After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Bigfoot: the Origin Story

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Our second episode examining the very real history of Bigfoot. This time we're looking at ancient Native American rock art and meeting the extinct (or is it?) giant ape Gigantopithecus.Our returning guest is the wonderful Dan Schreiber - host of We Can Be Weirdos and co-host of No Such Thing As a Fish.Produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Welcome to After Dark. My name's Anthony. And I'm Maddy. And we are back today looking for Bigfoot once again and asking what the origin story of Bigfoot is, or to put it another way, I suppose, trying to figure out what the true nature of Bigfoot is. There are lots of versions of Bigfoot with different origin stories to explore, but we've picked two to concentrate on. First of all, Bigfoot's origins within Native American

folklore as a piece of legend that has evolved over time, and then particularly after contact with white settlers. And secondly, Bigfoot as a subject of science, as a flesh and blood giant ape that was thought to be extinct. I can't finish the sentence, but I'm going to have to finish the sentence. That was thought to be extinct, but has somehow survived in the hidden corners of the world. And I laugh at this, but it's not impossible. Things are being discovered all the time. But before we get into the meaty details, Maddy is going to set the scene. The towering pine trees disappear into darkness.

More than a hundred feet above your head, their branches overlap to block out the stars. The earth is soft, the air sweet. Your eyes are drawn to a patch of moonlight through the trees. Then something steps out into it, a giant with a face that is human-like, giant with a face that is human-like and yet something more other. It watches you in silence from the magic-filled clearing, a keeper of the forest. It looks straight at you. Then it's gone. Later, you'll take out your phone and shakily record your story for the internet. But you pause before uploading it. What should you call this vision? What did you actually see? our returning guest today who's going to help us find the answers to these long way to bigfoot questions big feet big foot big foot multiple big foots yeah foots okay it's just no foots it's just

foot big oh no foots yeah yeah there's no plural foot is dan shriver dan was on the last podcast where we talked about this as well. You may know him from No Such Thing as a Fish and various other podcasts which have been hugely successful around the world. And Dan is interested in all things Bigfoot,

has a lot of friends, I think, and connections that you've been talking about previously with us about people who are involved in this world. So we're delighted to have him on. And we have been talking in the previous episode about different experiences that people have had, famous sightings.

Now we're going to try and get to the bottom of what a Bigfoot might be. And we're going to start by looking at a picture. I was going to get you to describe it, Maddy, but actually, no. No, I think let's make Dan work for his visitorship on this show. Right, image one. Dan, we have to explain that this is a tradition on After Dark where Anthony and I get each other to describe a picture, often without having seen it beforehand. So give us your best shot of this image.

Okay, so we're looking at multiple entities. They sort of have a ghostly look about them in terms of their drawing. There's two massive ones. I can see 2.5 meters has been written on the image, I think by someone else, it's not there. But they look kind of like an invasion of giant robots. You can see these kind of humans, there's big lines coming out the top of their heads as if to say, look up that way. I think that was an, it must be like an old way of saying it. Like a speech bubble. Look up there.

One is fully black with two white eyes, kind of like a primitive Slenderman. You know that? Or Mothman even, which is another cryptid. The other one is just ghostly white. And then the most sort of bigfooty looking one is to the left of that, which is not coloured in at all. It's got eyes. It's got a nose. It's got a mouth.

It's got five fingers and five toes on one side. It looks aggressive. It looks like they're invading. It's, I love it. It's, what it looks like is a great tattoo is what it looks like. It would be a great tattoo. I think that was an amazing description, full of detail. Maddy, tell us the actual...

Okay, so it's actually a rock painting. The 2.5 metres, as you may have guessed, is the height of the rock. This is a painted rock from the Tall River Indian Reservation, which is in California. And it's estimated to be between 500 and 1000 years old. So this is a significantly old artwork. According to tribal elders in this region, this is a character, a folklore legend known as the Hairy Man. And what we're looking at here is the Hairy Man and the Hairy Man's family.

