Every October, Westminster, SC, a small town along the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, becomes Sasquatch Central, Bigfoot Basecamp, Cryptid Corner—you get the idea. First and foremost, it’s a good time. There are sasquatch-themed activities, various vendors, many food options, and live music. And if you’d like to learn more about Bigfoot lore, well, you’ve come to the right place.
There were eight talks on all things Bigfoot, which also covered a variety of cryptids and phenomena. The speakers included three bigfoot investigators, three researchers, a cryptozoologist, and a wizard.
The Bigfoot community has its own lore, vocabulary, and cultural touchstones. Some feel that Bigfoot is an undiscovered primate or ape. In contrast, others theorize that it may have additional capabilities, including invisibility, telepathy, and the ability to move through different dimensions using “portals.” I can name a dozen Marvel superheroes that can’t compete with those skills.
Keep Your Fur On and Knock Wood
From Friday evening’s Sasquatch Stroll down Main Street to the Saturday contests for kids and adults, including best Bigfoot costume, Bigfoot calling, and Bigfoot Banana Split Eating (just go with it; the kids love it), bigfoot lookalikes, tree knocking, and even a contest to see who had the biggest foot.
I have to give a shout-out to the contest masters of ceremonies. Their enthusiasm, patience, and ability to go with the flow, particularly with the kids, was an outstanding example of how to facili
Let’s get right to the stats that sports fans want the most: the Bigfoot banana split eating contest. Participants had to eat a banana split with two whole bananas and six scoops of ice cream with toppings. I’m happy to report that there were no “inflate gate” issues here, and no one was wearing carbon fiber super shoes.
The previous best banana split demolition time was 3:18 by a mother who was holding a baby. All three of this year’s winners came in under 3 minutes, and a new record of 2:32 was set. At least one case of “brain freeze” was reported.
Regarding the “Big Foot” contest, the women’s top three were 10 3/4, 10 1/4, and 10 1/8 inches. The men’s were 12 1/4, 11 7/8, and 11 3/4. There was a second and third-place tie, so the judges measured the other foot based on well-established international rules.
Bigfoot, Bears, and UFOs
Each speaker had their own perspective on Bigfoot, with differing views on sasquatch numbers, behaviors, and abilities. The one thing they had in common was an experience they could not explain, usually a bigfoot sighting.
Gwen Purcell, a Bigfoot researcher from Central Pennsylvania, was riding in the car with her husband when she saw a giant black figure running across a farmer’s field at a pace that would have made Usain Bolt, the greatest human sprinter of all time, yell, “Dude, hold up.”
“I’ve hunted my whole life, and I have never seen anything like that in the woods,” said Purcell. “I was quiet all day. My husband asked me, what is wrong with you? I asked him, did you see that thing in the field? He said what thing? I saw something that I’ve been trying to rationalize all day, and the only thing I can think of is a bigfoot.
“After I had my sighting, I kind of ran full bore down the rabbit hole. So far that I can’t even see the top of the hole anymore.”
Mike Familant, a field investigator from New Jersey, pointed out that if you overlay a map of bear populations with a map of Bigfoot sightings, they are essentially the same. He has a YouTube channel called Sussex County Bigfoot. Michael Cook of Kentucky, founder of Cook Cryptid Research and SossSquatch BBQ Sauce, explained that there is a correlation between Bigfoot sightings and UFO sightings. He also stated that some cryptids are real. He’s on the fence about the Loch Ness monster but is researching a book on lake monsters, so expect to hear more from him on this.
Tim Dills from North Carolina offered some insights into the world of Bigfoot field investigation, including getting tiny microSD cards in and out of various pieces of equipment, placing and maintaining dozens of trail cameras, and going through all the data to see what, if anything, was captured by the devices.
“Our audio recorders will run 24 hours a day for two weeks and will record 300 and something hours at a time,” Dills said. “Right now, I’m about 2,100 hours behind in listening to all of that.”
