Monday, March 1, 2010

Bigfoot and UFOs: Correlation?

















There’s been a lot of talk during the past decade about the incidences of Bigfoot sightings and UFO sightings seeming to correlate. Books such as “Hunt for the Skinwalker” (a chilling read, by the way), have tried to tie the two events together. Theories run the gamut from Bigfoot is an alien, an alien slave worker, being observed by aliens, somehow psychically being controlled by aliens, and perhaps being reintroduced into our world as a sort of cloned ancestor from old being put into our mix again.

I don’t usually take stands on things until a long period of study and even then when I say I believe or don’t believe in something, I’m liberal-minded enough to be flexible. I certainly am not the resting place of all knowledge, but my logical mind can’t help but make some assumptions in reviewing subjects. At this point in my own evolutionary process as a truth-seeker, I’m not sold on the concept of Bigfoot/UFO correlations. Here’s some of why:

UFOs are seen constantly in my state of Arizona. During the infamous Phoenix Lights evening, not one BF was sighted. In fact, nowhere in the desert are they seen and yet we have sightings of UFOs up the wazoo (BTW, I will not verify the man who said he sighted BF in Gila Bend. His story is completely ridiculous). Mexico and Chile have mass sightings of UFOs (also huge mining sites which I think has something to do with it) and yet Mexico and Chile do not report BF sightings.

On the rare day the skies are clear enough in the NW where BF is sighted, people often look to the skies for the first time to be able to see stars, which means there’s more people seeing UFOs that would have been missed the other 250 days a year they don’t get clear skies at night. Such a unique sighting would be quite exciting and unusual and noteworthy; however, BF can be sighted with or without UFO sightings. People are just more likely to recall incidents occurring together because both are rare, but both happening together are very rare, therefore making it stick in memory as potentially significant.

BF is often sighted within a mile of a stream. He’s also often sighted in the middle of the woods. He could very well be sighted within a mile of a Starbuck’s, but I’m not necessarily going to say that Starbuck’s and BF are somehow in cohorts.
It’s my belief that the whole BF/UFO connection was made by some twisted logic. BF is hard to find, sometimes it seems like his tracks stop in the middle of nowhere as if he just disappeared. For a time, mystical explanations were used such as he was a Wendigo or perhaps a shapeshifter. Others thought he might be other-dimensional which would explain how hard it is to pinpoint him and trap him.

Eventually, a jump was made to “perhaps he’s alien.” However, this would completely dismiss the fact that he is, by description, an obvious part of the evolutionary process of man and ape. I rather doubt that’s a coincidence that the aliens happen to have a version of a life form from our world. It was perhaps the popularization from the Skinwalker Ranch incident (see first paragraph) that got people’s attention and started them looking for correlations. Sometimes, these correlations are completely coincidental or explainable.

In my study for the haunted formula, I included train tracks at first. My thought was that it was just ridiculously highly likely that a haunted place was within 1000 feet of a railroad track. Upon studying it more, it came to my realization that I had to omit that from the formula. Why? Well, older historic homes are more likely to have more history and be more haunted, right? Train tracks were actually an incidental finding. Those very homes were built in towns and areas near train tracks where they could get goods to the stores there in town and to the people. Therefore, most older homes were near train tracks—sort of like the “highway” of the olden days. More remote haunted places with no train tracks still had high incidences of hauntings, therefore you didn’t need a train track to make a haunting, they just happened to go together.

I feel the same way about BF. He happens to hide in the huge woods of the west. UFOs (if we assume they are alien operated) would more likely observe from the west to be less detected by human eyes. We do see a huge amount of UFOs in the west. I think there’s three reasons for that: Secretive Air Force Bases like Area 51, clear skies most of the year, and more mining areas—geology and UFOs seem to like each other a lot.

BF, in my opinion, is a real biological creature of this earth and not otherworldly. I seriously doubt UFOs are dropping off little groups of BFs to go hunt salmon and hang out in the woods for a little rustic “vay-cay.” These creatures have a musky scent like an ape, leave heavy footprints and even hairs, make sounds, and upon occasion show fear and curiosity. They are not here to observe us and they are not operating advanced flying machines just to have a honeymoon getaway on a crowded and intelligent planet (with the obvious exceptions of Pat Robertson, Glenn Beck, Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Sarah Palin).

It’s time to give up the urban legend and move on to real correlations and real-world thinking. I have a saying in the ghost hunting world; whether you want to believe ghosts are spiritual or explainable, the fact is that they manifest things we can see and hear which means they have to at some point adhere to our physics and physical world. It is in that place that we will converge to explain them through science. I feel the same way about BF. Whether he comes from a saucer or not, he's seen and heard and smelled in this world, which means that when he's interacting with our world, he is highly vulnerable to capture.

