Capturing cryptozoology

 

The skeptical YouTube channel "Truth is scarier than fiction" reviews the recent documentary "Capturing Bigfoot", which makes a strong case for the famous Patterson-Gimlin film (PGF) being a hoax. Which is awkward for cryptozoologists and other true believers in the hairy beast, since the PGF has always been the best piece of evidence for Bigfoot´s existence. 

Of course, none of this will move the needle, since peopel were seeing Bigfoot (a.k.a. Sasquatch) before the PGF even existed. Indeed, it was these observations that inspired the PGF in the first place. So people will probably continue seeing (and smelling) the elusive creature despite the documentary and its scandalous revelations.

Besides, many of these people (the humans involved in Bigfooting) thrive on controversy anyway, so this is just more grist for the mill... 

PGF cult exposed?

 

 

Some reactions to the recent documentary "Capturing Bigfoot", which was released this Tuesday. Apparently, October 20 is National Bigfoot Day in the United States. At least unofficially. 

I haven´t seen the docu and I´m too stingy (and too lazy) to buy/download anything from Amazon, but the bottom line is that it disproves the famous Patterson-Gimlin film. Or *maybe* disproves it. Or is part of a gigantic conspiracy and hence doesn´t disprove ape-shit. 

Ultimately, it doesn´t matter, since people will continue to believe in Sasquatch anyway. Including the pro-docu people linked above! So nothing has really changed here. 

October surprise

 

The release date for "Capturing Bigfoot" is October 20. In case you give a damn. Trust me, *many* people do. This is the documentary supposedly proving (once and for all) that the famous Patterson-Gimlin film is a hoax. That is, the best and most iconic evidence for Bigfoot´s existence. If the film falls, it´s over. Or so skeptics hope. 

The docu has already been shown on some film festivals, but the yuge public release will be in three weeks. Apparently, October 20 is the 59th anniversary of Patterson´s and Gimlin´s original encounter with the elusive beast...

Bring out the pop corn, guys.  

Teal is blue

 

"Paranoid Protestants" is a three-hour long video about the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) from a skeptical (probably atheist) perspective. It´s interesting, to be sure, and it´s obvious that the narrator (who sometimes doubles as himself!) has done some heavy reading on the history and theology of this particular denomination. I actually learned some new stuff about both Adventists and others from this documentary.

However, there are also some rather obvious problems with this production. For instance, the Branch Davidians headed by David Koresh are prominently featured. But what on earth is the *real* connection between the cult at Waco and the SDA Church? Not that much, really. It´s like making a docu about atheism and throw in Jim Jones and the People´s Temple (who were "Marxists" and sometimes sounded like atheists). 

The content-creator also believes that apocalyptic Protestantism (including the SDA) is the main cause of so many Americans believing in conspiracy theories. But a more likely explanation is that both apocalypticism and conspiracism have a common cause independent of both, or that they are parallell phenomena influencing each other. 

With that, have at it!

Greenland oil crisis

 

Credit: Håvard Berland

This shit isn´t going away, is it? It would be ironic if the next world war would be fought between the US and the EU circa 2040 over oil on Greenland. Rather than between Russia and the EU over Svalbard, as predicted in some futuristic documentary I watched long ago...

Greenland issues "strong warning" as Trump-linked oil firm prepares to drill

A reminder

 

Credit: pinterest

From my own blog:

The day the sun stood still 

From Krakatoa with love

Tickets please

 

Hoax or fake news? The recent drama surrounding the Patterson-Gimlin film continues...

It was just a dream

 

A summary of the new documentary "Capturing Bigfoot" which apparently proves once and for all that the famous Patterson-Gimlin film is a hoax. The docu has not yet been commercially released, but it was recently shown at a film festival in the United States. Note that the content-creator linked above *isn´t* a 100% skeptic, which may explain why he sounds so shocked. 

I´ve been skeptical towards cryptozoology and cryptids for some time, but it´s still a bit disappointing that the Patterson-Gimlin film has been conclusively debunked (if that´s the case), since that was the best piece of evidence that the elusive hairy man might be real after all. 

The world just got more boring.

