Belief at the Metaline Falls Bigfoot Festival

Hundreds of people gathered at the small Northeastern Washington town of Metaline Falls on June 20 and 21 to celebrate Bigfoot. Amidst the music, vendors, and food trucks both believers in Bigfoot and sceptics joined together for a fun weekend. The Religion Desk visited the festival to hear from organizer, Bill Bisson, the Sasquatch Hobbit Hunters, as well as many venders and festival goers. Author of The Secret History of Bigfoot, John O'Connor, joined the podcast from Massachusetts to talk about his research into the world of Bigfooters.

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:02

This is the Religion Desk for Faves News. I'm Jason Jones. I bought a shirt at the Medelline Falls Bigfoot Festival that says Believe. It has Bigfoot on it. I spent some time at the festival asking people, do you believe in Bigfoot? Medelline Falls is a small town in northeast Washington, just a few miles south of the Canadian border. For the annual Bigfoot Festival on June 20th and 21st, hundreds of people came to the little town for music, food trucks, vendors selling all kinds of Bigfoot merchandise, a 5K run, as well as lectures and boots on Finding Bigfoot. Some who gathered are Bigfoot skeptics, some are true believers. I asked people if they believed. Steve Buckholz. What are you doing here, Steve?

SPEAKER_06 0:52

We are trying to sell our bird houses and other crafts that we do. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 0:58

What drew you to doing Bigfoot themed crafts?

SPEAKER_06 1:03

This festival.

SPEAKER_08 1:04

This festival? Yeah. Okay. Would you say you're a a believer in Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_06 1:09

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_06 1:10

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:11

Have you ever had a Bigfoot encounter?

SPEAKER_06 1:14

No, and I don't wish to. He can see me all he wants, but I really don't want to run into him.

SPEAKER_08 1:20

Here's one of the festival organizers, Bill Basson.

SPEAKER_09 1:23

Well, I'm part of the Bigfoot committee. Um, I'm the vice chair, my wife's chair. Uh, we have a whole board. There was some changes from last year to this year you described me? There were some changes due to the fact that there was um a person that was running running it, uh, kind of got themselves a little bit of trouble. This seems like a big way for the community to gather. Yeah, it really is. Um, it started out a little over six years ago. Um, I started it with a friend of mine that is in the Bigfoot community, and um I was telling him that uh I think there was some Bigfoot up in this area. Uh I heard some noises and he does filming and stuff. He's done some shows on the Discovery Channel and everything. So I called him up and I said, Why are you going all the way up to uh Alaska to do your filming when it's right here in our backyard? Tell me about those noises. The noises, it was it was kind of a I you know, I've I could describe noises that I've heard out in the woods before. And um, you know, I've heard some strange things over the years. I used to work for the Forest Service when I was a young man. And um working with crews and stuff, we've heard screams and everything else. Um but this this is kind of a weird noise. I I got up here and um and it was like in the middle of well, after midnight, probably about two or three o'clock in the morning. I was just kind of laying there and in the camp and uh and I heard this uh it was really not like an owl, but it was like a woo-hoo, you know, like somebody was uh partying or something. And so I sat up and I and I went, uh what was that? You know, and then I did it again. The only thing was there was nothing on the other side of the creek, it was all high um high cliffs and and and steep ground. So that was when I kind of thought that that might be something up here that uh wasn't a normal animal.

SPEAKER_08 3:25

As I asked around, I found plenty of openness to the idea of Bigfoot. Tell me your name again, Officer Richard Shosha. Tell me what organization you're with. I'm a corrections officer for the Ponterey County Sheriff's Department. And this event here, would you say it's mainly about fun or about Bigfoot? I'd say it's about both. And you were telling me that you might have had an encounter with Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yeah, I'm a believer, and there was a time where I am pretty sure that I experienced a Bigfoot in the area, but I I didn't stick around to find out. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 3:57

Would you say Bigfoot's uh a friend or something you don't want to get too close to?

SPEAKER_03 4:03

You see, uh, I'm kind of uh up in the air on that one. That's why I didn't want to find out. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:08

My name is Michael Langley.

