Abominable Snowman

Cruisin’ the Sasquatch Highway

In a review of this week’s transportation news, I note the names of a couple of my favorite unknown hairy hominoids, who remain on the fast track to a deeper legacy in popular culture. During a caravan tour of the proposed Sasquatch Highway route back in 2003, British Columbia Representative Barry Penner (in the purple vest at right) and Mayor Sylvia Pranger (center), District of Kent, examine a natural hot spring on the north end of Harrison Lake, while BC Hydro’s community relations manager, Terry Parsons (far left) and Fraser Valley Regional District Chair Terry Raymond look on. At the [...]

Yeti and The Number 23

Virginia Madsen stars in The Number 23, opening in the USA on February 23, 2007. As reported in promotional interviews about the movie, Madsen was asked: “How did you learn about the number 23 phenomenon? Virginia, had you heard of the phenomenon?” Yes, because I think all that stuff is really fun, the shows on the Discovery Channel about ghosts and the Yeti and UFOs, which I totally believe in, so I’d heard about it. But I didn’t know how vast it was until really the first day of production. I’d sort of been online and I came in and [...]

The Great Days of Yeti Hunting

Harry Trumbore’s drawing of a Yeti. Ask yourself, where are all the great Yeti hunters from the 1950s? Take for example, what is Peter Byrne, the leader of the Tom Slick expeditions of the 1950s, up to these days? Byrne is often remembered, for example, online at such sites as The Anomalist and Wikipedia, with regard to his involvement with the late actor Jimmy Stewart and the Pangboche Hand. My favorable overview of Byrne’s Yeti-related life appeared in Tom Slick: True Life Encounters in Cryptozoology. The book contains an updated version of what I had previously written about Byrne and [...]

Cryptozoology: First Use?

Cryptozoology, as you know, means “the study of hidden animals.” In 1955, Belgian zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans wrote a groundbreaking book in French, a now classic opus entitled (in English) On the Track of Unknown Animals. But in the 1955 French and the 1958 English editions, you will not find the word “cryptozoology,” in any language. The first (known) published use of the word “cryptozoology” in French, occurred in 1959 in a book by wildlife biologist Lucien Blancou, dedicated to “Bernard Heuvelmans, master of cryptozoology.” In 1961, Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life was first published. Sanderson’s book [...]