Moderated Bigfoot- Anybody Seen one?

[xblade]

The rifle doesn't seem to have eased John's fears of being attacked.

Infrasound rays can have that affect on people.

 

[kitakaze]

Vortigern,

I am at work this morning. If I had to make a knee jerk reaction, I would say it was not sleep paralysis. But I will study the information you provided closer when I get home tonight. I want to be fair to you and the fine research you put into it, so it does deserve a closer look when I have more time. Thank you so much for your effort.

John, I am not going to say that you definitely had a case of sleep paralysis and the associated hynagogic hallucinations but I will definitely say that at this point it bears some consideration regarding your experience and can not be fully ruled out. I myself have experienced sleep paralysis many, many times and know how terrifying and real it can feel. First, here are some threads we have related to the subject:

Sleep Paralysis

Sleep Paralysis

Need help: Scary sleep problem.

Why do only people who believe see "shadow people"?

Lucid Dreaming. WTF?!

Have you hallucinated without being dreaming, tripping, or mentally ill?

Sleep paralysis - my experience

Now, John, you may think this is a bizarre explanation but I have already know without doubt that there are claimed Bigfoot encounters that are most certainly sleep paralysis. I am going to copypasta part of the Blogsquatch version of your encounter story and highlight the parts that I think could have some indication of sleep paralysis and associated hallucination:

JC’s encounter occurred in Pasquotank County, North Carolina, near the river that lends the county its name. He had gone there with a friend and his father to spend a little time hunting. JC was not himself a hunter -- in fact, he told me that he had never really been in the woods before this time. “I’m a city boy, a beach boy. I hadn’t been in the woods much,” he said.

“We left after his dad got off work on Friday night and then we drove down there,” he told me. “And at that time, it took us about two hours to get down there because they didn’t have the interstates that they do now. Now it only takes 45 minutes to get there. We got there about 10 or 11 o’clock at night on a Friday night. And where they parked the vehicles, we still had to walk back in the woods probably half a mile to get to where the cabins were. They had two cabins, and they were right on the Pasquatank River. And they were on these stilts, like a beach house. I guess if they get flooded, it won’t flood the cabins.”

The walk in was uneventful, according to JC, with no time to do anything more than hit the sack. Early the next morning, everyone awoke and preparations were made for the days hunting. “I had never hunted before, so they gave me a rifle and showed me how to shoot it,” JC said. “We went out right near the cabin. They showed me how to load it and shoot it and put the safety on. It kind of scared me.” JC paused for a moment. “I really wasn’t there to hunt. I just had never been in the woods, if you know what I mean? So, I’m an animal lover anyway, so I wasn’t going to shoot anything.”

There were five of them that day: JC’s friend, his friend’s little brother, their father, and his friend’s uncle, with JC making the fifth. With the uneven number, one would have to man a deer stand solo. JC drew the unlucky lot, and they took him out to their farthest deer stand. JC described the deer stand to me. “It was like a platform, and it had camouflage covering on it, and I’d been told it was a hunting blind. The only thing I could see out of was like a mail slot. It was a wooden platform floor. It didn’t have any walls, but the camouflage served as the walls of it. It was covered completely. It had a roof on it and everything.“ JC climbed up into the stand while it was still dark and listened as the sounds of the other men faded into the distance. But JC was not afraid at this point, he was excited to be out in the woods watching the animals that pass near the blind. “The wildlife started coming around. I saw a couple deer,” he said, and these he declined to shoot. “I saw a small black bear. I don’t know if it was a cub or if it was just a small one. I caught a glimpse of it as it ran by. And I also saw like, raccoon, or other little small stuff, which was pretty cool to me because I had never seen any of them before.”

But this idyllic scene was not to last. At about 9 o’clock, JC caught a whiff of something awful. “ It was like a dog that had been rolling in crap,” he said. “It was really bad. It was so bad it made my eyes water and it made me gag. Then I started having dry heaves, like I was going to vomit.” Maybe because he hadn’t yet eaten that day, JC was able to hold off the nausea. But the trouble didn’t stop there. “Then I felt like a static electricity shock, it felt like, and kind of.. have you been shocked before, it’s like your just frozen? All the hairs on your body are standing up, and you’re just stuck there, I guess. Then I started feeling like, I could feel my internal organs.. my heart, my lungs. I don’t know how to describe it, I’ve never been able to feel it before, but I could feel them. I can’t explain it, but maybe they were getting some kind of trauma. It was just the weirdest thing I had ever felt. And then I started having some kind of muscle spasms or nervous spasms, really bad, and I kind of slumped down on the floor of the deer stand, and curled up in the fetal position.” JC thinks he was on the floor for about five minutes, and then the strange feelings began to lessen.

