This last week, I discovered one of my favorite things in the world: an eccentric. Her name is Mary Greeley and she has a website where she posts news videos about foreign affairs. Usually, it something like an article from The Times of India which she reads. The title sequence on the videos reads, “News they don’t want you to hear.” That sounds all conspiratorial, but the articles are really nothing special — things about Ukraine, North Korea, ISIS. And they are all from establishment news sources. A better tag line for the videos would be, “News you don’t care about because you’re an American and it happened outside the country.” But its cool that she does this. And she has over 15,000 followers with over two million views.
But as the Billings Gazette reported, “She also posts less newsy videos about Yellowstone, including webcam footage of tourists and scenic attractions.” And on 29 December 2014, she posted a three and a half minute video, Buffalo Arrive at Old Faithful Geyser, Yellowstone National Park. It’s actually amazing: the bison enter the valley through clouds of steam. But there’s more!
At 2:55 in the video, four dark figures walk between a break in the trees behind the bison. It’s so minor that I wouldn’t even have noticed. But that’s what separates the idiots like me from the Bigfoot hunters. YouTuber Thinker Thunker noticed these four humanoids and they determined that they were something special. According to him it is a “world record.” No one has ever caught four Bigfoot on video before! Thinker Thunker then goes on to do the kinds of analysis that we have become very familiar with from people who already know The Truth™ and are simply going to make the facts fit this.
It’s curious that he claims they are hunting the bison. Because they seem to be doing the opposite. They seem to be avoiding the bison. But even better than Thunker’s analysis are all the comments on his video and on Greeley’s original post. Lolita Grant wrote, “Your buffalo/geyser video here, may very well, turn out to be the best proof to date, that Bigfoot really does exist!!” (If you were a Bigfoot hunter, don’t you think that this news would justify three exclamation marks?!!!) Some people, like Monique Migneault, just don’t get the import of this video, “That’s soooo cool you shared this video. I saw 5 buffalo about 2 weeks ago grazing in the grass in the melted area just outside the path near Old Faithful…” Wake up Migneault! If bison were important, they would hide in shadows requiring video editing software to prove their existence!
But there were a lot of people who have no use for all this Bigfoot nonsense. My favorite came from Jon Loftus, who wrote:
I hope a survey team can make it to the area and look for evidence of these creatures before the weather removes it all (tracks, granola residue, cliff bar wrappers, receipts for over priced boots, etc).
I’m very excited and look forward to seeing if there is additional evidence of the Hikers.
The truth is that I don’t know that the Bigfoot doesn’t exist just as I don’t know that there isn’t a teapot orbiting the sun between Earth and Mars. But I’m pretty sure in both cases because the evidence is really lousy. But it bugs me that someone would post what is a magical video of bison and geysers, and think that it was important because four hikers in the background are “the best proof yet” for Bigfoot. We all need to open our eyes to the beauty and majesty of the world as it is. Be more like Monique Migneault and less like Thinker Thunker.
Afterword
For the record, I’m all for science as anyone who reads this site knows. But what the Bigfoot folks are doing is not science. It is rather like what the global warming deniers do: start with a conclusion, find or manufacture confirming data, and dismiss contradictory data. That’s not science. That’s apologetics.
