Yowiehunters Forum

Ruby Lang wrote:Hi Guys,

Well, I have believed for some time that there is a paranormal aspect to the yowie mystery.

The native custodians of this land, the Aborigines, have referred to them as spirit beings as well as flesh and blood...and then there are those 'backward pointing feet'. Hardly the physical attribute of a flesh and blood creature - and a characteristic of faerie creatures in mythology worldwide.

Let me direct some of the more well-read members of the forum to the Myths and Monsters 2001 talk given by researcher Tony Healy (co-author of Out of the Shadows and the soon-to-be-released The Yowie File), who has also explored the paranormal dimension to the yowie in his talk "High Strangeness in Yowie Reports": Are the hairy giants flesh and blood - or are they psychic phenomena? Yowies appear to be part of a world-wide phenomenon of strikingly similar traditions of uncatchable ape-men occur in many other parts of the world.

I reproduce it here in full because I know 99.9% of people won't bother to look it up or consider any of the arguments

Ruby

"The vast majority of people who report yowie sightings sincerely believe they haveencountered living, breathing animals - some kind of extremely elusive ape or giant,primitive hominid. Their eyewitness testimony is supported by footprints, tree bites and otherphysical evidence which proves the creatures are much more than mere hallucinations. Thereare, however, many other elements of the mystery which suggest it may not be ananthropological or zoological problem at all - but perhaps something a great deal weirder:some kind of psychic phenomenon.

Many yowie researchers dislike any mention of the supernatural and feel that proponents ofthe paranormal are attempting to solve one problem by creating another. They are concernedthat people who raise the spectre - so to speak - of the paranormal will strengthen the hand ofthe sceptics, confuse the media and scare off those few scientists who have been courageousenough to express an interest in cryptozoology.I can understand their reactions - I had the same attitude myself for several years.

But if wereject everything about the yowie which smacks of the paranormal we will have to sweep approximately 20% of the accumulated data under the carpet. To do that would be not onlyunscientific - but also plain dishonest. Nothing would thrill me more than for someone to prove conclusively that yowies arephysically real - but I now suspect that will never happen. After 25 years on their trail I am strongly inclined to believe the creatures are shape-shifting phantoms which may alwaysremain beyond human comprehension.I may be wrong ( and in fact I hope I am ) but as Fred Beck, one of the miners who wasinvolved in the famous 1924 bigfoot encounter, known as the Ape Canyon Incident, oncesaid, ?It is no sin to be wrong, just as it does not make a person a saint to be right.?

(1)There are many reasons why I suspect there is something quite uncanny about the yowie. Idon't have space here to discuss them all, so I will focus instead on just three majorconsiderations:1. Elusive hairy giants are a world-wide phenomenon.Uncatchable hairy ape-men have been reported in every state and territory of Australia, invirtually every state and province of the USA and Canada, in Guatemala, Panama, Colombia,Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Nepal, China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, NewGuinea, New Zealand, Kenya, India and even Japan.For centuries tens of thousands of armed men - aboriginies, explorers, trappers, hunters,prospectors, soldiers - have roamed most of the areas concerned, wiping out whole species oflarge animals - and races of people - yet no museum has so much as a finger bone of a yeti toexamine.

I just cannot see how giant apes could have avoided being captured, killed or clearlyphotographed in one or other of those areas - unless they have an avoidance technique whichis way beyond our ken.Yowie and bigfoot - the terrible twinsI now believe that the elusive ape-men of Australia and North America are not just verysimilar but are, in fact, exactly the same creature. There is not space here to list all thesupporting evidence but it boils down, essentially, to this:In virtually all aspects of their appearance, their behaviour and the reactions they engender inother animals, in tribal people, modern witnesses, believers and sceptics, the animals areidentical. (2)There is reason to suspect the Himalayan yeti and several other types of elusive ape-men arealso part of the same phenomenon.

