I was wondering about this the other day but are foreigners less skeptical than in the U.S. ?

So many people in the US are willing to say "No it's not possible" even though there is a history of stories and sightings whereas other cultures seems to be more accepting of the unknown or paranormal (not sure if appropriate to use paranormal but I think you all know what I mean)

Now that is an interesting question? I do not know if it has been covered or not, but I think instead of going the Euro/North Amer route, it yould be more telling to go the rural/urban route..which is a common factor in both areas.
I think that the rural folk are prone to be more open minded about such things over their urban cousins. More in tune with nature, and working with nature every day..however you want to put it. I think that maybe a sense of isolation gives way to an awe of nature and its mysteries, which the city streetlights just wash away.
However, europe is a much older civilization well steeped in myth..it would be interesting to hear from some of our European members as to their thoughts on how the BF/ or Yeti theory is accepted there?

This is very true, they have been telling and re-telling tales about Grendel, Werewolves, Kraken, etc for ages so they are probably more accepting of the idea of strange and unusual animals than we are. They all have rich histories filled with fantastic stories about amazing encounters with many strange creatures. Our country is considered very "new", at just under 230 years old, in comparison to all the other major nations on the planet.

I guess in the mix we brought along a lot of myths with immigration to North America. Probably giving it a twist along the way.
But for every myth there is a distant reality. There actually are vampires..not like the movie kind..but individuals who need to digest blood for varied reasons.
Werewolves? There are those for which the full moon has a drastic effect!
As the mythical gods were created for 'morality plays'..so too where monsters created. Monster.[.meaning 'shame before God']
The monster was the alter ego of man..the dark side which shamed mankind. It put him in his place in the scheme of things and tought him that he had far to go to be God-like!
To know your place in the universe you must have a healthy sense of shame. By that, you must believe in a higher power. Then and only then can you decide where you fit onto that scale. Belief in that higher power is a starting point. The higher power could be the universe its self. It could be a tree.
Therefore monster is who we are in our distance from God. The 'beast'!
Not Satan....but a kissing cousin of a friend who used to date him!
It is a reminder of our distance from God, so that we may better ourselves in His./Her eye.
So Bigfoot could be considered a monster in the eyes of many..for his beastial qualities! And in that light I am sure that there must be anecdotes about the 'furry lug' in most countries. Probably not as obvious as the creature would appear to North Americans..but if you dig a little..

What about Beowolf for instance......would that be considered to be a stylized Bigfoot tale?

For sure, in fact some people think that Grendel was possibly a Sasquatch based on the descriptions of him.

...and to take that a step further..there have been reports of 'hairy men' in every culture that has ever been, I suspect! What are the odds that these 'hairy men' are not just mountain tribes who are too busy to shave.
Unfortunitly most societies probably do not give enough of a description of the 'hairy men' to draw any kind of conclusion. They are just savages...even when it is savages calling them so!
It will be about another three hours before any european members come on. This could be very interesting once they do.
We are too young as nations..we do not have many myths...
You know what.......when in doubt go to the aboriginies...no matter what country you are talking about. They will have the old stories. And every country has them. In europe the might be known as gypsies, as well as Asia. Just about every east asian nation has an older tribe or society..Japan does on Hokkiado..they have them in Tibet...Borneo, Malaysia. But for now it would suffice just to hear about the celtic myths.
And I do not mean english and irish. There was a time when everything outside of Rome was celtic..from Italy to France From Norway to Spain. It was they who ended the Roman Empire!
This is a damn good topic!

After doing a little research I find that european sightings might take a while to collect.

Luxembourg

More.....

from...bigfootencounters.com


Sightings of hominids in Europe are rare but obtainable nonetheless. There is an account from Croatia in the Bigfoot Field Guide dated around the late 1880s. A contact from Yugoslavia recently emailed me a list of lake monster sightings from within the region and amongst them is an apparent hominid sighting though unfortunately no date is given: Aleksandar Sasha Trivich writes: "I have searched for the possible reports or sightings of humanoid-like creatures but found nothing even in the folklore there seems to be nothing which could be interpreted as a bigfoot-type sighting.

However a friend of mine pointed out to me one book, which deals with legends, folklore and strange happenings in which I have found one testimony that is quite interesting and believable.

The books name is ''Taj Drugi Svijet'' (In English: ''That Other World'') and was written by a folklorist Mr. Vujica Ognjenoviæ.

