BIGFOOT

Idaho Professor Criticized Over Bigfoot Study
By JESSE HARLAN ALDERMAN, AP

POCATELLO, Idaho (Nov. 4) - Jeffrey Meldrum holds a Ph.D. in anatomical sciences and is a tenured professor of anatomy at Idaho State University. He is also one of the world's foremost authorities on Bigfoot, the mythical smelly ape-man of the Northwest woods. And Meldrum firmly believes the lumbering, shaggy brute exists.

That makes him an outcast -- a solitary, Sasquatch-like figure himself -- on the 12,700-student campus, where many scientists are embarrassed by what they call Meldrum's "pseudo-academic" pursuits and have called on the university to review his work with an eye toward revoking his tenure. One physics professor, D.P. Wells, wonders whether Meldrum plans to research Santa Claus, too.
Meldrum, 48, spends most of his days in his laboratory in the Life Sciences Building, analyzing more than 200 jumbo plaster casts of what he contends are Bigfoot footprints.

For the past 10 years, he has added his scholarly sounding research to a field full of sham videos and supermarket tabloid exposes. And he is convinced he has produced a body of evidence that proves there is a Bigfoot.

"It used to be you went to a bookstore and asked for a book on Bigfoot and you'd be directed to the occult section, right between the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs," Meldrum said. "Now you can find some in the natural science section."

Martin Hackworth, a senior lecturer in the physics department, called Meldrum's research a "joke."

"Do I cringe when I see the Discovery Channel and I see Idaho State University, Jeff Meldrum? Yes, I do," Hackworth said. "He believes he's taken up the cause of people who have been shut out by the scientific community. He's lionized there. He's worshipped. He walks on water. It's embarrassing."

John Kijinski, dean of arts and sciences, said there have been "grumblings" about Meldrum's tenure, but no formal request for a review.

"He's a bona fide scientist," Kijinski said. "I think he helps this university. He provides a form of open discussion and dissenting viewpoints that may not be popular with the scientific community, but that's what academics all about."
On campus, Meldrum -- himself a hulking figure, with a mop of brown hair, a bristly silver mustache, and a black T-shirt with a silhouette of a hunchbacked, lurking Bigfoot -- gets funny looks and the silent treatment from other scientists, and is not invited to share coffee with the other science professors.
Over the summer, more than 30 professors signed a petition criticizing the university for hosting a Bigfoot symposium where Meldrum was the keynote speaker.

He pays for his research with a $30,000 donation from a Bigfoot believer.
Still, Meldrum has a distinguished supporter in Jane Goodall, the world-famous authority on African chimpanzees. Her blurb on the jacket of Meldrum's new book, "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science," lauds him for bringing "a much-needed level of scientific analysis" to the Bigfoot debate.
"As a scientist, she's very curious and she keeps an open mind," said Goodall spokeswoman Nona Gandelman. "She's fascinated by it."

Bigfoot is sort of the Loch Ness Monster of the Pacific Northwest. The legend dates back centuries.

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Bigfoot at Big Sandy!
by Brent Raynes

On October 11, 1980, the legendary Bigfoot was apparently spotted in Big Sandy, Tennessee. It wasn’t until Saturday, December 27, 1980, that I arrived on the scene around 10 a.m. at the home of Larry R. (full name withheld but on file) on Sulphur Creek Road, not far from Kentucky Lake. R was 20 years old and a carpenter.

R told me, “We was coming back, and we got about 4 miles out of Big Sandy, and we was coming up through this little hollow, and my lights shined up on top of the hill and we seen something standing right over on the left hand side of the road and it kind of had its head hung down, and it kind of looked over towards me, and as soon as the lights hit it it acted like the lights might have hurt its eyes or something. And it took off in kindly in a fast trot and went over in the bushes, beside the road—on the right hand side of the road, and I didn’t know what to think so I kept on going and went on down the road about quarter of a mile and I decided I would turn around and come back, and see if I could see anything of it again.”

“Now your wife saw it too?” I asked. “Yeah,” R replied. “And by the time that I got back it was done gone. So I told a couple of my buddies around here and then he told one of his coon hunting friends and he got pretty alarmed about it, so he started looking for it because he said that he didn’t want to be out at night sometime hunting and run up on it, so—and he said he had a couple of kids running around and it might attack his kids, so he was out looking for it and about a mile and a half from where I seen it—he said he was going down the road in his jeep and it was standing in the middle of the road—and it turned around and looked at him and he said it’s eyes were glowing bright red and he said he got out of the jeep with his gun, he was going to shoot it, and as soon as he opened up his door he said it acted like it scared it, and it took off running and went down in the woods.”

R., describing his sighting again, stated: “It stood in the middle of the road for just a minute and it looked towards me, and it took off runningÉ It looked like it was real coarse hair. It was kindly a dark brown, and maybe a black, the best that I could tell. It [hair] looked like it was two inches long, something like that. And it looked like it had long arms, and it had its shoulders slumped up, with its head kindly hung down. ..Right before I had seen it, my wife’s grandmother lives there and soon as she heard about me seeing something she called me up that next Sunday morning and said that she had been scared because she had been hearing something sounded maybe—what she thought it was was a dog had got up there behind the house in the hollow and sounded like a bunch of puppies hollering all in one voice. ÉIt looked like it was real big. It looked like it would be real strong, the best that I could tell. And it didn’t act like it was clumsy. It moved real smooth, and everything. It didn’t take it but like maybe 4 or 5 steps to get all the way across the road.”