2. Hot Spots: The yowie/black panther/lake monster/UFO connectionThe second major consideration is this: localities which produce hairy man reports alsofrequently produce reports of other strange phenomena.In the year I spent on the trail of the sasquatch I concentrated, naturally, on areas whereNative Americans had always believed in the hairy giants and where white people hadreported sightings since the frontier days. To my surprise I found that in virtually all of thoselocations people had also reported a variety of other strange, uncatchable animals. The mostcommon of these were ?black panthers? and Loch Ness style lake and river monsters. Severalof these "hot spots" also produced a large number of UFO reports.To give just one example:?O Canada - you're so weird?Many sasquatch sightings have occurred near the village of Easterville, Manitoba, which issituated on a thin isthmus surrounded by Lake Winnipeg, Lake Winnipegosis and Cedar Lake,all of which have produced many lake monster reports.The lake monsters have been seen out of the water, on beaches or in swamps, on at least threeoccasions. On one occasion a sasquatch was seen wading out of Lake Winnipeg. Although mountain lions are believed not to exist at all in Manitoba, four ?black panther?sightings also occurred in the immediate area. The three different types of mystery animalswere all reported within a radius of 10 miles. In North Carolina and Florida I interviewed people whose properties had been visited by boththe bigfoot and black panthers. One witness had been fortunate enough to sight both types ofanimal. Here in Australia the same pattern has emerged: many yowie ?hot spots? such as the BlueMountains and the Batemans Bay to Bega area also produce reports of several other types ofstrange, elusive animals. As in America the most common of these is the ?black panther?,and, as in America, some lucky individuals have actually seen both types of creatures.

Yowies and bunyips
The unlikely link between giant ape-men and lake and river monsters is less evident inAustralia than in America, but I believe it does exist.One area which has produced a plethora of yowie, black panther and bunyip reports since the1820s is the ACT and immediate environs.

(3)The UFO/Yowie LinkIn North America an apparent link between bigfoot and UFOs has been noted on manyoccasions. Between June 1973 and February 1974 in western Pennsylvania there was aphenomenal outbreak of weirdness which yielded 118 bigfoot and not less than 600 UFOreports. On a dozen occasions low flying UFOs were reported immediately before or after abigfoot sighting.

(4)Definite yowie/UFO connections are much rarer but they have been reported.In January 1975 people near Goolma NSW observed a UFO descend and possibly land. Overthe following two weeks there was an intense wave of yowie reports - which suddenly ceasedafter a second UFO was seen.

(5)Some yowie and bigfoot enthusiasts simply ignore the apparent UFO connection and others,like the irascible Rene Dahinden, love to ridicule the idea. Sometimes, however, the link is soobvious it simply can't be swept aside.Consider these two cases:(a) On 27 September 1973 two witnesses in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, told of seeing awhite, hair-covered creature with red eyes ?carrying a luminescent sphere in its hand?. Otherpeople saw a strange craft hovering over the woods into which the creature disappeared.

(6)(b) In June 1975 at Tailem Bend, SA, two groups of people saw a giant hairy ape-man withwhat looked like a lantern in his hand. A third group saw a huge illuminated dome-shape inthe same field.

(7)Significantly, local Aborigines say the Murray River at Tailem Bend is inhabited by a bunyipknown as the Moolgewanke which resembles an ape-like man ?more than ten feet tall ... longblack hair, dark red eyes, large teeth and webbed hands and feet.?

(8)So at Tailem bend we have a yowie/bunyip / UFO link. 3. High Strangeness in Yowie reportsThe third major consideration is simply the sheer, out- and- out weirdness of some details insome reports. Some of the weirdest details have cropped up time and again, in both Australiaand overseas.

?Nameless dread?
No doubt an unexpected encounter with an 8 foot tall ape would give anyone a bit of a jolt,but some yowie witnesses - and their horses and dogs as well - become much more frightenedthan you would reasonably expect.In 1912 a surveyor, Charles Harper, said that when he and two assistants were approached by"a huge man-like animal" in the Currickbilly Range of south-east NSW his fierce huntingdogs retreated whining and one of his assistants fainted and ?remained unconscious forseveral hours.?

(9)Exactly the same thing happened near Easterville, Manitoba, in the early 1970s: a witnessfainted dead away, later suffered recurring nightmares and could not sleep without a loadedgun beside his bed.

