A review of Chasing American Monsters: Over 250 Creatures, Cryptids, and Hairy Beasts by Jason Offutt (2019). I’ve been thinking a lot about cryptozoology lately. While consuming content about many […]
Tag: Bigfoot
The Mysterious Monster Mash of the Mid 1970s: Bigfoot hits prime time TV
Bigfoots and their other monstrous cohorts were presented to U.S. audience in a serious television documentary for the first time in 1974. The outing was so successful that it still […]
Supernatural Creep: When explanations slide off to the fringes
Originally published as Supernatural Creep: The Slippery Slope to Unfalsifiability for my column Sounds Sciencey on csicop.org May 29, 2013. I’m taking a step beyond sciencey with the following topic. What happens when science doesn’t cooperate with your subject area? […]
Science and cryptozoology: The taboo subject of Bigfoot doesn’t add up
Episode 7 of Laura Krantz’ Wild Thing podcast on Bigfoot, science and society explores the contentious relationship between the orthodox scientific community and those scientists who choose to seriously explore […]
Believers are the majority: Paranormal acceptance in America is rising
The results of the 2018 Chapman University survey of American Fears have been released and they suggest that America (that is, even well-educated America) is even more accepting of the […]
Legitimizing ghost research: Scientism, sensitives, and cultural authority
As I wrote yesterday, sociologists and ethnographers are paying greater attention to paranormal communities. I commented on Bader’s analysis of Bigfoot seeking groups and their mix of naturalistic and paranormalist […]
Supernatural in Society conference: Bader on Bigfooters
There is a lot of new research happening in academia about paranormal culture and belief. I kid you not. Scholars in sociology, psychology, religious studies, and media studies are noticing […]
The Doubtful Witness: You don’t really know what you saw
How often have you heard someone say “I know what I saw”. Observations and remembrances of events are deeply flawed but we still rely on our memory to give us […]
Monster tales of the southern swamps (Book Review)
Beyond Boggy Creek: In Search of the Southern Sasquatch, by Lyle Blackburn (2017) This is Blackburn’s third book in a semi-series of volumes on southern bipedal creatures. I reviewed the […]
Monsters (and sciencey-sounding nonsense) Among Us – Book Review
I feel I should preface this book review with an explanation of why I, a person that rejects paranormal explanations (for good reason), would be interested in reading books about […]
Manual of monsters from cinema and culture – Book Review
I found an advertisement somewhere online for Rue Morgue Magazine’s Monstro Bizarro collection, “An Essential Manual of Mysterious Monsters”. Â Maybe it was via the editor, Lyle Blackburn. I pay attention […]
Well-worn paranormal paths go nowhere: When to give up
Gary Campbell is the keeper of the Official Sightings Register at Loch Ness. In an article today in the Daily Record, he says that even after 20 years of this project, […]
The Bigfoot Book: Speculation and supernatural but no skepticism
Nick Redfern’s latest, The Bigfoot Book, has a sound premise and great potential. It’s all about stuff you may never have heard about or saw relating to the Bigfoot phenomena. […]
Dreaming of DNA: Review of Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the last Neanderthal
Originally published in the UK as The Nature of the Beast, Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes’ Bigfoot, Yeti and the Last Neanderthal: A geneticist’s search for modern apemen is highly enjoyable and reveals a bunch of […]
If you think Bigfoot is an interdimensional being, you’ve lost your footing
A person making an extraordinary claim may feel very special. A couple that I met recently who do paranormal research described some acquaintances’ behavior during an investigation of a supposedly haunted place […]
Stone-throwing wall-thumpers: Review of Australian Poltergeists
Paul Cropper sent me a copy of his new book with co-author Tony Healy, Australian Poltergeist: The Stone-throwing Spook of Humpty Doo and Many Other Cases. He must have known […]
Neutrality and the wood ape report
It’s very difficult to be truly neutral. In most situations, you can only get somewhere by taking a side and exploring it. Last week’s hubbub regarding the Wood Ape report […]
Sykes paper is a clarion call for higher standards for cryptozoology
The highly anticipated paper from B. Skyes regarding DNA testing of anomalous primates has been published and is, thankfully, freely accessible. In 2012, the team from University of Oxford and […]
A Bigfoot book that is incredibly relevant 30 years later
Once again, I’ve finally gotten around to a classic cryptozoology text. MAN! I missed out on this one for so many years. John Napier’s Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in […]
The long and short of The Making of Bigfoot
This is a brief review of Greg Long’s Making of Bigfoot. I don’t have the extra time or feel it’s worth the effort at this point to write much in […]