-
- VANCOUVER (Reuters) - For
sasquatch fans gathered in Vancouver this weekend, the debate is not over
the reality of the large, apelike animal but over its relation to UFOs.
-
- "It's a huge divide," Stephen Harvey, organizer
of the International Sasquatch Symposium, said in describing the dispute
between the cryptozoology and paranormal wings of sasquatch studies.
-
- Sasquatch -- aka Bigfoot -- is an ordinary flesh-and-blood
creature that just happens to have avoided capture, according to the cryptozoologists,
or students of hidden animals.
-
- But to believers in the paranormal, or psychic phenomena,
sasquatch is also an "interdimensional""being with strange
powers and ties to extraterrestrials aboard UFOs.
-
- Both camps tend to think there must be more than one
specimen around. And neither seems worried that no live or dead sasquatch
has ever been produced for study or that mainstream science considers the
idea of such an animal lurking in the forests of North America complete
nonsense.
-
- "How can you expect a creature that can't build
a fire to fly a spaceship?" grumbled Bill Miller of Illinois, one
of about 150 people who came in Vancouver to trade the latest reports of
sightings and accounts of their personal experiences.
-
- Miller's own brush with sasquatch took place in northern
Minnesota in 1980. "Who'd have thought it would happen outside of
the Pacific Northwest? But it turns out there are a lot of sightings in
northern Minnesota," he said.
-
- ORIGIN IN INDIAN TALES
-
- The legend of a large, hairy creature lurking in the
mountains of western Canada and the United States goes back to a time before
Europeans settled the continent. The word "sasquatch""was
derived in the 1920s from tales of the Chehalis Indians in British Columbia.
-
- Stories about sasquatch and his connection with flying
saucers are also staples of supermarket tabloids -- a fact that has the
cryptozoologists complaining that the paranormals give sasquatch research
a bad name.
-
- "I mean, if you call the police to report a murder
and describe what happened and say you saw little green men, how long before
the police officer stops taking notes?" Miller asked a reporter.
-
- Members of the paranormal wing contend that their opponents'
minds are closed and say that is why the cryptozoologists have never been
able to produce more than circumstantial evidence -- such as alleged footprints
-- of the creature's existence.
-
- "The way to go is to become more evolved ourselves,"
argued Jack "Kewaunee""Lapseritis, the author of "Physic
Sasquatch" and a member of the Self-Mastery Earth Institute in Trout
Lake, Washington.
-
- Lapseritis, who reported having had five dealings with
sasquatch in the last seven weeks, contended that since the creature could
travel between dimensions of reality and space, it would not be found unless
it wanted to be.
-
- So deep is the divide between the two schools of sasquatch
thought that Harvey ended up scheduling their discussion sessions on different
days.
-
- "I sort of had to segregate them," he said,
alluding to problems at past gatherings.
-
- NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY
-
- If cryptos and paras have common ground, it is in complaining
that mainstream science and news media will not take sasquatch, or their
efforts to find him, seriously.
-
- "Mainstream scientists think they have a monopoly
on knowledge," said Lapseritis, who described his research methods
as being identical to those used by primatologist Jane Goodall in studying
chimpanzees in Africa.
-
- "Yes, the evidence (of sasquatch's existence) is
circumstantial. ... But if this were a murder trial, then sasquatch would
have been convicted long ago," Chad Deetken of Vancouver said.
-
- Deetken, who also researches such puzzles as crop circles
and was initially reluctant to give his name, said scientists needed to
show "the same courage as Columbus""did in trying to prove
the Earth was round.
-
- As for the future of the divided sasquatch research community,
members of each side were quick to say they had no "personal animosity""toward
the other but gave no hint of willingness to compromise.
-
- "I also believe in extraterrestrials ... but there
is simply no connection (with sasquatch)," Miller said, shaking his
head. __________
-
- Copyright © 1999, Quebecor New Media Limited Partnership.
All rights reserved.
|