(10)In 1998, at a village on the NSW south coast, a friend of mine noticed a huge hairy hominidobserving her from the treeline and immediately experienced almost unbearable fearcombined with the feeling that her spine was literally in the icy grip of something quitesinister.Later, on a nearby fire trail the horse she was riding stopped dead, trembled, almost crouched,and stared fixedly into the bush. Seconds later, as the woman again felt the icy fear, the horseturned and, unprompted, galloped three miles home.That story illustrates one of the strangest things about the ?nameless dread?: you don?t have toactually see, hear, or smell the hairy giants to be poleaxed by overwhelming fear.Many such reports have been noticed by North American researchers. As early as 1970 LeeTrippett of Oregon stated ?He [the bigfoot] can terrorise you from the far side of a mountain.?Feeling Abominable It seems the elusive hairy giants of the Himalayas also possess the handy ability to zap othercreatures telepathically.In 1983 a Scottish scientist, Bill Grant, was approaching a tiny lake on the Nepal/Tibet borderwhen he was suddenly immobilised by overwhelming fear and a voice- that-was -not-a -voicecommanding him to go no further. Much as he struggled to do so the veteran expeditionerfound that he simply could not take another step forward. He retreated and hours laterreturned to find the psychic barrier had lifted. Cautiously proceeding, he discovered a line ofhuge five toed tracks along the muddy shore.

(11)There is no space to go into it here, but a number of lake monster and alien big cat witnesseshave also experienced the dreaded "nameless dread."

The scent of a yowieIn about 10% of yowie cases the creatures have exuded a mind-bogglingly foul stench. It canbe bad enough to make a person vomit and the pongy pongids seem to be able to release thechoking miasma at will. Usually the smell is compared to that of rotting meat, bat droppings or a ?badly kept countrydunny? but occasionally witnesses say the creatures left a distinct electrical smell ?like burntelectrical wiring?, ?burnt bakelite?, ?a sulphury stink?.
(12)Interestingly, in a very dramatic bigfoot/UFO case in Pennsylvania in 1973, witnessesdescribed a strong smell of sulphur and burning rubber.

(13)Jeepers creepersA weird detail which has cropped up repeatedly in America but also here is that the hairygiants' eyes are said not only to just reflect light but to glow in the dark as if lit from within.

(14)Knock knock, who's there? The polt connection As if the yowie/black panther/bunyip/UFO connection was not weird enough, three cases inour files suggest our Furry Friends might also have something in common with poltergeists.For example, in 1946, when George Nott and his family moved into a long-abandonedproperty near Wilcannia, they heard thumping sounds in the ceiling. Doors swung open,objects flew, and so many pebbles fell on the roof that they ?sounded like a heavy shower ofrain.? At the same time as this classic poltergeist phenomena , huge human-like tracksappeared in the yard and a large, very irate hairy ape-man began to invade the house, oncetrying to drag Mrs Nott outside.Not surprisingly, the family soon moved to an out-station.

(15)What's afoot? Thanks to the work of many investigators and eye-witnesses we now have a pretty goodcomposite description of the average yowie, from the top of his head down to ankle level.After that, however, things become a lot more confusing.Over the past 150 years or so people who have observed the yowies' feet or examined trackshave often disagreed not only on the general shape of the foot but even on the number of toes.Five-toed tracks may be the most common, but three, four and even six-toed tracks have beenreported by apparently reputable people, sometimes immediately after yowie sightings.

(16)The same problem arises in North America - and probably the Himalayas as well.Obviously, something is seriously amiss. Either an army of extremely ham-fisted hoaxers hasbeen at work on two continents for 150 years or the yowie, the sasquatch and company are, asI suspect, shape - shifters.

