Theory

My family and I have lived along a small wooded creek in Central Illinois for almost twenty-two years. Until May of 2005 we had neither seen nor heard anything unusual.

Wildlife that we have seen along and near the creek includes: beaver, bobcat, coyotes, deer, groundhogs, fox, mink, mountain lions, opossum, rabbits and raccoons. For a great article on mountain lions in Illinois see:
The beast of the bluffs by Scott Maruna.

There has been nothing unusual about the wildlife we see. Most people when they travel through Illinois see mainly corn and soybean fields not realizing the miles and miles of wooded rivers and streams that drain the fertile prairie.

From 1986 to 2002 we raised llamas on a two acre pasture that borders the creek. We had several Great Pyrenees dogs for protection from the coyotes. The Great Pyrenees are quite vocal but nothing strange was noticed or heard in all those years.

On the 23rd of May 2005 my world changed forever. My wife came home one evening around 8:30 p.m. I went outside onto the driveway and noticed that my seven month old Karelian Bear Dog puppy (Belle) was out by the barn barking towards the creek. I told my wife I was going to take the dog to the creek and show Belle where the deer bedded down in the tall grass close to the creek.

I put a lead on the dog and as I approached the edge of the backyard going into the pasture I heard what sounded like a giant man roaring towards the house. It is difficult to put into words exactly what it sounded like, but it was a very clean sound, not like a scream. And it sounded like whatever the animal was, it’s chest cavity was very large. The roar also had a distinctively human sounding element to it. The closest sound that I can find is a Digital Bigfoot Recording created by Matt Knapp and featured on Lets Talk Bigfoot! with Teresa Hall.

After that night I started recording nightly. I have recorded wood-knocks, howls, unusual voices. Then on the fourth of April 2006 I recorded on five different nights what I call the Illinois Howl. 

What has bothered me since that time is why did that animal pick my home to stop by and howl? Why only howl that April and May, and why not since then? Why did I not hear this animal sometime before during the twenty-plus years we have lived here? Assuming that what ever is howling is intelligent and has a purpose what is the reason for the howl and why only at my home? I have spoken with neighbors and none of them have heard anything unusual.

Recently I was visiting a fellow researcher and I asked her to listen to some of my sounds and to give me her honest opinion specifically about the Illinois Howl.

Stan – “Do you think this is a locator call, the animal trying to find other members of it’s family?

My friend – “No.”

Stan – “Do you think this is some type of mating call?”

My friend – “No.”

Stan – “Do you think this is imitating the coyotes?”

My friend – “No.”

Stan – “Then what does it mean?”

Her answer was “Stan, I believe it is imitating Belle.”

Stan – “What do you mean, imitating Belle and why?”

My friend – “It is a well known phenomena for coyotes to send in a lone member of the pack to play with a dog, get it’s confidence and get it to follow out into the woods where the pack descends upon the dog and kills it.” I think whatever is doing those howls is doing the same thing, trying to get Belle to come out so it can kill her.”

I was shocked. I had never considered that perhaps Belle was the single thing different about my place in the last twenty-two years. When we had the Great Pyrenees they were restricted to the pasture, and seldom ventured into the woods. Belle from the age of three months to two years ran with wild abandon through the woods much as a teenager. Being a hunting dog, she is extremely alert, and always looking for something to chase, whether squirrels , rabbits or deer. As Belle has matured she has calmed down, she sleeps more and is more satisfied to be let out in the evening to exercise and then be restricted to a fenced in area of the backyard for the rest of the night. Belle spends her nights on a brick wall that encloses our patio.

Like most dogs Belle does bark some but once in about every six weeks goes into a strange drawn out howl. The first time I heard her do the strange howl was the fourth of April, 2006 when I recorded the first Illinois Howl.

On this recording you can hear coyotes, followed by Belle’s barking, followed by the Illinois Howl and then Belle’s strange drawn-out howls.

So why have I not heard or recorded the Illinois Howl in two years? My only conclusion, is that since Belle is no longer in the puppy stage, she stays out of the woods and stays closer to the house. Belle has become less of a threat, or a perceived threat to whatever is out in those woods and making those howls.

On the 4th of February 2008 DB Donlon of Virginia (The Blogsquatcher) was a guest on Squatchdetective Radio.

During the show DB shared some of his sound recordings. DB also discussed what he calls Sound Skeptics. I thought it was a very good statement and you can read it below and also listen to the original sound clip.

