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Stop: Monster Time!

I'm not really all that good at making these photos, but this never gets old to me

A few weeks ago there was a spike in the amount of traffic that was coming through this humble site. At first I thought it was just the perennial re-indexing by the search engines, which always appears in my logs as a startling leap in traffic, but it turns out that a monster flap in the US has sent the curious looking for tales of cryptozoological ooglie-booglies. It seems Montauk is becoming the byword for spookiness.

Anyway, I received a number of chastisements almost unanimously from, for some reason, the young ladies, for not having updated my site in a while. I have truly been remiss, and I hope all of you will consider this article my penance for ignoring my space-monster commentary duties.

Since this summer has seen such a bumper harvest of “cryptid” news, and has been so good to me, why not have an eye at what’s going on? After all, cryptozoology was my first paranormal love. Well, aside from that orange-haired dame from The Fifth Element. It’s been a solid decade since that movie came out, and she still occupies a substantial space in my heart. But that’s where blood belongs. How will I transport oxygen to my vital tissues?

Enough about the machinations of my cold, brass heart. Let’s talk about monsters.

Probably the most famous of all non-existent boogiemen, the Bigfoot has gotten himself back in the spotlight this summer. Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, two men I hold in the highest respect for reasons that shall be mentioned shortly, claimed to have stumbled across the 7’7”, several hundred pound carcass of a Bigfoot whilst hiking through northern Georgia. As they made off with the body, they claim to also have spotted several Bigfeet (Bigfoots?) nearby. The gentlemen had the common sense to dump the body in an icebox and wait until a willing buyer was found.

As with so many things involving the paranormal, it wasn’t long until a buyer arrived on-scene. If my imagination serves me correctly, it wasn’t long after this arrival that a bucket dropped on the buyer’s head, and he began inquiring as to who turned out the lights before stepping on a rake. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
But who was the lucky fool so soon to be parted from his money? His name was Tom Biscardi, self-proclaimed “real-Bigfoot hunter” and a man who does not, apparently, learn his lesson very quickly. In 2005 he set up a scheme where, for a mere $14 fee, listeners of Coast-to-coast AM could view a captured Bigfoot via webcam. The day of the show, of course, he was forced to admit that no such captured Bigfoot existed. He’d been suckered by a woman with tales of Bigfootery.

Well, anyway, Biscardi purchased the 2007 Bigfoot for an undisclosed amount of money and held a press conference where he claimed it was the genuine article: he’d examined it himself, measured it’s feet, and “…felt its intestines.”

At the press conference, in addition to Biscardi mentioning his strangely erotic investigation of the burly man-ape-corpse, Whitton claimed that “Everyone who has talked down to us is going to eat their words."

I of course didn’t know this. I live in Morocco right now, and news travels a little on the slow side. But had I known, I would have tucked a napkin into my collar and filled a kettle with the many tens of thousands of words I’ve written here, talking down to people that think they’ve got proof of the paranormal. I also would have arranged for an enormous sign to be erected behind me, reading I TOLD YOU SO, but covered with a sheet. That way, when this whole mess was inevitably revealed as a hoax I’d be able to whip the sheet off, tear away the napkin at my neck to reveal a spotless tuxedo, and then begin singing my newly-penned anthem, “You Should Have Seen This Coming (I Want to Feel Your Intestines.)”

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. At the press conference, despite his claims, Biscardi had not yet seen the Bigfoot. To be blunt, he was lying. This means that he is a liar. He is a person who lies. Whitton and Dyer had insisted that they a) get paid, and b) hold the press conference, before they turned over the Bigfoot body. Behold:

Once he did actually have the body, Biscardi began to thaw it. When he was able to get his hands on a tiny bit of fur, he burned it, whereupon he realized that it was some sort of synthetic plastic fur. A little more melting later, and he realized that the Bigfoot corpse was a rubber gorilla costume.
I’d always wondered about the fact that it was incased in a block of ice. After all, dumping a corpse in an ice chest, as I have learned many a time, doesn’t magically create a giant ice cube. They must have kept pouring water on it to get that big ol’ block. And why did they need the block? With everyone watching the monkey man thaw, they were able to make good their escape. It was just to buy time.

