Page 22 - Flathead Beacon // 10.28.15

COVER
BIGFOOT
Becky Cook speaks at the Big Sky Bigfoot Conference in Hot Springs. GREG LINDSTROM | FLATHEAD BEACON
ridicule, they open right up.
“That vindication, that’s what I do for
people,” she says.
She also asserts that Bigfoots have
individual smells, that they’re not all hor- ribly stinky, as Michael Cook suggested. One female Bigfoot who apparently took an amorous liking to an Idaho man left a sweet scent, almost like orchids, she says.
Cook says she’s communicated with the beasts telepathically, and has heard reports of Bigfoots belonging to different dimensions and realms. An Idaho man once told her he followed a large, bipedal, hairy creature over a few hillcrests on a hunting trip, only to find himself 20 feet into a jungle at one point. Walking back, he was in Idaho again.
“We are all made of energy, and we have the ability to send that energy,” Cook said. “God’s wonders are amazing.”
She likes to sing “How Great Thou Art” while walking in the woods, and doesn’t feel the need to photograph her large friends, because it wouldn’t be respectful.
Answers to audience questions for her presentation include disdain for anyone who leaves out alcohol for Bigfoots; the youngest specimen she’s ever seen; and, of course, the inevitable awkward story about a woman impregnated by a Bigfoot (the resulting child lives a hidden life on a reservation, she says).
Brian Sullivan, founder of the Mon- tana Bigfoot Project, takes the completely opposite tack in his presentation, inform- ing us about the dangerous varieties of Bigfoot’s cousins, such as the aforemen- tioned Wendigo and Mountain Giants. These will eat you with little question, he said, and are not friendly like Bigfoot.
By this point in the conference, several attendees have cracked cans of beer, and some are taking the opportunity to work in a quick nap. Sullivan’s face is obscured by long, gray hair and a thick beard. He wears a Miskatonic University shirt, an homage to the fictional school that first appeared in an H.P. Lovecraft story and has now become part of the Cthulhu mythos.
His presentation delves into old newspaper reports of sightings across the country, and into various species classifications.
When a young girl in the audience asks what would happen if a Wendigo were to break into her house, Sullivan doesn’t sugarcoat his answer: You’d better have a weapon. He then tries to mitigate the sheer terror this answer has caused for the girl, by saying these creatures know better than to mess with humans because we’re usually armed and we live in groups.
The final presentation wraps up at about 3:15 p.m., and the group discussion
They often use communication like whistling, howling, and noises that sound like a big league slugger taking a prac- tice swing at the trunk of a massive tree. These aren’t the kind of animals you want to upset, he warns.
“What are you yelling at these crea- tures?” Cook asks. “It might be ‘Your mother is a hooker,’ you don’t know.”
He also talked about sussing out hoax stories, saying that most people who are lying won’t look you directly in the eye. To wit, Cook locks a woman in the audience with a stare and says, “I have seen a Big- foot. I know what I’ve seen.”
At the end of his slideshow, Cook takes questions about Bigfoot’s eating habits (omnivore) and the frequencies of sight- ings (most are secondhand), and informs the audience that he’ll be available to sign autographs for $5 a pop.
Next up, author Russell Acord regales the audience with tales of growing up in the Bitterroot Valley, and the idea that a lack of human experiences doesn’t dic- tate reality.
“I believe in the possibility of Big- foot,” Acord says. “I believe that there are things out there that we’ve never seen.”
To illustrate that point, Acord then shows a 3-minute, 27-second video of the stars in the Andromeda galaxy for “a little perspective.”
Acord has never seen Bigfoot, but he’s convinced by the stories he’s gathered. He’s a large man, with his close-cropped graying hair likely a throwback to his mil- itary days, a black-collared short-sleeve button-up shirt, forearm tattoos, and hands big enough to dwarf the micro- phone in his hands.
He writes books about a Vietnam vet- eran who has trouble blending in with society when he comes home from war,
and eventually lives with a tribe of Big- foots. Acord presents another view of Big- foot, one of a lonely creature that howls not to scare us, but to express its isolation and pain.
When he’s finished, Acord raffles off his new manuscript, one of many intrigu- ing raffle opportunities of the day; the first winner received a DVD of the “Min- erva Monster” movie, depicting a legend- ary 1978 sighting in Minerva, Ohio.
During lunch, I manage to pull confer- ence organizer Sarah Lederle away from her never-ending tasks to chat. She went to a Bigfoot conference in Ohio a while back, and upon her return, a friend asked why she couldn’t do something like that in Montana. She started planning on July 3.
“It’s gone amazingly well,” Lederle said, sitting on a comfortable red couch in the hotel’s lobby. “There are no Bigfoot events like this in our region.”
Lederle is a self-described skeptic without an experience of her own, but she doesn’t want to ignore possibilities she might not yet understand. Plus, all the people she’s encountered in the Big- foot community have made it an inviting, warm place.
“The community is so welcoming and wonderful as a whole,” she says. “We want a place for people to come and know they’re not alone. This is a no-shame zone.”
Soon, the next speaker on the agenda,
Becky Cook (no relation to Michael Cook), is sitting with us. She’s a story col- lector from Idaho who speaks with any- one who’s had Bigfoot run-ins, and the author of “Bigfoot Lives in Idaho,” and “Bigfoot Still Lives in Idaho.”
At 6-feet-6-inches tall, Cook is a pres- ence, with short hair, a bold face, and a tiny, almost-shy giggle that escapes from her wide and easy smile. Her Bigfoot experiences started early on as a child, growing up near the Shoshone-Bannock tribes on the Fort Hall Reservation.
The first story she heard was from her father – a local cop – when she was 4 or 5. He was called in for a report of a Bigfoot shaking a trailer off its foundations, after it had already destroyed a nearby pump house. Later on in life, she said she heard the full story, that the person living in the trailer had allegedly taken a potshot at a juvenile Bigfoot, and the avenging crea- ture was likely its mother.
Her perspective on Bigfoot is of a one- of-a-kind, family-based creature. She says the Bigfoots in her area know her, and visit her home often.
“I really don’t care what you think, because I know what I know,” Cook says, not to me in particular, but largely out of reflex.
Gathering stories follows the same path: people are reticent at first, but once they know it’s a conversation safe from
22
OCTOBER 28, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
“I BELIEVE IN THE POSSIBILITY OF BIGFOOT, I BELIEVE THAT THERE ARE THINGS OUT THERE THAT WE’VE NEVER SEEN.” MICHAEL COOK TITLE