I'm not sure he'd be nothing without his family he'd need company yeah which is interesting because when we think of Bigfoot it's very much okay we can think of him in terms of other cryptids but he's very much a lonesome figure I think it's fair to say Bigfoot has I would think it's fair to say some different characteristics from the hairy man but there is there's definitely a connection there and obviously one according to this rock that goes back up to a thousand years at least is this something that you come across in bigfoot communities and bigfoot followers bigfoot hunters for probably want to a better

word i personally i've never really heard much about the rock art and that sort of stuff because i think because it seemed to be a living being the history doesn't matter so much uh when you're talking about it in context of a new sighting has happened and so on. I think that's when you get into the scholarly world of it. I mean, what is the origins of this thing when it's a global idea? Everyone has their own origin stories. We've spoken about this on the previous episode. They serve their own purpose whenever they come into existence, filling a gap that needs filling. And it's very mermaid-like in that way. So we talked about mermaids before in the history of

mermaids. And one of the things that we found is as we went around the globe, there are versions of mermaids that are actually at times vastly different to one another. I will say with mermaids, and I think with Bigfoot as well, that there are different origin points for those stories. There are definitely commonalities, that there are different origin points for those stories there are definitely commonalities but there are different for example we looked at you know mermaids in Ireland mermaids in the Caribbean and then mermaids in Nigerian waters and the origins then have to be completely different they've grown up in completely different contexts and yet when you get into the 17th and 18th century and you start to get maritime trade in a way that you never have before those stories start to interconnect and I think in the 20th century with bigfoot it's almost

the same thing and i wonder how much the internet today has acted like those trade routes in the 17th and 18th centuries over the oceans that now it's that merging of all these ideas and cultural histories cultural ideas cultural stories all coming together in one place. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's we were on my fish podcast. We did a fact the other day about magpies. We're talking about Aussie magpies, New Zealand magpies. And then we're talking about British ones.

And they're different species. They're nothing. They're not the same. What? Yeah, a magpie here is not very different. Yeah, actually, they've just got a similar look and they got given the name by someone. But they're different species. They're nothing. They're not the same. What? Yeah, a magpie here is not. Because they can look very different, actually. They've just got a similar-ish look and they got given the name by someone. But they're different.

And that's just, there's your basic example there. You would attribute the Aussie magpie's abilities to the British one, but you shouldn't because they are completely different. Different lifespans, different ways and aggressions, and how in Australia they swoop on people. If you say that here, they're like, no, they don't. But they do in Australia because they're a different bird so I think it's that's that's where your problem comes in here as well or where the sort of regenerated Doctor Who of the Yeti kind of just takes on a new being but inherits the old memories and qualities of a

previous version be it Yowie Sasquatch or and how much do you think that is true then because in the in the we know keep referencing the previous episode so if you haven't heard that episode do go back and listen but in the previous episode i talked about almost the 20th century newness of the north american bigfoot but actually here we're confronted with this idea of the hairy man when i had maybe been a bit dismissive of bigfoot in the previous episode, there does, I mean, that drawing is incredible. It's really interesting to see that laid down on stone. And I love how quickly you flipped into a believer.

You're so close. You're so close. No, no, no. Well, now we're more in Europe. You're in. Yeah, the next, the third episode, I'll be like, I am Bigfoot. I'm off, guys.

On a five-part documentary series. No, like, what I'm seeing is the value. Because now I'm off guys on a five-part documentary series no like it what I'm seeing is the value because now I'm seeing history if that makes sense yeah well this is also this is so rooted in this is what we're missing I think this is where Bigfoot sticks out as something that's a bit hollow is that it's not plugging a hole in our belief systems in the way that it used to these would have been there and people would have seen them. I don't want to speak specifically for the specific community that drew these on the rock art, but you do hear about places where anthropologists go where people say, no, we just see them. Like ancient Babylonia, when they talk about ghosts, they saw them. They believed in them. They invited

them into the house. Talking to my friend the other day, who's in Bali at the moment, every six months they have a return of theits festival. They believe in them. They see them. It's part of them. And that's what we're missing these days. It's not part of us anymore. It's a showpiece. It's a freak show. We've turned Bigfoot into a freak show. Whereas here, you know this is going to be playing a very fundamental role. Maybe even in a kind of, you know, we often think we see ghosts because our brain is making patterns. And that's very useful. It means that we're on, you know, we're ready for danger.

