Abominable Science

by Daniel Loxton

161 Loren Coleman to Daniel Loxton, August 11, 2004.

  162 Krantz, Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, 34.

  163 Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed, 75.

  164 Krantz, Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, 42.

  165 Robert Carroll, The Skeptic’s Dictionary (New York: Wiley, 2003), 65.

  166 Tim Mendham, “The Carlos Hoax,” in The Second Coming: All the Best from the Skeptic, 1986–1990, ed. Barry Williams and Richard Saunders (Sydney: Australian Skeptics, 2001), 26–28.

  167 Adding complexity to this story, the Venezuelan-born performance artist who portrayed Carlos, Deyvi Pena, was arrested in 2011 after federal authorities discovered that he had been living in the United States under the assumed identity Jose Luis Alvarez. Pena pleaded guilty to passport fraud in early 2012. See Jon Burstein. “Artist Pleads Guilty to Passport Fraud,” Orlando (Fla.) Sun Sentinel, March 14, 2012, http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-14/news/fl-jose-alvarez-amazing-randi-plea-20120314_1_passport-fraud-sentencing-identity (accessed April 17, 2012).

  168 “Sasquatch Tracks Were Made by Man.”

  169 Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed, 257.

  170 John Rael to Daniel Loxton, March 21, 2010. I was apprised of the hoax early and asked to contribute some discussion. I was uncomfortable with the derisive tone of the project, so I declined. More information on the hoax is available at “Bigfoot Gets Kicked in the Nuts,” February 7, 2010, Skepticallypwnd, http://skepticallypwnd.com/?p=79 (accessed March 22, 2010).

  171 Green, Year of the Sasquatch, 73.

  172 “Sasquatch Wanted,” Washington Post, March 2, 1970, A9.

  173 Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed, 190.

  174 Quoted in ibid., 193.

  175 Quoted in Coleman, Bigfoot!, 236.

  176 Krantz, Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, 10.

  177 The James Randi Educational Foundation tested just such a claim in 2007. Rosemary Hunter “applied for the JREF’s Million Dollar Challenge with the extraordinary claim that she can make people urinate with the power of her mind,” but failed the preliminary test (Alison Smith, “Rosemary Hunter’s Challenge Test,” November 11, 2007, James Randi Educational Foundation, http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/jref-news/108rosemary-hunters-challenge-test.html [accessed March 18, 2010]).

  178 John Bindernagel to Daniel Loxton, November 29, 2004.

  179 Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed, 194.

  180 Jason Loxton to Daniel Loxton, March 19, 2010.

  181 Quoted in Coleman, Bigfoot!, 236.

  182 Bindernagel to Loxton, November 29, 2004.

  183 Green, Sasquatch, 409–410.

  184 Several such cases are described by Janet Bord and Colin Bord, including that of Richard Davis, alleged to have shot a Bigfoot in the chest with a revolver in 1975—at close range. According to the tale, Davis saw the bullet hit the creature, which then ran off. (This case also has a paranormal aspect, with Davis psychically prevented from emptying the remainder of the cylinder into the creature’s chest.) See Bord and Bord, Bigfoot Casebook Updated, 140–141.

  185 Daegling, Bigfoot Exposed, 194.

  186 I have argued that all parties should be able to agree that it is possible for entire categories of paranormal claims to be completely bogus, with hundreds or thousands of supporting testimonials comprising nothing but mistakes and hoaxes. All that’s needed to demonstrate this to the satisfaction of almost everybody is to go through a list of similar claims: Bigfoot, fairies, ghosts, alien abduction, mermaids, and so on. See Daniel Loxton, “An Argument That Should Never Be Made Again,” February 1, 2010, Skepticblog, http://skepticblog.org/2010/02/02/an-argument-that-should-never-be-made-again/ (accessed February 28, 2010).

