Tag Archives: Cryptozoology

Childhood Bigfoot sighting in San Bernardino Mountains

Nationality: American
Age: 25
Occupation: Student
Residence: Redlands, CA
Language: English

Text:

AB: “Okay, so when I was eleven years old, I remember I had spent a lot of time in elementary school fighting against the superstitions of the other kids, arguing with them that their beliefs weren’t real. Then one day, in the winter, I was snowshoeing with my younger brother in the San Bernardino Mountains.”

[Younger brother who was present at AB’s retelling]: “I was there?”

AB: “Yeah, you were. We were walking through the woodchip field in the forest. The snow was really deep and at some point we got separated. All of a sudden, I saw this large, dark figure walking in between two trees. I knew it was bigfoot because it was walking weird – they have this really weird way of walking, I’ve never been able to replicate it. Then because the snow was so deep, I fell down and it took me like two minutes to get back up because I was wearing snowshoes. When I looked back at the trees, there was nobody there. 

“I knew about bigfoot because I watched a lot of TV specials about him, discovery channel stuff. My friends had also told me about bigfoot. But then no one believed me when I told them about what I saw, and people kept making little snide comments about it. My family just won’t let it go even now. I would say I grew up in a very ‘scientific-minded’ community. So over the years from all this pestering from everyone, I just stopped believing in Bigfoot altogether.”

Context: Informant AB grew up in a rural community in Southern California called Forest Falls. His parents are both psychologists and members of the Seventh-day Adventist church, which is a Protestant Christian denomination that generally condemns belief in all supernatural beings except for demons, angels, God, and Satan. AB does not currently identify with Adventist beliefs and describes himself as agnostic. Among family and friends, AB is known for his sarcasm, intelligence, and argumentativeness. He is currently pursuing a doctorate of psychology at an Adventist university.

Analysis: AB’s story serves as a memorate to the legend of Bigfoot. The details he describes correspond with several popular characterizations of the cryptid (i.e. tall, dark fur, elusive, lives in forests). Interestingly, AB’s parents are both from the Pacific Northwest, where the legend of Bigfoot/Sasquatch has the most cultural weight in the contiguous United States. AB notes that he was not inclined to believe in any supernatural beings before his personal experience, and he then faced skepticism from his family and peers to such a degree that he felt forced to give up his belief once again. AB’s experience demonstrates the dynamics of folk belief in social circles that discourage ‘superstition’ and reflects dismissive attitudes towards children’s beliefs and experiences.

Dropbear

Nationality: White American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 4/30/20
Primary Language: English

Context:

PH is a 20 year-old student who lives in San Diego, California. She learned about the folk creature of the dropbear through her friend who is from Australia. She told me about it in an interview.

Text:

PH: my Australian friend tried to convince any non-Australian person she met about the existence of dropbears. This one is quite famous, I already knew about it. The fact that it’s so famous though made it easier to convince people because you can google dropbears and there’s a wikipedia page and lots of pictures so it seems legit. The pictures are all faked. The wikipedia page is actually about dropbears as folklore but at first glance it just looks real. Dropbears are koalas except carnivorous and vicious with very pointy teeth, they drop out of trees and attack people. Honestly almost every time my friend mentioned them to people she convinced them of their existence. It was always fun watching her casually do it to people. When we ran into other Australians she would mention dropbears and they would laugh and keep up the ruse.

Thoughts:

The legend of the dropbear plays into the exported national image of Australia as a land full of wild and strange creatures. People believe the informant’s friend when she tells them about dropbears because they don’t know any better, they assume that it’s true because they know that “there’s a lot of weird animals in Australia.” The informant’s Australian friend clearly takes joy in exploiting this popular representation of Australia and tries to convince people of something that is totally made up. It is something, according to this informant, that Australians seem to be “in on.” They know better but they like to perpetuate belief in the legend.

The idea of the dropbear, a hidden, dangerous creature that descends upon the unsuspecting walker at any moment, reveals anxiety about the unknown creatures in the woods. The jungle is a place of rich and dense biodiversity, and a lot of creatures can be dangerous. This legend reflects the anxiety of facing them. Moreover, foreigners’ gullibility with respect to the dropbear reflects the anxiety about encountering a national other, one characterized by wildness, the jungle, and primitivity. The Australian telling the story then stands in for this other, from a far off and unfamiliar land. The story also gives its tellers some national pride in being Australians.

The Piasa Bird

Nationality: American
Age: 80
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Performance Date: 4/30/2020
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

(The following is transcribed from a conversation between the informant and interviewer.)

Interviewer: Would you tell me your version of the legend of the Piasa Bird?

Informant: My version… back in the olden days, tribes of Indians lived on the bluffs above the Mississippi River. Which was not even the Mississippi river then, but, umm, uhh, and their nemesis was a – a uhh dragon, who lived in the caves on the bluff below them someplace. And the dragon would, umm, periodically umm, come and take a-an Indian, uhh, for it’s-for it’s its meal. Uh. The uhh… Indians would shoot arrows at it but uhh the-the-the it had kind of a… bunch of scale plates on the outside that umm, would deflect the arrows, and uhh, they couldn’t kill it! Finally the chief said, “this is enough of this.”

