The Georgia Bigfoot - could this be the real thing at last?

For any of you who are reading this that haven't yet heard the news, this Friday, August 15th, a press conference will be held to reveal DNA evidence and photographic evidence of the creature as "bigfoot" or "sasquatch". The body of this creature was said to have been found in the northern woods of Georgia, here in the USA. If you go to Loren Coleman's excellent site, Cryptomundo.com, you can read the article for yourself. Also, a photograph was leaked of the supposed Georgia Gorilla (as Mr. Coleman has suggested calling it) or Georgia Bigfoot, and Mr. Coleman was given permission to post the photo on his site. (NOTE: Their web server is understandably swamped right now, so you may or may not be able to get to the page, or at least, it may take a while to load).

Now, I'm sure many of you are skeptical, as am I. We've all seen our share of blobsquatch photos and have endured the shenanigans of so many hucksters that have attempted to profit by capitalizing on people's desire to believe in the existence of this creature. With so many past disappointments, we're all hesitant to get our hopes up. Having said that, however, I am more than a little curious (maybe even a little excited, I'll admit) about this latest development in the bigfoot saga. And that's because none other than Loren Coleman, one of the preeminant figures in the search for conclusive evidence of the North American ape, has said that this "...indeed, may be the real deal". Wow. If Loren Coleman is putting that out there, even tentatively, it has to get your hopes up a little, doesn't it?

The other reason to believe that this might be the real deal is the fact that the two Georgia residents who discovered the creature, Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, are allowing the body to be investigated by credentialed scientists. According to Loren Coleman's article on Cryptomundo:

"The hominoid (please note, not hominid) body, found in the Georgia woods, is now in a secure location, under armed guard, and set to be examined by a battery of academic scholars, skeptical scientists, Bigfoot researchers, and debunking writers."

If Mr. Whitton and Mr. Dyer are willing to do that, then they may actually be the first to have gathered solid, physical evidence in the way of a carcass of the creature known as "bigfoot" or "sasquatch". Of course, this could all turn out to be an elaborate hoax, in which case Whitton and Dyer deserve to be collectively spanked and fully ostracized by the public. But.., their willingness to present physical evidence to a objective group of scientists is encouraging. And this is exactly as it should be: nothing short of a full scientific analysis and necropsy of the creature will do if we are to take this seriously. The public and the scientific community needs nothing less than complete and total proof that this is truly an unclassified, undiscovered species of ape (or perhaps something between ape and human).

If this "Georgia Gorilla" is the real thing, I'll be overjoyed that this discovery has been made within my lifetime, and I'll be even happier for people like Loren Coleman, Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, Jane Goodall - people who have worked and sacrificed and often have opened themselves up for ridicule among their peers because of their belief in the existence of these creatures. I wonder also how this will affect other areas of research that are considered by some of the public and much of the mainstream scientific community to be "fringe" or "pseudo-science" - other areas within cryptozoology, as well as subjects such as ufology, parallel dimensions. It's my belief that if this Friday, August 15, 2008 we are finally given conclusive proof of bigfoot's existence, that we must then open our minds to the possibility of other undiscovered creatures existing in the wild, other entities in our midst. What was once "impossible" now because possible. If bigfoot exists, what else might be out there?

John Carlson