I asked JC what he thought at the time about what might have caused the feelings, and he gave it some thought. “I didn’t know what.. when that was happening to me, I don’t know what it was. I really don’t remember what I was thinking. I just knew that I had never felt anything like that. Before or since. Never felt anything like that.”

Readers of this blog will perhaps think of the infrasound hypothesis at this point.

At this point JC was pretty disoriented. “I was really groggy and kind of getting myself back together. I sat back up, and was like, what the hell was that? And I started to look out the deer stand again. Then all the sudden I started hearing something, like footsteps, like branches breaking, like leaves crunching, like bushes rattling. Like something was moving through the forest. I was thinking, oh thank God! I hope it’s my friend and his dad coming to get me out of this.” But it was not his friends returning to fetch him.

I don't think it's necessary to get into the actual experience of what may have been a hallucination. Let me share with you my own experience regarding sleep paralysis. It happens to me often. Not only that but also lucid dreams and highly vivid an super-real dreams where I am sure I am awake and tesing myself to ensure that I am awake. I can recall any number of these dreams as though they were real experiences. I can recall with vivid detail such dreams going back to my childhood. Only by the nature of the experience am I able to differentiate them from memories of real occurences.

When I experience sleep paralysis it is almost always when I am between sleeping and waking. Sometimes I don't realize I have been sleeping. I feel and begin to hear a malevolent presence in my vicinity. Sometimes I can begin to see or feel something and realize I am unable to move. Sometimes I am lying prone but sometimes curled up on my side. This is where the natural fear sets in. Over the years it has happened so much that sometimes I become somewhat aware that I am in a state of paralysis. Sometimes I become intent on fighting the paralysis but sometimes my focus goes to a type of rage against the phantom being harrassing me. My sense of time becomes very distorted and sometimes I can see the most vivid beings. Invariably when I fully regain conciousness and movement I am out of it and feel like I've been through an ordeal.

Again, I'm not saying sleep paralysis is the best explanation for your experience but frankly it is a much better one than to think there really was a 9ft by 6ft gargantuan land beast at the mulberry bush. Think about it carefully and let's have a look again at cos' excellent diagram:



If what you described is accurate, then what you witnessed was a true giant. Absolutely the one of the very biggest land mammals in the world that lives and breeds on the east coast of the continental U.S. amongst well traversed human habitated areas and yet never once have we been able to find even a shred of reliable evidence let alone a type specimen.

This event occurred in 1982 by your recollection and you reported a very bare bones version of it to the BFRO 16 years later in 1998. A much more graphic and detailed account is recorded again by your friend and fellow Bigfoot enthusiast organization member, DB Donlon another 11 years later. It is very possible that not only did you experience sleep paralysis after being left alone for very long in an effective isolation chamber in the dark of the early morning after having little sleep, but that in the years since the memory has gained in detail from fear and subsequent constant nightmares. Fear, as you know, John, truly is the mind killer and can do all sorts of strange things to us. You were put with a gun in hole up a tree in the dark of the woods you had never, ever been in and left alone. You may not remember being afraid before the events 27 years ago but there is the distinct chance that the workings of the human mind and not undiscovered giants were at play.

Just something to think about. If this is way off the mark, please tell us.

 

[kitakaze]

So in cos' diagram I guess it kinda looks like the wee little human in blue is trying to hide Bigfoot's monster wang.

 

[WGBH]

Kit and Vort,

One major flaw I see in this theory.

I could smell that smell for about a day after the encounter. It seemed to be burned into my nostrils. I even tried to wash it out of my nose. Thoughts?

There are other flaws, but let's start with this one.

 

[kitakaze]

Kit and Vort,

One major flaw I see in this theory.

I could smell that smell for about a day after the encounter. It seemed to be burned into my nostrils. I even tried to wash it out of my nose. Thoughts?

There are other flaws, but let's start with this one.

Psychological impression. There's no mention of anyone else saying you smelt like a wet dog rolled in poo and that it burnt their eyes or nostrils.

