The British Bigfoot at YouTube Debate Reaches the Media

The controversy surrounding the YouTube footage said to show a Bigfoot-style beast in Britain's Peak District has now reached the eyes and ears of the nation's media - albeit very briefly! Here's the link.

The British Bigfoot on Film: The Controversy Continues

Well, in the wake of my earlier post about alleged footage of a British Bigfoot posted at YouTube, I've been contacted by five people who claim to have in their possession either (a) footage or (b) photographs of such similar beasts. Time will tell if anything ever comes of these claims. If the evidence surfaces, or even if the tales simply evaporate into nothingness, I'll keep you posted.

Offline

I'll be offline from now until Tuesday.

A British Bigfoot at YouTube? A Hoax? You Decide...

I was alerted earlier today to this piece of footage that was posted at YouTube, and that was supposedly taken in Britain's Peak District. From the accents of the people present, it sounds like they are from the Stoke-on-Trent/Rugeley/Stafford areas of Staffordshire. The film briefly shows something man-like in the woods.

Of course, You-Tube is full of films like this...

The Man-Monkey: A New Encounter

Hopefully, in a week or so, I'll have the complete details of a new sighting of the infamous Man-Monkey of the Shropshire Union Canal's Bridge 39. This encounter reportedly occurred at in the summer of 2007. More details soon as I have them all.

My New Book And The British Bigfoot

As you'll see from this link, Anomalist Books have published online-details of my forthcoming new book: There's Something in the Woods. Those of you interested in the British Bigfoot will find lots of material in its pages to keep you occupied. I'll keep you posted as soon as I have the exact publication date.

Man-Beast Mysteries

A story that surfaced to me in 2000 and that most definitely deserves a mention here came from a man who declined a personal meeting with me and even declined to reveal his name; but who, in a lunchtime telephone-call, briefly told me how he had personally heard of an encounter with a strange creature at the height of the Second World War.

According to the tale, the man was a twelve-year-old in 1943 when a young evacuee – a boy of about nine or ten who hailed from somewhere in London - came to stay with his immediate neighbors: in Woodseaves, a village in Staffordshire that has been the scene of more than a few man-beast-type encounters since the 1800s.

The pair would regularly play in the woods and fields around Woodseaves during the summer of that year; however, a degree of dark melancholy overcame the young Londoner when he confided in my caller that he had overheard the husband and wife he was staying with quietly discussing one night a strange event that had occurred several days earlier: namely the sighting by the husband of a large, hair-covered thing "like an upright bear" that had been seen walking menacingly through Woodseaves shortly after midnight.

The witness had apparently been deeply disturbed by the encounter and swore his wife to complete and utter secrecy. My source knew no more than that and had not spoken to the boy from London for more than half a century; however, for what it was worth he said that he wanted to relate the details to me, as he thought I would find them interesting. I most certainly did! I thanked the man and he quickly hung up the telephone; never to call again.

On the Road

As I'm kind of racing around, getting ready for a weekend of lectures, I'll be offline from now. But I'll be back on Monday with a regular and varied supply of info on the British Bigfoot. Have a good weekend!

Coming Soon...

In just a short time from now (I'll keep you posted when I have the exact date myself), I will have a new book out that details my cryptozoological investigations undertaken over the course of the last two years. The book contains a wealth of new material on the British Bigfoot; and as soon as I'm able to, I'll summarize the data here. Suffice it to say for now, however: the number of incidents that have occurred in the British Isles is reaching truly dazzling levels...

Ben Macdhui: The Film

Here's something definitely worth checking out: a film and blog dedicated to the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui. There's some great stuff here, including good background on the legend, the film, sightings, and much more.

The British Bigfoot: On-Line Links

The Chase Post newspaper (which covers the English town of Cannock) has a number of articles posted on-line that deal with the British-Bigfoot controversy that dominated the area - and specifically the Cannock Chase woods - in 2006. Here's the link.

The British Bigfoot and the Problem of Food

In his classic book The Goblin Universe, F.W. "Ted" Holiday discusses various reports of the so-called British Bigfoot, including the famous Big Gray Man of Ben MacDhui.

Holiday also discusses the report of one James Alan Rennie, who, in December of 1952 "...came across some strange tracks about a mile from Cromdale in Lower Speyside and took pictures of them. They ran across a stretch of snow-covered moorland. Each print was 19 inches long, and about 14 inches wide with about 7 feet between steps...He followed the tracks for about half a mile until they terminated at the foot of a pine. About 20 yards further on they resumed again on a piece of arable land which they traversed, then went down a hill to the river and finally terminated, spookily enough, opposite the village churchyard."

Holiday reveals that in Rennie's opinion the tracks were the result of "warm air coming into contact with cold air and producing blobs of water. The meteorologists, however, have never heard of such a phenomenon and have no idea how it might work."

