Society
at Johnny's Pizza in Jasper, or as I
call it "our Jasper office", any excuse to go to Johnny's is a good one.
Steve had a slice of Hawaiian pizza
with hu