SPEAKER_08 4:10

What are you doing out here, Michael?

SPEAKER_04 4:12

I am set up out here trying to sell some fences.

unknown 4:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 4:16

Would you say your fences keep Bigfoot out?

SPEAKER_04 4:20

Uh they very well could.

SPEAKER_08 4:23

Are you a believer in Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_04 4:25

Of course I am. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 4:27

Have you had an encounter? I have not personally.

unknown 4:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_08 4:30

Would you want one?

SPEAKER_04 4:32

Uh why not? Okay.

SPEAKER_08 4:34

Do you think most people are here because they they're true believers in Bigfoot or just for the fun?

SPEAKER_04 4:40

I think it's a big mixture of both. I think there's definitely your believers, and then there's people that might not believe, but it is a fun weekend out here in Medellin Falls.

SPEAKER_08 4:51

I found some true believers when I met Alan Thuringer, Frank Thuringer, and Skipper Harding.

SPEAKER_10 4:57

My name is Alan Thuringer. Okay. And what brings you out here, Alan? Well, I just come up here every year, pretty much, and to support my younger brother, who's a that he has got a YouTube channel, the Sasquatch Hobbit Hunter.

SPEAKER_08 5:11

Okay. Have you ever seen Sasquatch?

SPEAKER_10 5:14

Uh, I've got pictures on the camera. He does.

SPEAKER_08 5:16

He does? Yeah. Okay. So you would say you're you're a believer?

SPEAKER_10 5:20

Well, they're out there because I got them. I live within the corner of state land and I got stuff, there's stuff on my cameras too that it's not normal. It's not normal.

SPEAKER_08 5:28

Okay, what what do you say you see on those cameras?

SPEAKER_10 5:31

Well, even things in the sky. I mean, you can say that people have said, well, that's it's something on your camera. No, it isn't because it moved. It's tree, it's on this side of the tree and it's on this side. And so it's uh it's real, he's out there. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 5:43

What would you say to convince somebody who's maybe not sure that about Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_10 5:48

Well, I would say, you know what, they can believe whatever they want to.

SPEAKER_08 5:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 5:52

But I believe him because I know, I see it. I've seen fifty years ago, I've seen strange things in the sky. When the first time I seen it was in Seattle and I got out of the military. Okay. I seen five, seven red lights in the sky, and they were doing this. And there's people looking up in the street, looking up at it. So then I knew that there's stuff out there.

SPEAKER_08 6:11

Would you say this event is for true believers, or is it more about fun? Or a little of both?

SPEAKER_10 6:16

Well, it's a it's a lot of everything here. You know, you gotta I think here more people are here to have fun.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_10 6:23

You know, I am. I mean, I have a motto. I'm gonna live until I die, but will I die before you live? I'm gonna have some fun. There you go. I love it.

SPEAKER_08 6:31

Okay, and tell me your name's Frank. What's your last name, Frank? Gurger. Okay. Okay. And and you guys, well uh you're all dressed in uh in similar outfits. What's that all about?

SPEAKER_02 6:43

This is this is what you call flash in the woods. So uh when you see this hat, you're kind of curious, so you take a peek at it and you might stop right in front of my camera. Okay. That's why this is all like this. This is flash. I see. That's all it is, is flash. I see. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 7:01

And and tell me about the picture you gave me.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

Oh, this here's a picture of a Bigfoot. He's six feet from my camera, and he I had to try and get him out of cloak. So I put concrete dye down on it. Right here, there's concrete dye. So it would he would lose his concentration, and then my camera would get a picture of him, and that's what happened. Pretty slick, huh? Yeah. If you don't try something, you'll never know. There you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 7:29

So you it sounds like you've got some experience hunting Bigfoots.

SPEAKER_02 7:32

Yeah, I got a few years in it. Okay. Yeah. So now I got a picture of his buddy, the Yeti. They see all that EMP around him? Yeah. It's like he bred with an electric eel. So when he comes into an area where he knows there's camera, he hits it and then knocks your camera on, and you don't get a picture of him. But this picture here was about 40 yards, and he didn't have enough gas in there to knock my camera out, and I got a picture of him. Okay. And you can see all this EMP around him like that. Yeah. That's that's that magnetic force around him. Yeah, and then I got a picture of his girlfriend, an alien. That's an alien woman right there. See her head? So hard to see, but that's her.

