That Jungian Year: 1977

by Loren Coleman © 2012

Thirty-five years ago, 1977 remains a strange one. It may have been a milestone point of change, coming on a synchromystic Jungian wave of passions and promises.

The world's first personal all-in-one computer (keyboard/screen/tape storage), the Commodore PET, was demonstrated for the first time ever at a consumer electronics show in Chicago in January 1977. Then the PETs were on sale by mid-year. On January 3, Apple Computer Inc. became incorporated.  The first Apple II computers were available for purchase later in 1977. NAVSTAR's Global Positioning System (GPS) was inaugurated by the US Department of Defense. The first MRI Scanner was tested in Brooklyn.

President Jimmy Carter pardoned the Vietnam War draft evaders, as the USA tried to move on from that extended conflict in Southeast Asia.

Do you remember 1977?


Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, and became the #1 movie of the year and the then-highest grossing film of all time. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was released on November 16, 1977, and became the year's #2 film. Getting the mainstream flavor of the year, yet? Well, the # 3 movie was Saturday Night Fever and the Oscar for Best Picture went to Annie Hall. Roots was first broadcast on television.

Vrillon of the "Ashtar Galactic Command" hijacked The ITN Nightly News at ITV Southern Television for six minutes. Four Palestinians hijacked a Lufthansa airliner demanding the release of 11 imprisoned members of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, also known as the Red Army Faction.

Loren Eisely, an American anthropologist and author of The Immense Journey, died on July 9th. Then the King left the building, when Elvis Presley, 42, passed away on August 16, 1977, never showing up for the concert he was suppose to perform that night in Portland, Maine.

On May 28th, 165 people died in the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. The New York Blackout lasted for 25 hours on July 13th-14th. The Bucharest Earthquake killed more than 1,500. A cyclone in India killed 20,000 and left 2 million homeless.

   

In 1977, along with Jerome Clark, I finished a manuscript entitled Creatures of the Outer Edge, which would to be published by Warner Books in 1978. It was a paperback book, tightly printed on 239 pages, being part two of our then-radical view of phenomena in terms of Jungian thought way back then. It was hailed as a breakthrough psychosocial look at a wide variety of Fortean, ufological, and cryptozoological accounts at the time. It had some missteps, but the data was great, and remains so.

The book is dedicated, "To John Keel, pioneer." 

Under that, there is this quotation:

There is not wanting a feast of broad joyous humor in this strange phantasmagoria, where pit and stage, and man and animal, and earth and air, are jumbled in confusion worse confounded. ~ Thomas Carlyle.

The book was first completed and submitted in 1976, and then the publisher sat on it. Our previous book, The Unidentified had appeared in August 1975, and reportedly sold 40,000 copies. We never could understand that sales quote, because we never saw much in the way of royalties. But, hey, we were young innocents, and it was just great to have a mainstream published book. Thinking about money was hardly part of the equation.

Anyway, after that second manuscript was accepted, it seemed like it was taking forever for Warner Books to decide when to bring out that next, my second book. I was not happy with the delay and the lack of up-to-date accounts in the approved-for-publication submission, so I sent in a new ending appendix. It was entitled, "Epilogue - 1977: A Year Filled With Monsters."

On the occasion of the middle of the 35th anniversary of the content of that essay, I want to share some words from there, which seem as timely today as they did then. On pages 208-209:

The mystery animals discussed in the preceding pages have continued to creep, crawl, fly, and run through the lives of humanity. As this opus quickly approaches publication, we felt it might be interesting to give a cross-section of a few noteworthy cases of 1977: cases which, in fact, further demonstrate the meanderings of the manifestations of the phenomena.
The year was a good one for sightings of the creatures of the outer edge. Bigfoot was allegedly photographed on Mount Baker in Washington State. The 'skunk ape' was photographed in Florida, but the photographer and his photos soon disappeared. The manimals were active in such widely separated locations as Easton, Pennsylvania, and Abilene, Texas. The so-called Bigfoot of Little Eagle, South Dakota made the Halloween issue of Newsweek.