 

[Vortigern99]

Enhanced sensory perception of all kinds, not only visual or auditory, is a known and documented element of hallucination.

A cursory search for "enhanced smell hallucination" turned up 138,000 hits, including the following information:

From http://www.answers.com/topic/hallucination :

Hallucinations are false or distorted sensory experiences that appear to be real perceptions. These sensory impressions are generated by the mind rather than by any external stimuli, and may be seen, heard, felt, and even smelled or tasted.

1. Perception of visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory experiences without an external stimulus and with a compelling sense of their reality, usually resulting from a mental disorder or as a response to a drug.
2. The objects or events so perceived.​

From http://www.vcu.edu/ent/ent_nose_smell.htm :

... hallucinations of smell (smelling a particular odor when no real odor is present)....​

From http://www.senseofsmell.org/feature/whitepaper/whitepaper03.php :

... phantosmia which refers to an olfactory perception when no odor source is present (olfactory hallucination)....​

Also, in consideration of your understandable sensitivity about this subject, please consider the following:

Sleep researchers in Great Britain and the United States have reported that 30–37% of adults experience hypnagogic hallucinations, which occur during the passage from wakefulness into sleep, while about 10–12% report hypnopompic hallucinations, which occur as a person awakens. Hallucinations related to ordinary sleeping and waking are not considered an indication of a mental or physical disorder.​

 

[xblade]

Psychological impression. There's no mention of anyone else saying you smelt like a wet dog rolled in poo and that it burnt there there eyes or nostrils.

Nor did this powerful, overwhelming odor seem to be lingering in the area when they came back to get him.

A bit off topic, but how irresponsible do you have to be to leave a kid alone in a tree stand who has never been hunting, and has little or no experience using a rifle? And for over 3 hours at that without checking up on him? Talk about an invitation for disaster.

 

[kitakaze]

With all the nightmares and anxiety over 27 years and heavy involvement with Bigfootery, one can not rule out the possibility that these were things the may have been subconciously added. There's no reason he could not have been in the vicinity of an acrid smelling plant or animal. Sounds to me like there might not have been an actual smell. He had to travel in an automobile with several other people, did he not? Nothing is said about a powerful smell Bigfoot smell clinging to him causing distress to others. He literally tried to wash the smell out of his nostrils. Sounds psychologicals. Like whenever I see Sylvia Browne I want to reach for a brillo pad and scrub the ugly away.

 

[kitakaze]

Nor did this powerful, overwhelming odor seem to be lingering in the area when they came back to get him.

A bit off topic, but how irresponsible do you have to be to leave a kid alone in a tree stand who has never been hunting, and has little or no experience using a rifle? And for over 3 hours at that without checking up on him? Talk about an invitation for disaster.

This is an absolutely fair question. I'm quoting it because I think John has you on ignore and I would also like to know how people could be so irresponsible. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, the former VP of the U.S. was an irresponsible hunter, why not these guys? Still, that is just messed.

 

[WGBH]

This is an absolutely fair question. I'm quoting it because I think John has you on ignore and I would also like to know how people could be so irresponsible. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, the former VP of the U.S. was an irresponsible hunter, why not these guys? Still, that is just messed.

They came back to get me at least 3 hours, and perhaps a bit more after the encounter. Would the smell still be lingering there? I mean, I could not tell because I still had the smell in my nose. They never mentioned it, but they were busy screaming at me. LOL

 

[WGBH]

A bit off topic, but how irresponsible do you have to be to leave a kid alone in a tree stand who has never been hunting, and has little or no experience using a rifle? And for over 3 hours at that without checking up on him? Talk about an invitation for disaster.

Very irresponsible. They had great parenting skills back then Huh? Actually I was in the tree stand for about 6 hours or more. From about 5:30 or 6 am till around noon.

 

[WGBH]

Kit,

I find it difficult to fathom that a episode of sleep paralysis would mess me up that bad. That would be one AMAZING nightmare. But who knows?

 

[William Parcher]

I think there are elements of John's encounter story that may be contrary to hypnagogic hallucination (HH). He describes himself in the tree stand doing a variety of voluntary physical actions some of which were prompted by the Bigfoot. Each time it turned to look around he would duck down then rise up again to look at it. That is not classic sleep paralysis in which the person is unable to move regardless of any escalating danger. As the demon moves towards you and opens its toothy mouth to bite off your hand you are unable to retract your hand to prevent it from being eaten.