  187 “Bizarre Encounters in Wahiawa, Hawaii,” and “State by State Sightings List,” Bigfoot Encounters, http://www.bigfootencounters.com/sbs/aikanaka.htm (accessed March 8, 2012).

  188 Green, Sasquatch, 233.

  189 Krantz, Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, 236.

  3. THE YETI

  1 Simon Welfare and John Fairley, Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World (New York: A&W Visual Library, 1980), 14.

  2 Brian Regal, Searching for Sasquatch: Crackpots, Eggheads, and Cryptozoology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 31.

  3 Reinhold Messner, My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas’ Deepest Mystery (New York: Pan, 1998), viii.

  4 Colonel [Charles K.], Howard-Bury, “The Attempt on Everest,” Times (London), October 21, 1921, 11.

  5 C. K. Howard-Bury, Mount Everest: The Reconnaissance (New York: Longmans, Green, 1922), 141.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Howard-Bury, “Attempt on Everest.”

  8 Howard-Bury, Mount Everest, 141.

  9 Henry Newman, “On Everest: The ‘Wild Men’ Myth,” Leader (Allahabad, India), November 6, 1921, 9.

  10 Henry Newman, “The ‘Abominable Snowmen’” [letter to the editor], Times, July 29, 1937, 15.

  11 For useful introductions to the varied vocabulary of the Yeti, see, for example, Edmund Hillary and Desmond Doig, High in the Thin Cold Air (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962) 32; and Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, viii.

  12 William L. Straus Jr., “Abominable Snowman,” Science 123 (1956): 1024–1025. Pranavananda published his interpretation in many venues; see, for example, Swami Pranavananda, “Abominable Stories About the Snowman,” Times of India (Mumbai [Bombay]), May 22, 1955, 5. Srimat Swami Pranavananda is identified as “Sreemat Swami Pranavananda, an Indian religious notable,” in “The ‘Abominable Snowman’ Unmasked: The Red Bear Believed Guilty of a Himalayan Fraud,” Times, July 3, 1956, 7.

  13 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 32.

  14 B. H. Hodgson, “On the Mammalia of Nepal,” Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 1 (1832): 339n.

  15 John Napier, Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (New York: Dutton, 1973), 36.

  16 Ivan T. Sanderson, Abominable Snowmen: Legend Comes to Life (New York: Pyramid, 1968), 43–45. Sanderson first offered a page of introductory fluff, waxing nostalgic about nineteenth-century British officer-explorers and their “wealth of wisdom” and “extraordinarily keen interest in the world about them,” and then gave a wildly inaccurate, paraphrased version of Laurence Waddell’s tale—both embellishing it with made-up details not found in the original (“tracks made by some creature walking on two legs and two bare feet … brought whoops of admiration from the Major’s mountain-born porters”) and omitting the key detail: Waddell had assessed the tracks as coming from a bear. The most charitable view would be that Sanderson was bluffing about his citation rather than deliberately misrepresenting the evidence, and he simply had not read the original. (He complained on the following page about the “time-consuming and frustrating” difficulty of trying to track down primary sources that are “either lost in some archive or truly lost forever.”) Bernard Heuvelmans at least quoted Waddell, but similarly omitted the key fact that Waddell had considered these footprints to be those of a bear and blamed “an atmosphere of superstition” for the claims of hairy wild men (On the Track of Unknown Animals, trans. Richard Garnett [New York: Hill and Wang, 1959], 128).

  17 L. A. Waddell, Among the Himalayas (1899; rept., Delhi: Pilgrims Book House, 1998), 223–224.

  18 Napier, Bigfoot, 36–37.

  19 William Woodville Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas: Notes of a Journey Through China, Mongolia and Tibet (New York: Century, 1891), 150–151.

  20 Napier, Bigfoot, 35.

  21 Ibid., 36.

  22 Quoted in ibid., 39–40

  23 Joe Nickell, Tracking the Man-Beasts: Sasquatch, Vampires, Zombies, and More (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2011), 56.

