QUOTE
Bigfoot & ME
By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, May 5, 2007
PHOTO GALLERY
« Previous | Next »
thumbnails | gallery
DIXFIELD - Tony Martin was digging in a clay bed beside Coos Canyon, rock hounding up the road in Byron, when he pulled a pair of odd-shaped stones from the muck.
Each weighed about 5 pounds, stretched 12 inches long. After a quick dunk in the Swift River, he saw what could pass for curved insteps and blunt heels.
His first thought: petrified Bigfoot tracks.
For the longest time, he didn't tell anyone, in case the town tried to claim the incredible find.
That was 1975. Martin, now 83, emboldened by time, has shared them with more and more people, stuck to his theory- a Bigfoot walked through Coos Canyon and left prints that filled with mud and pebbles and gradually petrified - and gotten quite used to skeptics.
"A couple weeks ago, I showed my friend from Turner. He said to me, 'It's only stones, it's only rock.'"
Martin smiled in a pitying sort of way.
"No comprehension. Nothing," he said.
"I say, 'You ain't got no imagination, do you?'... Just rocks ..."
Mega-Bigfoot?
Bigfoot stories and sightings have circulated here since way before Maine was a state, as far back as 300 years.
"The Micmacs have some of the richest tales," said cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. He's got an 8.5-foot, life-size Bigfoot replica on his porch in Portland. (He says it gives the DHL and UPS delivery drivers a fright, but curiously, doesn't seem to scare the FedEx or U.S. Postal Service workers.)
In Coleman's just-released, revised "Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures," he offers up a chapter on the "Eastern Bigfoot."
He's familiar with sightings in Rangeley and Mt. Katahdin. Coleman's been talking to a man in Sidney, just above Augusta, who believes he's found fresh tracks.
"He thinks there's a migration pattern from the coast to the Sidney area," Coleman said. Plaster casts of those footprints measure 22 inches from toe to heel. The average Bigfoot track is closer to 16.
"This Bigfoot would be a very, very large Bigfoot," Coleman said.
Lurking in the Maine woods
Matthew Moneymaker says there's a very good chance Bigfoots are here.
He'd like to lead an expedition to see some.
President of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, his group gets sighting reports every day from people across the country, from the sincere and the not-so.
"We're experts on hoaxes as much as we are on Bigfoot," he said, speaking by phone from Orange County in California.
Once fakes are weeded out, his group classifies sightings as Class A (close enough for a no-question-it-was-him-and-not-someone-in-a-costume observation) and Class B (spotted from the corner of an eye, or only noises heard, so there's potential for misinterpretation).
They've recorded six Class A sightings and four Class B in Maine dating back to 1970.
BFRO leads four-day expeditions all over in search of Bigfoot. Next up: Wyoming in June and Northern Ontario in September. The closest they've come to New England was the Adirondacks.
"We want to do an expedition in Maine next year," Moneymaker said.
Despite all the media attention and hundreds of sightings logged out West, "I'm real confident there's more of them in the East. There's more deer (deer, elk and wild pigs are believed to be Bigfoot's lunch) and more forest."
An expedition would most likely take place in the summer, he said. He'll first have to research the best sightings cluster in the state. That way, Bigfoot-seekers paying $300 a head in fees, plus food and lodging, are more apt to have an encounter.
In a typical trek, there's a base of operations and people spend daylight setting up cameras and recorders. At night, people spread out, communicate by radios and make animal noises back and forth to each other to prompt a Bigfoot response.
Expedition spotters have experienced branches being broken near them, rocks being thrown, growling and "demonstration charging - crashing through the brush and stopping right before they get to you."
"The provocation is they think we're another group of Sasquatch. When they figure out we're not them, that's when they let you know an area is occupied," Moneymaker said.
"There's certainly no guarantee if we take people out they're going to see one. Most people on most of the trips have gotten to hear them. Naturally, until you've had an encounter with one of these things, you're not going to believe they're there."
Geologist: stones pre-Bigfoot
Tony Martin, the Dixfield rock hound, believes they used to be here.
"I think probably they're all gone, crazy weather we've had," he said.
Over the years he's wondered about what do to with his special stones. Martin, a WWII Army veteran who spent 40 years working at the local paper company, joked that he could put them on eBay. Someone would probably snatch them up.
He'd like to donate them to the University of Maine at Farmington, where one of his sons graduated, to have them research the maybe-tracks.
For now, they're kept in his home in separate plastic grocery bags with a note encouraging anyone who touches them to handle with care.
Based on a photo of Martin's find, Tom Weddle at the Maine Geological Survey said they're likely metamorphic rock with mica crystals and a mineral called staurolite, around 400 million years old (pre-Bigfoot or other bipeds).
"We have to burst people's bubbles now and then," Weddle said.
"If I were going to be a Bigfoot believer - Bigfoot is a modern critter - I'd be looking for footprints in the mud."
Like around Sidney?
