Word is flying everywhere around the internet of the alleged recovery of a dead bigfoot in Georgia. A press conference will be held today in Palo Alto, CA at which the carcass will be revealed. My bet is that it will turn out to be yet another hoax, the main effect of which will be to drum up credulous customers for the business for Tom Biscardi, the spokesperson at the conference... which just so happens to be in conducting bigfoot tours.
In fact, the main characters in this latest foray into the wooful world of cryptozoology have already been caught participating in a hoax related to this precise event. A video shot by bigfootologists Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer featured commentary by supposed Dr. Paul Van Buren of Texas — but Dr. Van Buren turned out to be none other than Martin Whitton, Matthew Whitton's brother, and not a doctor at all.
...it's been revealed that a video filmed by the pair, featuring an interview with a "scientist", was a hoax.
The video, uploaded to YouTube by Mr Dyer, shows a "Dr Paul Van Buren" after he had flown from Texas to Georgia to view the Bigfoot body.
After seeing the corpse, Dr Van Buren says: "It's obviously a male, we looked at a very, very large primate male, it doesn't fit into any of the taxonomic groups I can think of.
"Unbelievable, I'm still shaking... I've never seen anything like this before."
However, Dr Van Buren was later outed as being Mr Whitton's brother, Martin, and the pair was forced to concede in a subsequent video that the interview was a hoax.— Source
Other aspects of the whole circus also scream "hoax," starting with the simple fact that bigfoot is supposed to be a denizen of the Pacific Northwest. Was the unfortunate crypto-ape on vacation with his family in Georgia when tragedy befell? This, of course, entirely ignores the fact that the very artifact that started the modern bigfoot myth was a footprint found near a northwestern logging camp in 1958 that itself turned out to have been manufactured. To date, there has been no evidence found that creatures like sasquatch inhabit North America. Indeed, most of the areas in which they have been sighted to date don't have enough resources available to support a population of giant apes that could have sustained itself for more than a few weeks.
The claims being made in this case are so dubious, in fact, that even fellow bigfoot enthusiasts have their doubts. For example, there's Michael Rugg, curator of the Bigfoot Discovery Museum of Felton, California:
Because of the way the information was revealed, the way the men in Georgia have been acting, and the fact that the only Bigfoot researcher that they allowed to see the body was Tom Biscardi, is a little questionable. Based on past experience, this is more likely a hoax than not.— Source
In fact, the loudest voice in the latest bigfoot revelation, Thomas Biscardi, doesn't exactly have a sterling record of skepticism when it comes to his favorite oversized simian. Biscardi was duped several years ago by others who claimed to have found a bigfoot body. He appeared on national news at that time to trumpet the discovery... only to later issue a retraction when the whole thing turned out to be a hoax.
Another bigfoot enthusiast with doubts about this incident is bigfoot enthusiast Jeff Meldrum, a "prominent bigfoot researcher" (what does that phrase even mean? How does one do research on something for which no evidence exists?):
Jeffrey Meldrum, a prominent Bigfoot researcher, told science journal Scientific American: "I'm extremely sceptical about this Bigfoot claim.
"I've had interactions with Tom Biscardi [a well-known Bigfoot hunter who is holding the press conference] in the past, and based on that history, I would say that anything he is involved in is suspect.
"What I've seen so far is not compelling in the least, and I think the pictures cast grave doubts on their claim. It just looks like a costume with some fake guts thrown on top for effect..."— Source
Still, there are going to be people who want so badly to believe that the bigfoot hoaxers really have evidence this time that nothing will dissuade them, even when it turns out that there isn't any of the claimed DNA evidence (has anyone actually extracted and sequenced DNA from the alleged bigfoot body yet?) and that what Rick Dyer says that he sweated and pulled from the North Georgia woods (
source) isn't the first physical evidence of a North American ape-man standing over seven feet tall.
In fact, the body — said to be secreted in a freezer somewhere near Atlanta — won't even be at the press conference. Just bad photos, apparently. Nobody outside of the hoaxers themselves have had the opportunity, nor are likely to get the opportunity in the future, to scientifically examine the supposed sasquatch specimen under controlled circumstances with objective instrumentation. Still, there will always be true-believers who are more ready to turn the inevitable revelation of a hoax into a media-and-science conspiracy to suppress the truth because somehow all the evil scientists and libuhrul media can't bear the thought of a big ape actually existing, so earth-shattering would it be to... well... something...
...I personally think that the DISINFORMATION SWEATSHOPS, are presently burning candles around the clock, in order to discredit the carcass, the finders, the buyers and anybody who steps up to the plate to concur that the body is real. They won't let this one become official without a long and bloody fight. Because then they will be out of their cush jobs, of harassment, illegal eavedropping, tracking researchers, ruining research areas, more harassment, funding local Bigfoot Bigot Clubs, paying $$lunch money to snitches who attend Bigfoot meetings and rat out the attendees, talking to employers of those attendees to get them fired, and oh, did I mention harassment yet? Harassment of Bigfoot researchers is not just a cush job with benefits and retirement. It is a way of life!
Furthermore, many sour grapes researchers will seek to discredit the carcass so that the decks will still be clear for them to somehow produce a carcass. Anthropologists from around the country, will be quietly bribed to publicly take a stance that the body is a hoax. We will see a book come out of manufactured lies, about the body being a hoax. We will primarily see TV coverage of the body being a hoax, because that is all that the news editors will allow. We are about to view a Disinformation Propaganda Campaign of unprecedented proportions that has unlimited $$$$FUNDING to back it up. After the momentum of the wave of excitement starts to die down, that is when the Disinformation Artists will kick in the after burners to "SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT"! Now, just sit back and watch the movie reel reveal the story of how American public opinion is tactically manipulated by carefully choreographed news stories...— themanwiththeplan, on Cryptozoology.com
Uuuhhhh, yeah, sure.
All you droids, get back in the trees! When do I get my paycheck for harassing bigfoot researchers?
Face it, folks, these latest hoaxers are good ol' boys
messin' with sasquatch.
Sphere: Related Content
LL: If they brought Copernicus back, do you think he could get anything accomplished with the Internet?
