Bigfoot: Man, Monster, or Myth?
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- Publication Date: 1977
- Written by: Carrie Carmichael
- Page count: 48
This is an old book that I remember reading over and over again as a kid. My grandpa worked for the local community schools when I was young, and would often bring discarded books home from the school libraries. This was one book that he had at home, along with The Truth About Monsters and the Search for the Unknown series. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated by cryptids such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Champ, you name it. I obviously can't prove that these creatures exist, but I've always liked to keep a little bit of belief that there are things out there that we simply don't know about and can't explain.
This very short book basically acts as a sort of 1970s Wikipedia article on Bigfoot. It features famous stories such as the kidnapping of Albert Ostman, a lumberjack who claimed to be kidnapped and held by a family of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), and the famous Patterson-Gimlin film encounter. Along with these, the book covers basic information such as accounts of the creatures' size, color, smell, and of course the famous footprint casts. Interspersed with all of this are a bunch of color illustrations and photographs that help make everything feel so much more real. There are photos of the Pacific Northwest wilderness, footprints in the dirt as well as casts, and some composite paintings of a Bigfoot that look like photos themselves. This book was written for children, so naturally it has a lot less skepticism than a modern book would feature. Little kid me thought this was a definitive source of Bigfoot information, and I suppose the author succeeded in convincing young me that this thing had a lot of credibility to it. It's very amusing to remember the things that you used to believe wholeheartedly as a child.
There's not much more I can say about such a short book, but I love holding onto it after all these years. I can't tell you how many times I read this thing after catching yet another Bigfoot documentary on TV, or the number of times I took this and The Truth About Monsters on car rides into town. Modern science and skepticism may point to many cryptids simply being myths or misidentification, but I still like to keep that little spark of belief in me burning just a little bit. You truly never know what could be out there.