At this point, insert the sound of my mocking laughter. If you don’t know what that sounds like, it’s high-pitched, infectious, and carries just the slightest hint of desperation.

It’s not really clear to me what happened after this point. After all, it was only a few weeks ago. Some articles claim that Whitton and Dyer have vanished, presumably taking their down payment for the body and fleeing to some exotic island, to live out their days in smug satisfaction at having pulled off the perfect crime. On the other hand, some articles report that the two have admitted it was a hoax, implying that they’re still around.
Biscardi, for his part, is said to be “demanding justice.” Let’s re-examine the chronology of this story:

• Tom Biscardi sets up a web-cam service that charges people money to watch a captured Bigfoot that he hasn’t seen. Before seeing it, listeners hand over the cash.
• It turns out the captured Bigfoot doesn’t exist. George Noory of Coast-to-coast AM is left to demand refunds for his listeners. Biscardi rails against the gullibility of those same listeners.
• Two men charge Tom Biscardi money for a Bigfoot corpse. Before seeing it, he hands over the cash.
• It turns out the dead Bigfoot doesn’t exist. Biscardi is left to demand justice. I, a sweaty shut-in, rail against Biscardi’s gullibility.

I’m not an expert on justice, but I think that we can give the courts a break on this one. There’s no reason to drag subpoenas and lawyers and white powdered wigs into this. This isn’t unjust. This is a parable. This should be added to some sort of modern bible. Apparently, one of the middlemen that arranged the deal is suing the two, and I sort of feel bad for him. But as for Biscardi, well, I lying to liars is right up there with stealing from theives, in my book.

To be honest, I like the idea of cryptozoology. And I’ll be the first to admit that there could be ooglie-booglies running around out there in the night. This has nothing to do with blind faith; every few months science drags some scary shit out of the ocean that no one’s ever seen before. I guess that same scary shit could exist on land, though if there is a huge ape-monster running about, I’d imagine we’d find it in central China, or the dark heart of Africa, or some tiny pacific island. You know, places we haven’t yet covered in Walmarts and Hardees. Hardeeses. Whatever the plural of Hardees restaurant is. Sure, it’s possible perfectly normal, earthly creatures are out there – but gall darn it, folks, a little skepticism would save you a lot of money. And an even greater amount of me making fun of you.

Speaking of scary shit that comes out of the ocean, it was the Montauk Monster (ahhhh!) that drove people to my site. I’d written an article about the supposed top-secret underground Nazi gold-funded space alien research facility from a different dimension underneath the SAGE radar at Montauk Point. I guess that once again I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Montauk Monster (ahhhh!), so-called by Loren Coleman, was originally called the Hound of Bonacville. It was basically a nasty-looking corpse that floated ashore in New York. A young lady took a photo of the thing, a local newspaper wrote a whimsical story about it, and it should have just floated back into the mysterious sea from whence it came. The photo:

Aaaaaah! Aaaaaah!

Alas, in this internet era, it was not to be: people started hearing about it, and they started speculating. Speculating hard. Space aliens! Sea monsters! A mutant genetic experiment gone awry from a nearby animal disease research facility! Aaaaah! Even the mainstream media began discussing the thing with a speculative enthusiasm I haven’t heard since they spend five solid years detailing the exotic ways someone was going to fill my lungs with Anthrax. It’s a raccoon! A sheep! A dog! A latex dummy! A capybara, whatever the hell that is! A rodent! A bird! A plane! Well, okay, not a plane. Not superman either.
The thing to remember is that all of this speculation, whether from the news channels claiming it’s some partially-decomposed terrestrial critter or the internet goofs claiming it’s a space monster from beyond the moon, comes from a single photograph. No one knows what happened to the thing. The original article speculates that someone took it away to “bury it… we hope!” Cue chilling drum kick. Dumm dumm dumm.