Signs

 

So I ask the Divine for a sign, and the answer I get is...the Patterson-Gimlin film is a hoax? WTF?!

2026: Annus horribilis?

 

Is it all over? No, I´m not talking about Trump, Putin or something to that effect. An American documentary film maker claims to have uncovered previously unknown film reels which strongly suggest that the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film was faked. Some family members have apparently confirmed it. 

Yuge if true. Or, to put it in another way: Fucking shit. The best evidence for Sasquatch being a real flesh-and-blood animal out of the window. Cryptozoology as a whole is over.

Or is it? Of course it isn´t. The show will continue anyway, somehow. Because the ride never ends. Or something. But for those of us who want the Truth to be Out There (pun intended), 2026 didn´t start off very well, did it? 

Lovecraft´s Lucia

 

- You *do* know that we are evolutionary cousins, right?
- Nah, I´m a special creation. God loves beetles! 

Just watched a rather boring French docu about the evolution (or is it EVIL-ution) of insects. Apparently, Lucia (or LUCIA = Last Universal Common Insect Ancestor) was a crustacean which crawled out of the ocean...and the rest is history. Hundreds of millions of years of history, to be exact. 

No surprise there. I mean, the idea that fleas, locusts and termites (or the praying mantis!) are ultimately derived from a primordial cousin to crayfish and crabs does make a certain intuitive sense. They are equally eerie and unsettling. Like some stuff straight out of Lovecraft.

Although I have to say that arachnids are even worse. Where did *they* come from, I wonder? Color out of space?  

    

Embrace the penguin

 

Trump and some branch of his admin recently posted a very strange meme. It shows Trump together with a penguin holding an American flag. They are seen walking towards a mountain range at which the Greenland flag has been hoisted. Most people who seen the meme react at that particular detail. After all, penguins live in Antarctica. Greenland is in the Arctic.

But...

The more I think about the meme, the more I´m convinced that this is a hex. A self-hex, to be precise. Trump is essentially cursing himself?! The picture of the penguin originally comes from a strange docu by Werner Herzog. Yes, *that* Werner Herzog. The guy with all the pessimistic and apocalyptic films and documentaries. Often with a certain Klaus Kinski as lead actor. The penguin is implied to be nihilistic or insane. Rather than heading for the sea together with his flock, he walks towards the mountains...and a certain death. On the Mountains of Madness? 

So the meme could be (subconsciously) read in the following manner: Trump is acting like the crazy penguin (or like Kinski?), leading all of America to its doom, chasing the mirage of a Greenland military conquest.

It´s actually quite eerie. And no, I don´t really believe in magick. Which makes it eerier still. 

Man, myth or fairy?

 

The YouTube channel "Cabin in the Woods" interviews former police officer David Paulides, who apparently made an entire documentary on the stranger sides of the Bigfoot phenomenon, "American Sasquatch: Man, Myth or Monster?". I haven´t seen it and probably never will, since I´m too stingy to pay my way on the interwebs. But sure, it looks interesting.

The main take away is that most people researching Bigfoot has a "dualist" view of the creature. It´s either  a flesh-and-blood primate or it´s entirely paranormal and therefore "spiritual" in nature. But what if the famed cryptid is both and neither? It´s a paranormal being which can enter our reality and leave physical evidence behind. Or perhaps it´s somehow part of our reality, which would then be far stranger than Modern Western Man imagines. 

This is of course not a new idea either, but connected to the notion that Sasquatch might be a kind of "hairy fairy". The fairies of folklore, after all, also act in this trickster-like manner. They look kind-of-human, all tangible evidence for their existence tends to disappear or be inconclusive, and can appear or vanish at will. Yet, they are materialized enough to abduct humans, mate with them (!) or attack their farm animals. I assume telepathy is also part of the picture.

What should be done about this is anybody´s guess. Nothing? The government denies knowledge as usual, according to Paulides because they´ll never acknowledge want they can´t completely control. Let alone understand. Which sounds about right. At least modern governments animated by the Western Idea of Progress act in this manner. Indeed, this is actually an interesting idea in itself: do conspiracy theorists feel strangely safe in the knowledge that at least *somebody* (the conspirators) are in control and know what´s shaking?