If you are going to suggest that his entire encounter was HH - then I will suggest it was a dream (nightmare). Better than that, I might suggest HH and then transition to REM sleep with a Bigfoot encounter dream. The stench and gut zaps were HH and the whole Bigfoot-arrives-and-then-leaves experience was the dream. Upon awakening (whether in a chair or on the floor) his false experiences are fresh in his mind as if they actually happened with a smooth transition. We cannot measure elapsed time during these altered states but because events occur in sequence it can give the false impression that an appropriate length of time did elapse. You can dream of playing an entire 18 holes of golf with two hole-in-ones and awaken to find that you were asleep for 10 minutes.

When he awakens, he looks outside to find that there is no Bigfoot. He saw it leave the area in his dream. Instead of thinking that it was never there, he feels relief that it really did go to some other part of the forest.

We don't regard dreams as being hallucinations. Dreams are dreams. Hallucinations are something else, but they may occur before dreaming.

Do I think this is what happened to John? I can't know.

 

[kitakaze]

They came back to get me at least 3 hours, and perhaps a bit more after the encounter. Would the smell still be lingering there? I mean, I could not tell because I still had the smell in my nose. They never mentioned it, but they were busy screaming at me. LOL

What do you mean? I know they mocked you and said you saw a bear. Can yopu elaborate?

The smell impressed itself on you so strongly that you literally washed your nostrils out. That's a powerful impression.

John, you're a very smart guy and I want you to try and absorb something a little cryptic I'm going to say...

Fantasy is real.

I'll say it again.

Fantasy is real...

Maybe that sounds weird or dumb but think about it for a second. Fantasies can be very very real for the people that experience them and have very real effects that change their life and the lives of people around them. The next part is very important.

Not everybody that has a fantasy in their life wants, likes, or needs that fantasy and may never have tried to actively encourage it or create it.

You may be suffering from a post traumatic stress that has snowballed out of control. It can very well come from something that never happened. The experience of that time in the darkness shut away by yourself with a gun up in a deerstand in the dark woods you had never been in before left alone by those men and your friend with the expectation to be a man and kill something may have put you under a very real stress. You could have very well gone into the fitful and restless sleep that can bring on sleep paralysis.

I want you to think carefully about the possibility and try and absorb it. If it's just flat-out wrong, then you have nothing to lose but just think about it. People are out there who will coax you and encourage you to believe that what you saw is real but think about it...

Stress+fear+environment+known human phenomenon vs true giant man beast of epic size.

 

[xblade]

This is an absolutely fair question. I'm quoting it because I think John has you on ignore and I would also like to know how people could be so irresponsible. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I mean, the former VP of the U.S. was an irresponsible hunter, why not these guys? Still, that is just messed.

Yeah, not saying it couldn't or didn't happen, it's just one more aspect that doesn't add up. You'd think it would be a given that you and your friend would be sharing a stand together. That's why you're there...to hang with your friend. To leave it up to a random drawing makes little sense. But again, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

To add, his "attack" sounds similar to an epileptic seizure. It's interesting to note that the attack happened before he ever saw the creature. Those suffering epileptic seizures have been known to hallucinate as a result. Here's one claim. Also, hunger, stress, etc have been known to cause such seizures. He said he hadn't eaten, I'd say it was probably a little stressful being stuck in unfamiliar territory, etc. Not a doctor though, just throwing it out there. A friend used to see angels during his seizures.

 

[xblade]

Very irresponsible. They had great parenting skills back then Huh? Actually I was in the tree stand for about 6 hours or more. From about 5:30 or 6 am till around noon.

Geez, that makes it even worse.

 

[kitakaze]

I think there are elements of John's encounter story that may be contrary to hypnagogic hallucination (HH). He describes himself in the tree stand doing a variety of voluntary physical actions some of which were prompted by the Bigfoot. Each time it turned to look around he would duck down then rise up again to look at it. That is not classic sleep paralysis in which the person is unable to move regardless of any escalating danger. As the demon moves towards you and opens its toothy mouth to bite off your hand you are unable to retract your hand to prevent it from being eaten.

You know my secret pain. I just mentioned this to Vort...