There are, I suppose, two basic options here: the body of some sort of regular animal fell into the ocean, started to rot, got nasty, and washed ashore, or, the body of some sort of animal unknown to science, not unlike Monsieur Grand-Pied (that’s French for Mr. Bigfoot), fell into the ocean and washed ashore.
One of these is more likely than the other. And until someone brings the body around so that we can take a proper look at it, we’ve got to go with what is more likely. We can argue about photos all day long, but we should probably be out doing something productive.

The photograph, I’ll admit, doesn’t look like any convention animal that I am aware of. On the other hand, my knowledge of wildlife is generally confined to identifying things at the supermarket. I’m not really qualified, and neither are 99% of the people making wild speculations, to identify half-rotted carcasses.
It’s well known that when animals fall into the ocean and begin to fall apart, things get strange and nasty in a hurry. For instance, when dead basking sharks begin to rot, big blobs of fat pull away from the corpse and end up looking like flippers, leading many a paranormal enthusiast to spot plesiosaurs where there aren’t any. And let’s not even mention the globsters. These are giant blobs of fat that wash ashore every now and then, which are usually identified as space monsters or sea serpents. In reality they’re just, ugh, disgusting blobs of rotting goo. You know what? Look up the globsters on your own time. The mere thought of them makes my stomach do the lambada. Ugh.

I’m surprised that so far, no one has connected the monster with the supposed secret research site at Montauk Point. But it’s only a matter of time. These two incidents, the Bigfoot Hoax and the Montauk Monster, are the seeds that are going to plant a rich field of conspiracy theories. People are going to connect the monster with Montauk Point. People are going to end up saying that government agents, or something, replaced the genuine Bigfoot body with a rubber gorilla suit on the rocks to keep the public from learning that the Bigfeet are real, and working with the little green men to mutilate cattle and steal our genitals. Or whatever it is that they do.

Well, we all have that to look forward to, I guess. Ugh.

Be seeing you.

Reader Comments:

Stacy said:

Research and report.

You can not continue to not update your website for months at a time and think that no one will care or notice. :)

Talia said:

Hello

I came across your site. Although I am a big believer in aliens, ufo, cryptozoology,ect ect I always like to read both sides of the story .I am quite sorry people feel the need to be rude over the computer to you(shows how mature they are) anyways I just wanted to say, good site, good job , and it was worth reading. I enjoyed your site.

thank:)

Cassie said:

I must say straight off that I thoroughly enjoy reading the articles posted here. I came across your site entirely by accident (looking for pictures of the “Montauk Monster” found me several pictures from “The Montauk Project” instead). I still have not read them all but am looking forward to doing so in the next few days. Your writing style in itself is unique, and I find your wit, sarcasm, humor, and most of all, your cynicism to be refreshing.

Although I am no expert on anything paranormal, and I can’t say for certain that UFOs/Bigfoot/whatever else may or may not exist, I believe that a certain amount of skepticism is needed concerning something that would classify itself in this category. Maybe they do exist and we’ll all be cattle-less and we could pop out half-alien kiddies that still don’t listen to their mothers when they’re called for dinner. But blind faith in anything is ignorant. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that we have the ability to ask the questions “why” and “how” are what make us intelligent, and the gross lack of using these when dealing with things like this makes one start to lose faith in people. In reading these articles, not only have I had many laughs (mostly at other peoples’ expense for being completely brainless), but it just goes to show that there are still intelligent people out there that don’t take common sense for granted.

To the “UFO enthusiasts” as you so lovingly call them: Having faith in something doesn’t mean you have to accept everything at face value. You call us skeptics; we call you daft.

If I happen to be abducted by aliens, rest assured you are the first person I will come to with irrefutable proof that they do exist. Although I may forget my camera in the space ship.