SPEAKER_08 8:14

Do you think aliens and do you think aliens and bigfoot are connected?

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 8:22

How how so?

SPEAKER_02 8:23

The aliens and the bigfoot. The bigfoot is is uh like a guardian to them. They're off-world, they're off-world, and the Bigfoot is a a track, a track member, yeah, where you can go up world and you can get a trek and say you want to go for three days, right? And they'll take you on this hike and he'll bring you back. So that's how they're doing it. I got other uh photos of me going into the vortex too, two different times. You've been there in and coming out and going in again, you just disappear.

SPEAKER_08 8:57

What was for you the experience like?

SPEAKER_02 9:00

Oh, it just sucks you apart inside, but you gotta have a good clear mind where you're at, otherwise you'll be gone. Because you gotta remember right where you're at.

unknown 9:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Because you won't even know it. The vortex will be open, you walk right through it, and you'd never come back. But you just if you see it like it's shimmering, you I don't know, you maybe have a bunch of silver stuff in the wind, and you see how it shimmers, it's like that in there. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_05 9:29

We are called the uh Sasquatch Hubber Hunters. We do have a YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_10 9:39

Why don't you say that one more time? It's not a bear. I don't know what it is, but it's not a bear.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

You can see that concrete die. I was hoping he'd put his hand on it and then I get a fingerprint or a foot, but he's he's got some military training, I know that.

SPEAKER_08 9:56

I wanted to know more about the whole world of Bigfooting, so I turned to John O'Connor, the author of The Secret History of Bigfoot for some perspective. John joined me from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I asked John about the work that went into preparing the book.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Talk to anybody who would talk to me to just ask ask him who where I should go, who I should talk to, who I shouldn't talk to, and um just try to get a lay of the land. I, you know, I'd done a lot of reading before that and kind of had a vague idea of where I wanted to go. This was uh post right after the pandemic. In fact, I think my first trip was delta variant, if you recall that. So we it was okay sort of to go out and but but you know, it was still maybe a little dicey in some people's estimation, but I felt that it was time. And um anyway, so yeah, you know, probably three or four months of research and then a year uh off and on on the yeah, off and on the road.

SPEAKER_08 10:50

What do you think's going on when people recount these stories of a Bigfoot sighting? What's what's happening there?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

