Tom Burnette - Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth & Discovering the Truth

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth & Discovering the Truth 2014 by Tom Burnette and Rob Riggs.

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First e-book edition 2014

E-book ISBN: 9780738739632

Book design by Bob Gaul

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Cover illustration by Dominick Finelle/The July Group

Interior photo by Tom Burnette

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Contents

: Bigfoot History in Western North Carolina and Southeastern Texas

: Toms Stories from North Carolina

: Robs Stories from the Big Thicket

: Toms Investigations

: Robs Investigations

: Why Its So Hard to Prove Their Existence

: Does Bigfoot Have Psychic or Paranormal Powers?

: Wild, Hairy Hominids, Mystery Light-Forms, and Anomalous Energy Fields

: The Shamanic Connections

: Where Do We Go from Here?

: A Model for Future Bigfoot/Mystery Hominid Research

: Questionable Evidence, Questionable People

Introduction

This book is based on Tom Burnettes and Rob Riggss many years of investigations of an unknown and peculiarly elusive animaland on interviews of eyewitnesses of apparently the same cryptic beastconducted during our twenty-plus years each of field research.

Bigfoot is admittedly a loaded word. For most people it evokes a knee-jerk reaction. Either they already believe in the existence of an undiscovered hairy ape/man or they dont. If they dont, thats usually the end of the discussion. Even if they do believe, they likely will have a set of assumptions, which could range anywhere from its being a brutish ape to a telepathic superhuman, and will only be looking only at the evidence consistent with their beliefs. Except for very few who claim to have had direct encounters,
most peoples opinions rest solely on their preconceptions. Since the supposed animal in question has never been caught, it is not clear whether people are even believing or not believing in the same thing. So, forget the word; try to forget what you already believe; you just might find this material to be eye-opening.

Whether it is called Bigfoot, wild man, mystery hominid, or by a name as corny and colloquial as swamp devil or boogerthis book presents evidence that an unknown big, hairy, stinky, loud, and perhaps wildly dangerous something inhabits the deep woods of large parts of the southern United States. Over the years, we have been subjected to considerable ridicule and inbred redneck jokes for making the claims presented in this book. Both the witnesses interviewed and we ourselves have been dismissed as superstitious and uneducated country bumpkins who are obviously deluded by wishful thinking or by the misidentification of known wildlife.

Apparently it does not occur to such critics, who invariably consider themselves to be highly urbane and sophisticated, that Bigfoot are naturally going to be seen in remote places. If they are real animals inhabiting sparsely populated parts of this country, is it not reasonable they should be seen in the backwoods of East Texas, the mountains of North Carolina, the bayous of Louisiana, the hills of Arkansas, and the swamps of Floridanot in the lecture halls of universities or rummaging through shopping mall dumpsters in cookie-cutter subdivisions?

We do not claim this is the same animal better known to make appearances in the Pacific Northwest. After considering this text, you may judge that issue for yourself. For conveniences sake, however, we will refer to the creature in question as Bigfoot. The information provided here would lead to the conclusion it is likely to be a heretofore unknown quadruped primate, but that certainly does not close the matter, nor is the mystery solved. It simply raises further questions of how a large primate could remain so elusive to official discovery, and what capabilities it might have to enable it to stay hidden.

So what qualifies a couple of southern country boys to expound on the subject of Bigfoot and its attendant issues? To begin with, this is not our first rodeo. In addition to various newspaper and magazine articles and interviews by each of us, both of us have had prior books published. Tom is the author of Natures Secret Agent published in 1999, and Rob wrote In the Big Thicket: On the Trail of the Wild Man , which came out in 2001.

Both of us conducted many years of separate field research, during which we were totally unknown to one another, only to eventually learn our respective findings firmly corroborate one another down to highly specific details unrecorded elsewhere. These include our independent respective discoveries of bizarre energy and light-form manifestationsdocumented with photographs by both of uswhich are apparently concurrent with Bigfoot sightings. They suggest that we are, indeed, dealing with a physically real being, but it might be even stranger than we had imagined. In part, this is the story of how we came to collaborate in our research and on this book after having individually made these observations.