But if that´s simply not the case? "They" are even more scared about this stuff than you and me...   

Ritvik not welcome here

 

"Glitch in Bhakti" is an anti-ISKCON documentary produced by some breakaway faction, which simply calls itself ISKCON Truth. They support the "ritvik system", but also criticize the official ritvik movement around the ex-ISKCON temple in Bangalore. Is it a breakaway of a breakaway? 

The docu is probably confusing for those entirely new to the subject, consisting of excerpts from American news reports, private films of ritviks heckling the official ISKCON (which sometimes leads to brawls) and a mysterious tape recording in which Prabhupada seems to suggest that he is being poisoned. Plus other material also excerpted from elsewhere. 

The message of "Glitch in Bhakti" is that ISKCON was a good organization under Prabhupada, but quickly degenerated after his death (or murder), when the 11 members of the new collective leadership turned themselves into "gurus" and hence usurped Prabhupada´s authority. The scandals surrounding New Vrindaban in West Virginia and the murder of Sulochan are mentioned. The docu also accuses the post-Prabhupada ISKCON of liberalism and decadence. Everything from an idol of Jesus to female fashion shows are frown upon, and so is the use of the English language when singing devotional hymns. New editions of Prabhupada´s books are another point of contention.

The "ritvik system" (or more properly the ritvik doctrine) is the idea that Prabhupada didn´t appoint a successor. The 11 members of the collective governing body therefore weren´t "gurus" and "acharyas" - these roles strictly belonging to Prabhupada himself - but rather "ritviks" or representatives, a lower position. Prabhupada remains the sole guru even posthumously. Maybe I missed something, but I don´t think it´s clear at all that this was Prabhupada´s intention. It certainly sounds as if he *did* appoint his successors to be gurus with the power to initiate their own disciples...

If you must know my position on this rather esoteric point (for an outsider). 

Make of this content whatever you wish.

Cabal in Kabul

 

This YouTube clip is 18 years old and apparently taken from a documentary about the two last Jews in Kabul, Afghanistan. OK, let me guess. There are *no* Jews left in Afghanistan today? Bizarre stuff. 

Papyrus burns at night

 

So I just watched the French documentary "Giza Pyramids" from 2023, featuring both French-speaking and English-speaking Egyptologists. OK, fine, so the officialdom is finally paying attention to possible alignements between the pyramids at Giza and the stars in the night sky. They even mention Robert Bauval´s controversial Orion hypothesis. I must say that their criticism of it is extremely lazy, though! One prominent archeologist, Mark Lehner, claims that it´s hard to believe that the Egyptians could have made such correlations, since...it´s pitch dark at night, so they couldn´t see anything?!

Ahem, Mark, I´m sure the ancient Egyptians knew how to make flaming torches...

The other objections are of a similarly unserious character. Finally, we meet somebody who explains how these accursed Hamites could have made the necessary measurements with the aid of two instruments known as "merkhet" and "bay". 

The docu also proposes its own correlation hypothesis: the "air shafts" in the Great Pyramid are pointing at Orion, Sirius, Kochab and Thuban, which all play a prominent symbolical role in Egyptian mythology. For instance, Osiris is associated with Orion and Sirius with Isis. Pharaoh´s soul was presumably expected to rise through these shafts until it reached an immortal realm among the constellations.

So it seems the fringe speculations were kind of right, after all. 

The fire last time

 

For some reason, I feel like linking to this old blog post from 2021. I must be the only person who starts reflecting on Shiva while watching a boring documentary about some fossils in Colorado!  

Our tribe

Homo heidelbergensis comes to life

 

Credit: Luna04

"Humans before Neanderthals" is a fascinating documentary about archaic humans in Europe about 450,000 years ago. Here, they are assigned to the species Homo heidelbergensis or Heidelberg Man. This species is believed to be ancestral to both our species and the Neanderthals.

These robust humans lived in Europe during an ice age, hunted reindeer and bears, manufactured spears and hand axes, and lived in caves at least during the winter. They didn´t seem to have fire. The bears were presumably hunted for their hides, which were used as clothes. It´s also possible that they "buried" their dead by throwing them into shafts in the caves. One handaxe have been found in such a burial shaft, perhaps as a symbolic parting gift? The documentary calls this "the oldest shrine in the world". 