"While traveling in remote parts of Montenegro collecting stories and beliefs from the local people he came across a man who had actually claimed to have seen hairy human-like creature many years ago in the near by mountains. The man's name was Bozo Radoviæ who was a peasant and a sheep watcher. Radoviæ told how many years ago he had been gathering firewood on one cold winter morning on the Mratinjski Hills near the village Babiæi in the western part of Montenegro. While he was gathering wood, he had noticed huge tracks that reminded him of human footprints but were much wider. He was immediately stunned by the thought how could someone walk around barefoot in such harsh winter coldness. He decided to follow the footprints and so after about 15 minutes of walking he stopped before a cave where the tracks entered. When he stepped inside he was paralyzed - for there was a large and muscular man-like beast with long arms and covered by long hair standing in the middle of a cave. Radovic was so shocked that he started coughing and calfing (sic) making very loud noise in fact such a loud noise that the strange creature jumped and hurled out of the cave climbing the stones nearby and was soon out of site. This fast movement of the beast sent chills down the spine, said Radoviæ, in order to describe how scared he felt. He could not believe how can anyone move so quickly and climb the uphill like a wild-sheep. Radoviæ never saw the creature again and there were no other reports in that or other regions in Yugoslavia. Maybe there were but no one have published them in fact maybe the peasants in the remote mountain regions had similar encounters but were never asked about them nor did they try to report them to anyone."

Report Credit Nick Sucik On Sunday, 29 September 2002

From personal experience on a daily basis. I don't think there is any difference at all. Some are open minded some not. And personally I don't think rural/urban is that important to Europeans. To those of the old USSR rural/urban is very important.

Something that intrigues about people, like my husband for example, is this, he is openminded to the possibility that Bigfoot is real, he is just not interested in the subject. There is a Russian figure in the bigfoot community with an Armenian surname from back in the fifties. Whenever that name comes up I ask my husband and he graciously answers any question he can but Bigfoot is of no interest to him. On some of the sighting reports from Russia if a location is given he can tell me about it and the local people. But he won't watch a documentary about bigfoot even if I paid him.

I'm not sure, but i sometimes get the impression that North American people have far less faith in folklore than many Russians and Eastern Europeans, and correspondingly greater faith in the institutions of modern science.
Knowing a lot of classical musicians means that i know a lot of Russians, Bulgarians, Czech people, etc, some very well, and i find that they are much less trusting of doctors and 'science' in general than their American and Canadian colleagues.

It follows, then, that people in such a culture would be more inclined to listen to folklore than to mainstream science on the topic of cryptids than North Americans.

This is a totally anecdotal experience, of course, but I thought it worth mentioning.

-robo

But it makes you wonder why there are precious few reports outside of Russia?
There are some, just enough to prove that Bigfoot is not a North American phenomenon.
But Europe, Africa, S.E Asia. South America, are pretty much wastelands. Even Oz has reports!!

There are hundreds of reports of Yeren sightings from China, so their investigators say, but I think they don't get published in the papers there, or not often, just funneled to scientists.

There are also lots of reports of the orang pendek from Sumatra, but there isn't much of an infrastructure to investigate such reports, nor are sightings much covered by the press.

R. Greenwell, head of the Intl. Cryptozoological Soc., said he thought this was the likeliest of the hominids to exist and be caught. Bobbie Short is very interested in both these cryptids, possibly because she's rather cynical about BF buffs and reports.

Reasons we hear little from China & Sumatra are that residents have few cameras, little access to plaster, poor communications, few firearms, and a sensitivity about losing face by possibly being ridiculed by scientists and officials.

I hear you Roger.
But I am really surprised that there is so little coming out of europe. I mean the home of horror mythology. Universal Studios made a fortune on their superstitions by making movies about them. And yet..amid many a belfry full of Vampires, and foggy graveyards full of Werewolves..not one Squatch!

There have been about 20 reported European hominid sightings since the war. Paul and I were mentioning this in another thread about a week ago, and the topic has also been touched on from time to time in the past. A search on "Europe" should turn up a few hits.

On the one hand, the fact that there have been virtually no European sightings adds to the believability of N. Am. sightings, since it would be very surprising if there were such animals in a land that is more heavily populated, less rugged, and less forested. (Few European houses are made of wood, which is scarce, whereas we have the stuff coming out our ears. I was glad for my wooden house during the quake in 2002; if it had been masonry it wouldn't have "given" and bounced back.) If this were just a cultural/mythological phenomenon, Europeans would be participating too, given our global entertainment and communications industry.

OTOH, the fact that there are ANY European sightings, let alone believable-sounding ones, casts the reliability of all witnesses to such things in doubt. If ecology isn't complete guesswork, or if BF isn't a very unusual animal, an animal needs a breeding pool to survive. So there should either be a dozen sightings a year in the UK, or none. You shouldn't have one every five years. That's the Mothman pattern--i.e., the realm of the twilight zone.

Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Here's a link to five recently posted chapters from Ivan Sanderson's often-overlooked books "Things" and More "Things". They deal with hominids in South America, Canada & Alaska, Medieval and Ancient Europe, the P-G film, Greenland, and the Aleutians. And of course Sanderson's classic Abominable Snowmen, which can be obtained from the library (by interlibrary loan if need be) or for under $10 used on Amazon, contains additional material on hominids abroad.

Also, I'm just reading Heuvelmans' out-of-print and "dated" classic, On the Track of Unknown Animals, which contains chapters on suspected African, S. American, and Asian hominids. It's too expensive to buy used ($140), but you can borrow a copy from the library.

As one of the resident Europeans here, I thought I would throw my hat into the ring.

