He is a very good witness as you say, especially his background and you make a strong argument. I'm listening to it again and I will have a look at more cases from this area. As a podcast to creep out its listeners it is a cracking case.
Scary...but if we're to take his physical description , which was incredibly detailed, as a guide would a bear with or without mange and standing up the whole time, be 10-13+ feet tall, have eyes a foot apart and an extremely pronounced brow ridge, fill an 18square inch window with just a section of it's face, and appear "more human than ape"?
Just out of curiosity we never put a traffic marshal onto the road without a body-cam on him to record what goes on during the day. Do any of these guys who claim to have encountered Bigfoot wear something similar? Because from memory I have never seen a believable picture of a Bigfoot yet.
141,162 views Premiered on 9 Mar 2024
In Episode 7, Alaska Native, Fred Roehl, shares that terrifying night in September of 2006 when they were surrounded by multiple Sasquatch with deadly intent. He had grown up hearing about encounters of the "Hairy Man", but nothing in his life could have prepared him, his uncle, or cousin, for what was about to happen. There lives, nor their relationships with one another, would ever be the same.?
The following link is broken but Google:
WE WERE FOOD...Fred Roehl Shares His Terrifying Encounter That Changed The Way He Views Sasquatch.
Just because he is an active Bigfoot researcher doesn't negate his account one iota (see Big Cat DNA) but I do feel Danny should have mentioned this. Also a little disappointed that this is the second story that has been played out on the internet before Danny featured it.
Scary...but if we're to take his physical description , which was incredibly detailed, as a guide would a bear with or without mange and standing up the whole time, be 10-13+ feet tall, have eyes a foot apart and an extremely pronounced brow ridge, fill an 18square inch window with just a section of it's face, and appear "more human than ape"?
I think if you add in the fact that it was dark so the light may have been falling strangely, he was terrified and more importantly that his extremely tough and fearless Uncle John and Cousin John were terrified too, it could have appeared to fill the window when maybe it didn't quite. Although I expect grizzly bear heads would be pretty big.
Scary...but if we're to take his physical description , which was incredibly detailed, as a guide would a bear with or without mange and standing up the whole time, be 10-13+ feet tall, have eyes a foot apart and an extremely pronounced brow ridge, fill an 18square inch window with just a section of it's face, and appear "more human than ape"?
So it has challenged my preconceptions about Bigfoot (@gattino) and it is a thrilling and chilling campfire tale. But I personally prefer Uncanny when it features previously unknown witnesses to Fortean goings-on that have not already been posted and discussed on the on the internet, as that for me was a part of the charm of the concept This includes the UFO stuff, the Alan Godfrey episode was good but I preferred the listener witness accounts more.
Damn! I forgot to listen to Uncanny. I have been listening to old RHLSP podcasts and one of Richard Herring's emergency questions to his guests is "Have you seen a Bigfoot?"
Usually the answer is "no" but over the weekend I listened to RHLSP with Canadian comedian Tony Law and he said "Yes"
Only to explain that what people are seeing is a bear on it's hind legs.
I'm looking forward to this one now, the Bigfoot phenomenon has fascinated me since I was a kid!
Yes, I really enjoyed the story and Fred described everything beautifully.
I have to disagree about the sceptic though. I think, sadly, she has it spot on. I have taken Fred's description of the face and listed them below. Now look at some photos of mangy bears. (Do not do this before bed and don't say I didn't warn you guys..)
Skin was an ashy grey
Very wrinkly
Big cheekbones
Nose flat to the face with broad nostrils pointed down
Very defined brow ridge
Deep set eyes
Faint red eye shine
I also think he said he did not see below the nose.
Uncle John's fish chowder would have been very interesting to a starving bear.
I was intrigued by the description of the huge figure as being so black it seemed to absorb light as this is what I and others have seen.
Yes. Those were my thoughts too.
The reported standing height and width of the skull seemed to be a very good match for large bears.
I appreciate that these witnesses were familiar with the environment, but a close encounter at night with a family group of exceptionally large but mangy Alaskan bears (which can include the Polar bear), coupled with a supernatural dread engendered by their tribal beliefs and legends, could have been conflated into the encounter described in Uncanny.
A couple more facts: bears tend to stand up on their hind legs to smell their surroundings - and the whiff of that fish stew must have been irresistible. Also, underneath their white fur, Polar bear skin is a dark grey.
Remember the description that he could only see part of the face, due to the tiny window in the shack.
I imagine it could have looked rather like this:
The grey skin, widely-spaced eyes with brow ridges and downward pointing nostrils are clearly visible.
This strikes me as far more plausible than a 10ft tall unknown species of hominid.