  24 Consider the case of Man Bahadur, a thirty-five-year-old Nepalese pilgrim who spent an extended period with Edmund Hillary’s high-altitude medicine team (1960/1961). As described by team member and doctor Michael Ward, Bahadur

  stayed for 14 days at 15,300 ft and above, and throughout this period wore neither shoes nor gloves, and walked in the snow and on rocks in bare fe
et without any evidence of frostbite. He wore minimal clothing and had no sleeping bag or protective equipment other than a woollen coat. He was continuously monitored whilst spending four days without shelter between 16,500 ft and 17,500 ft, with night temperatures between −13°C [8.6°F] and −15°C [5°F], and day temperatures below freezing. Eventually he developed deep cracks in the skin of his toes, which became infected, and he returned to lower levels for this reason. Had any European members of the party followed this regime they would undoubtedly have become severely frostbitten and hypothermic. (“The Yeti Footprints: Myth and Reality,” Alpine Journal [1999]: 86)

  For photographs of Bahadur and his feet, see “The Highest Livers,” Life, May 12, 1961, 92.

  25 Napier, Bigfoot, 61.

  26 Ernst Schäfer, Dach der Erde: Durch das Wunderland Hochtibet Tibetexpedition 1934/1936 (Roof of the World: Through the Wonderland of Upper Tibet, Tibet Expedition, 1934–1936) (Berlin: Parey, 1938).

  27 Christopher Hale, Himmler’s Crusade: The Nazi Expedition to Find the Origins of the Aryan Race (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 2006), 53.

  28 Ibid., 180.

  29 Schäfer, Dach der Erde, 81–87 (translated by Hans-Dieter Sues).

  30 Quoted in Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, 108.

  31 Quoted in ibid.

  32 “A Himalayan ‘Snowman’? Alleged Signs. Strange Imprints at 16,000 Ft.,” Times of India, December 9, 1936, 11.

  33 F. S. Smythe, “Abominable Snowman. Pursuit in the Himalayas,” Times, November 10, 1937, 15–16.

  34 Balu [H. W. Tilman], “Are the ‘Snowmen’ Bears?” Times, November 13, 1937, 13. Tilman’s climbing partner Eric Shipton explained that same year that in 1936 he had been “amused to find that these men [Mana porters] had nicknamed Tilman ‘Balu Sahib’ (Balu meaning a bear) owing to the speed with which he moves over steep, forested ground” (“Survey Work in the Nanda Devi Region,” Himalayan Journal 9 [1937], http://www.himalayanclub.org/journal/survey-work-in-the-nanda-devi-region/ (accessed May 17, 2012). Frank Smythe pretty clearly knew that Tilman was Balu, as evidenced in “Mr Smythe’s Reply,” Times, November 16, 1937, 17. Tilman rather theatrically denied that he was Balu: “Mr Smythe’s facility for putting two and two together and making five is seen … in his identification of Balu with Your obedient servant, H. W. Tilman” (“Abominable Snowman” [letter to the editor], Times, December 1, 1937, 12). Despite this denial, Tilman made Balu’s argument the central plank in his defense of the Yeti in 1938. See H. W. Tilman, “Notes on the Abominable Snowman,” in Men and Mountaineering: An Anthology of Writings by Climbers, ed. Showell Styles (New York: White, 1968), 105 (excerpted from Mount Everest, 1938 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948]).

  35 Tilman, “Abominable Snowman,” 12.

  36 Ralph Izzard, The Abominable Snowman Adventure (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1955), 14.

  37 Tilman, “Notes on the Abominable Snowman,” 105.

  38 Izzard, Abominable Snowman Adventure, 44.

  39 Hale, Himmler’s Crusade, 58.

  40 Quoted in ibid., 128.

  41 Messner, My Quest for the Yeti, 107–122.

  42 Napier, Bigfoot, 46–47.

  43 Sanderson, Abominable Snowmen, 269.

  44 Napier, Bigfoot, 47.

  45 Edmund Hillary, “Abominable—and Improbable?” New York Times Magazine, January 24, 1960, 13; Ward, “Yeti Footprints,” 81.