During two talks I attended, audience members related their stories of Bigfoot sightings. After their talks, it’s not unusual for the speakers to field questions about incidents, artifacts, or photos. After Daniel Benoit, a researcher from Virginia, finished his presentation, a man approached him and showed him a trail photo showing what appeared to be a hairy humanoid silhouette from a friend’s son’s trail camera.
Terry Windell, a field researcher from South Carolina, offered some tips about what to do if you should bump into Bigfoot out in the woods.
“Every encounter is different,” Windell said. “Treat Bigfoot like any other forest creature that you come up on and keep your distance. If you feel threatened or uncomfortable, turn around and leave. Don’t go chasing after him with cameras. You’re not going to catch him.”
Rick Reles, an investigator from North Carolina, discussed Appalachian Cryptids and Legends. His slide on Bigfoot/Sasquatch noted, “They have abilities beyond human, physical characteristics. Glowing eyes, invisibility, mind-speak, and “zapping” faculties are reported by witnesses.”
Reles was the only presenter to mention South Carolina’s own swamp lizard man, a cryptid who was something of a sensation in the late 1980s after two sightings near Bishopville, SC. The creature was said to have been hit by a car in the first incident and shot and wounded in the second. This hostile treatment may have encouraged it to slide back into the swamp, where things were safer.
Oberon Zell is a wizard. It says so right on his business card. His talk revolved around the cryptids described in his book A Wizard’s Bestiary: A Menagerie of Myth, Magic, and Mystery. It’s available on Amazon. It has a 4.6 out of 5 stars rating.
He strode into the room, looking as much like he could have just arrived from the California of the 1880s as the 1980s. He leaned against a table and held forth, quickly capturing the audience’s attention with his tales. It turns out that wizards don’t do PowerPoint. He led with his story of raising unicorns in the 1980s. When I got home, I did a quick bit of research on this claim. The August 4, 1982, Toronto Star newspaper has a photo of Zell in full wizard regalia beside a 150-lb goat named Lancelot, who has a single horn mid-forehead that is at least a foot long. The article is titled A real unicorn brings magic and wonderment back to life.
An audience member asked Zell about the Mongolian death worm, a creature alleged to exist in China’s Gobi Desert. Yes, I have been working the phrase into conversations with coworkers.
Skeptical But Interested
I feel compelled to report that I remain skeptical of many, if not most, of the claims made about Bigfoot in general and at the festival. At the same time, I am awed by the breadth and depth of the legends, lore, and assorted media generated about it.
I reached out to my lifelong friend and frequent co-author, Scott Lunsford, to get his perspective on Bigfoot from his decades of law enforcement experience.
“Every creature in North America has been hit by a motor vehicle at some point,” said Lunsford. “Yet there has never been an insurance claim for Bigfoot totaling out the front end of a Toyota.”
“Okay, let’s say they’re too smart to walk in front of cars. Based on the odds, I find it hard to believe that in a population of hairy people big enough to sustain itself for hundreds of years, there’s not one idiot who might walk out in front of a Ford on a dark road. Heck, even the little green guys wreck a flying saucer every once in a while.”
While I’m not as eloquent as my colleague, I subscribe to astronomer Carl Sagan’s famous dictum: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The more extraordinary the claim, the more substantial the evidence must be.
Let me know if you want more content on this or related subjects. There are so many aspects that could be explored. I feel far better qualified to write about West Virginia’s Great Train Robbery of 1915 or John Paul Scott’s Alcatraz escape attempt. Having said that, let me close with this cryptic crytid comment: For Squatch, There Are No Heroes.
Check out my new book, Blood on the Blue Ridge: Historic Appalachian True Crime Stories 1808-2004, cowritten with my friend and veteran police officer, Scott Lunsford on Amazon. Buy it here!
Sources
Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, and Ash Dekirk. 2007. A Wizard’s Bestiary. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books.
Toronto Star, Ontario, Canada, Wednesday, August 4, 1982, Page 11, “A real unicorn brings magic and wonderment back to life”
Wikipedia: Bigfoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot
Wikipedia: Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizard_Man_of_Scape_Ore_Swamp
