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Geographical Index > United States > Washington > Lewis County > Article # 175
Media Article # 175 Sunday, April 15, 2001 In Search of Bigfoot, with a PCBy Laura Porto A group of Oregon researchers is using off-the-shelf technology to prove the existence of the legendary sasquatch
The challenges for choosing technology were many, according to Powell. The first attempt to photograph a bigfoot on the property involved a motion-activated still camera with weatherproof housing, the kind often used by deer hunters to monitor activity in an area. Powell tempted the bigfoot into the area with treats such as fruit and candy. Powell was convinced that they successfully got the animal to take their bait, in the form of treats, but it wasn’t triggering the camera, he said, theorizing that the bigfoot’s thick hair may not allow enough heat to escape to activate the camera. To remedy the situation, they upgraded to an X-10 Night Watch Surveillance Camera, only to find that it used CMOS [imager] instead of CCD [imager], which didn’t pick up any near-infrared light and required visible light. To illuminate the monitored area, Hughes pointed the Holmans’ porch light in the direction of the camera, but the lighting was poor, and the camera didn’t capture clear images. It was replaced in early February. “The sooner we can get some good images, the more compelling this will be to the skeptics,” said Powell. I Want to Believe Up until a couple of years ago, Powell was a skeptic himself. It wasn’t until moving to rural Oregon and talking to neighbors with similar experiences that he began to seriously consider the existence of bigfoot. Today, after investigating almost 200 sightings in the past four years with the BFRO, as well as experiencing “something big and spooky” moving around his camp site on the Chehalis property, Powell is a firm believer. It was a move to a rural area outside Portland that finally convinced him. “There’s a bias that comes from urban living, that we would know by now whether they existed or not,” he said. Not influenced by that bias, Powell and fellow curator Hughes are dedicated to documenting the creature, so much so that they’ve funded most of the project themselves up to this point. The next step, however, is out of their financial reach. The best equipment, including a customized VCR that captures images using time-lapse technology hooked up to 16 cameras costs upwards of $80,000—money that, as an all-volunteer organization, the BRFO does not have. Though it wouldn’t be unwelcome, the goal here isn’t to photograph a bigfoot. Instead, the BFRO researchers are hoping to gain enough evidence and generate enough interest to attract a sponsor. Their short list includes Paul Allen, backer of the alien radio signal detection project SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and Joe Firmage, founder of the Web consulting giants Serius and USWeb, who went public with an alien encounter in 1998. Bigfoot.net But with or without backing, the BFRO has continued to operate using the Internet as its life force since 1995. There are 25 curators scattered across the United States, in addition to three in Canada and one in England. While Hughes has only met a few of them, he said they work very closely together. “That interaction is enabled by the Internet,” he said. The BFRO also hosts a mailing list that provides a forum for curators to discuss subjects ranging from investigations going on around the country to operational logistics and report management. The mailing list, which receives about 10-15 messages daily, also brings specialists into the discussion, which, according to Hughes, would not be possible without the Internet. The group of people who started the BFRO has been communicating “the old-fashioned way,” by phone and by mail, for years, Moneymaker said. “When the Internet came along those people connected with each other...and eventually out of that group we formed the BFRO.” Moneymaker describes the Internet as a watershed for sightings as well. “The biggest problem that was holding back inquiries was the delay, the amount of time it took for people to find out about sightings,” he said. “Without the medium of the Internet those people would never have found anyone who was seriously interested in this subject.” “For a lot of people it is a relief that there are hundreds of people each year that have these sort of experiences,” Hughes said. “They’re not the only ones these things are happening to.” Hughes is now working on entering old sightings into a database [actually an army of dozens of volunteers is doing so] so that researchers can run reports and track patterns. According to Hughes, 15 to 30 sightings come in via the BFRO Web site (http://www.bfro.net) each week, and on average, about 10 of those turn out to be legitimate. “Many investigations don’t get far before we determine them to be a hoax,” Powell said. One tip-off is when people ask about publicity or money. Moneymaker also credits the net. “The Internet [has] made the geographic picture more clear,” explaining the relationship between deer and elk populations and bigfoot sightings, he said. Bigfoot are “taking advantage of the overpopulation of these prey species, pulling them into areas where they usually wouldn’t go,” he explained. The BFRO’s webcam has not yet documented a sighting, but Powell and company aren’t ready to give up. Neither are Janet and Bill Holman. “At first, when I realized what they were doing, I wanted to move the bed,” Janet Holman said, speaking of the noises heard and the footprints found near her bedroom window. “Now it’s like I don't even care.” The family’s comfort with the creatures only increases the chances of getting some footage, Powell said. The couple’s teenage daughter is so comfortable with the bigfoot that she imitates their howling when she hears it, calling back to them in a sort of dialogue. Powell describes the howl as a combination of laughter and screaming. “It tells you that there’s something with a lot of lung power,” he said. While Powell said the creatures are very smart and often notice and avoid cameras, he added that he hopes they get used to the onsite equipment over time. “The more equipment we can get ... the more chance we’ll have at getting solid evidence,” Powell said. “And that’s where we want to go.” That’s where Janet and Bill want to go too, they said. “A lot of what we want to do is prove they do exist ... and seek protection for them.” That “throws an enormous monkey wrench into public land,” said Powell, adding that the bigfoot would become the “ultimate endangered species” and bring organized opposition to any type of video documentation they get, he said. Powell is dedicated to his mission of capturing a bigfoot on tape. In fact, the following step may be harder, he said. What happens after? “You get ready for a lot of ridicule,” said Powell. Ridicule or not, Moneymaker dreams of the day when anyone can view a bigfoot via the Internet. “Eventually [there will be] full streaming audio and video that people can have running on large-size HDTV screens,” he said. “To us that is a futuristic thing but not far around the corner, and we want to be the first ones to do it ... the first ones to pump live wildness in to urban spaces and make it accessible.” “We will achieve that someday,” Moneymaker said, “and when we do, it will be a big deal.” Bibliographical Information:
BFRO Commentary:
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