Last week we looked at "real" with
a chat about The Velveteen Rabbit; this week, inspired by the recent flap of Bigfoot sightings in Ohio, we turned our analysis to cryptids.
I started by asking the children to list words with < crypt > in them:
crypt
cryptic
crypto
cryptocurrency
cryptozoology
cryptid
SWI connection! Affixes are a group of word parts that includes prefixes, suffixes, and connecting vowel letters. We see the connecting vowel letter
< o > easily in < cryptocurrency > and < cryptozoology >!
(The < o > is preserved in < crypto > even though it connects to nothing, because < crypto > is a clip of a longer word.)
I read pp.4-13 from Land & Sea Monsters by Daniel Quinn. This book is a little out of date monster-wise (1971) but its initial section still holds up.
Note: I have three other books in my cryptid collection: The Very True Legend of the Mongolian Death Worms by Sandra Fay, Snowbound Secrets (Bhutan) by Virginia Kroll and Nívola Uyá, and Monstrous: The Lore, Gore, and Science behind Your Favorite Monsters by Carlyn Beccia.
What kinds of evidence would it take for you to be convinced that Bigfoot was real?
FR - Bigfoot is a large hairy bear basically. I can see that being real. I guess you can call a unicorn just like a goat and a horse.
Z - I would need to see Bigfoot behind bars, moving.
EO - I don't know how Bigfoot works but I'm imagining it kind of like a bear with its habits of scratching its back aginst the tree. If some of its fur got caught in the bark and someone found it and sent it to a lab and they confirmed that it wasn't actually a bear or something else with brown fur... A scientific test that is very reliable. Or somebody somehow caught it.
Z - I was reading a Childcraft book about legends and it was footprints but then the scientists looked at them and there's a kind of bear that has really big feet (but that's in Europe).
How do you know that somebody really saw what they thought they saw?
The group agreed that you would need to
capture it, fur (DNA evidence), or "a really legit photo." But then someone pointed out,
"Now with AI, I don't know if any photos or videos can be trusted."
Is there a kind of visual evidence that you could truly trust, besides your own actual experience?
FR - I don't know if I would trust myself, even with my own experience! In my bedroom, I tend to make something seem like it's really there. When I was little but even now, I tend to do it for fun sometimes just if I get bored. I can't trust myself to believe myself that I saw something.
I have woken up from dreams that I was sure really happened. Has that ever happened to you? [nods of agreement]
What was it about it that made it seem so real?
EO - Once I was awake and looking out my window, and there were these bright red eyes staring back at me and they were floating towards me and it seemed so real.
How do you know you were awake and not asleep?
EO - It just seems like something I can tell. I'm 99% sure that I was awake and that my head was trying to scare me. I imagine things that aren't there that really scare me. It felt so real because I was awake.
AAR - Sometimes your brain just puts more detail in a dream and tries to make you believe in this one thing more than other dreams. The night my dad died, there was this floating lantern thing and it was just floating around and around in the darkness. And then I woke up and knew that my dad died. My mom says that might have been my daddy coming to visit me. The weirdest dreams can feel real in the moment but then you realize it wasn't actually real. But in the moment it feels real because nothing else is happening.
FR - Your brain makes you believe that something is real because it's putting pictures of things that you've seen -- like a basement or movie characters -- all in this one thing. It makes it like it's happening. It wants you to believe that there's actual creatures that have been impossible to find.
Next, I read them the June 26, 1973 police report from a local "sighting" of an unexplained creature, since nicknamed "The Big Muddy Monster."
https://murphysboro.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Big-Muddy-Monster-Merged-File.pdf
Does reading this change your thoughts about what counts as evidence?
FR - Yes, just for this once. True, people have made up police reports. But for something like this, and people are still so sure about it. Many times over the years. And a trained animal. People from different timing that didn't even know it was there, a child that didn't know it, and an animal which is trained to not back down from searching things. It's pretty convincing.
AAR - I think since there are multiple people who saw it, there's evidence (the slime), the cops. Why would the cops lie? They did report the slime and that the monster must have had some kind of slime on it. Maybe the monster lived in the water by the pond. I think it might be real. There's a lot of evidence that it's probably real. If this creature has been reported again and then the exact same thing happened, slime that when you rubbed it put black on your fingers, dogs backing down...