You know, maybe that's what these were back in the day. You know, watch out, there's a Bigfoot. You know, I saw the shadow of a thing that looked like a giant thing. Good. Then you'll be on the lookout for the big woolly mammoths that are said to be living out here. The actual things that are around the corner. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But talking about perceptions, though, and what you saw and what you see and we talked about these indigenous stories drawings but then we're

confronted with the settler intrusion in america right yeah and i think this speaks to what we're saying about these big stories having different origins and coming together and being this mashup of things and what we get in the 19th and the early 20th centuries is stories of white settlers going into the frontier you know going out into the American land that is already occupied by indigenous peoples and often pushing them off their land and when they encounter the Bigfoot stories it merges into something else altogether and we've got this amazing story I'm going to read some of this from a newspaper article in 1924 and it's basically a story of a group of men who are out in the cascade mountains and they are beset whilst they're working mining the land they're beset by

a creature that or a series of creatures who attack them and they claim that these are oversized giant monsters they say the animals were said to have the appearance of huge gorillas they were covered with long black hair their ears are about four inches long so this is all enough to get that detail their four toes which are short and stubby their tracks are 13 to 15 inches long and these tracks have been seen by forest rangers for years. So there's this sense that as you're moving onto land where you're maybe not welcome, and you're not only having to push the people

who already live there off the land, but you're also dealing with the hostility of the landscape itself, it's maybe only natural that you would imagine a manifestation of that threat in some way. And I don't buy this story necessarily it's a sensational story for a 20s newspaper but I think it gives a sense of even in the 20th century that landscape in particular being hostile being a place where there was still mystery and there's things there's things to learn there's things to fear there even yeah it's a really detailed

stories as well so they sort of have an encounter with this beast they attack it and then they're camping at night and then basically a group of them come back and they start pelting rocks at the tent and so they're being attacked from the inside as a second account encounter in the night and it's like ripping the tent up and and really hurting them and so the detail of it was big enough that it was sort of like, oh, multiple witnesses, two attacks, we can treat this as a legit story. And I think that's where sometimes these stories grip when you have multiple people who are able to say, yeah, this definitely happened versus the one person. But also, sometimes it's like the mundanity of a story is also what captures the imagination, which is really weird. I was talking to this amazing nonfiction writer that I love called John Higgs, and we were talking about aliens.

And he was saying the most convincing story that he's ever heard of an alien encounter was when an alien landed in the backyard of this chicken farmer slash, I think he was a plumber, that landed in his yard. And these aliens walked up to his house and said, can we get some water, please? And he said, yeah, I'll go get you some. And they were so grateful for the water that when he came back, they were making pancakes for him. And they gave him some pancakes and they flew off in their spaceship. So he reports this. And the government came and genuinely took away some of the pancakes to analyze them to see if they were alien in their nature. And they weren't. They were just normal pancakes.

And for John Higgs, the story is the most believable story because of the mundanity of it. Why would this guy throw up his entire life into chaos and have all this media attention to claim pancakes were made for him by aliens? And that's something really alluring about a normal story as opposed to a villainous paranormal encounter where, so like in this case, this is a very simple story. These are people who know the area, they go out there, they've never encountered this before. They've been attacked twice. Why would they lie? Just doesn't make sense. What are they gaining from it? Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4.

Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour. Anne of Cleves.

Catherine Howard. Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so origin story one, something got to do with the indigenous cultures in America,

some variety of folklore that has been left in stone carvings linked to different cultures, different tribes, different storytelling that's all coming together. And then we have this idea in the 20th century that it's this Bigfoot type animal. So origin story two, then we're going to delve into what a cryptozoologist might say. And if you don't know what a cryptozoologist is, don't worry, I didn't know either. But we're going to speak to Dr. Brian Regal, who is a historian of science, and he has written a book called Searching for Sasquatch, Crackpots, Eggheads, and Cryptozoology. So if we pop on our ear muffs, that's not what they're called.