Sound Skeptics- play

DB Donlon –

Sound skeptics will object that you can’t tell what animal made a sound if you didn’t see the animal make it. I think this is true in the broadest sense. After all, I can play a file of a coyote and if you heard it in the distance, you’d think it was an actual coyote, and not a recording.

But an important point I want to stress is that these same sound skeptics are the first to say, “you’ve recorded a coyote,” or “you’ve recorded a hog” when they hear the sounds we get. They don’t say they don’t know what it is, they almost always define it as something known, and they get to that identification from the sound alone. If you can’t tell what made a sound without visually i.d.ing the sound maker, how do they know we’ve recorded coyotes and hogs?

I’m not just making that point to rub someone’s nose in it, I’m saying you can’t have it both ways. If it really is possible to id creatures by their vocalizations (and we do this all the time, don’t we? When we hear an owl call, we don’t say, “I’ll never know what that is..” we say, “oh, an owl!” The plain fact of the matter is that the calls we’ve recorded don’t sound like coyotes, and they certainly don’t look like coyote calls when you look at them in the software. They do sometimes sound coyote-ish, but they don’t sound like the coyote calls I’ve found on the net. (I’m being strict about definitions here — like serving as an = sign, rather than an approximation.) Nor does the East Central Ohio chatter sound like a hog, rather, occasionally hog-ish.

So when the skeptics tell you that we can’t tell what made the sound because we didn’t see the animal making it, you insist that they stick to that. They are right, we can’t really tell. So let’s stop calling these things misidentifications out of hand in an attempt to quell all interest in sounds. It’s a legitimate area of research. Who knows what advances will come in the future that will make this kind of research easier?

Vocal mimicry in bigfoot has been talked about among researchers. However it is difficult enough to recognize a bigfoot sound let alone a bigfoot imitating birds or other animals.

Mimic is described by Wikipedia as:

“….any species that has evolved to appear similar to another successful species in order to dupe predators into avoiding the mimic, or dupe prey into approaching the mimic.”

“….a mimic doesn’t try to blend with the surroundings, but to appear as some other creature.”

Sound mimicry has been described in many birds, marine mammals as well as primates, humans, cetaceans, seals and birds. Especially in birds is mimicry well known and accepted. Mockingbirds, catbirds, and various other birds do some really great imitation calls. I have seen a blue jay give a perfect red-tailed hawk’s call which I wouldn’t have believed if I weren’t watching it just ten feet away.

There is a great amount of scientific literature available that deals with all aspects of vocal mimicry, the great apes and human speech:

The Life of Mammals, Vol. 4 DVD
David Attenborough
..”only feet from an orangutan .. discussed the intelligence and mimicry abilities of these great apes. “…”and mimicry are all primate traits according to Attenborough. ”

The evolution of speech: a comparative review.
Trends in cognitive sciences, 4(7):258–267.
Fitch, W. T. (2000)
“At least two changes were necessary prerequisites for modern human speech abilities: (1) modification of vocal tract morphology, and (2) development of vocal imitative ability.”

The Biology and Evolution of Language
Philip Lieberman
Man, New Series, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), p. 542
“All great apes have large air sacs attached to their larynges, …..”

Humankind Emerging
Bernard G. Campbell
“Vocal mimicry not only makes speech possible, but is used by hunters…”

Social Imitation In Neonatal Monkeys
“Mimicry exists throughout the animal kingdom, but imitation with a purpose–matching one’s behavior to others’ as a form of social learning–has been seen only in great apes.”

The Cognitive Prerequisites for Language
“Vocal mimicry, to say nothing of vocal imitation, seems to play, at most, no more than a very minor role among any species of primate other than humans (Seyfarth and Cheney 1997).”

Although none of the following examples can be proven to be a bigfoot vocalization most occurred in areas that had previous eye-witness bigfoot sightings.

Suspected bigfoot vocalizations:

1 – Barred Owl – I spent the night of 27th of August 2005 near Seneca, Illinois in my van and kept the microphone on the roof. I heard about fifty whistles and then rock knocking. After the barred owl hooting the rock knocking started up again.

2 – Barred Owl and dogs from the Argosy Project – quoting – “The day after the rock clacking incident, I came back to the location alone to leave the Bigfoot more food. It was about 6:45 p.m. and I was finishing packing up my gear at my spotters station when I heard a hoot to the east in the woods. I would call it more like someone doing a bad imitation of a barred owl hoot. It hooted a few more times, and each hoot seemed to be very low to the ground about 250 feet away.”