Well, I think like I say in the book, I think they genuinely believe they saw what they say they saw. And um it's wasn't it's not my place to question that or to cast a doubt on that. Like, what do I know? Like, I the last thing I wanted to do coming in for shooting from Cambridge and and sort of wag my finger and say, no, no, no, no, that's not possible that you could have you let me tell you where you went wrong here, you know. So that was not my antenna. I wasn't I'm not interested really so much in what I what I think is um as I am in what other what people's beliefs are, like how do they come to their beliefs, like um how how belief might diverge or overlap at times with disbelief or unbelief. And as as much as it's possible, I try to set my own convictions aside. I think that's that's only possible up to a certain point. And I if you read between the lines, I think you can tell what might what I think of of much of what's going on. You know, I'm not I'm not a stenographer. Um I I do my own opinions do creep in. But um, but you know, there's there's uh a f a few things happening, which is um, I mean, in in terms of like actual sightings of Bigfoot, I mean you gotta kind of open, you gotta cast a wide net to um, you know, human vision and you know, problems with just the cognitive biases, the whole perceptual system, which um total make it totally possible to hallucinate a bigfoot in the woods. I mean, I do think that happens. Big footers bigfooters will tell you that a lot of this cognitive bias stuff, like I learned about from Bigfooters, it's not as if they don't, they don't, they're not aware of that, you know. So that that's certainly part of it. Uh, you know, you can literally hallucinate a bigfoot in the woods. Uh and we we do often see exactly what what we've been primed to see and what we want to see. You know, if I could set aside from, and I'm including myself in that that assessment too. I'm not I'm not different than than anybody else out there. But um, if I could set aside from that, you know, people's like very heartfelt and vociferous testimony of having seen a Bigfoot. Like I don't, I don't, again, I don't really have any any interest in kind of casting down on on that, but I but I think we can't discount the possibility that that they didn't see that and that something else is afoot. You know, there's also like just the the legend and lore of Bigfoot that's handed out the centuries, and uh and there's just a really strong reason to want to believe, I think, in a creature like Bigfoot. I mean, I and I I make a big claim in the book that it's a stand-in for our kind of yearning or longing for a lost, lost wilderness, a kind of ravaged environment. And um, you know, if you were to laid lay out a map of the United States, you know, you just see a couple of pinpricks on that map, just here and there, of original old-growth forest, you know, that most of it has been cut down multiple times. And and I do think people realize that. I think that when you drive around this you know magnificent country of ours, you can't help that but notice that um that it is really a kind of series of cut over lands, and with a again, with a few, a few tracks of genuine wilderness here and there. And so I think Bigfoot feeds some sort of um, not to get off Freud in or anything, but feeds some kind of longing or manifestation of a um of a desire for wilderness to be a little more wild than it is. When we talk about belief, like it's um we're really talking about a kind of a shadowy part of our of our psyche, you know, it's hard it's hard sometimes to say one way or the other what we believe and don't believe in. You know, there's always a kind of tinge of doubt there, I think, regardless of your the level of your devotion to to um whatever creed I think there's um you know, like if I were to tell you um, you know, oh I don't believe in Bigfoot, would there not be some shadow of doubt, some suspicion that maybe then I'm not 100% sure about that? And I think that that doubt characterizes how we feel about a lot of things. Like, you know, go ghosts are a great example that overlap with Bigfoot in a lot of ways. And there um if you ask people, you know, there's a couple of surveys that come out every couple of years, one uh one um in Pew, the Pew Research Center and one um one at Chapman University every two years about paranormal supernatural beliefs, and um and ghosts are on that on that list, as you might imagine, like pr pretty far at the top. And but that that binary, that question with a binary answer, yes or no, does little to actually cat cast capture the kind of complexity of people's belief. Like a lot of people generally know what the answer is. Do you believe in ghosts? What the right answer is, you know, uh well, no, not really. However, when my grandma died, you know, I had this strange premonition that she was, you know, I woke up in the middle of the night and there she was at the end of my bed. And to give more like a personal example, my um we my my family, so I live in uh kind of in the Cambridge area, um, or the Boston area in Cambridge, and we vacation my family and I every summer on the North Shore of Boston. So it's like Cambridge, uh sorry, Gloucester and Rockport and that sort of area. And and we always go to the same place, and one year it wasn't available. And we found as a backup this kind of bent breakfast. It wasn't perfect for us, but it was near where we'd like to go. And but then we've sort of found out in the small print it was supposed it was supposedly haunted. And my kids were like, We have to go there, you know. We like, you know, that's where we're going. And my but my wife, who's a very smart, very sane, competent person, she's a doctor, you know, she has people's lives in her in her in her hands, and she was like, Well, we can't go there. And uh, and I was like, So um, just to be clear, so we believe in ghosts now, and she was like, No, don't be ridiculous, but we're not staying in a haunted house, you know, like so. And I think that that sort of that thinking it captures a lot of how we operate when it comes to to belief. Like we're not always that, like even if talking about straight up religious belief, you know, like do you really no matter what your creed is, do you really believe, like really believe an earthly paradise in which we'll all be united with everyone who's ever we ever loved, and you know, and happily ever after and stuff. I think that all of that is um again, if people are being honest, I think they're um less than certain.

SPEAKER_08 17:06

Even if they don't believe in Bigfoot, I learned at the festival that most people have something they believe in. Okay, can you tell me your names?

SPEAKER_07 17:16

My name is Darien Sheenor.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I'm Teresa Sheenyer.

SPEAKER_07 17:21

And what are you all doing here? Well, we're just vending for the weekend.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Yep. We're from Spokane Valley, and we just wanted to come out and see what the event was all about.