Z - They could have done more. I think they should have taken the slime to the lab. Or searched to see where the kid said there was a white ghost, and see if there was slime there. When the dog wouldn't go into the barn, it's possible that the creature was visible to the dog but invisible to the cops. It couldn't be seen by people that were older than say 20.
EO - It has changed what I think, the animal and the child. The child seemed like it would be a younger child. I'm just going to say 5, I'm guessing. A 5 year old probably wouldn't understand how to get influenced from somebody else about there being a monster. Would not understand that. Seeing a "ghost" would not be influenced by anybody else. And then the dog cannot be influenced. They don't understand human speech enough to be influenced by that. I'm wondering if it was up in the rafters. Dogs have a special sound that they can hear that humans can't. Something the monster was making that the dog can hear but humans can't. There seem to be many signs that it's white. Other Bigfoot sightings are brown. I wonder if they are relatives.
CB - The slime could be sensitive to the temperature change. When he rubbed it between his fingers he warmed it up. And it would turn different colors.
Lastly, I read them a portion from https://www.bigfootohio.org that talks -- very charmingly -- about being rigorous in your methodology and being your own worst skeptic ("The Researcher's Creed: A Guide to Honest Bigfoot Investigation"). And then I shared some of the recent news items from Ohio and we examined whether the evidence there was convincing.
Fun fact: the collective noun for a group of Bigfoot sightings is a "flap."
Cluster of Bigfoot sightings reported in Northeast Ohio
newsnationnow.com
“It’s normal for there to be Bigfoot sightings all over the United States, but it’s not normal to have multiple sightings in a small area within a short number of days,” said Jeremiah Byron, host of the “Bigfoot Society Podcast.”
Byron has interviewed over 1,000 people on the subject and told NewsNation local affiliate WJW in Cleveland that these claims seem sincere.
Ohio Bigfoot Sighting Surge | Flap or Fakery?
reddit.com
As of this video being made, 8 sightings have been reported over the past 5 days in Northeast Ohio, including Mantua, Garrettsville, Headwaters, Windham, Streetsboro, Newton Township, and Lake Milton (Portage County and Trumbull County). But is this a legitimate Bigfoot flap? Or just clever fakery? All the reports come from anonymous sources, all reports are going to the Bigfoot Society podcast, and the reports gave gone viral very quickly, hitting the local news, social media, and even the mainstream media.
Bigfoot in Ohio? Reports of 'sightings' are going viral on social media
wlwt.com
An account called Bigfoot Society began posting about apparent encounters, with each video getting more and more views.
The account even has a map of where the 8 recent sightings were made, all in northeast Ohio over the past week or so.
The reports however weren't backed up with any photo or video evidence.
Reported "sightings" aren't new for the region.
In fact, an annual festival is held in Ohio dedicated to Bigfoot.
Bigfoot sightings light up the gloomiest corner of Ohio — residents report dogs are ‘shaking in fear’
nypost.com
At least seven Bigfoot sightings have been reported across northeast Ohio since Friday, according to the minds at the Bigfoot Society, with most of the encounters coming between Akron and Youngstown in Portage County.
One of the latest alleged incidents happened Monday evening in Streetsboro, with the witness insisting she hadn’t seen any of the other reports of the sightings.
“They were passing the Tinkers Creek area when a 6-and-a-half-foot lean, brown bigfoot appeared in their lane but going against the flow of traffic,” the Bigfoot Society’s Jeremiah Byron said.
“They were so close that the witness said that her daughter could have reached out and hit the Bigfoot with her arm.”
“She was so freaked out she couldn’t turn around and go back — she is not a Bigfoot person,” Byron added.
Surprising no one, perhaps, none of the Bigfoot spotters have managed to snap a photo — despite the ubiquity of high-resolution cameras on modern smartphones.
And no reports have been made with local police, either, according to the Canton Repository.
Do you think that there is enough evidence here?
The children were very disappointed! They were all talking over each other in their frustration:
Why didn't she reach out with her arm, grab the fur and bring the fur to an office or something?
It's no proof just to say.
No pictures, no nothing.
It's all from the
same source (Jeremiah Byron), the people are anonymous, no police reports.
Why didn't she take a picture, why didn't she grab some fur, why is it just word of mouth?
Update - Mar 23, 2026
Today we followed up on this by reading The Nantucket Sea Monster: A Fake News Story by Darcy Pattison. The events in this story took place in 1937. It makes for a great student conversation on the rights -- and responsibilities -- that come along with having a free press!
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