Holiday also made an excellent point. Although his following words are directed at Bigfoot, they could easily apply to its British cousin (and perhaps more so, too, given the nature of the British Isles, its landscape and potential food supplies in the wild): "Real animals stay alive by eating. Giant primates, such as the gorilla, feed almost continuously during daylight, and in no dainty fashion...Bigfoot of the North American west coast, however, allegedly lives in coastal evergreen forests which produce low-energy food of the poorest quality. It is impossible to imagine this miserable fare could sustain a race of eight-foot-high anthropoids..."

Holiday's words are highly problematic for those who see the British Bigfoot as a flesh-and-blood animal. Where is the evidence of its massive feeding activities? The answer is simple: nowhere.

Online Interview

Earlier this week, I was interviewed by Ghost-Mysteries.com about my research into cryptozoology. The interview has now been posted online and can be found here. We discuss a variety of crypto-related issues, including the British Bigfoot and paranormal aspects of the subject.

Man-Beast Secrets

Jon Downes' excellent autobiography, Monster Hunter, includes a fascinating "British Bigfoot"-type story, the roots of which can be traced back to the height of the Second World War. It's an account full of high-level conspiracy, dark-goings on at a Devonshire hospital, strange medical files, disturbing family secrets, and the presence of a hairy man-beast that was rumored to be either a genuine wild-man, or possibly an unfortunate individual afflicted with hypertrichosis. Whatever the truth of the affair, it's a story that is as intriguing as it is significant. If you're interested in tales of hairy man-beasts on the loose in the British Isles, this one from Jon is a valuable addition to the data in-hand.

The Wild-Man of the Beach

One of the strangest stories I ever heard - and that can be said to fall firmly into the realm of the British "Wild-Man" - came from a man named Morris Allen, who told me how, early one morning in 1968, he had been walking with his dog along the coast near the town of Orford (which also happened to be the site of another man-beast encounter centuries ago), when in the distance he saw someone squatting on the sand and leaning over something.

As he got closer, Allen said, he could see that the man was dressed in what appeared to be animal-skins, and was tearing into the flesh of a dead rabbit. The man was dirt-encrusted, with long, tangled hair and had wild, staring eyes.

Allen held his dog tightly, and could only watch with a mixture of fascination and horror. Suddenly the man held his head aloft and quickly looked in Allen's direction, as if he had picked up a scent.

The man quickly scooped up the remains of the rabbit, bounded off into the grass and was lost to sight. He was never seen again. We'll probably never know if this was some sort of true Wild-Man, or an eccentric soul who had taken to living in the woods of England's east-coast.

The Chatham Thing

Many thanks to Neil Arnold (author of Monster! - an excellent book that everyone with an interest in cryptozoology should own) for the following report.

As Neil says:

"August (day unknown) 1975 WALDERSLADE, CHATHAM.

"A female witness named Maureen, who was eighteen at the time, was with her boyfriend, late at night, in local woods near Sherwood Avenue. They were chatting and her boyfriend decided to bend down and light a fire. As he was doing so, Maureen saw two glowing points of light just a few feet away that she took to be eyes. They belonged to a hulking, hairy creature that she could just pick out in the darkness, and it stood a couple of feet above her, making this creature around six to seven-feet in height.

"Maureen watched the figure, but was too transfixed to alert her companion, and then, the eyes seemed to lower and the form disappeared behind the undergrowth, but she sensed it was still there, so, without trying to worry her partner, she simply asked to leave.

"She never spoke of the encounter for some thirty years often asking herself afterwards if she’d seen the Devil! Skepticism may arise over such matters but across the UK there are legends of such 'wildmen', and as you will read in other cases from Kent, such glimpses of red eyes and hulking humanoids, albeit scarce, do occur."

Click here for more of Neil's work.

Monster Artwork!

This great piece of artwork of a glowing-red-eyed British Bigfoot was recently done for me by a very skilled artist named Simon Wyatt. Si will be following up with his own unique renditions of other mysterious beasts, including the Owlman and the Goatman.
Check out his work at http://www.comicspace.com/simonwyatt/; at http://simonwyatt.blogspot.com/; and at http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/simon_wyatts_portfolio/default.aspx

On the Road

I'm on the road again from now until late Sunday, but will be back with more British man-beast news on Monday of next week.

A Close Encounter of the Hairy Kind...

In January 2003, the Midlands-based newspaper, the Express and Star, published an article titled Night Terror With a British Bigfoot that described a very close encounter with a mysterious beast near Staffordshire's Cannock Chase woods - a location notorious for its assocation with unusual and unidentified creatures.

The newspaper reported that the witness had described seeing a "huge, ape-like creature at the side of the road on Levedale Lane between Stafford and Penkridge." He told the newspaper that:

"I was driving my [Ford] Fiesta [car] down the road towards Penkridge and as we approached a house, the security light came on. I saw something in the corner of my eye. It was coming towards the car, running very fast. It wasn’t a dog or a deer. It was running like a human would run, but it was really hairy and dark. It came level and jumped at the car but just missed. My friend turned round and said it was huge and had run through the hedge and across the field. I turned the car around but there was no sign of it."

There are countess such reports from the Chase, and over the next few weeks I'll be posting all my archived reports here.