Is our treatment of witnesses in the research community creating an atmosphere ripe for hoaxing?
At Beachfoot, my good friend Tom Steenburg was giving a presentation that included a portion regarding a certain witness that he felt was a hoaxer. He began telling us how he felt this particular person was manufacturing evidence in order to remain in the witness limelight. He brought our attention to a photograph… one that he thought felt smelled a little fishy. He also claimed that this witness was seen throwing rocks during a research outing and blaming it on Sasquatch.
Will witnesses manufacture evidence in order to impress a researcher? Sure. It can happen. It may or may not have happened in this particular instance. Since I haven’t personally worked with this witness, I can’t say for sure. I don’t know how he was treated by the research community prior to the “evidence” that was questionable. I can’t speak to his level of frustration with researchers. But during Tom’s talk I was struck by something that I’ve seen happen numerous times that I feel needs discussing in depth.
The mainstream Bigfoot community has a tendency to be somewhat impatient with witnesses. The greater the claims, the greater the impatience. “Show me the photos!” “Where’s the evidence?” “If you’re really claiming all of this, where’s the proof?”
Fine. Nothing wrong with asking for evidence. But if, in the process, you summarily dismiss, ridicule or alienate someone who has come forward with all good intentions to a public forum to SHARE something with folks that they thought would be interested, only to find themselves lambasted for not having brought enough souveniers for everyone from their trip to Bigfootville… well, I hate to say it, but some of those folks may end up feeling so pressured that they might BEGIN to fabricate evidence in an attempt to shut-up the naysayers and may feel perfectly justified in doing so.
Is it right? No. Does it happen? You bet. It doesn’t mean that those folks didn’t have a genuine encounter. Doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have learned something valuable from them, had we ripped the needle off the “Show me the money” broken record long enough to LISTEN to what they had to say. But perhaps our scathing impatience with witnesses is creating the very thing we fear… subsequent hoaxing by a witness who had a perfectly legitimate encounter but felt ridiculed and pressured into manufacturing “proof” by the very researchers he turned to.
I’m not saying this happens in all instances that a witness brings forth questionable evidence. Some witnesses just aren’t very credible. Period. But we need to be sure that our desire to maintain our own “credibility” at all costs isn’t affecting the outcome of interactions with those who are genuinely experiencing Sasquatch phenomena.
Now, imagine this scenario: a witness is experiencing something akin to PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) because he’s suddenly been thrust into a situation in which he is dealing with bigfoot hanging around his property and harrassing his family regularly. He’s never thought about Bigfoot before, and suddenly he and his family are being terrorized. He’s had some incredible, scary things happen. He’s afraid for the safety of his family. He’s shaken up. He does an internet search, finds a public forum, and comes forward asking for understanding and support. He jumps feet first into the pool of egos and personalities that makes up the bigfoot community and he has no idea what he’s in for.
He shares his story. The creature comes around after the family has gone to bed. It yells. It bangs on the side of the house. It has been seen watching his children play in the yard. Fruit is disappearing from the upper limbs of trees in the orchard. One night, while out smoking a cigarette, he saw glowing red eyes and was growled at. It looked in the window while his wife was doing dishes. They’ve begun to follow him when he walks in the woods. His dogs hide under the bed. Last week, he saw one watching him from the trees in broad daylight. They’re getting bolder. He’s never thought to grab a camera. He’s just scared, out of his depth, and looking for help.
And what he hears from the peanut gallery of the public forum is: “WHERE’S THE PROOF? DID YOU TAKE A PICTURE?” Over and over again. He can’t get anyone to believe him, much less come out and help him, because everyone wants evidence that this is occurring and is relying upon the witness to provide it.
What these researchers fail to comprehend is that these folks are WITNESSES, not researchers. Gathering evidence is a researcher’s job. This guy had never even thought bigfoot a month ago.
Let’s continue with our scenario: Frustrated at the lack of empathy and the hard-nosed bully tactics of researchers hell-bent on quickly and decisively determining a witness’ credibility based upon how much “proof” he brings forward, the witness does as the forum members ask. He goes out and tries to bring in “proof”. He sets up a camera, but it takes no pictures of the big, hairy form lurking around his house at night. He has a recorder near his bed, but doesn’t turn it on in time to catch the sounds. He’s photographed a few blurry impressions, a dog’s water bowl that was dragged out into the woods, a stick stuck into the ground at an odd angle. He takes pictures of the woods when there are sounds coming from that direction and, in one photo, there is a dark shadow that may or may not be a bigfoot. He presents his evidence to the forum.
It’s not enough. In fact, the “blobsquatch” photo has the opposite affect that he was hoping for since the picture doesn’t represent his previous claim of a single, clear daylight sighting he’d had a week before. As the researchers sit on their collective behinds and play judge and jury, the witness is scrambling now to quiet the critics. The witness becomes frustrated, knowing he has something VALID going on, but can’t seem to gather enough evidence to silence the masses of arrogant nay-sayers. He feels caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s hurt and angry at being ridiculed.
So he begins to manufacture evidence in an attempt to validate his claims. He creates some clear tracks to “prove” to the critics that these creatures are around. The tracks aren’t very believable to a trained eye. He posts them, and those on the peanut gallery “catch” him in the falsehood, tear the photos to shreds with their detailed analysis of what’s phony about them and crow to the world about having one-upped a shady witness. They knew he was full of it! The whole thing sounded fishy from the get-go. No one’s going to pull anything over on them! The witness slinks away, shamed, embarrassed. Or stands firm in support of the manufactured evidence in spite of the obvious hoaxed nature of the tracks, entirely killing what credibility he might have had.
Regardless, evidence was manufactured, and the truth in this particular scenario – that there really WAS something going on here that was worth investigating – is lost in the fray.
I fully support asking hard, pointed questions. I think it’s necessary to ask witnesses if they’ve managed to gather any evidence and request to see it. It’s even a good idea to instruct witnesses how to gather evidence if we can’t make it to the location ourselves. But doing so respectfully, and withholding judgement on a witness’ claims based simply upon a lack of immediate evidence of those claims is equally important. If we become instant detractors, we run the risk of creating hostile witnesses bent on “proving” us wrong – no matter what it takes.