There is a great deal more extreme weirdness in our files but we do not have space to discussit all here. Instead I will conclude with one particular "high strangeness" case which is takingplace right now.Out of the Blue LabyrinthJerry and Sue O?Connor, the principal witnesses in this case, are happy to have their namesused, but asked me not to reveal the exact location of their property. Suffice to say they live inthe Blue Mountains to the south of the Great Western Highway, where the land immediatlybehind their house falls away into a vast maze of twisting, scrub-covered ravines known asthe Blue Labyrinth.Since moving into the area in September 1997 the O'Connors have been regularly visited byyowies, have seen them on numerous occasions, have fed them and have communicated withthem, both telepathically and by more conventional means.Many people will find the O'Connors' story difficult to accept, so I would like to emphasisehere that everything they have reported - even the apparent telepathic communication - hasbeen reported elsewhere in Australia or overseas.I find their testimony convincing not only because it has been, in effect, corroborated bysimilar testimony, but because I know Sue and Jerry and I trust them.For some time after the yowie activity began, Jerry, a down to earth ex-serviceman, couldhardly believe it himself. "My whole life was spun on its axis", he says. "It changed my wholebelief system."Sue, however, has always been interested in spiritual matters and it is just possible her openspirituality actually triggered the yowie visitations.Shortly after they moved into their house she conducted a quiet ceremony to invite the localnature spirits into their garden. Soon she and Jerry experienced strong feelings of dread and ofbeing watched. Their screen door rattled, the power box slammed, they heard crashing soundsin the scrub and, in November 1999, heard at seemingly point-blank range, a tremendous,terrifying roar as loud as that of a lion, yet indefinably alien - "other worldly".They then found about 30 huge bite marks up to 7 feet above the ground on young bloodwoodtrees, identical to those found by Neil Frost whose house, only a couple of kilometres away, isalso the focus of yowie activity.Deep grooves left by upper canines which were consistently 80 mm apart and by lowercanines which were always 55 mm apart seemed to prove the bites were all made by the sameindividual. It was clearly hunting for grubs. At about 2 o'clock one morning in August 2000 Sue woke from a disturbing dream which wasaccompanied by a weird "electric" feeling, looked up at the window behind their bed and sawa huge animal staring back at her. The creature had a human-sized head which lookeddisproportionatly small as it was set low into a pair of absolutely huge shoulders.As it was illuminated by a streetlight and a full moon, Sue could see the animal had a slimnose, a very wide mouth and a rounded clump of tan-coloured hair on top of its head.

Sue and Jerry have now experienced six similar sightings, always preceded by the strange"electric" dreams, cold chills and fear. To look through the bedroom window the creaturemust be over eight feet tall.It seems highly significant that the visits always occur just before or during Sue's monthlyperiods.For weeks they hid four infra red video surveillance cameras - loaned to them by yowiehunter Dean Harrison - at various key points around the yard. During those weeks the yowieapproached only once. Choosing the only night when a narrow quadrant was not covered bythe cameras, it reached the house and looked in as before.Like Neil Frost, Dean Harrison and others who have tried yowie hunting with infra redcameras, the O'Connors concluded the creatures can either detect IR light .... or read peoples'minds.On 25 October 2000 they hid a sound-activated tape recorder in a hollow stump next to a cliffover which they suspended a feed pot. They selected that particular spot because that sameafternoon, in the same area, Sue had seen a hunched, hairy, tan-coloured ape-like figurerunning through the undergrowth at phenomenal speed. A local man, Brad Croft, had alsorecently seen a huge yowie in the vicinity.In the morning they found the tape had registered heavy bipedal footsteps, the sound ofcamouflage being pulled away, and what sounded like dextrous fingers lifting the recorderand ripping its protective plastic. The final sound was a hollow thump to the feedpot, whichlay empty and shattered 35 feet away.Tracks found by the O'Connors reflect the confusing pattern elsewhere: some are three-toed,some five-toed.Communication {a} Thumping. Basic communication began one night when Jerry impulsively pounded onthe bedroom wall and yelled "how are ya goin' mate?" Two nights later a tattoo of knockscame by way of reply.{b} Crossed Sticks. More recently he has interacted with the creature{s} via patterns hemakes with sticks. He creates a pattern or structure and returns after a night or two to find thepattern has been thoughtfully rearranged. He feels the yowie{s} enjoy this game.{c} Psychic Communication. Not surprisingly, the O'Connors eventually decided the hairygiants had more in common with spirits than they did with normal animals, so Sue triedcontacting the creatures mentally.Eventually, on 31 October 2000, she established a telepathic link with what purported to betheir regular visitor - a female yowie.The creature conveyed that it resided in the "Black Dimension" but was a benign "being oflight" which was drawn to her and her garden.It conveyed its disapproval of the word ?yowie? and seemed to say it was ?of the bunyiprace?. Among other things it informed Sue it was immensely old -essentially immortal.