Bobby J., 26, a TVA employee and a resident of Big Sandy, told me that on the Sunday night [October 19th], about eight days after Larry R’s creature sighting, he encountered the thing. “The reason I was out, the night before, on Saturday night, they come down here. I was gone hunting, and they were trying to get a party up because they heard it down around those people’s houses. And my father-in-law went back down there and he said he didn’t see nothing, so when I came in she told me about it and the next day I went back down there to see if I could see signs that anything had been around, and I found a footprint. It was about 12 inches long and had four toes on it. So I was going to go back that night to see if I could hear it, and I took my rifle with me. On the way down, I seen something standing on the side of the road before I got to the place where they had been seeing it at. And I turned around and come back, and when I did this thing was standing in the middle of the road, and it had its back turned to me and it just turned around and looked at me like that there, and his eyes looked like a ball of fire, just as red as they could be. And I started to stop my jeep and I started to get out, and whenever I did the thing ran out of the road. I come back to the house and I got my mother-in-law and father-in-law and we went back down there and we sat there and listened to it holler about 10 or 12 different times and it finally were raising cain around there and everything else."

“It was anywhere between 6 or 7 foot tall. It looked like it weighed anywhere from 300 to 400 pounds. The shoulders looked like they might have been at least three foot apart. The head was down around his shoulders. ÉBlack looking from what I could tell under the lights. ÉWhen I come back and got my mother-in-law and father-in-law we went back down there and we heard it hollering. It wasn’t no really screaming sound but—me and these other boys went down there—it was on a Wednesday night, and I’ve got a sound of it on a tape, but you can’t pick it out too good on account of coyotes that went to barking about the time it started screaming. ..The sound was coming in good until them coyotes started barking, and it was in the distance. It was way off. I just barely did pick it up. If they had never started barking I’d have had it good.”

“There were some gun shots,” I noted. “Do you know what they were shooting at?” “They were just shooting in the air about the coyotes,” J. noted. “I found some [hair] in barb wire. It was sort of a dark brownish, almost black. A boy over at the plant was supposed to have it analyzed but he never did send it off. I don’t know if he’s still got it or not. I gave him all I had. When I seen it it was between 10:30, quarter till 11. Something like that. I was alone at the time. The noise at that time was just like most animals have got a noise they carry when they’ve moving. It wasn’t no screaming sound or nothing like that. It was just sort of a grunting sound, but it wasn’t no kind of an animal I’ve heard around here. I’m out all times of the night coon hunting and stuff, and I’ve never heard anything like it. And the guy’s dogs above where I seen it at, they were raising cain that night, and we talked with people who lived on the road the way it went and they said their dogs were raising cain all night long.”

“I was shook up so bad that it stopped me from hunting for a week or two, until nobody else had been hearing it around, and then I started getting back out.”
“If you had all come down around the time we had seen it I could have showed you some tracks. It was heavy enough I could stick my boot in it and work my foot back and forth in the track of it, and have plenty of clearance in it.”

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From God Like Productions forum

You may have heard or read about many of the sightings of the elusive "hairy biped," but less known are the "close encounters of the third kind" (contact) or even the fourth kind (abduction) with Sasquatch. Yes, people have reportedly been physically attacked by Bigfoot - and even abducted by the creature. Why are these stories less known? Probably because they are so fantastic that most of these accounts are not taken very seriously; even those who think Sasquatch exists look upon these cases with a highly skeptical eye.That's not to say they are not true, only that they have very little or no evidence to back them up. That said, here are some first-hand accounts of... when Bigfoot attacks!

1902 - Chesterfield, Idaho. A group of people enjoying a winter's day skating were suddenly terrorized by a hairy monster brandishing a wooden club. The witnesses said the creature stood about eight feet tall. Later, four-toed footprints were found that measured 22 inches long and 7 inches wide. Bigfoot indeed! No one was injured in the attack.1912 - New South Wales, Australia. A surveyor named Charles Harper was camping with several colleagues on Currockbilly Mountain. One evening, as the men sat sound their campfire, they became increasingly unnerved by the strange sounds they heard coming from the woods. To help allay their fears, they piled more wood on their fire. The increased light revealed that something unexpected had invaded their camp. "A huge man-like animal stood erect not twenty yards from the fire, growling," Harper later told a newspaper, "and thumping his breast with his huge hand-like paws." Harper estimated that the creature stood about 5'8" to 5'10" tall and was "covered with long, brownish-red hair, which shook with every quivering movement of his body." To say the least, the men were terrified. One even fainted. For several minutes, the creature continued to growl and make threatening gestures at the men, then turned and disappeared into the forest dark.1924 - Ape Canyon, Mount St. Helens, Washington. Fred Beck and several other prospectors were puzzled by very large footprints they found in the canyon - until they encountered the beast that made them. They saw a large, ape-like creature peering from behind a tree, watching them. One of the miners leveled his rifle at the creature, shot and possibly grazed it in the head. It ran off out of sight. Later, another creature was seen by Beck. As it stood on the edge of a canyon wall, Beck shot it in the back. It fell, irretrievably, into the canyon.