There is evidence that Heidelberg Man (and Woman) felt compassion, since they took care of disabled children. However, everything clearly wasn´t alright in Old Europe. Some have suggested that these archaic humans were cannibals. While compassionate towards their own children, they killed and ate those of other bands! But sure, all material remains are open to interpretation. Perhaps the makers of this documentary side with one particular faction within the archeological community? If so, it´s the most pessimistic one, since one scientist interviewed argues that Homo heidelbergensis practiced cannibalism *by choice* even during periods when other food sources were abundant...

I admit that I was fascinated by "Humans before Neanderthals". Previously Homo heidelbergensis was just a name, now they (or those in Europe assigned to this species) have an identity. It´s also rather sobering that humans for most of their existence lived in this kind of "barbaric" and "primitive" stage. In that sense, this is the natural state of man. We are the anomaly.

With that reflection, I end this review.  

     

What indeed

 

"What are UFOs?" is a recent NOVA documentary about the UFO phenomenon. It was shown on Swedish TV just two hours ago. While nominally objective, I think it´s obvious that it´s main purpose is to debunk the Pentagon UFO videos, including the UFOs/UAPs popularly known as "Gimbal" and "Tic Tac". I think they are quite succesful in proposing alternative explanations. 

Interestingly, the docu even promotes the idea that many UFOs might be "ours". As in secret military craft tested by the US air force. This, too, I think is true. However, "What are UFOs?" then suggests that the general public misunderstands what they are seeing and that this inadvertently aids the military in directing attention away from their secret tests. Nah, that´s only a portion of it. The rest is evidently too controversial for an "official" documentary of this sort. The rest being a long term conspiracy by military intelligence to actively encourage a belief in alien visitation.

I suppose NOVA can´t spy on their own government. Let´s see how long it takes for them to air a program about the New Jersey drone panic...    

Swedish vampire

 

"Secrets of the Dead: Field of Vampires" is a somewhat macabre documentary about vampire panics in 17th and 18th century Central Europe. It centers on recent archeological excavations of a burial field outside the obscure village of Pien in Poland. Many graves were found to be disturbed in an apparent attempt to hinder the dead from rising again as vampires. 

The film-makers have decided to concentrate on an unknown female nicknamed Zosia, who seems to have died a natural death at the age of 18. She was buried with a padlock attached to her foot, a superstitious attempt to keep her "good soul" from leaving the body. If it would do so, its evil double would take over! For some reason, the grave was opened at a later date and the padlock found to be broken. To stop Zosia from rising again as a vampire, a scythe was placed over her neck, presumably to behead her if she ever tried. The remains buried in some of the other graves were treated even worse. For instance, a dead child had gotten half of its body removed. 

The archeologists speculate that Zosia may have suffered from seizures when alive, which would have marked her out from "normal" people. Somewhat surprisingly, she must have been rich. Analysis of her teeth suggests that she wasn´t a local, and may actually have been Swedish. During the 17th century, Swedish troops invaded Poland and attacked Torun (the largest town in the area where Pien is located). Could *this* explain why Zosia was suspected of being a vampire? A wealthy woman from an enemy nation who behaves strangely. We sense a mixture of envy, hatred and fear.  

However, since at least one third of the graves at the "vampire field" had been disturbed, something else was surely going on. Perhaps some kind of mass hysteria or should we call it vampire panic? The docu mentions a very bizarre case from 18th century Moravia of just such an occurence. In 1755, corpses were dug up and put on trial (!) in the small village of Svobodné Hermanice (Frei Hermersdorf). Found guilty, the corpses were then taken to a nearby forest and burned. Perhaps vampire scares had something to do with life becoming harsher during the Little Ice Age and the increasingly more deadly wars during the Early Modern Period? This was also the high tide of the witch-burnings.

"Secrets of the Dead: Field of Vampires" ends with a Swedish forensic expert reconstructing the face of Zosia, which for some reason becomes very emotional to the Polish archeologists. Personally, I just shook the head at the "human condition" while watching this. For isn´t that what vampires really are? A kind of de-humanized humans. And a very human superstition...