So, that’s my stand on BF and UFOs.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your opinions, especially if they differ. I’m curious what sort of “evidence” keeps people believing this theory.

8 comments:

  1. OK. So this is going to sound very skeptical and I apologize. But in my field, there has also been a noted trend for the same period of time. Mental Illness, suicide attempts, and drug and alcohol dependency have been on the rise. Perhaps the correlation has something to do with these factors?

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  2. Not sure there is a correlation between BF & UFOs.....
    I think that the sighting of one causes people to think about any other odd or strange or unusual event that may have happened in the same time period. Thus causing people to think that there is a correlation. The average person does not take the time to investigate in depth.

    I grew up in an area of the country where strange lights/objects were sighted in the skies A LOT! Along with those sightings were also other unusual sightings of strange animals, cattle mutilations, & BF. Frequently all these things were observed within the same time span (a week or two) & so the assumption was made that one led to the other.

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  3. Jessica;
    You might want to look this one up, but I think it's a huge factor. The period of the 1990s through to 2008 the geomagnetic activity was at an all-time high--off the scales. At the same time period, we had a huge spike in UFO sightings and the ghost hunting shows had a lot of strange encounters. We know that geomagnetic activity affects the pineal gland and can cause very weird dreams and also pushes the psychotic and depressed over the edge because humans are affected by these changse. It's also entirely possible that because of those spikes and affects on our brains, those who don't consider themselves psychics are actually better accessing the parts of the brain responsible for gaining more sensory info than usual or in other words, it could be making them psychically sensitive which could drive depressed and empathic and psychotic people over the edge. My guess is that in general the rise in mental illness and depression and drug dependence is interwoven and also depend more on our social structure in the US. Almost no families stay together in the same home, there are less people making friends with their neighbors and having church support groups, so without any others helping to support folks, they're floundering and becoming addictive which also will affect their mental state. It's pretty commonplace that when a person goes into drug rehab, they're put on Lithium and the like for supposed bipolar when truly that behavior was an out of whack system on drugs/alcohol. I'd blame the issues more on social and then aggravated by geomagnetic activity. That's just how I see it. Interesting subject, though. I hope you probe that some on your ghost stories and haunted places site. It is your field of profession, so I'd love to hear what you think, not only about how sighting a ghost might affect people but how sensitive people may be misdiagnosed as mentally imbalanced.

    Jeanne; It is interesting how these things seem to come in waves with weird things happening all at once. The question becomes whether because weird events heighten people's sensitivity, they may be taking notice of things they never did before. Sort of the "home alone" syndrome when you suddenly hear your house making sounds you never noticed before because you're alert to intruders.

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  4. I'm sure BF wasn't watching while Travis Walton was abducted and thinking, "wholly crap I better get out of here, we are being invaded!" OK, my attempt at silly humor. I totally agree with you and don't think one thing has to do with the other. BF is a creature of this Earth that we still don't know much about and aliens are from worlds light years away.

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  5. Hey Julie;
    Poor BF. He takes the blame for lots of things, but alien abductions, I don't think so. Besides, the most often reported aliens are the "Nordic" looking ones and the little grays. I've never heard anyone describe being in a UFO with a BF leaning over them with a probing device.

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  6. LOL, that last lines was funny!

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  7. Autumn,

    I tend to veer away from the geomagnetic theories. I haven't seen any research published in any apa journals that shows conclusively that it affects behavior. I know theoretically it may and there are those that kick the idea around, but I need a statically signicant value in a controlled experiment to believe in most anything. My suggestion was much more simple. Mentally ill people may think they are seeing UFO's and Big Foot but are not. It's not so much that I don't believe in either thing, but that I know many mentally ill people have magical thinking that may center around these types of ideas.

    I also don't believe the psychically sensitive are mistaken for the mentally ill anymore these days. They always show that in movies, but someone who is trully mentally ill presents in an irrational fashion that is hard to miss. Their delusions aren't organized like they are depicted on TV. They are tangential and you can't mistake someone who's seen a ghost for someone who's mentally ill. I spend a lot of time with the mentally ill and you can almost pick them out of a crowd.

    I agree with you that the rise in mental illness is probably due to a breakdown in certain social standards and values and I also firmly believe that our modern society creates mental illness. Social Isolation is a major contributer to mood disorders and our society in which people spend more and more time alone in the house watching tv and blogging (lol) isolates people and contributes to escalation mood disorders. Inactivity is also a major contributing factor in mood disorders and our society creates a favorable enviornment for that.

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  8. I first thought it was an interesting theory when I heard the BF/UFO correlation years back, but I'm with you, Autumnforest. I don't think they go together. I think BF is an ape species (or perhaps even the Missing Link) and UFOs are from elsewhere...just like most everyone else stated too.

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