Mondo Bizarro | Aug 29 2012 |
In northwestern Montana a night ago, a forty-four-year old man was run over while trying to stage a Bigfoot sighting. He had donned a Ghillie suit—a military camouflage outfit resembling foliage but which could be mistaken for coarse fur—and was standing either on the shoulder or in a traffic lane of State Highway 93. Instead of being seen and mistaken for a sasquatch, he went unseen and was just plain squashed when hit and run over by first one car, then, for good measure, another. Needless to say, the man, whose name was Randy Lee Tenley, died on the scene. Tragic, unfortunate, family is in our prayers and so forth, but let’s not even pretend this isn’t funny. Even the most moral among us (our girlfriends) have to smile morbidly at this. Picture this poor guy lurking by the highway, probably giggling inside his Ghillie suit, feeling quite clever and doubtless imagining the next day’s headlines—which you can be sure he did not think would read “Local Idiot Fatally Flattened.” We know, we know—tragic, unfortunate, family is in our prayers and so forth. You know what the worst part is, though? Not only did the guy die in brutal fashion, but his death was completely in vain—no Bigfoot sightings were called in that night.
Mondo Bizarro | Mar 28 2011 |
One of the most enduring mysteries of North America concerns the existence of the apelike creature Bigfoot. As of yet, none of the 985 reported sightings of the primate has produced conclusive evidence of its existence. And a video shot last week in North Carolina by a man named Thomas Byers isn’t going to be reversing that trend anytime soon. Byers claims he and a friend were driving along Highway 226 the evening of 22 March, when: “we both observed a large, upright, brown, furry animal between six and seven feet tall come up out of the field beside the road and then it ran across the road in front of the pick up truck we were in.” Byers claims he grabbed a videocamera and recorded the creature as it fled into the woods. Unfortunately, what he actually recorded was not the creature, but a blur that should have him checking to see whether the auto-focus on his camera is broken. You can see the recording here, if you’re inclined. You’ll notice that the creature doesn’t run—rather, it lopes in a way that doesn’t seem a very effective mode of locomotion for a famously elusive wild animal, but might be appropriate for either a toddler with a load in his pants or a hick wearing a novelty ape suit. We suspect the latter, which means we’re calling this sighting a prank. But we’ll keep hoping. And we know you will too.
Mondo Bizarro | Dec 15 2009 |
A couple of months ago we wrote about the famous 1967 Bigfoot sighting in Bluff Creek, California, and now this week the elusive creature is in the news again after being filmed in Minnesota. Peter and Casey Pedrowski were staying overnight in their hunting cabin and had set up a motion-activated trail-cam to determine if any game were wandering nearby in the wee hours. And as it happened, something was. When they looked at the photos weeks later, they were shocked see the above image. However, the brothers are skeptical about whether the figure is a Bigfoot. “I still don’t know what to think about it,” said Casey Kedrowski. “I’m still not convinced.”
We have to agree with the wildlife experts on this one. As pulp enthusiasts, we’re just as eager to find a Bigfoot as the next guy, but not to the extent that some hoser headed out into the cold for a piss after drinking a sixer of Moosehead starts to look like one. If the Pedrowskis had aimed the camera thirty degrees right the shot would show a dark figure with steam rising nearby and instead we’d all be talking about whether it was a photo of the Devil. We appreciate the image for what it is—either a good practical joke or a bad hoax. Nothing more.
Mondo Bizarro | Oct 20 2009 |
It was today in 1967 that Bigfoot enthusiast Roger Patterson shot his famous movie of what he claimed was a genuine Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch, in a remote area of California’s Six Rivers National Forest. We took a look at the Wikipedia entry on this, and it goes into excruciating detail. In fact, we think the entry on regular apes is shorter. But these types of things do fan the flames of passion, if for no other reason than so many people seem to have a deep seated need to believe in the bizarre and/or supernatural. Roger Patterson's Bigfoot encounter certainly qualifies as the former. After reading everything we could find on the event, we draw no conclusions, except to say that if it was a hoax, it was one of the most perfectly planned hoaxes of all time.
For scientists, all the film analysis claiming Patterson’s Bigfoot was real meant little. Contradictions of established scientific patterns must come with proof, and Patterson had nothing to explain why his Bigfoot violated a universal rule of primate physiology. But he swore on his deathbed in 1972 that his film was authentic. Robert Gimlin said the same for decades, wavering slightly only in 1999, when he admitted, “…I’m an older man now...and I think there could have been the possibility [of a hoax]. But it would have to be really well planned by Roger.” In the end, we may never know what happened that day. Scientific evidence supporting a genuine Bigfoot encounter is lacking, yet nobody has come forward with irrefutable proof of a hoax. The only analysis of the event must rely on the film, but the original negative is lost. Only Roger Patterson knew the truth, and he took that with him to the grave.