My long-time friend and associate Dr. Franklin Ruehl told me that among the most impressive pieces of recent evidence for Bigfoot that he had examined is a three-minute videotape shot on Saturday morning, April 16, 2005, just after dawn, by Bobby Clarke, a bargeman on the Nelson River in northern Manitoba in the Cree Indian community of Norway House. He sighted and videotaped what he described as “a big black figure” on the opposite side of the riverbank approximately 750 feet away.
Dr. Ruehl was willing to dismiss the possibility of a hoax because Clarke waited several days before going public with his film, wanting to avoid publicity. On May 4, 2005, Dr. Ruehl analyzed the video for the TV program, A Current Affair. While the image was blurred to a certain degree, Dr. Ruehl endorsed it as having a high coefficient of credibility. Indeed, if it had been too perfect, one would wonder if it might have been choreographed with someone in a costume.
Dr. Franklin R. Ruehl is a physicist, anomalist, ufologist, author, lecturer, and television host and producer (photo by International Cryptozoology Museum/Loren Coleman/Jessica Meuse).
The very next morning after he had analyzed the film, Dr. Ruehl received a phone call from the show’s producer, Burt Kearns, inviting him fly up to Canada to personally investigate the case.
According to Dr. Franklin Ruehl:
At first, I demurred as I am a stereotypical wimp, not a wilderness hunter! But, at breakfast, my mother encouraged me to give it a go.
Early the next morning, I found myself on a plane headed for Manitoba, along with segment producer Brett Hudson and chainsaw artist Cherie Currie (who was going to carve an image of the creature out of local wood). On the final leg of the flight, as we journeyed from Winnipeg to Norway House, I was most impressed with the dense forestation on all sides, the left, the right, the north, east, south, and west … you could easily have had 100 such creatures concealed within.
Soon after arriving, we met with Clarke, who impressed me with both his sincerity and knowledge of the region. Then, accompanied by two Cree guides, we made our first excursion into the brush in the area where the video was shot. I was struck with the awareness of just how difficult it would be to track and chase one of these creatures down. We were truly in Bigfoot country!
Every step of the way, our path was encumbered with mud holes, bramble bushes with thorns, and branches of all sizes. My immediate conclusion was that it would be very dangerous, very difficult, to pursue a creature if he indeed does exist there, a creature which knows its way around and may have evolved heavy foot and lower-leg padding to easily navigate through such terrain.
While our team did not find Bigfoot, we did uncover a significant amount of secondary evidence. For instance, in what may have been a Bigfoot feasting field, we found bird bones that had their feathers peeled off before being eaten, something a bear or other predator, for example, would not do—but perhaps an intelligent primate, such as a Bigfoot, might take the time to more carefully prepare its food.
The locals continued to bring us sophisticated digital photos of possible Bigfoot footprints. Indeed, one contingent even delivered a large box of dirt with the footprint embedded within.
Moreover, as word spread that we were investigating Bigfoot, I was being inundated by calls from other areas of Manitoba about sightings and footprints. One woman with whom I spoke definitely impressed me with an account of a Bigfoot suddenly materializing near her home, again suggesting that this was the time the entity was awakening from hibernation.
One hair was recovered from the area and subsequently analyzed by a technician with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). His conclusion that it was of indeterminate origin, but he kept open the hope that it was indeed from Bigfoot.
A legitimate question raised by skeptics that needs to be addressed is why no Bigfoot cadavers have yet been recovered.
I point out that while birds, squirrels, and other creatures are dying all the time in the forest, we virtually never see their corpses as a variety of predators tend to feast on such remains, with microscopic scavengers ingurgitating whatever is left behind. And, with Bigfoot, we may well be dealing with an intelligent entity that may carry off its dead, hiding or even burying those remains.
In conclusion, I arrived in Norway House as a believer in Bigfoot, and my belief has been strengthened by what we uncovered in such a short amount of time. I submit that it is just a matter of time before we have absolute confirmation that Bigfoot exists! No doubt about it whatsoever!
Other researchers have pointed out that Mother Nature keeps a clean house. The carcasses of the largest forest creatures are soon eaten by scavengers and the bones are scattered. Zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson suggested that if these beings are members of a subhuman race, they may gather up their dead for burial in special caves. Others remind the skeptical that it is not unusual for certain of the higher animals to hide the bodies of their dead. Accounts of the legendary “elephants’ graveyard” are well-known; and in Ceylon, the phrase “to find a dead monkey” is used to indicate an impossible task.
On the southern-most tip of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula there once was a thriving little community named Port Chatham. Through the centuries, the village had offered friendly hospitality to strangers. When Captain Nathaniel Portlock visited the place on his 1786 Alaska expedition, he and his men were made to feel welcome.
In the mid-1930s, strange and terrible things began to happen to the people of Port Chatham. The Nantiinaq (“big hairy creature” in the native Sugt’sun) had become bolder and had begun to terrorize the villagers. Sometimes they would even come into the village and hurt people. Some witnesses swore that the Nantiinaq were led by the spirit of a woman dressed in flowing black clothes who would materialize out of the cliffs and summon the Nantiinaq.
A logger was killed instantly when he was struck from behind with a piece of log-moving equipment.
A gold prospector who was working his claim disappeared one day and was never seen again.
A sawmill owner saw a Nantiinaq on the beach, tearing up the fish traps that had been set.
By about 1936, the people of Chatham left the village en masse. They abandoned their houses, the school, everything, and vacated their once peaceful town to move to Nanwalek.
In the mid-1930s, strange and terrible things began to happen to the people of Port Chatham. The Nantiinaq … had become bolder and had begun to terrorize the villagers.
In the early 1900s, the town of Portlock, named for Captain Nathaniel Portlock, was established as a small cannery town. In 1921, a U.S. post office was opened, and the town appeared to be prospering. The population was made up largely of natives of the region who were mostly of Russian-Aleut heritage and who had lived in peaceful interaction for decades.
Sometime in the early 1940s, the same kind of strange occurrences that drove people out of Chatman in the past began to happen in Portlock. Men who worked at the cannery began to disappear. Some would go hunting for Dall sheep or bear and never be seen again.
Reports of sighting the Nantiinaq became common. So did the reports of mutilated and dismembered human bodies floating in the lagoon.
Hunters tracking signs of moose would suddenly find the tracks of the great animal overlaid with giant, human-like tracks over those left by the moose. Signs of a struggle in the snow were mute testimony that a giant human had slain the huge moose. Then the only tracks remaining were the monstrous, manlike tracks heading back toward the fog-shrouded mountains.
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