Bigfoot Needs a Better Agent

People are taught to believe outrageous things from a young age. They are told that Santa Claus is watching, "so they better be good," that the Easter Bunny is on his way with baskets of candy, and that if they put the tooth that has just fallen out under the pillow at night then the next morning it will be replaced with change. As children it’s easy to believe the things that adults tell us. After all, they’re the ones who provide us with food, shelter, toys and love.

At a certain age, though, children start to think about things logically and begin questioning the things that they have been told.

“How can Santa Claus/the Easter bunny make it to all of those houses during the night?” is a question usually asked by kids who are skeptical.

It’s tragic really when you learn that certain things that you believe in turn out to be stories that were made up to make you behave.


I began to become suspicious of Santa around 2nd grade. I wanted to believe in him, but too many things went against him being real. The whole how can he go to all of those houses in one night argument was a strong one, and the fact that I never submitted a formal list to him made me suspicious as well. My family also didn’t have a chimney, and considering that this was Santa’s normal way of entrance, it didn’t take long for me to realize that he was fake.

Which isn’t to say that it bothered me much; all I really cared about was getting those toys on Christmas Morning. And now that I think about it, I was never really Santa’s biggest fan anyway. He never seemed to remember me when we went to see him every year at the mall, and he didn’t always deliver what I asked for (please don’t take that to mean that I was ever disappointed on Christmas Morning).

Now the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy were easier for me to figure out, and I'm not even sure that I believed in either for very long. Both are even more outrageous than Santa and require a lot of belief. And in the case of the Easter Bunny, like Santa, he never really ranked high on my list to begin with. On the first Easter that I can remember a case of sleepy headed confusion caused me to think that the Easter Bunny had forgotten to deliver my basket. Me and my brother both woke up early and were eager to tear through our baskets. The problem was that from the position on my bed I couldn't see the basket. All I saw was my brother’s. It took a few minutes for my parents to calm me down and convince me that the basket was there.

As adults it’s easier for us to just dismiss outrageous claims than to believe them. With that said however, there are plenty of urban legends/hoaxes/conspiracy theories out there that a majority of adults do believe in.

The most obvious "unexplained" happenings that most people will say they believe in are UFOs and ghosts. Now, it's not very hard to believe that in this huge universe of ours that there are some other forms of life floating around. And although not too many people admit to UFO sightings, it seems that everyone has at least one ghost story that they've either experienced or heard from a relative.

When I was in college, I lived with my grandfather. And although, I never saw what amounted to a ghost, I did hear lots of weird things at night. On more than a few occasions, I would hear foot steps in the hallway just outside my bedroom (insert spooky music here), and on another occasion a loud crash came from the basement in the middle of the night. When my grandfather and I went down to investigate, we couldn't find anything out of place (ok, I'll admit those aren't the greatest ghost stories, but their mine).

Urban legends are more wide-spread than UFOs or ghost talk, and are more readily believed. Also, with the popularity of the internet (a great place, but not always the most reputable), more ULs are created each day. Most urban legends involve events that either a friend or relative has experienced, and like a game of telephone, become more outrageous with each telling.

Hoaxes and conspiracy theories exist on the far end of the UL fringe, and it is here that we find some of my favorites. These inlcude the Loch Ness monster, the JFK assassination (which if you believe that Oswald didn't act alone, and didn't have help, becomes a straight up conspiracy as opposed to a theory), the Paul is dead hoax, and bigfoot.

Now the idea of bigfoot has been around for a long time, but really came to prominence in 1967 with the release of the now famous Patterson footage. In the 70s and 80s, Bigfoot was featured as a character on television's "The Six Million Dollar Man," and "The Bionic Woman." In '87, bigfoot was the main character in the feature film "Harry and the Hendersons," which was also spun off into a syndicated television program.

After "Harry and the Hendersons" went off the air though, it seems that bigfoot fell off the radar. New sightings are rarely reported on and you don't hear many people debating his existence. Is it the fact that the general public finds him less exciting, or does he just need better representation than the nerdy scientists and anthroplogists who pop up on lame Sci-Fi network shows analyzing foot prints and other clues that he has left behind? Who knows, and until definative proof reveals him to be a hoax, I'm a believer.

And before I close this piece, I thought that I would start an urban legend of my own: J-lo really dumped Ben Affleck because he spent more time at Taco Bell than he did with her. Oh wait a minute, that might have some basis in reality. Just ask my ex.

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