Elford Alley

I have just completed a 1200+ mile journey to Voidcon in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania! Day One: Leaving Oklahoma, a surprisingly foggy journey. I made a few stops along the way. Frist, I hit up a circus sideshow museum in St. Roberts, Missouri. You pay $6, go through the door, and enjoy horrors of circuses past. There’s the fun stuff, like the fake Fiji mermaids and a Chupacabra (I will always appreciate a non-dog Chupacabra. I watched Sightings in 1995, I know it’s supposed to be an alien kangaroo, damnit!).

There were also a surprising number of deformed babies made from dolls. Although some floating in jars may have been legit. Honesty, the whole thing is 99% deformed babies. There are also quite a few “mummies” of bearded women. I guess “deceased” displays have fewer variables to consider. There are also a few displays that… have not aged well. Random mannequin dressed up look like a 1950s-era Ripley’s Believe It or Not take on a nondescript tribesperson was a racist fever dream.

But the real nightmare was the turtles. I thought they were a display too. Then one of them blinked… there are two conjoined turtles chilling back there, who remind me of the dog from The Fly II. Just $6 to experience unfathomable sadness at nature’s mistakes!

Then I stopped at a bucket list destination: Cahokia! Been obsessed with seeing the area forever. Hell, I co-wrote a Cracked.com article about them a lifetime ago. I knew Monk’s Mound was big. But seeing it in person really brings home the incredible work and ingenuity that went into constructing it. Looking out over the area, it’s also incredible to take in that all these mounds are essentially just the scarce remnants of a massive city complex. Also, pictures fail to show just how boxed in the whole area is by the city, and you pass a landfill with a mound that dwarfs Monk’s Mound. Like Monk’s Mound, it will be here when we, and out cities, are all long gone. They opened Mound 72 at Cahokia and discovered a world of beautiful artistry, the bones of revered people and those sacrificed to them, and peek at a culture that remains a mystery. When future archaeologists open the landfill mound, they’ll find plastic bags and fidget spinners.

Finally, I stopped for a night at a hotel in a small Illinois town! Let me set the scene: There are no outside lights. No street lights. Half the parking lot is gravel. You enter to see a long hallway, lights flickering. There’s a cloudy fishtank of dead fish to greet customers. Got a nonsmoking room? Fuck you. Every room is haunted by the ghost of Pall Malls past.

Day Two!

Got an early start, witnessed an Indiana sunrise, and stopped in Ohio to see an Adena burial mound, situated in the center of a small town. Passed some roadside nonsense here and there, a few buildings and signs with TRUMP on them in tall letters, but nothing else. No slogans. No promises. TRUMP. I also stopped in Kecksburg to see the monument to a UFO crash in 1965, featuring the UFO model used in the Unsolved Mysteries segment of that episode. I assume one day we’ll see the real thing, rolled out when the US government has run out of excuses for not delivering healthcare, and needs a description. They’ll eventually slap those Roswell alien corpses on a slab outside the capital, too. Anything to not make medical care affordable.

Now, I’m here! I load in my stuff tomorrow, and you can visit my table for signed books on Friday and Saturday. This has been an amazing experience, and I look forward to meeting readers and fellow writers. Huge thanks to Katy, my parents, and my in-laws for all their help. A lot of people made it possible for me to do this, so I better sell every goddamn book I brought with me! Otherwise, straight into Susquehanna River I go, my corpse to wash up by the Mini Statue of Liberty.

Bigfoot is dead! In the aftermath of the Capturing Bigfoot documentary revealing the famous Patterson/Gimlin film was fake, many people are saying that Bigfoot is dead. If you visit any Bigfoot/Cryptozoology subreddits, you will see similar sentiments. Along with denial. So much denial.

