The persistence of fascination

Photos by Axel-D - Flickr.com

    Stories of bigfoot, or sasquatch, have existed for thousands of years. The Native Americans had encounters with the big guy, as well as did early American settlers, French trappers, and your average joe from down the street. The persistence of bigfoot stories seems, to me, one of the strongest cases for the existence of some sort of undiscovered North American great ape.

    If every bigfoot footprint was a hoax, every audio recording some other animal, and every reported sighting a lie or misidentification, would the interest of the public continue to lie with the story of bigfoot? Wouldn't the search have lost momentum by now? I just don't see how stories of such a creature can persist for so many years if there isn't anything to back them up. Every year thousands of people around the world report sightings of bipedal, mysterious hominins. Every year, large footprints are found, photographed and cast by researchers. Every year, pictures of some sort of unidentifiable animal are captured. Given, none of this is conclusive proof, how could it all continuously occur if there really was no undiscovered great ape? I highly doubt that everyone who has some sort of evidence of bigfoot is fooling themselves into a "blind belief" of the existence of this animal. All these sightings have to mean something strange is going on in the woods of North America. I'm not saying this evidence warrants the conclusion that bigfoot is real, but I am saying that it calls for more research. Remember, "Close-mindedness is the death of progress."

    Thanks for reading!

 - A.Z.