  46 Napier, Bigfoot, 141.

  47 Eric Shipton, “A Mystery of Everest: Footprints of the ‘Abominable Snowman,’” Times, December 6, 1951, 5.

  48 Quoted in “Gigantopithecus: The Jury-Rigged Giant Bigfoot,” Pacific Northwest and Siberia Expedition, http://www.bermuda-triangle.org/html/gigantopithecus--_the_jury-rig.html (accessed October 22, 2011).

  49 Peter Gillman, “The Most Abominable Hoaxer?” Sunday Times Magazine (London), December 10, 1989, 39–44, and “The Yeti Footprints,” Alpine Journal (2001): 143–151.

  50 The photograph appears as an unnumbered figure, whose caption reads, “The abominable snowman’s trail, photographed by Eric Shipton in 1951 with (inset) a single footprint …” in Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown Animals, facing 136.

  51 Shipton passed away on March 28, 1977, as noted in “Obituary: Mr. Eric Shipton: Mountaineer, Explorer and Writer,” Times, March 30, 1977, 19; Gillman reported that Sherpa San Tenzing was dead by 1989, in “Most Abominable Hoaxer?” 44; and Ward died in 2005, as recorded in Jim Perrin, “Obituary: Michael Ward,” Guardian, October 27, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2005/oct/27/guardianobituaries.everest (accessed May 21, 2012.) In 1999, Ward wrote his rebuttal to Gillman: “Yeti Footprints,” 81–83.

  52 Ward, “Yeti Footprints,” 81–83.

  53 Quoted in Gillman, “Most Abominable Hoaxer?” 44.

  54 See, for example, “The Abominable Snowmen,” New York Times, December 27, 1951, 18; “Abominable Himalayan,” Life, December 1951, 88; Wladimir Tschernezky, “A Reconstruction of the Foot of the ‘Abominable Snowman,’” Nature 186, no. 4723 (1960): 496–497.

  55 Ward, “Yeti Footprints,” 83.

  56 Gillman, “Yeti Footprints,” 145.

  57 Ibid., 146.

  58 Ward, “Yeti Footprints,” 85.

  59 Gillman, “Yeti Footprints,” 150.

  60 Ibid., 149–150.

  61 Gillman, “Most Abominable Hoaxer?” 42.

  62 Gillman, “Yeti Footprints,” 145.

  63 Quoted in ibid., 150.

  64 Edouard Wyss-Dunant, “The Himalayan Footprints: New Traces Seen by Swiss Expedition,” Times, June 6, 1952, 5.

  65 Edouard Wyss-Dunant, “The Yeti: Biped or Quadroped?” The Mountain World, 1960/61, ed. Malcolm Branes (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1961), 252–259.

  66 “Abominable Snowman: Hairy Beast Seized Him, Says Porter,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 30, 1952, 11, second edition.

  67 Joshua Blu Buhs, Bigfoot: The Life and Times of a Legend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 36.

  68 “Everest Climbers Given Medal by Ike,” Joplin (Mo.) Globe, February 12, 1954, 20, final edition.

  69 “Now Seek Abominable Snowman Says Col. Hunt,” Daily Express (London), June 16, 1953, 2.

  70 Quoted in “Tenzing Saved His Life, Hillary Says in London,” Globe and Mail (Toronto), July 4, 1953, 8.

  71 P. McL., “A Man of the Mountains,” Winnipeg Free Press, August 13, 1955, 28.

  72 Richard Crichfield, “In the Land of the Abominable Snowman,” Sunday Herald Magazine (Chicago), May 20, 1979, 10.

  73 Izzard describes hiring “nearly 300 coolies” plus, as a result of a supply problem, “a second coolie team of 70 men to follow our main party” (Abominable Snowman Adventure, 95–96).