As ever it's probably worth going through the broadcast again and collating line by line the precise physical descriptions given by which to assess any interpretations:
" He ( cousin John) used to do bear control with me back in the mid 90s. And this 800 pound plus bear charges us years back, and he didn't falter. So, he had nerves of steel."
( Through the 18 inch window) " I saw something dark move out of the way. I assume its a bear. "
( When they shine the lamp outside) " We see three sets of eye- shine. They were HUGE. They just stood there, unmoving. They were every bit of ten foot tall, if not taller. And they had this brownish colour, similar to the colour of a moose. But what really stood out was the size of that eye shine. Blood red. Typically you hit a bear with a big spotlight like that, they're looking for cover, they're trying to hide themselves. (...) These things did not give a flying rats ass that we saw them. They were laser focused on us. "
( In the window, causing John Jr to become paralyzed and urinate: ) "I saw a face. It was MASSIVE. I only saw from the bottom of its nose to the top of its eye brows. The eyes had to have been about a foot apart." " It was more human than ape, but not..human like me and you."
Danny: " he's really familiar with bears. He's dealt with rampaging ones. Would he really make that mistake, I wonder. "
( The face: ) "The skin was an ashen grey, very wrinkly. It reminded me of those old tintype photos of Native Americans, you know those old Indian chiefs where their face looked wrinkled and weathered. BIg cheek bones. The nose, there wasn't much of a bridge. There was a little bit, but it went flat to the face. Real broad nostrils, facing down. It had a very defined brow ridge, VERY defined. Eyes deep set. And it had the faintest bit of eye shine, red, from the lamp that was on above the table. "
"There's no human being alive that has eyes a foot apart, a head so big that the bottom of the nose and top of the brow fill up 18 inches "
(When they try to leave: ) "There's an old out house ..it's about,eight and a half feet tall. ...behind it, standing there we see a figure. It was obviously taller than the outhouse. I'm guessing 13-14 feet tall.. it was hulking. But it was so black, Danny, it absorbed the light. There was no eye shine. Even a black bear will have a sheen to the black hair with the light on it. This gave back NOTHING. "
It seems to me there are, if accepting his description, three things counting against the bear - mangy or otherwise - interpretation.
1) His far greater than any of ours familiarity with bears.
2) the first three creatures were brown and the one behind the outhouse was jet black....what happened to the mange? The grey and wrinkled description was only in reference to a face. He appears to be describing something presumed hairy except for the face ..which is certainly consistent with a primate.
3) wide nostrils flat to the face , little to no bridge. .again sounds more like a chimp or gorilla: surely a bear, with or without hair, would be described as having a snout or muzzle? And do they really have pronounced cheek bones and eyebrows ?
It seems to me there are, if accepting his description, three things counting against the bear - mangy or otherwise - interpretation.
1) His far greater than any of ours familiarity with bears.
2) the first three creatures were brown and the one behind the outhouse was jet black....what happened to the mange? The grey and wrinkled description was only in reference to a face. He appears to be describing something presumed hairy except for the face ..which is certainly consistent with a primate.
3) wide nostrils flat to the face , little to no bridge. .again sounds more like a chimp or gorilla: surely a bear, with or without hair, would be described as having a snout or muzzle? And do they really have pronounced cheek bones and eyebrows ?
You make a good argument for Team Believer and it is easy to overlook certain details, especially if the idea of a hostile Bigfoot is going against the grain of mainstream US Bigfoot reports.
I would rather Uncanny stick with previously unknown witnesses but then you could argue it has brought the concept of the hostile Alaskan Bigfoot to a UK audience and perhaps I 'm being a bit idealist.
I think the problem with unknown witnesses/untold stories is ...can there even be such a thing in the internet age? I mean every encounter I have with ..well...the uncanny ...I report on here. You don't know who I am but the stories such as they are are "out there" to be found by typing in key words. Surely everyone tells someone when weird things happen and nine times out of ten it's going to appear online somewhere.
If I'm the self appointed attorney for team believer I may as well go the whole Billy Flynn and razzle dazzle the jury. I see your mangy bear and raise you museum reconstructions of a ten foot tall, flat nosed, grey wrinkly faced, pronounced browed, brown colored ( it's amazing how much detail they can get from a tooth nyuk nyuk) Gigantopithecus.
Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes.
I think the problem with unknown witnesses/untold stories is ...can there even be such a thing in the internet age? I mean every encounter I have with ..well...the uncanny ...I report on here. You don't know who I am but the stories such as they are are "out there" to be found by typing in key words. Surely everyone tells someone when weird things happen and nine times out of ten it's going to appear online somewhere.