In the book's epilogue, I continued by talking of the Bigfoot-type creatures being reported in Rising Sun, Ohio County, Indiana.

The phantom felines were active in Allen County, Ohio. I detailed my interview on site with Dog Warden William Reeder. Over 57 sheep had been killed by the mystery cats, locally called Black Panthers.

I spent most of June 29, 1977, traveling with Reeder, from the Nesbaum and Burkholder farms in Richlard Township, to the Richard Etter farm on Pandora Road to the Herman Hilty farm on Lugabill Road, interviewing eyewitnesses to the mayhem, as the black cats seemed to be moving down the roads, closer and closer to Lafayette, Ohio.

Bill Reeder and two officers on the Lafayette Police Department saw the big black panther in a plowed field near Lafayette. When they came up on it, the cat was walking calmly. Then it broke for the woods and ran "150 yards in two seconds flat," said the law enforcement personnel. Click and read more on the "Fayette Factor."

Stopping to give an overview, I wrote on page 217:

1977 is shaping up as a synchronistically interesting year for the cats. 1877 saw mystery feline reports from Ohio and Indiana. During 1977, besides the Ohio events, there have been sightings in Bay Springs, Mississippi; Edwardsville, Illinois; and California, Kentucky. And as we continued our investigations into the matter of the Dover Demon of Dover, Massachusetts, word came of a maned lion's having attacked two dogs near Dover, Arkansas.

I then detailed my fieldwork in April 1977 of the Dover Demon case.

On page 225, I put the year's Lawndale, Illinois, kidnapping of Marlon Lowe in context by mentioning:

The creatures of 1977 seemed to be playing cosmic jokes on a number of people. The 'Big Birds' were at it again during the year. One of these huge things with wings attacked a five-pound beagle puppy belonging to Mrs. Greg Schmitt of Rabbit Hash, Kentucky. The 'large bird' snatched a dog from her farm and dropped it in a pond 600 yards away. While local wildlife officials argued over whether or not the dog was attacked by an American Bald Eagle, the dognapping appears to have been a dry run for something more sinister. 

I overviewed the remarkable incident of the twin Thunderbirds that tried to kidnap Marlon Lowe from his front yard near Kickapoo Creek, Logan County, Illinois, in April 1977. My brother Jerry initially investigated the case. I would personally do so later on a trip to Illinois. I wrote about Lawndale, too, in that book. The case, along with many of these creatures of the outer edge from that weird year, have become part of the literature of those times.

The high strangeness of 1977, a mere 35 years ago, still fascinates me.

   

First appearing in 1975 and 1978, these two paperbacks were republished by Anomalist Books, in 2006, as a special double edition with a new introduction. The Unidentified and Creatures of the Outer Edge: The Early Works of Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman is a combined quality paperbound book from Anomalist Books. Near the top is the original cover of Creatures of the Outer Edge.

Are Bigfoot Witnesses Really Seeing Reptoids?

Loren Coleman ©2012

This is not going where you think it is. I have not joined the Icke fringe, seriously.

Back in 2006, I discussed "The Evolution of Cryptozoology Drawings." I found that initial eyewitnesses’ attempts to capture what they saw did change through the artwork created by later illustrators, some with their own agendas, and sometimes through the retellings of the witnesses. I spoke on this issue at the original Texas Bigfoot group’s early 2005 conference and at the Bates College’s cryptozoology symposium held in October 2005 in Lewiston, Maine. It may be appropriate now to look at another issue in a related realm. First, two questions: What if eyewitnesses who are describing Bigfoot are not actually seeing what they think they are? Do we know what happens in a Sasquatch encounter is correctly be referenced for us via the human eyewitnesses?