  74 Quoted in ibid., 108–109.

  75 Charles Stonor, The Sherpa and the Snowman (London: Hollis & Carter, 1955), 118.

  76 Izzard, Abominable Snowman Adventure.

  77 Ibid., 137–145.

  78 Ibid., 198–201.

  79 Quoted in ibid., 199.

  80 Stonor, Sherpa and the Snowman, 38.

  81 Quoted in Izzard, Abominable Snowman Adventure, 103.

  82 Stonor, Sherpa and the Snowman, 78.

  83 “‘Abominable Snowman’ in Tibetan Zoo,” Times of India, November 15, 1953, 1.

  84 Stonor, Sherpa and the Snowman, 30.

  85 Ibid., 64–65.

  86 Ibid., 204–205.

  87 Loren Coleman, Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology (Fresno, Calif.: Craven Street Books, 2002), 74, 36–37, 186, 45.

  88 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 37–40.

  89 Loren Coleman, Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), 178–203.

  90 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 37–41.

  91 Buhs, Bigfoot, 42. Tom Slick was reported to have left Kathmandu for the mountains around March 14, and to have returned to Kathmandu on April 19. See “Texan to Hunt Asian ‘Snowman,’” Lawton (Okla.) Constitution, March 14, 1957, 13; “Slick About Convinced Gia
nt ‘Snowman’ Exists,” Miami (Okla.) Daily News Herald, April 19, 1957, 9; and “Texan Finds Footprints of ‘Snowman,’” Pacific Stars and Stripes (Tokyo), April 20, 1957, 5. However, Byrne later wrote that they “spent three months in the mountains” during the 1957 expedition (The Search for Bigfoot: Monster, Myth or Man? [Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1975], 117).

  92 “Slick About Convinced Giant ‘Snowman’ Exists,” 9. Byrne, however, mentions only two sets of tracks: “I found one set of footprints, in the Chhoyang Khola at 10,000 feet, and Tom [Slick], working with a separate party in another area, found a second set” (Search for Bigfoot, 117).

  93 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 42–43.

  94 Tom Slick, “Abominable Snowman—No Longer a Legend,” Daily Boston Globe, May 18, 1958, B22.

  95 Buhs, Bigfoot, 43.

  96 Peter Byrne, “Hope to Take Him Alive with Drug-Bullet Gun,” Daily Boston Globe, May 19, 1958, 8.

  97 Peter Byrne, “We Dress Up as Natives to Fool Wary Animals,” Daily Boston Globe, May 20, 1958, 10.

  98 Buhs, Bigfoot, 43–45. However, Byrne reports that the end date is less clear: “[O]ne by one, the various members had to leave and before four months had passed all, with the exception of my brother and I, had departed. We stayed on for another five months, making nine months in all” (Search for Bigfoot, 118).

  99 “Snowman Reported Seen Eating Himalayan Frogs,” Washington Post, June 17, 1958, A3.

  100 “Americans Find Cave of Abominable Snowman,” Daily Boston Globe, April 30, 1958, 9.

  101 Buhs, Bigfoot, 45.

  102 Ibid., 49.

  103 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 43.

  104 “Tracing the Origins of a ‘Yeti’s Finger,’” December 27, 2011, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16264752 (accessed May 19, 2012).

  105 Loren Coleman, “Jimmy Stewart and the Yeti,” The Anomalist, http://www.anomalist.com/milestones/stewart.html (accessed October 22, 2011); Byrne, Search for Bigfoot, 120.

  106 “Abominable Snowman” [season 3, episode 59], MonsterQuest, History Channel, October 25, 2009, “MonsterQuest: Abominable Snowman, Pt. 4,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syLd4zx1BWU&feature=related (accessed October 22, 2011).

  107 Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 47.