Interviewer: (laughs)

Informant: So he said, uhh, “what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna get the, the uhh, dragon to a place where i can do a better job of killing it.” And he thought and thought and though for a while, and then he said – he took his daughter, good looking lady young lady and put her out on the edge of the bluffs, and he hid himself where he could uhh, see her and also, see the-the-the dragon coming in… to get her. And as the dragon came in it raised up, and the chief stood up, and shot… the only spot… on the dragon that wasn’t protected, and put the arrow into the dragon. The dragon uhh was… mortally wounded, ummm did not get the daughter, umm, flew back over toward the river, umm crashed into the river, and was never seen again. And so then – the chief was renowned for his skill at archery and uhh saving the rest of the tribe.

Interviewer: Wow.

Informant: To this day… nobody’s ever found that dragon. Haven’t found where it is, and people have looked. Umm. I looked.

Interviewer: (laughs)

Informant: Up and down the river – the bluffs. We used to go down there and climb on the bluffs and up and down the roads and all over the place. But to this day the dragon has never been found, and people wonder whether it’s really true or not. But I guess you have to figure that out for yourself.

Background: My informant lived most of his younger life in Alton, Illinois, where the Legend of the Piasa Bird originated. The legend is well known, at least in the southern Illinois region, though there is much mystery around the legend and that causes many slight variations in the story. It’s one large source of pride for the city of Alton.

Context: The informant is my Grandpa, and this piece was collected after I asked him if he knew any ‘folklore’ and gave him a day to think about it, on his request. He is certainly getting old, but he’s still rather sharp for his age.

Thoughts: The legend of the Piasa Bird supposedly comes from a traditional Native American story, but the story that most people know is some version of a telling by a professor, John Russell, at the nearby Shurtleff College in Alton. This is a strange example of reverse authorship. Did Russell make up the story? If he did, why? Why would he make up a legend for another group of people? In all the Piasa Bird is an interesting study of folklore.

Momo, or the Missouri Monster

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Kansas City, MO
Performance Date: 4/13/20
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece:

“I think in the 70s it was, I know the name of the town because it’s called Louisanna, Missouri. It’s on the Mississippi river in the south of the state and in the 70s apparently a few people reported seeing a very tall, like 7 to 8 foot tall, ape-like swamp creature in the woods- they also called it a swamp ape. But the distinguishing feature of this thing was it had a very huge like bulbous onion shaped head, but like an upside down onion though, so like big and bulbous- and it had shag all over it and like big, big like freakishly huge red eyes because it’s a shitty B-Movie monster pretty much. So it’s like Bigfoot but with a big onion head and it reeks because it lives in a swamp near the river. For a brief period in the 70s and 80s, I think it was, people got really into the idea- it became called Momo, Missouri Monster, from the state abbreviation monster.”

Background:

The informant is a 21-year old male from Kansas City, Missouri who has lived there for the majority of his life. His family comes from southern Missouri, near Joplin and the Ozarks. The town in question for this piece, Louisiana, apparently tried to profit off this cryptid very shortly after its sightings similar to other towns who use Moth man or Bigfoot sightings to drive tourism, however Momo was not nearly as successful as those previous examples. The town remains a relatively quaint and small town.

Context:

I overheard this story when the informant was talking to a group about cryptozoology and I asked him to share it again with me for the sake of transcription. The exact exchange occurred in his room a few hours later.

Thoughts:

This piece appears to be another example of the common cryptid of Bigfoot. A large, ape-like creature that is elusive and on the fringes of society. Furthermore, these creatures are typically very smart and nearly human-like but not quite enough to warrant describing it as human. I feel there are a lot of these types of legends ranging from Bigfoot to Sasquatch and I feel this creature is another attempt to fit into that mold. What differentiates it and what makes this monster interesting, in my opinion, is how Momo is shaped to specify Southern Missouri. The Mississippi River is a huge part of the culture of Southern Missouri and so the monster being based out of a nearby swamp of the Mississippi River makes a lot of sense. What I like most about this legend is how it is clearly an attempt to cash in on the cryptid craze of Bigfoot and similar legends. While undoubtedly some people believe they saw the monster, the town quickly moved to monetize the creature and tourism surrounding it. However, compared to similar towns that attempt to make a tourism industry out of a local legend, this one did not work nearly as well, which makes it interesting to me. Finally, Momo is interesting as it fits the entire culture of Southern Missouri and the Ozarks as it is a creature on the fringe of society, which reflects the often isolated communities that exist in this area. Compared to a heavily urbanized city, a legendary monster like this is far more likely to appear in areas with lots of forest and mountains with small isolated communities, such as those in the Ozark Mountain range.

Knoxville Tennessee skunk ape

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 17/4/2017
Primary Language: English

CML is my tutor at USC. She is 22 and a fourth year student at USC. She lived in Knoxville for 15 years. She learned about local culture at school learned urban legends from family and friends that were commonly spoken about. CML told me this piece of folklore during one of our tutoring session.

 

“Have you ever heard of the Skunk ape?”

 

No what’s that?

 

“It’s like a yeti, little smaller than a normal Bigfoot, wonders the hills of eastern Tennessee, has a horrible smell. It comes from the Appalachian mountain and it eats people’s chickens. Sort of a silly thing, like people don’t take it seriously, I imagine it like a little thing, a nasty little skunk ape. No sympathy by people if a possum eat your chicken, but if a skunk ape eat them…oh shit”

 

There is not too much to a meaning to it but you want sympathy and try to make the story more dramatic and get attention rather than just having your chicken eaten by a common possum (because that would be a boring and uninteresting story)

 

For more information on the skunk-ape, see http://www.newanimal.org/skunkape.htm