Sleep paralysis sucks. I love my dreams because I can dream so very vividly but that is the occasional downside for me. The last time I was in my bed in Tokyo after a fitful and restless sleep for only few ours in the late morning after an all night performance. After not being sure if I had really been sleeping their was a sickening presence just above my head and whispering really foul indecipherable crap in my ear while I was paralyzed. I knew what was happening wasn't real and was determined to fight it. This thing kept clutching at me from just over my head and I was in such a rage to get at it and attack it. Finally I broke free and shot my arms out and grabbed the arms of the spectre thing above me and yanked them down while shooting up to a sitting position in my bed. I was suddenly awake in bed disoriented with my hands in front of me and simply realized I had my latest sleep paralysis.

If you are going to suggest that his entire encounter was HH - then I will suggest it was a dream (nightmare). Better than that, I might suggest HH and then transition to REM sleep with a Bigfoot encounter dream. The stench and gut zaps were HH and the whole Bigfoot-arrives-and-then-leaves experience was the dream. Upon awakening (whether in a chair or on the floor) his false experiences are fresh in his mind as if they actually happened with a smooth transition. We cannot measure elapsed time during these altered states but because events occur in sequence it can give the false impression that an appropriate length of time did elapse. You can dream of playing an entire 18 holes of golf with two hole-in-ones and awaken to find that you were asleep for 10 minutes.

When he awakens, he looks outside to find that there is no Bigfoot. He saw it leave the area in his dream. Instead of thinking that it was never there, he feels relief that it really did go to some other part of the forest.

We don't regard dreams as being hallucinations. Dreams are dreams. Hallucinations are something else, but they may occur before dreaming.

Do I think this is what happened to John? I can't know.

Those are good points and we can never truly know, only try and narrow the possibilities.

 

[kitakaze]

There are only 2 plausible explanations for his sighting report...

1) He saw Bigfoot.....or...

2) He's making the whole story up.

You know nothing.

I think people like you are gasoline on the flame for people like John.

 

[WGBH]

What do you mean? I know they mocked you and said you saw a bear. Can yopu elaborate?

The smell impressed itself on you so strongly that you literally washed your nostrils out. That's a powerful impression.

John, you're a very smart guy and I want you to try and absorb something a little cryptic I'm going to say...

Fantasy is real.

I'll say it again.

Fantasy is real...

Maybe that sounds weird or dumb but think about it for a second. Fantasies can be very very real for the people that experience them and have very real effects that change their life and the lives of people around them. The next part is very important.

Not everybody that has a fantasy in their life wants, likes, or needs that fantasy and may never have tried to actively encourage it or create it.

You may be suffering from a post traumatic stress that has snowballed out of control. It can very well come from something that never happened. The experience of that time in the darkness shut away by yourself with a gun up in a deerstand in the dark woods you had never been in before left alone by those men and your friend with the expectation to be a man and kill something may have put you under a very real stress. You could have very well gone into the fitful and restless sleep that can bring on sleep paralysis.

I want you to think carefully about the possibility and try and absorb it. If it's just flat-out wrong, then you have nothing to lose but just think about it. People are out there who will coax you and encourage you to believe that what you saw is real but think about it...

Stress+fear+environment+known human phenomenon vs true giant man beast of epic size.

I was not stressed. Excited to be in the woods is more like it. I had no major fear until the sighting. I mean hell yeah, I felt ill during the smell and whatever happened to cause my incapacitation. For the record, I have never said it was infrasound. I do not know what is was. I can only explain what it felt like. I did recover from the sensations after a few mins. Except for the bad smell trapped in my nose.

To elaborate on the mocking is pointless. It was the usual things we taunt about. I am sure it was much more shocking from the point of view of a boy. It was probably just magnified by the fear. I wanted to get out of there. I even left the gun up in the tree stand and got screamed at more for that.The taunting and ridicule continued the rest of the weekend.

Will continue tomorrow. goodnight

 

[DogB]

Would the smell still be lingering there? I mean, I could not tell because I still had the smell in my nose.

If nobody else could smell anything (after they all settled down) then there was no real smell. Odours are one of the most common hallucinations. Our sense of smell hooks right into the most primitive parts of our brain. As suggested by others I'd strongly suspect the odour was a carry over of the traumatic experience - whether real or otherwise.

Oh BTW - being left in that hide would have scared the hell out of me.