Pacific Northwest

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Let’s Take a Stab at the Medical Myths Surrounding Vampires

Posted by Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB) on November 17, 2012
Posted in: Creatures, Myths, Science, Story Telling, Vampires. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

By Glenn D. Braunstein, M.D. via huffingtonpost.com

If you buy into the current pop-culture craze about vampires, they’re simply the most intriguing, seductive creatures around, trapped in torrid love triangles with young, beautiful people. With super-speed, super-strength, killer wardrobes and a thirst for blood that can’t be slaked, the “undead” now dominate the box office, rack up ratings and top the bestseller lists. Whether it’s vampire Bill guzzling True Blood in the swamps of Louisiana, Edward Cullen brooding in the twilight of the Pacific Northwest, or revenants hunted by Abraham Lincoln (?!), the public never has seemed more obsessed with saying fangs you very much to these mythical demimonde.

But let’s dig deeper into their past, racing beyond creepy Count Orlok of black-and-white cinematic fame and dashing across historical Europe to ask whether whispers of health, medicine and science can stake out a different view of vampires: A considerable body of scholarly work seeks to explain what might have created the folklore of the vampire or Nosferatu — a name that comes from the Greek nosophoros, or plague-carrier.

Records of vampire-like creatures can be found in ancient religions of Tibet, India and Mexico. Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and other ancient cultures also appear to have held beliefs involving a dead figure who returns to life in its own body and feeds off the living. Similar myths exist in European, Chinese, Polynesian and African cultures.

Our modern ideas about these monsters probably originated in Scandinavia and the British Isles but really took hold in Central and Eastern Europe in medieval times. In a region of what is now Romania, the unspeakable deeds and a reputation for barbarism gave rise to the posthumous name for Vlad III Dracul, a prince of the region, as “Vlad the Impaler.” In turn, this inspired author Bram Stoker‘s legendary tale, making Dracula a synonym for vampire. Of course, even in modern times, we occasionally read about a psychotic killer who cannibalizes his prey (remember Jeffrey Dahmer).

Even more fundamental to vampire lore may be a misunderstanding of the death and disease people once encountered in their everyday lives.

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“Bigfoots are real. The evidence shows it.”

Posted by Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB) on November 15, 2012
Posted in: Bigfoot. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

via KVAL CBS 13

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. – Bigfoot is no stranger to the Pacific Northwest: about a third of reported sasquatch sightings happen in Oregon and Washington.

The legend – or search – has gained new popularity from “Finding Bigfoot” on Animal Planet.

“It won’t take long, a few years tops,” Portland native and bigfoot hunter Cliff Barackman told a Springfield High School club. “These things are real, and soon everyone is going to know about it.”

Barackman admits to a lifelong obsession with sasquatch, an obession he now gets to indulge by traveling the country with three other bigfoot experts in search of ‘squatch.

He is used to dealing with skeptics, but during a recent visit to Springfield High School, barackman was preaching to the choir at the Sasquatch Brotherhood, a school club.

“It’s like religion,” said Austin Helfrich of the Sasquatch Brotherhood. “You try to spread religion. Sasquatch, you try to spread it around, and have other people start to believe in it. And it just spreads like wildfire.”

“Finding Bigfoot” has helped fan the flames: 1.3o million people tuned in for the premiere of its third season.

“Certainly more people are becoming believers because of the show,” Barackman said. “I don’t encourage belief. I encourage weighing the evidence and coming to your own conclusion.”

The Sasquatch Brotherhood’s members have come to the conclusion that bigfoot is out there, and like many fellow enthusiasts, they feel there’s a good chance he calls the Pacific Northwest home.

“Lots of forested areas, very wet, mostly lots of animals,” Helfrich said. “I think it would be an easy location for sasquatches to live in.”

Helfrich and his friends admit they get some odd looks from other students.

But the general public’s skepticism doesn’t seem to bother them – or Barackman. They are all convinced that sasquatch’s days in the shadows are numbered.

“I don’t have a PhD. I don’t care what other people think of me,” Barackman said. “Bigfoots are real. The evidence shows it.”

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Bigfoot Sightings & Pictures: Hoaxes and Cases of Mistaken Identity

Posted by Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB) on November 7, 2012
Posted in: Bigfoot. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 1 comment

via LiveScience

Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, is a giant ape-like creature that is said to roam the Pacific Northwest. There is scant physical evidence that such creatures exist, but Bigfoot buffs are convinced that they do, and that science will soon prove it.

While most sightings of Bigfoot occur in the Northwest, the creatures have been reported all over the country. There are many native myths and legends of wild men in the woods, but Bigfoot per se has been around for only about 50 years. Interest in Bigfoot grew rapidly during the second half of the 20th century, spurred by magazine articles of the time, most seminally a December 1959 “True” article describing the discovery of large, mysterious footprints the year before in Bluff Creek, California.

If you don’t believe in Bigfoot (singular or plural), you’re not alone. According to a 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, only 16 percent of Americans said that Bigfoot “absolutely” or “probably” exist, with 44 percent responding “probably not” and about 40 percent saying that they “absolutely [do] not” exist. (In contrast, over twice as many people believe in ghosts or astrology.) [Infographic: Tracking Belief in Bigfoot]

Eyewitness evidence

By far the most common evidence for Bigfoot is eyewitness reports. Unfortunately, this is also by far the weakest type of evidence. Psychologists and police know that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, and that people are simply not very good at accurately describing something they saw — especially at a distance in low light and when the subject is partially hidden by trees and foliage (as most Bigfoot reports are).

A frame from the film by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin.

Anyone can be mistaken, and pilots, policemen, priests, and public officials are no exception. Most Bigfoot researchers admit that the vast majority of sightings are mistakes or hoaxes (up to 95 percent, by some estimates). Still, they insist that a Bigfoot must be hiding in that tiny portion of sightings and reports that can’t be easily explained.

Photographic evidence

The most famous image of a Bigfoot is the short film taken in 1967 by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin. Shot in Bluff Creek, Calif., it shows a dark, man-sized and man-shaped figure striding through a clearing. Widely considered a hoax, it remains to this day the best evidence for Bigfoot. However this poses a serious blow to the film’s credibility: if it’s real, and these Bigfoot creatures are really out there wandering in front of people with cameras, it’s very suspicious that better films and videos haven’t emerged since Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

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Where’s the science in the search for Sasquatch?

Posted by Mason I. Bilderberg (MIB) on July 23, 2012
Posted in: Bigfoot, Creatures. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a Comment

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency recently issued a statement indicating it knew of no evidence of the existence of “aquatic humanoids.”

This remarkable statement was prompted by calls from viewers of Animal Planet’s “Mermaids: the Body Found,” which claimed such creatures exist. A swarm of television programs, listed as “scientific” and “reality based,” perpetuate similar pseudoscientific ideas that are gobbled up by viewers, especially kids.

This incident illustrates a dangerous trend: Viewers’ acceptance of claims made by untrained laypeople as authoritative, and their simultaneous rejection of work done by experts in science, history and politics. This idea argues that egg-headed specialists — with a lifetime of focused academic work, peer-reviewed scholarship and study — are hiding the “truth” from us so that the only way to get answers is from down-home folks with little schooling but good sense. In other words, formal education is bad.

Keep Reading: Where’s the science in the search for Sasquatch? | NJ.com.

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