Читать книгу The Big Book of Mysteries - Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe - Страница 11

2 MYSTERIES OF THE MOUNTAINS

There is a subtle difference between asking whether Bigfoot or Sasquatch is real and asking whether the phenomenon associated with that name is real. The phenomenon is certainly real. New reports of sightings or the discovery of footprints come in almost daily. Someone or something — psychic entity, mental aberration, extraterrestrial being, unknown physical lifeform — is triggering the sightings. Someone or something is leaving the footprints. An enormous amount of Sasquatch evidence is accumulating in the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the United States.

On October 20, 1967, just after 1:00 p.m., Bob Gimlin and Roger Patterson managed to take 953 frames of 16mm cine film of something that looked like a very big, hair-covered humanoid.The existence of their film eliminates two theories: whatever they saw was not a hallucination, nor was it the result of auto-suggestion, self-hypnosis, or any sort of psycho-sociological mind trick that they’d accidentally played on themselves. As far as is known, cameras can’t record images that exist only in the photographer’s mind.

The film wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough to dispose of another theory: whatever is on the Gimlin–Patterson film is not a commonly known but misidentified zoological species. This thing wasn’t any kind of bear or anthropoid ape seen in strange conditions or from an odd perspective. It could have been one of two things: a hoax, or an unknown creature of some sort that possessed a type of objective reality capable of leaving a photographic record.

The indigenous people of Canada and North America have cultural and traditional histories of Bigfoot that go back several centuries. The oldest written records go back nearly two hundred years, and the sightings are by no means culture specific. Indigenous people as well as European, African, and Asian immigrants have all been involved in Bigfoot episodes.

Statistical analysis produces interesting correlations. There are, for example, more than six hundred place names in the northwestern United States that are thought to have associations with the Bigfoot or Sasquatch legends. These place names are not positively linked to population density. If hoaxers had been responsible, it would have seemed probable that the more people there were around, the greater the chance of a hoaxer working the area — but not so. What the sightings and place names do seem to correlate with positively is mountain ridges and mountain crests: in other words, if there really are such things as Sasquatch or Bigfoot, then they are closely associated with high and inaccessible places — just as the Yeti is in Tibet and Nepal.

Let us relate to you one of these thousands of typical reports. Two hunters from Stewart in British Columbia were travelling at an altitude of over 1,200 metres along an old mine access road. As daylight faded they turned a corner and jumped from their truck thinking that they’d seen a bear moving ahead of them. Setting off in pursuit, they saw that it was walking upright. The creature became aware of them at the same moment and turned to look directly at them. It turned its shoulders and the whole of its upper body, as it didn’t seem to have a neck.

The men described a dark face with a small beard and a flattish nose. It seemed as surprised to see them as they were to see it. The last glimpse they had of it, the Sasquatch was vanishing among the trees. The hunters noted particularly that it was very big — over seven feet tall — and heavily built, and that there was a powerfully unpleasant smell around it. They also noticed that the hands swung lower than the knees.

Albert Ostman had a much closer encounter than the Stewart hunters. He reported how in 1924 he was prospecting in Toba Inlet in British Columbia when an eight-foot Sasquatch picked him up like a rucksack and carted him along inside his sleeping bag for about three hours. When dawn broke he found he was in a Sasquatch “homestead” of some description and that it was occupied by the adult male that had kidnapped him, an adult female, and two young ones. Although they prevented his escape for several days, Ostman was unwilling to use his gun on them because they had done him no harm, and clearly intended no harm. He finally escaped by tricking the adult male with some snuff from his pack, and while it was rushing to find water to sooth the irritation, Ostman made a dash for freedom.

Dr. W. Henner Farenbach performed another interesting piece of statistical analysis on a large sample of Sasquatch footprints. The print size of any natural animal species, including human beings, tends to follow a normal bell curve of distribution. Most human beings, for example, have British shoe sizes greater than four but smaller than eleven. The great majority — the apex of that normal distribution bell curve — being between six and nine. A few very small-footed people have sizes two or three, and an equally low number of large-footed people wear sizes eleven or twelve.

When Dr. Farenbach made the calculations, he discovered that the Sasquatch prints adhered well to this normal, natural pattern. If hoaxers were responsible, it seems highly improbable that they could have colluded over such wide distances and over so many years to produce such a realistic sample range.