What are these? Headphones. Thank you, yes, headphones. And we're going to listen to Brian. Well, the term cryptid relates to any creature, any animal, usually something big. We don't tend not to call, you know, unclassified butterflies cryptids.

Any sort of animal which exists in a mythological, folklorish sense, but not in a documented scientific sense. And so Bigfoot certainly fits that role. The term cryptozoology shows up in the mid-20th century, the 1950s, basically, the post-war period. But the notion of monster hunting, for lack of a better expression, interest in anomalous creatures, goes all the way back to the classical world. Aristotle wrote about monsters. Pliny wrote about monsters. Lucretius also writes about various monsters. And you see interest in monsters all the way through. Darwin was interested in monsters, but it only really

gets the name in the 20th century. Why do we then see in the 20th century, do you think, this push and this need to start to categorize and so therefore apply the idea of cryptozoology to these myths, these legends, these monsters? Well, I think part of it is because there's better evidence. Lucretius could go on all he wanted about centaurs, but he had no actual physical evidence, obviously no pictures. But it's in the 20th century

that you start getting this kind of material, initially with the Loch Ness Monster, with Nessie, and then the Yeti comes along not long after that. And that's when the whole thing sort of goes crazy. Is there a danger, Brian, in cryptozoology, especially in our own age of fake news and culture wars and the polarization of politics? fake news and culture wars and the polarization of politics. And to a certain extent, I think the erosion of value and expertise. Does cryptozoology pose a threat to those modes of knowledge? Or is it just part of that continual questioning of how we know things and how we teach and invest in knowledge? Well, both of those.

I teach a course here at Kean University on the history of pseudoscience. And one of the things we discuss is that there's this sort of spectrum of pseudoscientific knowledge from things that really, okay, they're not real, but they're kind of fun to play around with, but they don't really have a serious impact on anything.

All the way out to the other edge where it becomes homicidal and is a threat to safety, a threat to liberty and freedom and all that stuff. And I think cryptozoology is down the lower end of the spectrum. is down the lower end of the spectrum. People who think Bigfoot is real probably were not involved in the January 6th assault on the Capitol. But people who are flat earthers, who question the very basis of knowledge,

they're at that end. And so there is this kind of sliding scale of what I like to call crack pottery. And I think fortunately for those of you who tuned in to hear about monsters, you're down sort of the less dangerous end. You know, you're away from the eugenics, you're away from the white supremacy and the, you know, all of that stuff. So rest easy, my friends.

If you believe in Bigfoot, you're probably not a threat to your neighborhood and that's the very least we could ask from the listeners probably probably and i'm saying this with my fingers crossed right so there we have brian regal author of Searching for Sasquatch, Crackpots, Eggheads and Cryptozoology. I think, can I just pick up on a point? Yeah, I'm coming to you on that. Yeah, well, with Brian saying that whole thing about storming the Capitol and belief in Bigfoot, I think that is a big thing that is happening these days where those two things are being lumped together. To believe in something weird means that your brain is open to conspiracy theory and all that sort of stuff. weird means that your brain is open to conspiracy theory and all that sort of stuff. I know a lot of people who believe in Bigfoot who are Biden voters, let's say, you know, just to throw to the other

side. And I do think it needs readdressing so that we can just remind people that, like we were saying before, Bigfoot stories are like campfire stories. They're fun and interesting. And isn't it a buzz when you suddenly get scared around the fireplace because you think a Bigfoot might be around? isn't it a buzz when you suddenly get scared around the fireplace because you think a Bigfoot might be around? And Brian's right. We keep now associating it with, yeah, capital stormers, and it's not, and it shouldn't be. And so that was cool. It was cool to hear him say that. Yeah. And it's the fun, talking about that fun element, we're going to make you describe a picture again. This is a fun picture as far as I'm concerned because you know that Harry and the Hendersons TV show?