SPEAKER_08 17:31

And what do you what are you selling?

SPEAKER_07 17:33

3D printed things and crocheted things and knitted things.

SPEAKER_08 17:38

And I I see some some Bigfoot and alien things. Would you say you're a true believer in Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_07 17:45

Not necessarily. We would have to see one to believe it.

SPEAKER_08 17:51

Okay, but but you're open to the idea?

SPEAKER_07 17:54

I'm sure. Sure.

unknown 17:57

Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_08 17:58

Um do you think most people are here for the fun or because they believe in Bigfoot?

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I would say maybe it's 50-50. A lot of people are here for fun, but when you read their shirts, they might believe too.

SPEAKER_07 18:14

Okay. I would think more for the fun.

SPEAKER_08 18:17

For Teresa, belief still plays a role in her life, though.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, I was saying that when I first started vending, that my car had broken down and I needed like $381.50. Didn't have it, but that morning I got down on my knees and I began praying to the Lord that this is what I had to have to be able to get my car fixed. By the end of that show, I had that exact amount. I will not stop believing that God will take care of me.

SPEAKER_08 18:53

And so believing in Bigfoot, not maybe part of your deal, but but belief is, and God at least.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, yes, yes, we believe in God 100%.

SPEAKER_08 19:05

Here's Bill Basson again. Would you say most people are here for Bigfoot or just for the community and the fun?

SPEAKER_09 19:13

Well, you know, a lot of people are believers of Bigfoot. Some are kind of a little bit skeptics, and I don't mind the skeptics, and we also like the believers. And uh, and it's just kind of it's just kind of a community event that's grown and it's gotten bigger. And like I said, we did not know if it was going to happen again because of what happened last year. And uh so we started out with a zero budget. We're in February trying to get a new business license to um get it, get it back together, and it just all of a sudden everything started coming together. We got our business license, vendors started applying for the spots again, and um so it's it's just taken off, and we were able to take care of everything get it going in the right direction again. One last question. What would you say to somebody who might be a skeptic about Bigfoot? You know, when I go out and I look for evidence, I am a skeptic, but I also, you know, that's that's a whole cool thing is we we go out and we actually look for evidence, and and sometimes we find stuff that we think could be evidence, and other times we debunk it. Sometimes we find it's plausible. But it's just getting outdoors and and being able to, you know, go around and and enjoy the outdoors. And you know, I mean, you don't have to have a lot of equipment or or be like on some of these shows and stuff. Just going out and walking around the trails and looking around is is just as much fun as not that not that you have to be a skeptic, but it's just it's just a fun thing to do. You know, it's kind of like going fishing or camping and stuff, you know. People people sometimes they find things. Uh we had we had one of uh when we were out doing some research, we had some people come down to us and they said they were hearing whistling on both sides of their camp. And it was at night and it was some strange whistles. So we went down there the next morning or that afternoon when they came and talked to us about it. And we went down there and we actually found some good-sized footprints along the creek bed, and it was on both sides of their camp. So, you know, they didn't know it was there. And and I wouldn't have people get worried about, you know, oh big puts out in the woods and you know, the scary creature. Um and and all the things that I I can say that uh they're they're from what I understand and from what um from what I I my knowledge of everything is they're shy. You know, if they wanted to be around humans, they'd probably already contact humans, but you know, people in the world go, well, there is no such thing. Well then there's also there's also um I'll I'll get in this part, they find tribes that they didn't even know existed in the Amazon and other places like that, you know, on islands and things. So you know, this world's a little bigger than what what we look in the cities and stuff. So we're gonna have the Bigfoot Festival next year. Please come up. It's uh it's really a good time, you know. Um there's everybody comes up here, you know, there's food, there's uh a little bit of entertainment. Big Bigfoot shows up once in a while, and you know, it's just a good time. It's a nice drive. This is a beautiful area up here. Um, we always encourage people to come up and and enjoy it and you know take the good memories home.

SPEAKER_08 22:45

This is Jason Jones for the Religion Desk with Faves News.