These acts of violence by the humans was not to go unavenged by the Sasquatch. That night, the miners' cabin was attacked by at least two of the primates. For five hours, they pounded on the door and walls, and hurled rocks onto the roof in an attempt to break in. Fortunately, the windowless cabin, built to withstand harsh winters, kept the Sasquatch from entering. As dawn approached, the creatures abandoned their assault. When the miners finally ventured outside, they found numerous Bigfoot prints all around the cabin, and a strip of wood gouged out from between two logs. (There is some evidence that this "attack" may have been a hoax, while others contend that it is true.)

1924 - Vancouver, British Columbia. Albert Ostman is one of the few people who claims to have been abducted by Sasquatch. It happened while he was searching for a lost gold mine that he heard existed somewhere near Toba Inlet. He had heard from an Indian guide about the legendary Sasquatch, but didn't take them seriously until he discovered that something was stealing food from his campsite at night. Then one night he was awakened by something picking him up in his sleeping bag. "I was half asleep and at first did not remember where I was," Ostman said. "My first thought was - it must be a snow slide... Then it felt like I was tossed on horseback, but I could feel whoever it was, was walking."

After hours of being carried, Ostman was finally dropped to the ground where he heard a strange-sounding chatter. It wasn't until dawn, however, that Ostman made his way out of his sleeping bag. He was astonished to find himself in the company of four Sasquatch - what appeared to Ostman to be a family: adult male and female, and a young male and female. Ostman was able to provide detailed descriptions of the creatures, all of which, except for the young female, were enormous.

Ostman claimed to have spent six days in the company of the Sasquatch family. When he decided he had had enough, he fired his rifle into the air and made a run for it.

1928 - Vancouver, British Columbia. A trapper named Muchalat Harry also claimed to have been kidnapped by Bigfoot. The powerfully built Indian of the Nootka tribe was plying his trade in one of his favorite hunting grounds around the Conuma River that autumn. Like Ostman, Harry was picked up in his sleep, bedding and all, and carried for about three miles by a large Sasquatch. When set down, he found himself surrounded by about 20 of the creatures, both male and female, which he at first thought planned to eat him, as their campsite was littered with large bones. The creatures poked and prodded Harry, seemingly puzzled by his clothing. After a while, they appeared to grow tired of the human curiosity, and many left the camp.

Seeing his chance, Harry made a run for it - running right past his own camp to his canoe on the river. He never went trapping in the woods again.

1957 - Zhejiang, China. On a May afternoon in the sparsely populated Chinese province, Xu Fudi heard her young daughter screaming. The girl had been tending the family's cattle, and Xu Fudi hurried to see what had happened. She was startled to see her daughter struggling futilely in the powerful arms of a young Yeti - the Asian version of Bigfoot. Xu Fudi rushed at the Yeti with a stick of wood and began to beat the creature. It tried to escape through a paddy field, but was slowed by the thick mud. More women from the village joined Xu Fudi in beating the creature to death. So terrified were they of this strange creature that they cut its carcass into pieces. Eerie cries of mourning were heard from the hills the next day.

1977 - Wantage, New Jersey. New Jersey isn't the first place one thinks of when Sasquatch is mentioned, but this reported attack comes from a rural area of that state in the month of May. The Sites family was disturbed by something that had broken into their barn and crushed several of their rabbits to death. The predator returned that night, and the Sites saw it clearly standing in their well-lit yard. "It was big and hairy," Mrs. Sites reported. "It was brown. It looked like a human with a beard and moustache. It had no neck; it looked like its head was just sitting on its shoulders. It had big red glowing eyes." When the Sites' dog attacked it, the creature effortlessly swatted it away - sending it flying about 20 feet. On subsequent nights, the creature was seen several more times by the Sites.So there you have them - only a few of the more well-known cases of close encounters with Sasquatch. Are they true stories... or just tall tales?

My neighbor swears to have had bigfoot encounters when he was a teenager in the 70's. I guess I believe him, we both had lots of strange things happen to us growing up here.It's a rural area near the Blue Ridge in Va. There were outbuildings on their property going back into the woods, there's an artesian well back there too, natural springs.He used the farthest building to get away from his parents' house, drink smoke, listen to music - he slept down there when weather permitted. He's seen a large being standing in the tree shadows watching him through the doorway.When he turned the music up loud, something would smash against the side of the building so hard it rattled the walls. He said the creature seemed to especially despise Black Sabbath. I do remember hearing Iron Man and Paranoid off in the distance, come to think of it.... memories...It would beat on one wall and then suddenly be beating on the opposite wall. Maybe more than one.

He said he could throw the door open while it was beating on the door and nothing would be there.He says he shot at it with a .22 but nothing happened.I don't know, I never saw it. The thing started showing up after I had a close ufo encounter, though.who knows...