WANTING TO BELIEVE

"Why do so Many People Still Want to Believe in Bigfoot?" 

That's the title of a recent Smithsonian Article by Ben Clair in the September 2018 issue.

But I'm not writing this to debate his question headline. We all believe and research and hunt for sasquatch for our own reasons. I'm content to let that ride.

What I am here to comment on is the slanted viewpoint of this article and how it tends toward the closed mind position that those of us who believe are somehow dimwitted and easily fooled. 

The author proceeds to talk to his reading audience as if they are undereducated and lists illustrative episodes of sasquatch history and proceeds to dismiss each event with only one side and one viewpoint. That everything is folklore, made up, a hoax, or lies.

First, he dismisses Native American beliefs as fiction and fables as his first step in his one-sided dismissal of the topic of sasquatch. He never illustrates any other view throughout the article of anything other than sasquatch is not real.

He tells us that ALL the footprints found in the Bluff Creek area were faked by Ray Wallace just as "a joke". That man certainly got around. Even managing to be in two places at one time, somehow traveling between even two different states to get those footprints out there. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Ray Wallace may not have faked some prints out there. 

And then the author dismisses the Patterson Film because it was from the same area, the Bluff Creek area. He cites as his outside source Benjamin Radford from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He argues that believers research with imagination, not reality.

To quote the author : "Naish has written that Bigfoot is the modern American 'manifestation of a human-wide cultural concept, not a zoological reality.' It has much in common with the Australian yowie and the Himalayan yeti: an upright posture, shaggy hair and, of course, large feet. As so-called wild men, they hold a crude mirror up to our own species: What might Homo sapiens be like if civilization had not removed it from nature?".

He goes on to tell us that sasquatch is our symbol of "pure freedom". When we search for it, it allows us to taste that freedom. We use the search to emulate an earlier time of discovery when curiosity, bravery, patience, and survival was what made men, men. Not money, position, possessions and such. It was the "Frontier Spirit" and sasquatch allows us to "channel" that "Frontier Spirit" and allows us to take on Native American traditions.

Guess he's trying to tell us that all we want to do is play Daniel Boone and pretend we're Indians? Really? Shame he thinks us so shallow just because of our belief.

And then come the rest of the accusations. If we believe in sasquatch we are gullible and just hunger for attention.  I won't say that there aren't those out there who can't wait to publish their weekend trek and gather the comments and observations to themselves. There are that kind in every place. I worked with a person who continually paraded their daily and weekly and monthly accomplishments from the workplace in front of anyone who was standing nearby. It didn't make any of us gullible or hungry for attention.

To prove his point, he finishes up with Frank Hansen and the Minnesota Iceman.

This is actually one story that will probably never have an ending of the whole truth. Suffice it to say, that when the Iceman was first displayed, Hansen had no problems with someone closely examining it. It appeared very realistic, and truly may have been. Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans certainly believed so after looking at it for a couple of days. I would hesitate to call both of these men "gullible" or uneducated, as is hidden between the lines.

There is also no denying that the Iceman that was on display at the finish was an obvious fake, manufactured on Hansen's orders to put on display. This appears to have been done after the issue of transporting a dead body across borders, both state and foreign, was becoming a legal issue. It was a natural thing to do in case authorities asked to see the body. It would be fake and he would have broken no laws concerning the dead and dead bodies. And it isn't until then that Hansen begins to deny access to the body for study, denying Napier the chance of close examination. Hansen needed to keep the fake a secret for as long as possible.

However, I presented the case with both sides shown, not to prove or to disprove. But the author presents it as only a hoax and to illustrate how gullible we all are.

This article is an annoyance for sure. And if the Smithsonian Magazine cannot present both sides of an issue, perhaps they should not approach it at all. Of course, perhaps they feel they have a right to do as they feel fitting. After all, science has never been proven wrong. LOL

Yes, there are those out there who are gullible and believe everything they view and read without looking deeper and without keeping an open mind and waiting to see what else is out there. And there will always be those who hunger for the attention or the money or the fame and will fake and hoax their way up that mountain. But it does not explain all those out there who have seen and believe but do not share their findings with anyone else, because they have nothing to prove to the rest of us. 

There will always be those who believe; those who wish to believe; and those who never will. Not even if a sasquatch stepped out in front of them.

Nancy

"I'll spark the thought; what you do with it is up to you."