You Know What They Say About Bigfoot

Rachel Gendreau was driving on a deserted rural route one October night when she decided to take a shortcut through a patch of thick woods.

There was a total moon that night, and the route was tinged with an eerie glow. As Gendreau chatted with her fiancé, she squinted into the darkness ahead and saw something strange: A massive wolflike creature was continuing upright in the road, staring at her with shimmering white eyes.

Every bit Gendreau drew closer, the beast leaped from the road and divisional into the woods.

"What the hell was that?" Gendreau sputtered. "Did you see it?"

"I don't know what it was, but it had domestic dog legs," said her fiancé.

Gendreau looked into the rearview mirror and had another scare: The beast had circled behind her motorcar in a wink and was watching her again with those glittering white eyes as she and her fiancé sped away.

Gendreau didn't know it at the time, simply she had spotted the Wolfman of Chestnut Mountain, an elusive fauna that people had sighted in rural Illinois for years. Y'all may not have heard of the Wolfman, simply chances are there's some strange brute lurking well-nigh you -- and a group of monster hunters is hot on its trail.

Have y'all met the 'Horny Werewolf'?

America may be divided past ruby and blue states, but virtually every state is a "monster" state. Only equally each has its own flag, most have an unusual animate being people have been claiming to come across for years. Bigfoot is the most well-known, but thousands of people say they've seen all kinds of wolfmen, prehistoric birds, behemothic bats and bizarre creatures living among u.s.a..

In this United States of Monsters, some creatures have been sighted so often that they've get virtual celebrities. In that location's the Jersey Devil, a brute then real that constabulary with bloodhounds reportedly once tried to corner it; the Dover Demon, a Massachusetts monster that climbs walls similar an insect and has an egg-shaped head; and the Mothman, a huge winged brute with ruddy eyes that has supposedly chased terrified drivers in West Virginia.

Monsters are so hot that they've spawned their ain subculture. Cable shows such as "Mountain Monsters" and "Monsters & Mysteries in America" draw big audiences; monster investigators hold national conventions and Sasquatch festivals; and eyewitnesses see online to bandy shaky, blurry videos of monster sightings and swap monster-hunting tips.

Monsters have go and so popular that they've even become sexual practice symbols. "Monster erotica" is a new book genre. People are self-publishing stories nearly creatures kidnapping and ravishing women with titles such as "Moan for Bigfoot" and "The Horny Werewolf." Serious. No hoax.

It all may sound new and bizarre, simply people have been swapping stories about monsters since prehistoric man drew pictures of them on cave walls. Greek mythology gave usa the tearing Medusa, whose frightening visage turned men into stone; the Bible gave us the massive sea animal called the Leviathan in Task, and the beast with seven heads and 10 horns in the Book of Revelation. Hinduism gave usa the Makara, a legendary sea monster -- the listing goes on.

"People similar a good scare," says Linda S. Godfrey, author of "American Monsters," which features Gendreau'south Wolfman sighting. "People have been telling campfire stories forever. We like to know that there'due south something out there bigger than u.s.a.."

Simply why are so many Americans getting into monsters now? Some suggest information technology'south a rebellion against modern life.

There are no more uncharted regions of the globe marked by the declaration, "Here there be monsters." In the sprawling sameness of the global village, everything looks the same: People go to the same chain restaurants, mind to the aforementioned pop music and wearable the same jeans.

Monster hunters are some of the last romantics; they believe in that location's nevertheless magic and mystery out there, says Rob Morphy, an creative person who has collected accounts of monster sightings at American Monsters since 2000.

"We live in a time when even though the world has been Google-Earthed to death and GPS'd to the infinitesimal point, there are really large stretches of state that have non been explored and thousands of miles of oceans that no human being has set human foot in," Morphy says. "Extraordinary discoveries expect united states of america."

How people discovered monsters

History backs Morphy up.

Monster hunters may seem flaky to some, simply in that location's historical precedent for their passion. Mythical creatures have been discovered earlier, equally have animals idea to be extinct. The behemothic squid was a sea legend until i was defenseless on film in 2006. The Coelacanth, an armor-plated fish, was idea to have gone extinct 66 meg years ago merely was discovered by a museum curator in 1938 in South Africa.

