The natives are getting restless

"The Locals" is an interesting book on the Bigfoot-Sasquatch phenomenon. Or bigfoot with a smaller case "b", as the author prefers to call the creature. Thom Powell wants to believe that Bigfoot is a real, albeit currently unknown flesh-and-blood animal. He is a member of BFRO, the "respectable" Bigfoot research organization. However, Powell is honest enough to admit that not everything is well in flesh-and-blood Bigfootland.

The book contains a lot of strange reports about supposed Bigfoot behaviour. The creature runs across highways right in front of speeding cars, even when no other cars are in sight! Why not just wait until the sole car has passed, and then cross the highway completely undetected? It's almost as if Bigfoot *wants* to be seen by humans, a behaviour unheard of among wild mammals. Bigfoot can "zap" people with infrasound, making them feel intensive fear or nausea. When Bigfoot is around, all other animals (including birds) are silent. (Note the similarity with the so-called Oz effect surrounding supernatural phenomena.) Witnesses have seen Bigfoot literally vanish into thin air, and they have an uncanny ability to avoid cameras. In fact, the best way to deal with a Bigfoot disturbance is to rig cameras around your farm! Powell also admits the UFO-Bigfoot connection, plus Bigfoot abductions. At least one of the abduction experiences (which the author interprets literally) sounds like a childhood fantasy...or out-of-body experience.

The author suspects a government cover-up of the creature's existence and true nature. Evidence vanishes, phones are tapped, the houses of witnesses are broken into, etc. Both Powell and other Bigfoot researchers claim to have gotten some of their files stolen. Powell eventually reaches the conclusion that Bigfoot is more human-like than ape-like, and represents an alternative line of evolution, using highly developed psychic powers to stay undetected. This is presumably too much to bear for the U.S. federal government, and perhaps the public too?

"The Locals" is a relatively good introduction to the Bigfoot phenomenon, as it actually looks like in real life - both the scientific (or "scientific") side represented by Jeff Meldrum, Grover Krantz and the BFRO, and the more fringey side represented by witnesses who claim to have habituated the creature, seen it make impossible feats, etc. Thom Powell seems to be frustrated by the problematique surrounding this strangely elusive (and yet always present) creature.

The natives are clearly getting restless.