The Historical Bigfoot

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 348 pages
• Published by: Coachwhip Publications August 22, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1930585306
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1930585300
• Book Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1 pounds

Product Description
The Historical Bigfoot covers sightings of Wild Men, Gorillas, Yahoos, and What-Is-It's, from the early 1800s to the 1940s. Before the term "Bigfoot" was coined to signify an unknown species of North American primate, sightings of towering bipedal apes were reported throughout the continent, but called a variety of names. This book compiles and sorts the most significant sightings, but also provides a look at hoaxes, misidentifications, and the influential perspective of newspaper editors as they dealt with reports of a strange hairy manlike ape.

Reader Reviews
Chad Arment delves into the possible historical references of bigfoots. The author basically collected newspaper/magazine articles from the early 1800s up until roughly 1940, the time before the "big boom of bigfoot". This is before the general terms of bigfoot and sasquatch were used, so references are to wild man, apeman, gorilla, or 'nondescript'. He alphabetically covers areas through the U.S. and Canada and includes references to the sightings based on newspaper. It was an interesting book but does get rather monotonous. All in all, it's a good reference for pre-"bigfoot" name incidents but the incidents themselves fall anywhere within hoaxes, made-up news stories, actual sightings, local myths, boogeyman stories, and real hermits/runaways. The amusing part of this whole collection is just how many newspapers would claim the creatures were escaped circus/carnival/zoo gorillas/orang-utangs/chimps/baboons. Man, zoo and circus security must have sucked because there were gorillas escaping all over the place. You quickly can tell this is an excuse the news used to try and explain the incidents, whether there were in reality any escaped gorillas or not. With the number of "escaped gorillas" from circuses, you'd think they wouldn't have any attractions left. The second amusing explanation by the news was that these were often halfbreed children, escaped insane people (again very poor security for asylums), or lost hikers which all managed to instantly grow full body covering hair. Whew, if there were that many escaped crazy people, escaped gorillas, and feral hair-sprouting lost people, I'd be seriously concerned how the country ever developed. Not to mention the 100-man posses all over the countryside hunting down these gorillas and crazies but never managing to capture them. Overall, it's not your traditional bigfoot book and that's good. It's a much better book on how far-fetched the newspapers got regarding "wildman" sightings. It should be in your bigfoot collection but it does get monotonous. Also the author only presents the articles, he doesn't offer any theories or explanations to the stories.