Someone even institute an earlier version of Bigfoot. For centuries, European explorers returning from Africa told stories of massive man-beasts that were covered with hair and had immense force. 1 of them then "discovered" the human-beast in the early 20th century. Nosotros now know it as the mountain gorilla.

Many monster hunters don't even like that term. Some prefer to call themselves cryptid investigators, a term taken from the fledgling field of cryptozoology, the report of animals idea to be extinct or mythological.

"There'due south a good chance that what we phone call monsters are really unknown and unidentified natural creatures that have learned to be very elusive," Godfrey says.

The people who see these monsters cantankerous all demographics, she says. They're police officers, businessmen, housewives, doctors. They often remain silent because they're traumatized or don't desire to be ridiculed.

"Their color completely drops, and they turn completely white every bit they relive the story," she says. "They cry; their hands are shaking. You tin can tell that they're reliving something that's very real to them."

A prehistoric bird in Wisconsin?

John Bolduan, the owner of a low-cal fixture visitor in Minnesota, is 1 of those people. He is still bewildered by something he saw on a sunny summer solar day ix years ago.

He was biking on a deserted road near Webb Lake in due north Wisconsin when he spotted an unusual bird in a field. He hopped off his cycle and crept into the field to get a closer expect. He says he saw something that looked like a prehistoric bird. Information technology stood about 7 anxiety alpine, had an immense storklike beak and was covered with silverish-grey feathers. It took off when it noticed him, he says.

"I got a little frightened," Bolduan says. "Information technology was unbelievably huge, not something y'all want to mess with."

Bolduan returned home and went online searching for large birds. He couldn't observe anything that matched what he saw. An evangelical Christian, he says the feel challenged his faith -- was the bird a demon, or a prehistoric animal? Some bourgeois Christians don't believe dinosaurs always existed. He says he had never read much before well-nigh Bigfoot or other monster sightings. He was too busy running his business.

"That kind of stuff I didn't take time for," he says. "I barely knew about it."

He tried to forget the feel every bit the years passed, but he gave Godfrey a call i day afterwards hearing her on the radio. She later featured his story in "American Monsters."

"It doesn't leave me," he says of his experience. "It'south bothersome because there's no explanation for information technology. Information technology doesn't make whatsoever sense at all. Information technology would have been easier if I had never seen it."

How monster hunters are upping their game

Some people, though, envy Bolduan. They want to see a monster, and they're willing to tramp into the woods at all hours of the night to find one.

Monster hunting used to be strictly erstwhile school. Some excited hunter snapped shots of mysterious footprints, or squeezed off a blurry photo of an brute moving in the tree line. Yet Bigfoot e'er seemed to exist i footstep ahead. Nobody could seem to grab him.

At present Bigfoot should be getting nervous. Monster hunters are upping their game. They're using night-vision equipment, sophisticated listening devices, camera traps activated by motility sensors and even drones that fly over rugged forests inaccessible to man beings.

The high-tech development of monster hunting has been championed past television. Cable Goggle box is full of monster documentaries and reality shows depicting grizzled men in camouflage stumbling through the forest with nighttime-vision goggles while blurting out, "Did you hear that?"

One cable network has go monster key. Destination America offers v monster hunting shows: "Mountain Monsters," "Monsters & Mysteries in America," "Monsters Underground," "Swamp Monsters" and the latest, "Alaska Monsters," which premiered in September.

"Nosotros leave no monster unturned," says Marc Etkind, Destination America's general manger and the human who helped bring monsters to the network.

"Monsters are starting to pitch us," he joked.

The network'south most pop show is "Mount Monsters," which features a group of elite hunters in the Appalachians wearing overalls and sporting ZZ Elevation beards while tracking down legendary beasts such as the Fire Dragon and Hogzilla. The first episode of "Mount Monsters" was the virtually popular telecast in the network'due south history, and the series has been renewed for a second season.

"We're always finding prove, merely we haven't institute that one crucial clue," Etkind says. "We haven't caught a monster in a trap -- yet."

The best monster evidence so far

That "yet," however, is why and so many people are skeptical about the monster hunting business. There's e'er a "nevertheless" or a "only" with monster hunting. There accept been many stories of monster hunters catching something, merely and so far they've ever turned out to exist a hoax.

In 2012, for case, scientists at Oxford Academy and the Lausanne Museum of Zoology in Switzerland examined hair samples submitted by people from around the earth who claimed to have stalked Bigfoot.