Yeah. I mean, this is that, surely. Oh, yeah. Your references are... What? I've never heard of Harry and the Hendersons. Have you not? Yeah, that was a classic movie back in the day.

Back in the day. Being the operative word. It's not that far back in the day. Was it 90s yeah yeah I guess yeah yeah definitely 90s

oh god you weren't even oh no you were born I was born yeah yeah yeah but still still at some point in the 90s but Dan

yeah here's Harry yeah I mean for for listeners that know that movie that's that is a very good

description except maybe a cousin of the yeah the ginger cousin of harry it looks very orangutan to me giant posing next to a very unterrified man holding holding his arm in a really sweet way sort of a nice cover actually it's it's a really kind of like we're best mates posing for an album cover. Which best mates always do. Yeah, exactly.

He's the serious scientist, but the orangutan giant cryptid has got his arm pressed up against a giant tree. He looks like he's about 12 feet tall, I would say. And he's just chilling. He's got red eyes. He's holding a face that says, I mean, business. But his hand is on the man to say, but I'm in a good business. Loving business. Yeah.

This is a friendly business. It's a bit. It's a cross species business. It's a bit of a prom photo, do you think? Yeah. It's very much a prom photo. It's a in-between prom photo. That other arm was around him.

But mum is taking the photo. She doesn't know where the thing is. He's like, Jesus Christ, he's putting his hand up on the tree. Tell us when you're ready. That's a tell us when you're ready. I'm good to go, guys. So, I mean, this is now this idea that actually Bigfoot is simply, I suppose, a giant ape. I mean, Maddy, what do we know about this?

What's the origins of that? Well, there's cryptozoology and then there's scientific investigation. And in the 20th century, at least, they overlap, I think it's fair to say, that there is this genuine scientific interest in cryptids, in things that we can't explain

that might be out there. These, especially, as Brian said in the interview, they're usually large. They're not, I think he said, you know, they're not undiscovered butterfly species. They're usually large monster-esque creatures. But of course, in the 20th century, there is, you've already mentioned the discovery of dinosaur fossils and things.

And one thing that's discovered in, I think, the 1920s is the Gigantopithecus specimens what was that word maddie gigantopithecus oh well done well done me so these are fossils of a giant ape-like being that are found in caves in china and they are real and they are evidence of something that was ape-like that was massive that was on this planet alive at some point and i think this is something that if i'm not mistaken david attenborough references when he's talked about his openness to maybe the yeti or or bigfoot as being something that is still alive on the planet today and he often references the gigantopithecus i've said it three times

you know and this was the the the estimates that have come off of these fossils is that this was gigantopithecus. I've said it twice, it's enough. I've said it three times, so my looks went out, I won't say it again. You know, and this was, the estimates that have come off of these fossils is that this was a creature that was 10 foot tall, that weighed about 1,200 pounds, that's 85 stone,

if you're listening in Britain, that possibly lived in East Asia, around Asia, and died out about 300,000 years ago. So there is the genuine possibility, well, not even possibility, there's evidence that there was something that maybe if we saw it today, we would describe it as Bigfoot or as the Yeti. It was genuinely alive. Things were big back then, weren't they? Yeah.

We had big, big things. The big question that a lot of people ask is, where are the bones? big, big things. The big question that a lot of people ask is, where are the bones? Where are all the bones? Where's Bigfoot's bones? And that is one of those in a academic warfare sense that when you have a believer versus a skeptic talking about it, that's an argument that often comes up. There's lots of excuses that come out from the side of the cryptozoology side, because obviously the only answer they can give is, well, they must erode or, you know, they're very good at hiding. They're as good as hiding as the animal themselves. That always, for me, strikes a very interesting conversation that's not spoken about much in the evidence sense. I had a friend I spoke to recently on my Weirdos podcast called Elf Lions, and she

says she doesn't believe in fairies because if fairies existed, I don't know if this is her idea, but it's a great thought. If they existed, they'd be showing up in dog feces. You know, they would be part of the poo of lots of animals that are out there eating random. How have we not found any in our dog poo? I mean, is anyone looking in their dog poo? They may be there. We're just not noticing. I sometimes look at my dog poo.