By Kathryn Skelton , Staff Writer
Saturday, May 5, 2007
PHOTO GALLERY
« Previous | Next »
thumbnails | gallery
DIXFIELD - Tony Martin was digging in a clay bed beside Coos Canyon, rock hounding up the road in Byron, when he pulled a pair of odd-shaped stones from the muck.
Each weighed about 5 pounds, stretched 12 inches long. After a quick dunk in the Swift River, he saw what could pass for curved insteps and blunt heels.
His first thought: petrified Bigfoot tracks.
For the longest time, he didn't tell anyone, in case the town tried to claim the incredible find.
That was 1975. Martin, now 83, emboldened by time, has shared them with more and more people, stuck to his theory- a Bigfoot walked through Coos Canyon and left prints that filled with mud and pebbles and gradually petrified - and gotten quite used to skeptics.
"A couple weeks ago, I showed my friend from Turner. He said to me, 'It's only stones, it's only rock.'"
Martin smiled in a pitying sort of way.
"No comprehension. Nothing," he said.
"I say, 'You ain't got no imagination, do you?'... Just rocks ..."
Mega-Bigfoot?
Bigfoot stories and sightings have circulated here since way before Maine was a state, as far back as 300 years.
"The Micmacs have some of the richest tales," said cryptozoologist Loren Coleman. He's got an 8.5-foot, life-size Bigfoot replica on his porch in Portland. (He says it gives the DHL and UPS delivery drivers a fright, but curiously, doesn't seem to scare the FedEx or U.S. Postal Service workers.)
In Coleman's just-released, revised "Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures," he offers up a chapter on the "Eastern Bigfoot."
He's familiar with sightings in Rangeley and Mt. Katahdin. Coleman's been talking to a man in Sidney, just above Augusta, who believes he's found fresh tracks.
"He thinks there's a migration pattern from the coast to the Sidney area," Coleman said. Plaster casts of those footprints measure 22 inches from toe to heel. The average Bigfoot track is closer to 16.
"This Bigfoot would be a very, very large Bigfoot," Coleman said.
Lurking in the Maine woods
Matthew Moneymaker says there's a very good chance Bigfoots are here.
He'd like to lead an expedition to see some.
President of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, his group gets sighting reports every day from people across the country, from the sincere and the not-so.
"We're experts on hoaxes as much as we are on Bigfoot," he said, speaking by phone from Orange County in California.
Once fakes are weeded out, his group classifies sightings as Class A (close enough for a no-question-it-was-him-and-not-someone-in-a-costume observation) and Class B (spotted from the corner of an eye, or only noises heard, so there's potential for misinterpretation).
They've recorded six Class A sightings and four Class B in Maine dating back to 1970.
BFRO leads four-day expeditions all over in search of Bigfoot. Next up: Wyoming in June and Northern Ontario in September. The closest they've come to New England was the Adirondacks.
"We want to do an expedition in Maine next year," Moneymaker said.
Despite all the media attention and hundreds of sightings logged out West, "I'm real confident there's more of them in the East. There's more deer (deer, elk and wild pigs are believed to be Bigfoot's lunch) and more forest."
An expedition would most likely take place in the summer, he said. He'll first have to research the best sightings cluster in the state. That way, Bigfoot-seekers paying $300 a head in fees, plus food and lodging, are more apt to have an encounter.
In a typical trek, there's a base of operations and people spend daylight setting up cameras and recorders. At night, people spread out, communicate by radios and make animal noises back and forth to each other to prompt a Bigfoot response.
Expedition spotters have experienced branches being broken near them, rocks being thrown, growling and "demonstration charging - crashing through the brush and stopping right before they get to you."
"The provocation is they think we're another group of Sasquatch. When they figure out we're not them, that's when they let you know an area is occupied," Moneymaker said.
"There's certainly no guarantee if we take people out they're going to see one. Most people on most of the trips have gotten to hear them. Naturally, until you've had an encounter with one of these things, you're not going to believe they're there."
Geologist: stones pre-Bigfoot
Tony Martin, the Dixfield rock hound, believes they used to be here.
"I think probably they're all gone, crazy weather we've had," he said.
Over the years he's wondered about what do to with his special stones. Martin, a WWII Army veteran who spent 40 years working at the local paper company, joked that he could put them on eBay. Someone would probably snatch them up.
He'd like to donate them to the University of Maine at Farmington, where one of his sons graduated, to have them research the maybe-tracks.
For now, they're kept in his home in separate plastic grocery bags with a note encouraging anyone who touches them to handle with care.
Based on a photo of Martin's find, Tom Weddle at the Maine Geological Survey said they're likely metamorphic rock with mica crystals and a mineral called staurolite, around 400 million years old (pre-Bigfoot or other bipeds).
"We have to burst people's bubbles now and then," Weddle said.
"If I were going to be a Bigfoot believer - Bigfoot is a modern critter - I'd be looking for footprints in the mud."
Like around Sidney?