If I'm the self appointed attorney for team believer I may as well go the whole Billy Flynn and razzle dazzle the jury. I see your mangy bear and raise you museum reconstructions of a ten foot tall, flat nosed, grey wrinkly faced, pronounced browed, brown colored ( it's amazing how much detail they can get from a tooth nyuk nyuk) Gigantopithecus.
Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes.
Except that Gigantopithecus went extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago.
I still reckon a large but manky old bear is the most likely explanation.
If we're delving into cryptozoology though, then it's probably worth mentioning the Short-Faced Bear.
This enormous ursine was thought to have become extinct 10 - 12,000 years ago, but some cryptozoologists speculate that a few specimens may still exist in remote regions of North America and Russia.
Out of curiosity I looked up tales of Bigfoot..whatever that is ..attacking people. There are several articles, low quality book compendiums etc on the subject. There appears to be some consistency in the tales. Here's a few collected anecdotes summarised.
It seems to me there are, if accepting his description, three things counting against the bear - mangy or otherwise - interpretation.
1) His far greater than any of ours familiarity with bears.
2) the first three creatures were brown and the one behind the outhouse was jet black....what happened to the mange? The grey and wrinkled description was only in reference to a face. He appears to be describing something presumed hairy except for the face ..which is certainly consistent with a primate.
3) wide nostrils flat to the face , little to no bridge. .again sounds more like a chimp or gorilla: surely a bear, with or without hair, would be described as having a snout or muzzle? And do they really have pronounced cheek bones and eyebrows ?
1) I wonder if that might be the reason for misinterpretation? Bears run away when you lamp them. These animals did not. Bears are completely furred. We know that one of the animals at least had a bald face. Perhaps due to hunger and/or unfamiliarity with humans, these bears just did not behave like normal bears. If you know for a fact that bears do not behave like this and they do? Then logically it is not a bear.
2) There were several animals and he only saw the face of one of them. Mange is a progressive disease and all the hair does not completely drop out of the entire animal at once. I have just re-listened to the Bigfoot and Beyond podcast and there is more detail in it and he mentions a little bit of hair on the cheeks.
3) It sounds very much like a bald bear face to me. Remember also that he did not see the entire face, only from the nostrils to just above the eyebrows. Also remember that it was dark and the only light was coming from the Coleman lantern on the table which would have been casting light upwards. Everyones face looks freaky lit in that way. ( I hope Uncle John told many campfire tales to the boys as children like that)
One snippet from the Bigfoot and Beyond podcast that does not make it into Uncanny which does not sound consistant with a bear face is that the reason Cousin John went under the table is that the animal showed its teeth at him and it had "flat block teeth like ours". Bears have very pronounced canines. However, when I searched for images of bear teeth, this chap was right at the top.
Perhaps a bear with broken canines finds it harder to hunt and eat and may be more susceptible to diseases like mange?
Something else important to note from the B&B podcast is that Fred and his tribe had had many other Hairy Man encounters, it wasn't just tales from aunts. I think this is significant because not only had the group heard of the Hairy Man they had seen them. However at no point did Fred ever get a very good look at the animal in question. In one encounter, the animal threw rocks at them in their boat and was throwing so hard that it dislodged a moose quarter from where it was hanging in the boat. At this point I thought there was no way this particular animal could have been a bear (or a human). But just in case, I did a search for "can bears throw rocks" and blow me they can! Once again, this is very unusual, semi-mythical behaviour. Very experienced bear people might go their whole lives without seeing this.
This next part would be a spoiler for next week for those who don't know the story already so I have put it in spoilers. (it is more of what Fred saw the following day)
They manage to leave the hut in daylight but at no point does Fred get a good look at the animals. When getting in the boat he sees the lower legs of one animal which has dark fur which is lighter at the ends. This is consistant with how the fur on a bears legs might look.
Also, a bear with mange would like be feeling very off colour. I've known animals with mange, it makes them itchy and irritable generally, so it can change their temperament enough for them to behave atypically.
Surely to say anything went extinct is conjecture with greater or lesser degrees of confidence rather than a bald fact?
Things are declared extinct if there is evidence for their existence in the past ( typically fossils or bones) but no evidence for their existence in the present.
If you take something like Gigantopithecus ..as far as I'm aware the entire evidence of its past existence are some teeth and a few jaw bones. Nothing else remains.
Whereas ( if you were to hypothesise "big foot" is some variation of the ape) evidence for its present existence is countless eyewitness testimonies.
You could therefore suggest evidence for its current existence is greater than evidence for its past existence.
Give him a break! With the constant round of podcasts, live shows and TV shows, the poor man must never get any sleep. Bed-head is probably something he greatly aspires to.
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