SASQUATCH SOUNDS

In addition to footprints and occasional hair samples, there are sound recordings in existence that claim to have caught Sasquatch vocalizations. Some of the most interesting of these were made by Al Berry and Ron Morehead in the Sierra Nevada. They can actually be contacted through the Internet at their web site “Sierra Sounds,” where CDs or tapes are available.

One question frequently asked by serious Sasquatch researchers is why prominent, orthodox scientists haven’t joined their ranks in any perceptible strength. It may be argued that they have, but that the traditionalist and rather cautious academic official media are still reluctant to give much space or weight to Sasquatch research.

The well-balanced information available over the Internet via the Virtual Bigfoot Conference Site organized by Henry Franzoni suggests that part of the problem is to be found in the suspicion among a number of researchers that Bigfoot seems to possess a kind of paranormal sixth sense, and perhaps some additional ultra-human abilities. How else, one might sensibly ask, has it managed to avoid contact with Homo sapiens for so long?

Once the question of a sixth sense arises, Franzoni warns, orthodox scientists begin to shy away from delving into a phenomenon. This is probably because of the heavy bias in favour of the mechanistic philosophy of science which appears to have been a dominant influence since the seventeenth century, and the lasting impact of Rene Descartes.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s profound and highly readable work entitled Why Puzzling Powers of Animals Have Been Neglected makes the point that academic biology has inherited from seventeenth century science a strong faith in reductionism — a technique for explaining complex systems in terms of smaller and simpler parts. For example, it was once believed that atoms formed the fundamental bedrock for all physical explanations, but recent subatomic research has shown that the atoms themselves can be thought of as patterns of vibrations within fields: which more or less dissolves the foundations of the old style materialistic science.

Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, has said: “Through modern physics, materialism has transcended itself.” What seems to have revolutionized the philosophy of science as far as physics is concerned has not yet conquered the stubborn materialism that still persists in some areas of biology. As Dr. Sheldrake says, “Fields of enquiry that are inherently holistic have a low status in the hierarchy of science.”

There is, however, another biological philosophy of science known as vitalism which suggests that living organisms are truly alive, whereas mechanistic and materialistic theories regard them as merely inanimate and soulless.

Because vitalism admits the existence of unknown vital principles, its adherents tended to be open minded about the possibilities of phenomena which were not vulnerable to explanation in mechanistic terms. Vitalists were interested in studying the psychic powers of human beings and uncanny powers in animals — such as the apparent sixth sense of the Sasquatch.

A report from Union Town in Pennsylvania, published in a paper by Stan Gordon for the 1974 UFO Symposium, tells the story of a woman who was sitting at home watching television, when she heard a strange noise coming from her front porch and got up to investigate. Thinking that something dangerous might be out there, she picked up a loaded shotgun first. As she turned on the porch light and stepped out to look, she saw a creature she described as seven feet tall and covered in hair, less than two metres away. She said that it raised its arms above its head, and, thinking it was about to attack, she fired one shot into its body at point blank range. There was a flash of light and the thing simply vanished: no blood, no carcass, no sign of anything.

PARANORMAL ABILITIES

J.W. Burns worked for many years as a teacher among the indigenous Chehalis people of Harrison River, close to Harrison Hot Springs. From his Chehalis friends he heard many accounts of the Sasquatch, not as huge, ape-like semi-humans, but as a magically gifted giant race that had clothes, fire, weapons, and basic technology, and lived in villages. They also had paranormal abilities.

It may be unkind to suggest that perhaps mechanists are mechanists because they are afraid of vitalism and its implications, but it often seems as though they are. As Dr. Sheldrake argues again, for them to admit the reality of anything mysterious or mystical in life would mean abandoning their faith in the hard won certainties of science.

Some embarrassing phenomena are then either attacked or ignored, not because they are unorthodox, illogical, fallacious or ridiculous, but simply because they don’t conform to the comforting mechanistic theory which sets out to explain the universe and all it contains.

Sheldrake maintains that a broader alternative to the mechanistic theory of life has grown up in the form of a holistic or organismic philosophy of nature. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. Nature is made up of organisms not machines.

Against this more liberal philosophical-biological background, the Sasquatch and his Himalayan cousin the Yeti, have much more opportunity of emerging into the light.