It’s the suit. It’s a fake. That’s reality. We all knew Patterson was a sketchy dude. As Darren Naish pointed out in his wonderful Hunting Monsters book, the film was made by a known con artist making his own documentary about Bigfoot. Not only that, but Patterson wrote a book on the subject featuring an illustration that’s a deadringer for Patty.

So, is Bigfoot dead? Well, he survived Ray Wallace admitting to faking tons of prints. He survived Ivan Marx’s hoax-filled documentaries (and likely, the famous cripplefoot tracks, which Marx likely made). He even survived the reveal that the Minnesota Iceman, which fooled renowned cryptozoologists like Ivan Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, was a fake. Side note: you can see the Minnesota Iceman in Austin! Just beware the walled-garden weirdos at The Mothership…

Honestly, to me the biggest nail-in-the-coffin for Bigfoot is the fact that multiple tests show that dermal ridges, the biggest smoking gun for the Big Guy, are often just artifacts from the casting process. A gut punch, that one.

But Bigfoot never goes away. Ketchum’s flawed DNA study couldn’t slow him down, neither could the failure of Bryan Sykes’ study to find DNA. The lacks of eDNA in any water sources does little to even slow his gait.

Since science failed to corner him, the Bigfoot world changed. It embraced… the woo. In the 70s, this was a flesh-and-blood creature that could be discovered with science and gumption. By the 2000s, “the woo” had firmly taken hold to explain why in decades of searching, no bodies or evidence had been found. They board UFOs. They step out of our dimension. They turn invisible Predator-style. Hell, some reports claim they turn into balls of light and float away.

Personally, I don’t hate the stories involving “the woo” and in fact, Where the Footprints End volumes by Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner are fantastic reading. I’ve talked to people with experiences that seem to blend paranormal activity and UFOs with the Bigfoot phenomena. I’ve also talked to people who describe their experiences as encounters with a flesh-and-blood creature, an animal. Although, it is an animal with a very, very human face. Eerie shit, and I love it.

I prefer my Bigfoot as an animal. Not a missing link or a prehistoric survivor, just something new that has sidestepped us for millennia. If this is of interest to you, check out Valley of the Apes: The Search for Sasquatch in Area X by Michael Mayes, which takes place in my current home state of Oklahoma.

AI is doing its damnedest to ruin Bigfoot (and the paranormal in general), as now any and all photo and video evidence is assumed to be slop. Otherwise great volumes on the paranormal and Sasquatch are now riddled with shitty AI images and covers. Thank God for Lyle Blackburn. He refuses to give in, his work is excellent and AI-free. Sinister Swamps is a personal favorite, but you can’t go wrong with any of his Bigfoot and Boggy Creek-centric books.

But even AI’s slop shit cannot slow a legend down.

Will Bigfoot ever die? No. If there is nothing out there, clearly some part of our brain needs there to be, and will fill those dark places with a primal reflection. If there is a such thing as a sasquatch, then they have already survived ice ages, disasters innumerable, climate change, and everything we can throw at him. But who knows, we may yet deliver the killing blow.

The fact is, there were sightings before 1967. There will sightings tomorrow. The Ohio flap was just a couple months ago! And my dumbass will be here, the motto of my existence summed up with a simple poster:

And I would be failing in my duties as an author not to go ahead and drop some self recs. I have written two books about bigfoot. In Search of the Nobility, TX, Wildman is a literary novella about a dying man’s final attempt to prove the existence of a monster. Wildcat Thicket is a gonzo horror/comedy about a couple on the run from a murderous group of sasquatches. Both are on Amazon and Bookshop. Both will fill the deep yearning in you for meaning. I promise.

I have an article on Manor Vellum about the history of eco-horror books and movies. Plenty of great indie recs! Also, tons of despair regarding the climate extinction that will claim us all. You ever stay up at night wondering how to apologize to your kids for the hell they’re going to inherit? Trying to explain how in the early 2010s there was optimism? Eh, nothing to do now I suppose. We’re all doomed. Extinction is inevitable. Here’s a link!