Recently Jerry, whose family nick-name is "Jock", left food outside the bedroomwindow for the yowie. Shortly thereafter he felt the "electro" sensation followed by a voice inhis head which said quite clearly, "thanks, Jock!"By any standards the O'Connors' story is petty weird, so it is worth repeating that everystrange detail Sue and Jerry mentioned has been reported elsewhere - right up to andincluding the telepathic communication - which has been mentioned frequently in Americaand once, memorably, by a Russian cryptozoologist. His close encounter with an almastigave rise to one of the weirdest headlines I've ever seen: " I HAD MY MIND READ BY THEABOMINABLE SNOW WOMAN OF THE PAMIRS" !----------------I think most open-minded readers will acknowledge that the "high strangeness" aspects of theyowie do suggest rather strongly that Australia's hairy giants are in some way paranormal.I cheerfully admit that, as Paul Cropper sometimes says, the paranormal "explanation" is not areal explanation at all. It is certainly not a complete explanation because it doesn't tell us whatthe yowies actually are. I believe, however, that by indicating what the yowies are not ( i.e.ordinary flesh and blood animals) and by identifying other phenomena to which they areapparently linked (UFOs, "black panthers", poltergeists) the "high strangeness" data may atleast bring us part of the way towards understanding the true nature of these bafflingcreatures.I'm far from the first yowie or bigfoot investigator to speculate about the paranormal. SeveralAmericans, notably John Keel and Jon Beckjord, have been writing about it for years. As farback as the 1930s a pioneer Australian cryptozoologist, RW McKay, noticed the apparentyowie-big cat connection and referred to them as "something supernatural". "Whatever theseanimals are ", he wrote, "they seem to have something protecting them ..." 18Fred Beck, last survivor of the 1924 Ape Canyon Incident, wrote in 1967 that "... wegenuinely fought (the sasquatches) and were quite fearful ... but I was always conscious thatwe were dealing with supernatural beings, and ... the other ( men) felt the same."Something else Fred Beck said is very interesting in light of what the yowie told SueO'Connor about the "Black Dimension": the sasquatches, he said, "... are from a lower plane.When the condition and vibration is at a certain frequency, they can easily, for a time, appearin a very solid body." 19In conclucion I'd like to mention something I heard in the Florida Everglades from a memberof the Miccosukee tribe. Their term for the bigfoot is yati wasagi , meaning "seperated" or"different man"; they, too, believe the creatures can "phase in" from another dimension.One man, Bobby Tiger, said something, which, when I reflect on it now, in the troubled yearof 2001, makes me a little uneasy: 'All these things are part real and part not. We're going tosee more and more of them in different places. Then eventually the world will 'turn over onitself ' - and they'll phase in, while we phase out."Freaky.

Notes:1. Fred Beck, I Fought The Apemen of Mt St Helens, self published, 1967, p. 16.2. For a detailed comparison, see Tony Healy and Paul Cropper, Out of the Shadows, Ironbark/ Macmillen 1994, pp. 153-55.3. Ibid, p.1894. John Green, Sasquatch - The Apes Among Us, Hancock House, 1978, pp.260-61.5. Anderson, F., "The Yowie Mystery", Bigfoot, Tales of Unexplained Creatures. No further bibliographical information available.6. Janet and Colin Bord, The Bigfoot Casebook, Stackpole Books, 1982, p.112.7. Anderson, op. cit. 8. The Advertiser, Adelaide, 5 July 1973.9. Sydney Sun, 10 November 1912.10. Tony Healy, Monster Safari, unpublished MS , 1982, P.229.11. Tony Healy, notes of interview with Bill Grant, Scotland, 1999.!2. Healy and Cropper, op. cit. , pp. 127 and 129.13. Janet and Colin Bord, op. cit., p.115.14. Paul Cropper, notes of interview with Richard McDonald, April 2001.15. Martin McAdoo, If Only I'd Listened To Grandpa, Landsdown Press, 1980, chapter 4.16. Healy and Cropper, op. cit. , pp.141-43.17. McKay, RW, letters to Rod Estoppey, 13 Nov 1934 and 22 April 1940.18. Fred Beck, op. cit. , pp.7 and 10.

just like the rooster that crows in the morn
it is said to explode like a shotgun at dawn
highly explosive and easily stired
so be sure you dont step on a ballbearing bird

Dion wrote:Hey twisted and Shar*Chi,

It certainly is an eye opener to hear about such reports isn't it

I just wish these kind of cases would get more coverage in the Yowie/Bigfoot community, It’s a shame that they get overlooked.

Good research in my opinion should not be confined to the age old ‘Flesh and blood’ rule, but should delve into the more restricted areas just like any good researcher should.

I personally love to hear about such cases