He has a bad tummy. So sometimes I have to be like what's going on there never seen a fairy in there fairies? no fairies unless you count me and my husband they're the only two fairies

that are flitting around here it's it's it is there's this there's this question isn't there which I kind of love this about people

why do we need to believe in these things why why is Bigfoot important to us why are fairies important to us and actually some of the things that you've been describing dan is how i interact with ghosts i love a ghost story and and i love that world of ghostly paranormal things but i don't believe in ghosts yeah so i can relate to it in that sense actually that this world building is is really

comforting in a way even if they're scary So why do we need to believe in it? Why do you think that that's important to us? Well, it's a weird universe we find ourselves in. And sometimes the explanations that are given to us don't fit the handrails that we need to exist in it. And I think these things help us. And it might be essential to why we are who we are. And that's the thing why I think knocking it out is a bit dangerous. If the argument was, if we could just knock out belief in Bigfoot and stuff, is that a good thing to do? Geographic. He's written a lot of books about the ethnosphere. So the diversity of ideas,

languages, everything around the planet. And he was saying one of the things that he thinks we're going to be remembered for in our time in the 20th century and 19th and going forward unless we fix it is as well as destroying the resources of the planets, as well as destroying the animal biodiversity, we are going to be remembered for killing the ethnosphere, the multiple belief systems and ideas of people that has made us such an interesting species. Every time you knock out a language, you are knocking out an understanding of the planet. All these tribes that have spent their entire existence learning about the planet in a different way to us, making connections between plants to make medicines and so on, that all goes when you kill a language.

When you kill myths, that goes as something goes, just something definitely goes. As we try and turn the world just into a one rational thinking place, you could argue that that's one of the most dangerous things we've ever done because no one will come with a left field answer by thinking about a problem differently. I think there's something to be said for that. Even if it's only one person that we keep in a room of 100 thinking differently you have to have that one person in the room you know and if we think of the internet as being responsible for homogenizing a lot of the world and you know getting rid of this diversity to some extent it's interesting that

bigfoot culture exists so much on online and actually that says something quite hopeful about the internet that maybe it also as well as making everything universal and the same and connecting people in ways that means that we lose variation, that actually maybe it is also keeping that variation alive. It's a bit more of a hopeful vision of the internet. There was a really cool thing. A study was done in America during the pandemic of seeing who was ready for the pandemic,

like who was ready to be hunkered down in their house and know what to do to survive on minimal stuff. And they found that it was largely lovers of zombie movies, people who loved watching post-apocalyptic worlds who mentally were ready for this kind of thing. They were like, yeah, we know how to get tinned food and where to keep water and how to be preppers using, I don't know, condoms as water tanks and stuff like that. They just found that that was an interesting advantage. And who would have thought? And there's quite a few government agencies now that when they're trying to educate the public about how to survive things

like a disaster, like a hurricane hitting your city, the best way to do it is to teach it through how do you survive a zombie apocalypse? And that's, you know, that's where it's stepping up and helping. So I don't know what Bigfoot's purpose in that role is, but it's there. Someone will find it. There's something to offer the world. Yeah, exactly. So thinking about Bigfoot today in the world and the 20th century version of Bigfoot, the legacy that that's had going forward, one of the things I think to come out of the stories that we tell is economies that are built on the idea of Bigfoot. And there is Bigfoot tourism to particular areas of the world, isn't there? Yeah, I wrote a book a couple of years ago,

and in it, that was one of the tiny, it was a tiny chapter, but it was one of my favourite things to explore of how people have monetised the weirdness of the world so that economies can flourish in these small towns that just have nothing usually to give. So the Paterson Gimlin, which we were talking about in the previous episode, that happened at Willow Creek. That's got a population of 2,000. So it's a tiny town. There's not much going on for it in terms of like big scale money. The museum, the little Bigfoot Museum, which is not even a Bigfoot museum.