   

The example of the Pascagoula Critters, which, by definition, are part of ufology might not seem like a good place to start talking about the eyewitness testimony of Bigfoot witnesses. But there are lessons to be learned here, and perhaps it is time for Sasquatch investigators to look for some comparable data to inform our cryptid pursuits. Physical evidence is important, but then so too is the tricky world of firsthand encounter (eyewitness) sighting data, as well. Regarding the Pascagoula case, University of California professor James Harder investigated the story, as did Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who represented the U.S. Air Force. Harder and Hynek worked together on the case. First they interviewed the two fishermen eyewitnesses, Calvin Parker, 19, and Charles Hickson, 42, together. Harder tried to do regressive hypnosis on Hickson, but the alleged abductee was so frightened that the hypnosis was stopped. Both of the witnesses, however, took polygraph tests, and both passed without a problem. Harder and Hynek both believed that the two tormented men were telling the truth. What occurred with the depiction of the Pascagoula entities leads to similar insights as what I described in "The Evolution of Cryptozoology Drawings" for the changing view of Momo (the Missouri Monster).  For the Pascagoula experience, from the supposedly "based on the eyewitness" drawings to their morphing into popular cultural comic books, shiny figurines, and one-of-a-kind art, the evolution of these "critters" is somewhat predictable.

 From the Air Force's investigations' images...  

 ...to the following comic book graphic of the event which does demonstrate that some leaps are big ones.

    

What were eyewitnesses really seeing? Will we ever know?

   

 What did the eyewitnesses experience? Various artists have similar but different views.  

 Harry Trumbore's drawing is generally regarded as bringing together many of the elements of the eyewitness descriptions and other artists' interpretations. Trumbore's image below was first carried in Patrick Huyghe's 1996 edition of The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials.

   

 Then there are the 3-D figurines...

   

But something else is going on too. In Patrick Huyghe's The Field Guide to Extraterrestrials there is an investigative incident that needs to be reviewed and reflected upon. Richard J. Boylan, Ph. D. is a behavioral scientist, anthropologist, and certified clinical hypnotherapist. He has been involved in hypnotizing ufo abductees. What he found is worth pondering. On page 131, Huyghe writes of how an eyewitness under hypnosis told "Richard Boylan that she had encountered a 'spaceman.' When he invited her to look closely at the face of the 'human' spaceman, she replied, 'Oh my! It's not human after all. It's one of those Grays.' But when he suggested that she look closely at the face of the Gray, she realized that the Gray was actually a reptoid."

   

 Wetzel’s “It” by Bill Rebsamen from Mysterious America (page 273). 

Now, I am not here to dwell on reptilians or aliens or ufonauts. My concern is with eyewitnesses. What are they seeing, and when they see Bigfoot, are they so scared or in shock or in trance that they are telling us what we want to hear? Or what culturally they "think" a Bigfoot looks like? What would occur if Sasquatch encounters were examined more deeply by hypnotizing the eyewitnesses? 

What happened to the use of hypnosis in earlier Bigfoot investigations? Should we even broach this critical forensic difference between ufological and cryptozoological eyewitness stories? Within murder investigations, criminal reconstructions, and, yes, ufological and abduction research, the frequent use of the technique of hypnosis appears to have become divorced from the examination of Bigfoot eyewitnesses. Why? We aren't sure why this occurred. Indeed, considering that even in homicidal and violent crime cases where court admissibility of evidence obtained through this method is not regarded too highly, it is in the data gathering phrase of the investigation where there is great reliance on hypnosis to collect the details of the cases. Bigfoot researchers, in the 1970s, experimented with hypnosis, but not in any well-crafted fashion. What would Bigfoot researchers find behind the sightings of large hairy creatures if they used hypnosis more? More details, more psychology, more hidden messages, or nothing? Are we even asking the right questions?

Mormon Conspiracy?

The Mormon Conspiracy
A View From The Outside by Loren Coleman

Following is a posting that I first wrote for February 5, 2008, and posted on Cryptomundo.com. It stirred up discussion of a topic some would like to keep quiet. But it won't go away. Please note, I am reporting, not stating any stance, one way or another. I am highlighting an issue that is out there, being talked about in back room conversations and campfire exchanges. With this summer of 2012 bringing forth Mitt Romney as a national presidential candidate, Mormonism may or may not be a topic in politics. But it is already one within the politics of Bigfoot hunting. We should not be afraid to tackle it here again.

