Yowieocalypse V2.0 - 2021 page 2

This is a personal quest into the mysteries that inspired my childhood with a particular focus on the Yowie, Australia's Bigfoot. A labour of love since 2009/2010 -- no sponsors, no merchandise for sale, not cencerned about 'likes'.

Yowieocalypse (version 1) was of mixed success. It is sloppy and disorganised and much of it remains unfinished. Cryptozoology is a massive subject to tackle and I simply bit off more than I could chew.

However, I did succeed in getting to the bottom of a couple of Yowie cases (a rare feat, apparently), published online the first ever image of the enigmatic historical figure H.J. McCooey, and finding the earliest documented use of the word "yowie" in indigenous culture (I think). I was even once mistaken for a Yowie myself. Fun times...

Yowieocalypse (v2.0) will focus more on writing online articles which examine specific events and ideas in greater depth. Perhaps I'll even have a go at explaining the Yowie phenomenon. The latest information in things I find interesting will still be tracked and shared.

This is serious research, seriously! Enjoy...

ESSENTIAL READING:

Native and western eyewitness testimony in cryptozoology

By J. Rabbit (2002)

In Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, edited by G.M. Eberhart. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, xxxv–xliii

The three-way conversation included the voice of Burtsev, a male friend in Russia, and Bigfoot creature. It lasted about 20 minutes and included a husky, gravelly-sounding voice hissing and screeching in short bursts that Burtsev interpreted as friendly greetings to those at the conference, along with messages denouncing poachers and those who desecrate the forests where “the forest people” — as Bigfoot are called in Russia — reside.

Dr Waldron said the memory could play tricks on people. “So often what you see in the excitement of the moment can look quite different under the camera later,” he said. “I've actually talked to people who have taken photos and were sure they'd seen a big cat, and when they've shown photos to me they are suddenly unsure.”

The Yowie Hunter from Australian Yowie Research claimed the photos, taken in May at Springbrook National Park on the Gold Coast, show two 'eight-foot tall Yowies'. The Yowie Hunter claimed the first Yowie pretended to be a tree in a bid to hide from the researchers. 'It's doing what Yowies do, they all hug a tree,' he said.

'Sasquatch' is actually about self-described “gonzo journalist” David Holthouse looking into three gory killings supposedly done in 1993 by a rampaging Bigfoot in the “Emerald Triangle” of Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties in Northern California, where generations of ex-hippie cannabis growers have built a lucrative empire. Only it turns out the murders were done by humans, “who are the real monsters”.

My most accurate description is that cryptozoology is a social phenomenon where legendary and rumored animals are studied and/or appreciated… Some self-styled cryptozoologists admit their interest is an escape from the every-day world. It’s exciting to entertain ideas that cryptids may exist and they can be the ones to discover them.

These results demonstrate that there are certain images for which people consistently make the same false memory error, despite majority of visual experience being the veridical image. These errors suggest shared representations in memory, even for false information.

I started probing into the video and the circumstances around its production and found some issues so I began asking the Yowie Hunter some open questions on the Coalition for Critical Thinking in Bigfoot Research Facebook page but the questions remain unanswered.

In 97 % of the cases, they are perceived as grounded in the actual environment, thus indicating involvement of higher-level regions of the perceptual network subserving the fusion of sensory and hallucinatory content. Perceptual release and deafferentiation are the most likely underlying mechanisms.

I suggest that individuals now perform monster-hunting through documentary media consumption, festival attendance, and museum curation and visitation, which are all forms of cryptid tourism. I refer to monster-hunting as the act of how an individual or community looks at, lives with, and searches for unexplained, unknown, or unnatural creatures, beasts, and animals and the Cryptid Tourist Gaze is a means by which those acts are performed.

Hurn sees cryptozoology fitting nicely into what she and several of her contributors describe as the “ontological turn” of anthropology, which emphasizes the idea that one’s experiences don’t always correlate to reality as empirically verified. In Hurn’s case, this means that while she maintains that she did encounter an ABC in the Welsh countryside, the experience doesn’t necessarily lead her to declare that ABCs exist in the U.K. in a way that science can verify.

When we ask if Bigfoot exists, we’re asking the wrong question. Bigfoot exists, in a sense. He exists in a fundamentally more important way than roaming through the woods — as a representation of humanity’s curiosity, imagination, and determination. Bigfoot is a symbol of hope, of the belief that there is still more to learn, and of the acceptance that we’ll never know everything. It’s humbling to think this way.

Strikingly, as the lives of Warlpiri people changed with colonisation, so too did the lives of Pangkarlangu… The phenomena of the Pangkarlangu at Lajamanu and at Yuendumu show us the monster heralds change as well as changing itself.

In 1881 George Drevar, a merchant captain who had survived a shipwreck in the Cape Verde Islands, was tried at the Old Bailey for libel and threatening the life of the Commissioner of Wreck, Henry Cadogan Rothery, in part because of a disagreement over the existence of the great sea serpent. Drevar’s actions seem to have been driven by mental illness caused by the stress of shipwreck coupled with a fervent religiosity with regard to the sea serpent.

After the 'San Andreas' Bigfoot rumor took the internet by storm, Rockstar not only kept the rumor going for quite some time but would also reference Bigfoot in other games. For the record, Bigfoot is nowhere to be found in 'GTA: San Andreas' without the use of mods.

Green’s obsession has come at a price. He’s estranged from his two grown children. Daughter Anita Green tells Guterson she questions her father’s sanity. She calls his obsession a disease. “To watch him come in and out of reality … was torture.” It’s driven her to tears. Stepson Chris Williams speaks of not having seen his father for years.

"I am firmly convinced," wrote Harris, "that this unknown mechanic and insurance peddler is one of the most outstanding poets that we have produced here." Yet within weeks, it emerged that neither Ern Malley, nor his sister Ethel, had ever existed.

What we actually see or hear or feel or taste or smell isn't actually what's out there, but what we think is out there. "If you see a younger woman, you can't see the old woman, and if you see the old woman, you can't see the young woman, because there is a simple principle that in every part of our visual field, we see a certain region either as a figure, or as a ground," Dr Spehar says.

The “myth of the ‘Gympie Pyramid” is a fraud which has been innocently repeated by many well-meaning people, according to respected Gympie historian Elaine Brown. Dr Brown, recognised for her thorough research of early settlement records, says the “pyramid”, officially called Rocky Ridge, is just that, a “rocky ridge.”

“None of Gilroy's alleged Cryptid footprints look at all like real footprints. I think they've been created by human hands. If you compare this alleged track to real fossil Dinosaur footprints you'll see that Gilroy's one looks totally fake, artificial, superficial and lacking in any and all detail. Same goes for the yowie prints he purports to have cast, by the way.”

Note that links to the "Yowie thermal" videos are now unavailable. Why were they removed? Is it an acknowledgment that Yowies weren’t actually captured on thermal video? Is it an attempt to avoid further scrutiny? Is Big Brother responsible? Or have the rights been sold?

At any rate, removing the original videos makes further analysis impossible.

Note: The YowieOcalypse website will no longer provide analysis nor comment on the claims and "evidence" by a particular individual and his/her "research group."

However, if you have any questions about such "Yowie evidence" I am more than happy to answer private enquiries from interested individuals, independent researchers, and journalists. There are many inconsistencies.

Questionable claims and evidence deserve to be questioned and I encourage those with a genuine interest in the Yowie phenomenon to take a closer look at what is going on. Future cryptozoological conferences provide wonderful opportunities for anyone to question the so-called "Yowie experts" on the inconsistencies of their claims and evidence.