An amazing encounter was reported by nineteen-year-old Lakpa Sherpani in 1974. She said that her yak herd was attacked by a short but immensely powerful yeti, which killed five of them by twisting their horns and then knocked her unconscious. The incident occurred at an altitude of approximately 4.3 kilometres in the vicinity of Mount Everest.

In 1957, Professor V.K. Leontiev was in the Caucasus Mountains near the source of the River Jurmut, when he saw strange tracks in the snow. That night he heard inexplicable sounds, and saw a weird, unknown creature the following day. He described it as over seven feet tall and very broad. The body was covered in hair and it walked upright, not touching the ground with its hands. The professor referred to it as a Kaptar, the name by which it was known locally. He examined its footprints carefully after it had gone, and described them as unlike the prints of any animal he had ever come across previously.

In July of 1924 a party of miners was attacked by a group of Sasquatch in the Mount St. Helen’s/Lewis River district in Washington State. The miners had heard strange, frightening sounds for over a week before the Sasquatch actually attacked them. They saw a weird, seven-foot-tall creature and fired at it, then ran to their cabin and barricaded themselves in. All through the night the Sasquatch hurled rocks at the cabin and attempted to break in the door — despite their massive strength, it held. Press men from the Portland Oregonian came to investigate and found giant footprints all around the miners’ cabin. After the attack, the place was renamed Ape Canyon — a name by which it is still known today.

Artist’s impression of Sasquatch or Yeti, based on witnesses’ reports.

Ivan Wally of Vancouver was driving his pickup along the Trans-Canada Highway above the River Thompson, five or six kilometres east of Lytton. It was the evening of November 20, 1969. As his vehicle climbed the hill he saw a creature ahead of him on the road. It was approximately seven feet tall; the legs looked long in proportion to the body, and Ivan guessed that it probably weighed more than 136 kilograms. The creature had short greyish-brown hair all over it. As the truck approached, the creature turned to look at it, and raised both arms.

Ivan said later that its face reminded him of a wizened old man. Something about the thing sent Ivan’s dog — which was on the seat beside him — half crazy with either fear or anger, maybe a combination of both. At that point the creature loped away on its long legs. Ivan turned around and drove back to Lytton where he reported the incident to the RCMP, who took him seriously and searched for footprints. Unfortunately, the roadside gravel was not conducive to taking impressions, and they found none.

Volumes could easily be filled with similar incidents: hundreds, perhaps thousands, of sensible, truthful and reliable witnesses from Canada, the United States, Tibet, Nepal, China, and Russia have reported sighting after sighting of strange creatures resembling very large men, covered with hair. So what might they be? A significant number of the reports suggest that there is something paranormal about them. Are they simply some unknown but perfectly normal and natural anthropoid? If so, why do we never find their bodies? Perhaps they bury their dead. Perhaps they go off to find a lonely and desolate place — maybe a hidden mountain cave — where they can die with dignity, privacy and secrecy when they feel that their end is near. The strangest theory of all is that they enjoy enormous longevity.

In the Hunza valley, high in the Himalayas, the normal human inhabitants enjoy exceptionally good health and extremely long lifespans — possibly attributable to their pollution free air and a diet rich in apricots and apricot oil. If the Sasquatch and Yeti and their cousins around the world’s other mountain ranges also benefit from the pollution free air available at those altitudes, perhaps their life-spans are many times ours.

Some researchers suggest that they may have had an extraterrestrial origin: the jury’s still out on that one.

It seems highly unlikely that the Sasquatch and his close relatives are merely myth, legend, hoax or imagination. There have been so many reports of these enigmatical hairy giants that there simply has to be someone or something up there in the mountains — the great unsolved mystery is what.

PROF OF THE YETI?

Joshua Gates, a television presenter, came across what seemed to be Yeti footprints in Nepal, not far from Mount Everest, in 2007. Each print was well over thirty centimetres long. The prints had five toes and measured about twenty-five centimetres in width. Casts were taken, and when these were examined by university experts in the United States they were thought to be too anatomically accurate to be fakes. Gates’s team also found mysterious hairs on a high-altitude tree. When these were examined, it was concluded that they belonged to a hitherto unknown primate of some kind. In 2008, Japanese researchers led by Yoshiteru Takahashi photographed what looked very much like Yeti prints.