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Look, no one wants to talk about it straightforwardedly, so let me bring this to the fore.

In the journal published as a book, Intermediate States: The Anomalist 13, I deal with a touchy subject in my article "Between Worlds: The Three Nephites."

I began the essay this way:

During the 2008 presidential campaign season there was much talk of Mormonism and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because of the candidacy of Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. But few of those interested in his candidacy realized that one tenet of the Mormon faith includes the belief in a race of beings who live in a world between the known and unknown.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints accept as true that the Nephites – initially righteous people, who eventually fell into wickedness – once existed and may still walk among us, saving lives and doing good deeds, and looking for redemption. ~ for more, see Intermediate States

In terms of cryptozoology, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) have figured into some of the backstories and rumors linked to Bigfoot for a long time.  Let's sort through some of these links.

A few would have you believe there is a Bigfoot Mormon Mafia.  What dots are being connected?

The late Grover Krantz grew up in a devout Mormon family, and his parents were actually living in a heavily Mormon location (Rockford, Illinois) when he was born.  Krantz later rejected his Mormon roots, to further his scientific thinking.

Jeff Meldrum is [or was] a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and reportedly writes books, according to his critics, "defending the historical veracity of the Book of Mormon, in essence saying he thinks American Indians are decendents of Jews who emigrated here thousands of years ago."

Are Mormons behind all cryptofilm productions? What details are being connected here?

Doug Hajicek, the executive producer of "Monster Quest" was raised a Mormon, although his current status as a LDS member is unclear.  He is not, however, a member of the subgroup headed by an estranged relative. Perhaps someone has their Hajiceks confused?

Haijeck's half-brother is Elder John J. Hajicek, one of the leaders, along with James Strang, of the Sabbath-keeping Mormons. This branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has accepted the reality, apparently, which says Cain and Bigfoot are one in the same. A cryptofiction version of these thoughts can be found in Clan of Cain: The Genesis of Bigfoot by Shane Lester. But John Hajicek has nothing to do with "Monster Quest."

Sunn Classics Pictures, a Mormon-owned documentary production company, did produce films in the 1970s, on Bigfoot, Noah's Ark, and other mysteries outside the mainstream.  Of course, they made one on Lincoln's assassination too, and the company happened to be located in Utah, where Mormon ownership might be expected.

John Green, writing on July 25, 2004, to the editor of The Skeptical Inquirer, addressed some of the rumors floating among skeptics that the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage was created by the film company American National Enterprises of Salt Lake City, and they produced a hoax. It is intriguing that it has come to a point that Green would even have to say this.  He wrote that it has been...:

...claimed at times that the making of the [Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot] movie was somehow a Mormon conspiracy. Ron Olson, son of one of the three owners of American National, says that none of them were Mormons, and that their only association with Patterson was that they paid him for using his footage in their movie.

I suppose if people look hard enough they can find conspiracies whereever they want to find them.

But perhaps the truth here is a little more innocent and subtle. It has often been acknowledged that to be a Mormon one must allow for a more open-minded approach to life, which happens to include cryptozoology and other anomalist topics. Maybe it is nothing more than that at work, at least in a few cases. Or maybe it is nothing at all.

In terms of full disclosure, it must be stated that some of us who aren't LDS are open-minded too.  After all, I grew up with more than a dash of Aimee Semple McPherson in me, at least until zoology, anthropology and cryptozoology took over my life in 1960.
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Update:

Perhaps it is merely a coincidence, but I noted after I wrote the above, over at 10 Zen Monkeys, a new blog essay appeared about "The Morman Bigfoot Genesis Theory."

Morgan & Sturgis?

So you are unaware of the name Bob Morgan in conjunction with that of Frank Sturgis, Watergate burglar, CIA operative, and Bay of Pigs player?

People who study Bigfoot understand the history of Robert W. Morgan and his involvement in the search for the elusive creatures. Few realize that Morgan has a rich legacy, as well, cryptopolitically. This will all change in January 2010 after Morgan's new book Citizen Spy is published.