Bigfoot apparently likes to travel. Variations of Bigfoot-like creatures, or "hairy hominids," have been spotted around the globe for years. In Australia, they call a giant, apelike brute the Yowie; in the Himalayas information technology's called Yeti or the Abominable Snowman; in the Pacific Northwest some call it Sasquatch.

Some scientists, though, notwithstanding telephone call this fauna a hoax. Using Deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing, the scientists at Oxford and the Lausanne museum returned the results: All the Bigfoot samples came from animals such as bears, wolves and raccoons.

Still, though, at that place'southward one piece of monster show that stands above the rest.

On Oct 20, 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin were riding their horses in Barefaced Creek, a wooded expanse in Northern California, when they said they came upon an apelike animal. The creature started to flee, but Patterson said he managed to picture it earlier it disappeared into the brush.

The wobbly film doesn't last a infinitesimal, merely it is captivating. It has the look of an one-time home moving-picture show -- except it's of a massive apelike animate being walking in a forest clearing in the sunlight. The beast looks over its shoulder at the camera as if it's annoyed to exist filmed.

The Patterson-Gimlin film has been dissected seemingly equally much as the Zapruder movie of Kennedy'due south assassination. Patterson insisted the film was existent upwards until his death from cancer in 1972. But some scientists say the figure in the film was a person wearing an ape suit. Others using computers to examine the gait of the creature say it was nonhuman and that no special effects in 1967 could have created an apelike creature that natural looking.

Virtually every monster hunter dreams of capturing footage similar Patterson'southward. The movie even so inspires investigators, says Morphy of American Monsters.

"In that location has been no official debunking," Morphy says. "I can't guarantee it was not a hoax, just if it was a hoax, it was the finest-crafted hoax."

We'll always see monsters

Science, though, won't ultimately explain why nosotros continue to encounter monsters. But psychology tin can assistance, says Fifty. Andrew Cooper, co-author of "Monsters" and a film studies professor at the Academy of Louisville in Kentucky.

The reason people run across monsters isn't simply nearly what'due south out in that location in the woods; information technology's about what'due south inside people, Cooper says.

Monster sightings surface in certain locations and at sure times because they reflect local anxieties, he says. He cites stories nearly Chupacabra, or "goat sucker," a hairless doglike animate being that purportedly roams the border betwixt the United States and Mexico.

"The thought of a Chupacabra every bit a supernatural force crossing the edge betwixt Mexico and the U.S. seems to me a way to expect at our anxieties about immigration."

The political mash in another country may have spawned one of the nearly famous monster sightings in history -- the Loch Ness monster. People had reported seeing an aboriginal, serpentlike brute in a Scottish lake long before a man snapped a blurry photo of information technology in 1934.

The photograph came at a fourth dimension of resurgent Scottish nationalism, Cooper says. The Scottish National Party had emerged, and Scotland was rethinking its history and national identity.

"Voilà -- the emergence of an ancient, distinctly Scottish creature that became a symbol of Scotland through the world," Cooper says.

Read more: The search for Africa's mythical beasts

People who run into monsters are not but driven past nationalism or politics, he says, but something even deeper -- religious organized religion.

"Monsters are a miracle," Cooper says. "They stand outside the natural order. Evidence of something that defies what science calls the natural order is also potentially show for miracles. If you have evidence for miracles, y'all have bear witness for God."

Gendreau, the woman who says she encountered the Wolfman of Anecdote Mountain that fall night in Illinois, isn't prepare to call what she saw a miracle. At first, it seemed like a curse.

"It defenseless united states of america off baby-sit," she says. "It kind of ruined the evening."

She says the experience disturbed her for a long fourth dimension. At one point, she couldn't even accept her dog out at night for a walk considering she lived near a wooded area. She still thinks about it at times when she'southward out with her canis familiaris.

"It was so hard for me to wrap my mind effectually information technology," says Gendreau, who has a doctorate in behavioral psychology.

"You go, 'At that place's a logical explanation,' merely after dissecting it you say, 'Maybe I'm just crazy,' " she says, laughing.

Now Gendreau views her feel as something else -- a "gift."

"It immune me to be open-minded," she says. "There's a lot of mystery in this world, and if you're open to it, you lot'll see it."

Just then she quickly adds: "I'd rather non go through that procedure again. It was creepy."

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/10/us/monsters-in-america/

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