bigfoot

There’s No Sasquatch Conspiracy Afoot, Scientists Say

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"A Mere Big Foot From Discovery" // Artistic masterpiece by Rick Spears // Full size image HERE

A popular theory among some Bigfoot researchers or “Bigfooters” is that there’s a Sasquatch conspiracy afoot. They think the scientific community seeks to thwart Bigfoot’s discovery by ostracizing scientists who search for the creature and suppressing evidence of Bigfoot’s existence. Purported reasons for this range from petty feuds to ego to secret plans within the government.

But some scientists strongly disagree with this idea, including those who have faced the legendary subject of Sasquatch during their careers—and lived to tell the tale.

“I don’t think there’s any sort of conspiracy to disprove the existence of Bigfoot at all,” says geneticist Bryan Sykes, author of Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal: A Geneticist’s Search for Modern Apemen. “It’s blatant paranoia or delusion to think that.” 

In 2014, Sykes led a study where scientists asked people to send them hairs that they suspected were from cryptids (mythological animals) like Sasquatch. They received 57 hair samples and were able to sequence 30 of them. While most of the samples revealed known mammals, two samples revealed what appeared to be a previously unrecognized species of bear. The study’s findings were published in The Royal Society journal.

“There’s all the conspiracy theorists saying that scientists or the government are covering [Sasquatch] up,” Disotell says. “It doesn’t hold water.”

“The idea that the scientific community is actively conspiring to prevent Bigfoot evidence from ever reaching the popular attention is nonsense. Editors of top journals would jump at the chance to publish a paper [proving Bigfoot exists] if it ever materialized,” says Norman MacLeod, curator of paleontology at London’s Natural History Museum. Adding jokingly: “Probably walk over their mothers to publish it.” 

Molecular primatologist and New York University professor Todd Disotell, who has been on TV programs like Ancient Aliens and 10 Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty, agrees that there is no anti-Sasquatch plot.

“There’s all the conspiracy theorists saying that scientists or the government are covering [Sasquatch] up,” Disotell says. “It doesn’t hold water. No one’s career is going to end or be damaged if Bigfoot is discovered. I think the average scientist would be super excited. Primates went extinct in North America 30 million years ago. If you find out one didn’t… that’s cool!”

When discussing his 2014 cryptid study, Sykes says no other scientists or establishments stood in the way of him getting published because he did “proper scientific work, which was the best way to do it.” 

“I have quite a lot of faith in the scientific peer review process,” Sykes says. “My paper was published in a good journal. It wasn’t held up at all by the peer review system.”

But not everyone shares this point of view.

Should I Capitalize the Word ‘Bigfoot?’ The B vs. b Debate

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I’ve been making the decision to capitalize the word Bigfoot for the last year and a half now, and it occurred to me recently that I might be doing it all wrong.

While curled up in bed last week, snug as a bigfoot in a rug, I flipped through the pages of books like Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, Monster Trek, Searching for Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Last Neanderthal, Anatomy of a Beast, etc., and I realized there was no consensus on capitalization. Authors would use big B’s and little b’s at different times—sometimes with multiple variations in one text.

Were these decisions arbitrary? I refused to believe it! If each author had enough time to write a book about Sasquatch, then they surely had enough time to deeply ponder the writing mechanics—or at least do whatever a random editor told them to do.

I decided to capitalize the word Bigfoot mostly because that’s what I’d seen most modern journalists doing. I was a mimicker. A sheep! A wild, black sheep by nature—but a sheep, nonetheless. I couldn’t believe I had overlooked this for so long.

It plagued me for hours, even whole days. I would lie awake for minutes. I nearly dreamed about it. It was clear that I was a fraud. How could I call myself a professional writer if I hadn’t solved the ultimate Bigfoot mystery of B vs. b?

On Bigfoot Research, My Life, and the Craft of Writing

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Me, Krissy Eliot, with blue hair and a stare // View larger photo here

Last week, I did an interview with the San Diego Voyager about my Bigfoot research, this blog, and journalistic writing as a craft. For those of you who didn’t see the article posted to my social media accounts, I figured I’d post an excerpt here and link out to the extended interview so all of you have the opportunity to check it out.

Now, more than ever, I think it’s vital to get to know the people we look to for knowledge. Misinformation and biases are rampant—not just in the dark corners of the Internet—but in the pretty black and white pages of our established news outlets.

I want to be someone you can trust and rely on for honesty and accurate information. I hope that my work speaks for itself, but I also think knowing more about the woman behind the Hot Alien can’t hurt.

Hopefully, this interview provides you with a little more insight into my experience as a writer and editor, my motivations for studying Bigfoot and other strange phenomena, and my philosophy on the craft of journalism.

So many of you continue to share your wishes, hopes, thoughts and dreams with me. I figure it’s only fair to give some of that back. So! Behold, the interview…

You Will Find Bigfoot With This New App—Guaranteed

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Bigfoot captured on an iPhone // Credit: Bigfoot Reality

Bigfoot Reality is a new augmented reality app that will allow people to finally capture totally undeniable footage of an authentic-looking Bigfoot—right down to the hair in its stinky, cavernous nostrils! Of course, it’ll be totally, undeniably fake, but, when has that ever stopped anyone from posting their Sasquatch videos online?  

The way it works: You hold up your phone in certain locations around North America, and mere feet in front of you, you can be face to face with the mythological hominid species known as THE SASQUATCH.

The app will be equipped with a “Biome Map” that allows you to click on different parts of the U.S. and Canada to see which subspecies of Bigfoot are native to specific regions, and where you can go to find them. (If you’re in Texas, you’ll be hunting Harry Bill; in California, Sasquatch; in Chicago, Grassman.)

It’s kind of like Pokémon Go for Squatchin’—only way more advanced.

Is Sasquatch Too Controversial For Science? What Happens When Scientists Toe the Bigfoot Line

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Bigfoot illustration by Rick Spears

I’m no scientist, but from what I’ve gathered from interviewing scores of them over the last five years, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Contrary to what some may believe, you don’t get to just create 8-foot-tall zombie men with bolts in their necks and go all Jekyll and Hyde whenever you want. You have to, like, deal with politics and shit.

In fact, it seems that many scientists are forced to spend their lives formulating ways to jump through bureaucratic hoops rather than formulating hypotheses—keeping their heads down while desperately trying to justify their existence by getting their names into academic journals and scrambling for funds.

“The saddest people on Earth are junior faculty hoping to get tenure at a university, because they’re forbidden to smile in public, crack jokes, or make eye contact, and they absolutely can’t be seen as being even mildly interested in tabloid stories,” Dean Radin writes in his 2017 book Real Magic. “It’s the kiss of death to put one’s twenty-plus years of education and training in jeopardy by being perceived as too sympathetic about controversial topics.”

So when it comes to Sasquatch, it seems the hoops a scientist has to jump through to study the creature are even wider, higher—and on fire. Or at least, that appears to be the case among some scientists brave enough to take the heat.

Even though it’s impossible to prove that Bigfoot doesn’t exist, and science holds that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence—some scientists absolutely insist that Sasquatch can’t be real, says Jeff Meldrum, Idaho State anatomy and anthropology professor and author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science. Which is ironically un-scientific of them.

“I was faced with a colleague saying, ‘[Bigfoot] can’t exist; therefore, they don’t exist, and it doesn’t matter what evidence you think you have.’ And that’s a verbatim quote,” Meldrum says. “Where can you expect to get an equitable and objective review from an individual like that? They’ve already made up their mind.”