Robert Morgan

Canton reporter Diana Rossetti recently interviewed Morgan, and wrote an interesting overview of the man's life:

At 74 years old, Robert W. Morgan still muses, only half joking, about what he wants to do when he grows up.

Until he narrows the possibilities, here is what the 1954 Lincoln High School [Canton, Ohio] graduate already has under his belt:

Morgan led the first expeditions in search of what he now calls “forest giant people” and others variously dubbed Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti and the Abominable Snowman.

He still believes the hairy, strong-smelling giants exist, and plans a private expedition to Washington in June [2010].

He was commissioned by developers of a multimillion-dollar condominium project on Maui to search for the world’s most beautiful fountain.

One of life’s proudest moments, aside from the birth of his only child, a daughter, was being adopted by the then-100-year-old Nino Cochise, grandson of the original Cochise, nephew of Geronimo and the last Apache born free.

Morgan was on a movie set when a hanging scene featuring screen actor Harold “Oddjob” Sakata, best known for his role in “Goldfinger,” went awry, leaving the 270-pound thespian actually dangling by his neck.

“Bill Shatner ran up and lifted him up by his legs, and another guy and I climbed up and cut the rope,” Morgan recalled. The rope that nearly took Sakata’s life is on Morgan’s desk today.

“When Sakata was dying of stomach cancer in a Honolulu hospital, his nurse was Nancy Thomas. She was from Canton. It turned out, I had dated her sister, Gwen,” he recalled, adding that there is a “special lady” in his life these days.

The late Frank Sturgis, sometimes remembered as one of the Watergate burglars but also as a decorated World War II U.S. Marine, enlisted Morgan in a Miami-based, CIA-funded paramilitary group training to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

The kid with the piercing blue eyes who grew up on Prospect Avenue in Canton’s southwest end is a successful screenwriter and filmmaker, having worked around the world, including a stint in the former Soviet Union.

He recently completed a two-year radio blog and remains a popular radio talk show guest in the Pacific Northwest.

Currently, Morgan is burning the midnight oil at his home, where bears wandering his deck are the only visitors. He is steaming toward a publisher’s deadline for his latest book, “Citizen Spy,” due for release in January.

The nonfiction thriller reveals Morgan’s own story of teaming with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration to foil a drug-trafficking ring operated by the Mafia....

See here for the entire article.


Robert Morgan
“Life’s too short to dance with nasty ladies,” jokes Robert W. Morgan, who says his favorite Friday nights are spent at the Grizzly Den in Whitefish, Mont., drinking Obsidian Stout, a brew the bar ships in from Bend, Ore., just for him. Here, he works on a movie set.


Robert Morgan
Nino Cochise (front), grandson of the original Cochise and nephew of Geronimo, poses with his wife and adopted son, Robert W. Morgan. Cochise gave Morgan the name “Not Afraid.”

Thank you!

Red Lake and Bigfoot

With all the interest in the new Ely Sasquatch Video, it seems like a good moment to mention the time-space links to Red Lake, Minnesota. Both locations are in northern Minnesota, just south of the Canadian border. Ely is 200 miles due east of Red Lake.

Yesterday, as the Ely Sasquatch Video was exploding onto the internet via such sites as Cryptomundo, Boing Boing, The Anomalist, and Coast to Coast AM, the day also marked the first anniversary of an infamous school shooting with strange ties to Bigfoot.

On March 21, 2005, Red Lake, Minnesota high school student Jeffrey James Weise (August 8, 1988 – March 21, 2005) killed a total of ten people. First he killed his grandfather and grandfather's wife, 32-year old Michelle Sigana, who was his grandfather's police force partner. Later he shot and killed seven people at Red Lake High School, including a teacher and a security guard. As many as 15 others were wounded in the school shooting. After briefly exchanging fire with police officers following the murders, Weise died by his own hand.