From what I can see, the general population in western europe seems to think the whole north american bigfoot thing is just down to 'americans' - we have touched on this in the past, but I don't think you guys realise just how different much of American culture and behaviour is to western europeans.

For us english speaking europeans, the gap between us is incredible - take the Janet Jackson nipple affair for example - we simply cannot understand what all the fuss is about - she could have paraded on network TV here naked, and we wouldn't be the slightest bit bothered. The idea to us of a country where people can carry rifles and handguns legally, but can't show a nipple on TV is utterly, utterly barmy.

This is not a criticism - what I am getting at, is that much of western europe looks at bigfoot, roll their eyes and say 'Americans !' in that exasperated way.

There are some of us that have taken the time to see things differently of course.


Can we set one thing straight here - the Luxemburg video was a hiker - nothing more. if you watch the video and stills closely, you can make out a blue water bottle.

That said, there *are* sightings in western europe, but there are so few, that the evidence is not compelling. I recently followed up and saw some incredible tracks left in overnight snow, that could not possibly have been human, and could not have been horse because the path they were left on had locked gates at each end.

In Britain we have had less than a dozen reported sightings in the past 5 years, and frankly, I have a hard time believing that much of britain is suitable habitat.

I am always amazed that no reports ever come from the alps.

I am in the process of colaborating with a few european hominid investigators on a european-wide website, so as soon as we have enough information prepared for the website, i'll point you all in the right direction.

In the meantime, i'll keep my eyes peeled.

Hey, it's Presidents Day in the USA and Paul took the day off. How cool is that?!?!

It was much the same here in Canada! The americans are our cousins, but we are somewhat different on how we view many things. I am a direct decendant of the British Empire as were all of my family and neighbors. My home province did not leave the British Commonwealth until 1949. So I appreciate all three of our cultures!
But we all see eye to eye on Bigfoot..or on this side of the border Sasquatch
I was intensely curious, being that we are two young nations, whether or not this was just a North American phenom?
Roger mentioned of the' over population' of Europe being a factor for lack of reports and expressed surprise that there was no reports even from the isolation of the Alps.
I am beganing to think that this is just confined to N.A.
And that even the Aussie reports have to be of another creature all together!

What we have here in North America appears to be somewhat unique, although there appear to be variations between the Bigfoot/Sasquatch and Skunkape, based on eyewitness accounts. The Aussie Yowie also appears to be unique; much stockier (big boned?), somewhat shorter, and, perhaps, more aggressive,
based on eyewitness accounts. Of course, with Australia, that has an over abundance of animals that appear no where else in the world, what would you expect...
I have not yet made my mind up on China. Did something exist at one time? Does it exist now? I'm hoping that Bobbie Short will post her presentation that she is scheduled to give in Belgium about her recent trip and research in China.

I got these ten sightings from China

Yes, I'm aware of these items and some other variations which may or may not represent enhanced repetition. The problem with related research in China is that it is ground floor. The have done, and continue to do, wonders with Giant Panda research and propagation, but with an abundance of large ape-like teeth, feces, hair and urine samples available, little is heard of test results. Reports of people having conversations with the Yeren or Fei Fei, together with claims that human females have been assulted and raped are, well, Maryesque or Coyish, at best. China is a land of story-telling. They've documented their history in both written form and in verbal form, that has been passed down through the ages. Many stories have a basis in fact, but many have also been embellished to suit the desires of the story teller. China is a vast land. I do believe that something exists there, but lean toward it being more ape-like than our Bigfoot. I've sent an email to Bobbie Short asking if she would kindly post her presentation on Asia's hirsute relic homins after she gives it at the Belgium Cryptozoology Symposium this spring. Stay tuned...

It wasnt the boobie so much that bothered me. It was how much she looked Edward Scissorhands she looked like that scared me.

They found a frozen dude near where my old unit used to train in Italy. We tromped up and down those hills and never thought something like that would be up there. Well until I fell through a snow drift and pictured someone chiseling my ass out of a block of ice in 10,000 years. I never gave Bf much though while in the Alps. I was more interesting in not falling off Mt. MotherF##ker than anything else. (Ok I don’t know the real name but people called it that and after climbing to the top, I knew why)

BF in the Alps? I dont think so, with the amount of human activity in the last few thousand years, you would think one or two decent reports would have come up. But one can never tell for sure.

I'm not going to track it down, but I remember reading of a sighting in the Italian Alps--maybe in a wooded valley.

There is one 'Alps' sighting that i know of - it is probably the same one you are thinking of Roger.

I seem to recall it involved a waterfall.

It should also be stated,that some ther countries such as China,and Russia,
take hairy bipeds inhabiting their mountain ranges and forests,alot more
seriously,than the scientific community in the United States does.These countries
actually have launched scientific expeditions in search of these creatures,where
as the majority of searches conducted in the US, is done by freelancers,and
normal people with an interest.In fact I am not aware of any expedition,or
reasearch conducted or involving support from the government of the United
States.If you do not look for something,it will be very hard to find!!