I think it's just like a section of the museum. They pull in over $100,000 a year just from the tourists who are coming in. They sell things like, you know, a Sasquatch. You can get a watch, it's not even just in that field that it's that it's interesting there was this lady called virginia wade who i became a bit obsessed with um she in the early 2010s so i think it's about 2012 she started writing bigfoot erotica and it became like a whole family affair like her her mom i don't know the exact details wait where's this going her mom that is what you started her mom dad and husband basically were all

involved in like either the marketing or the editing or the the cover creation or the blurbs i've read a bunch of them and so in 2000 in 2012 her her bigfoot erotica books which the titles are almost too rude for the show maybe you can bleep it there was bigfoot's bitch like stuff like that they were downloaded that's the name of this episode they were downloaded a hundred thousand times in 2012 and in some months she was generating as much as thirty thousand dollars just from her ebooks that she was releasing on Amazon. She's now publishing these? Yeah, yeah.

I wonder in which months they sold best. And I bet it's in the colder months. Yeah, it could be. And she's still going. The last one I saw was, it was called something like Namaste Bigfoot. It's now gone into the mindfulness realm. And it's still erotica. It's a whole genre. I've got a lot on my Kindle.

It was very questionable when I was first with my wife, who was my then-girlfriend, and she would see me in bed reading Taken by the T-Rex. What exactly is this? Taken by the T-Rex. But so much, and I do love that. I love merch. And so I very much am into it i love that in

bermuda they they would sell triangular coins you know with the shipwreck on it and so on to celebrate the mystery of yeah of the bermuda triangle i found an astonishing thing which was lee harvey oswald's mom even capitalized on the whole killing she used to stand with a trestle table under deely plaza Plaza where Lee Harvey Oswald shot from selling her signature to tourists for five dollars a piece wow yeah I mean everything is monetized in this there's a there's a live webcam that you can see which shows you the vantage point from the I've seen this yeah you can watch live it's just live it's just live footage and every 15 minutes or so it cuts to an ad. They've monetized the view of the Kennedy assassination.

Is that streaming on YouTube or something? It's on their website. It's on their website. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I watched it for days while I was writing my book, just sort of just staring at it to see what ads. It was like, come to Buenos Aires. It was all these odd little things. Yeah, exactly.

There's an X on the ground on the street where you can see where he was shot in the distance. So monetization really, if you have a Roswell incident, if you have a Bigfoot encounter, you can really help your economy in ways that you might not have been able to do in any other circumstance. And so then that's a question of, is that good or bad? When you go to Glastonbury and it's just full of Stonehenge wizardry, druidry stuff, is that good or bad? I don't know. It's making people money.

It's human nature. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes you get really nice stories off the back of it. Do you remember the very famous picture of Jesus, the painting of Jesus that the cleaner went in and she... Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She fixed it in inverted commas.

Exactly. She drew it and it looked ridiculous. And to begin with, you know, huge kind of hoo-ha, like, what have you done? And then suddenly the world falls in love with it. If you go there now, you can buy T-shirts of it. You can buy mugs. And the lady who did it, who obviously was mortified, she said she wasn't finished. So I think she feels like round two really could have nailed it.

Yeah. But she was an old lady who had a, I think I'm getting the details right. wasn't finished so i think he feels like round two really could have nailed it yeah but um she was an old lady who had a i think i'm getting the details right so let's just assume it's in the territory what i'm saying she had a disabled son who was an old guy because she was very old and so she was looking after him and she has been given merchandise a split of the royalties which she now can look after her son with and she feeds the rest of it into charities there to look after other people who need money great what a brilliant use of a of a messed up moment and that's how i see the economy of bigfoot and loch ness and all that it's it's

yeah it might be cheating and hoaxing people in some cases but then you get stories like that yeah on that note if you want to sponsor this episode i think that's a perfect place to end dan thank you so much for coming on after dark and thank you everyone for listening see you next time so there you have it what are your thoughts let us know that was bigfoot and thanks again to dan schreiber for being such a willing and wonderful guest. It was so lovely to chat to him on After Dark. We have got loads of new listeners recently, and we'd love to hear from you if you haven't been in touch before. So do get in touch with the show by emailing afterdark at historyhit.com.

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