The incident began at home in the afternoon when Weise apparently shot his grandfather and Sigana. Weise then drove his grandfather's patrol vehicle to the high school, propelling it into the building at around 3:00 p.m. CST. Wearing a reservation-police-issued bulletproof vest, likely taken from the stolen reservation police patrol vehicle, Weise killed the third victim (the security guard) immediately upon arriving at the school.

When the police first arrived, Weise briefly opened fire on them before going into the school. Once in there, he was said to be "waving and smiling" as he shot students at random. An attempt to break into an English classroom was thwarted by a quick-thinking teacher who had taken the precaution to lock the door.

Media coverage of Jeff Weise after the shooting was intense. Weise left electronic footprints all across the internet, on websites such as nazi.org, offering, as Wikipedia noted, "an unusual level of public insight into his thoughts and the hardships in his life that led to his depression and fascination with dark imagery in the months and years prior to the shootings."

Besides being a neo-Nazi, liking Hitler, seeing white owls, having dreams about shooting, Weise also was interested in Bigfoot.

Needless to say, people interested in Bigfoot are not all killers, and all serial, mass, and rampage killers are not Bigfoot fans. But the overlap between the two in this case are worthy of our sociological attention. Such twilight language and coded messages exist all the more overtly in this World Wide Web age, and there's no reason to ignore them and not examine what we might discover. (In this vein, I investigate past school shootings and the twilight language in my 2004 book, The Copycat Effect.)

The simple fact is the Red Lake school shooter liked to talk about Bigfoot, and we have the records to explore how Bigfoot worked into his cosmos.

Red Lake's Jeff Weise

Jeff Weise would post as "Weise" at the Above Top Secret forum.

Here is "Weise" talking about Sasquatch among the Ojibwa, on 6-11-2004 (November 6th?):

Almost everyone I know has a sasqautch story, almost everyone one has a person in their familly who's probably seem him. At least thats how it is where I live, (on a Reservation in Minnesota).

I've asked a few elders about bigfoot, and in my language (Ojibwe) we have a name for him. I forgot it, and barely could pronounce it, but he exists in our neck of the woods, at least I believe he does. I heard a story from my cousin (he works in Tribal Government), he told me that a guy he worked with was out in the forest alone on a fast. He was near a swampy area, and midway through his fast he saw Bigfoot walking through the swamp, reaching down into the water along the way and pulling up a certain type of weed and slinging it over his shoulder.

The weed from the swamp he was pulling out was supposedly some kind of herbal medicine used by Native medicine men.

And to feed some of you peoples interest in the possibility of a sasquatch and alien connection? The lake I live by (Red Lake) is one heck of a big lake, and if you sit out at the beach on a clear summer night you'll see lights over the lake. Everyone says they're UFO's, I believe that too. There was a UFO sighting in broad daylight a few years back, it was over the lake, people said it looked like a metal disc. Anyway, alot of people were reporting power outages and cars stalling on them around the exact same time.

I love living in this lively place...

Later on 11-11-2004 (November 11, 2004), responding to this quote (filled with incorrect info) from Brainiac: "Hi! The Bigfoot idea was recently found out to be made up, by the same guy that supposedly capture the creature on film in 1974. He said on his death bed that he made the whole thing up. The footage was real, but it was footage of a man in a gorilla costume... "

Weise rather appropriately writes:

Lol, sorry, but that just wont fly in my part of the woods.

We've actually seen him, in the "flesh," not just a video. The stories of bigfoot, as previously stated, have been around for hundreds of years, not just since the Patterson film.

Perhaps not coincidentally, on February 10, 2005, there were reports of tracks of Sasquatch being found on the Red Lake Reservation. Here are examples of two photographs (below) circulated on the web at the time. While initially they might look like bear prints, upon closer examination, more clearly defined Bigfoot-type toe prints are visible.

On March 21, 2005, the focus was on Red Lake, Minnesota and Jeff Weise's carnage, and the Red Lake Bigfoot track investigations faded into the background. On March 21, 2006, our attention is drawn back to Minnesota, and the new video of the Ely Sasquatch. What does it all mean? It remains to be seen.