“Then I heard a dog barking just north of the hooting. The barking didn’t seem very convincing to me. I’ve heard it numerous times before, and the barking sound is always stationary. After a brief pause, whoever was doing the hooting and barking moved closer together. I could hear rustling in the undergrowth as the two individuals met. I’ve never heard of an owl walking to a dog before. Shortly afterward I heard two whoops almost immediately to my left.”

3 – Dog barks – I have a report from Madison County, Illinois from a witness who has had several sightings this summer and fall. He relates that he heard what appeared to be a military type formation moving along the creek behind his house. He described the sounds as being dog-like “but not quite”. The sounds were proceeding forward, being answered left and right as it moved upstream, perhaps following a deer.

4 – Wild Turkey Clucks – On the 12 of April 2005 I went to my local state park. As I was sitting on a log near a large thicket I heard what I thought was wild turkeys clucking. When I turned around to investigate, the sounds stopped and I heard a loud wood knock coming from the top of the hill.

5 – Raccoon – I have a friend that does nighttime recording close to St.Louis, Missouri along the Missouri Bottoms. He has recorded what he describes as raccoon-like sounds but not quite.

6 – Raccoon – I recorded this raccoon-like sound near a feeding station where raccoons are not seen.

7 – Coyote – I recorded an unknown howl this spring in Central Illinois. This has been discussed at the Illinois Howl webpage. It has been labelled as either a coyote or wolf. However I have a Native American friend who reassures me that it is a bigfoot mimicing a coyote. I have reports of the same type of vocalizations being heard by hunters and researchers in Georgia, Oregon and four different locations in Illinois.

8 – Jungle birds – I have a report from Northern Illinois and I myself have heard in Central Illinois in the daytime, during the winter, what can only described as a jungle bird type sound.

What is the purpose of all these suspected vocalizations? Although no one knows for sure I think it is safe to assume that it is a way for an elusive animal to stay hidden and not give away their presence and position whether it be to prey animals or humans.

I have a friend at work by the name of Jennifer. Now when the topic of bigfoot research comes up in conversation she goes into a tirade usually along the lines of – Where’s the evidence? Where’s the body? Why hasn’t one been shot?

If you mention to her that all of these questions have already been addressed on many of the websites, she laughs boldly and walks away.

This reaction to the mentioning of the word bigfoot I admit is very common in our modern American society. I am not a psychologist so I can not adequately explain or understand it other than I suspect its root causes are

1) Fear of the unknown.
2) Fear of anything associated with the dark.
3) Fear of the “boogie man” or “monsters in the closet”.
4) Concerns that we humans are not the only upright walking ape.

What about me? Am I insulted or feel put down because of the ridicule? No. Although I may disapprove of their reaction or taunts I know that it has been a common situation for a long, long time.

What about the witnesses?

I have interviewed several hundred people who have seen an animal that is not accepted to exist by the general public.

I spoke with a lady in Southern Missouri who had been traumatized by seeing an animal who came very close to her car while she was driving. She was distraught and close to tears the hour I spent with her on the phone. My role of investigating the report for the website became secondary to counseling the witness and trying to reassure her that although she had been frightened by being so close to the animal she was in no real danger.

Nighttime sighting on country dirt road in Southern Missouri.

Other encounters that can be considered somewhat harrowing are:

Couple has car shaken and sees large animal up close near Tebbetts, Missouri.

Two teenagers have sighting east of Seneca, Illinois.

Considerations for witnesses coming forward with their stories.

To even report an encounter to a family member, co-worker or a website requires that the witness admits to themselves about the incident. I have a contact who after relating the story to me about the sightings he and his wife had been having I cautioned him about telling people about it at work. It was too late, his wife had already shared her story at the office. Her co-workers laid out a trail of M & M’s down the hallway and through the office and played a game called “follow the bigfoot”.

Many witnesses that I contact express their relief that they have someone to tell their story to. Often times they are not interested in having their stores published, they are just appreciative to have had someone to listen to them. Several times I have been told “in the twenty years since my incident I have spoken to no one about this other than my spouse and you”.

Several years ago when I got involved in research my wife’s family, although not outwardly skeptical, did seem to harbor a little doubt about what I was doing. One nephew told me “I am forty years old and have hunted these woods all my life and I have never seen or heard anything out of the ordinary nor do I know anyone that has”.

On the 23rd of Jan I gave him a phone call. I said “If you are not too busy I have something I want to show you.”

As he knelt in the trail and felt the depression that each toe had made in the ice and snow I saw a different look in his eyes.

It is amazing to see someone discover for themselves what the truth is and not what they have been told by society.