PringleCreamEgg posted:

Is ‘In Search of..’ not streaming anywhere? I’m not against ordering a box set if that’s the only way to see it, if not.

remusclaw posted:

Blake Smith of Monstertalk, which is a great Cryptid pod, and Jeb Card, archaeologist, do a side project pod called In Research Of, which is an episode by episode review and discuss show about in Search of. Its really good and I recommend it.

feedmyleg posted:

I think cryptids thrive in North America because (outside of the native peoples) it's a young culture without established folklore. Cryptids are nothing more than modern folklore, but with an air of veracity due to recency. Britain is rich with folkloric creatures, but they're just more easily dismissed with time. The Lambton Worm is no different from the Loch Ness Monster, other than the fact that ol' Nessie is so much more recent.

feedmyleg posted:

I think cryptids thrive in North America because (outside of the native peoples) it's a young culture without established folklore. Cryptids are nothing more than modern folklore, but with an air of veracity due to recency. Britain is rich with folkloric creatures, but they're just more easily dismissed with time. The Lambton Worm is no different from the Loch Ness Monster, other than the fact that ol' Nessie is so much more recent.

big dyke energy posted:

I don't know why, but Gef scared the poo poo out of me when I was a kid. Wasn't he never actually 'seen', just a voice and like...poltergeist-esque activity?

Ambitious Spider posted:

aww, no love for gef?

The_Doctor posted:

From what I remember Gef ‘let himself’ be seen only a couple of times.

And yeah, the US is extremely fertile ground for cryptids because of its size. There’s still so much wild untouched space everywhere, and places for things to hide and live in. I feel like it being a new country, there’s feelings of unknown things being around from before it existed. The current day American has no inkling of everything that walked the land before settling began, and there’s a healthy fear there.

alf_pogs posted:

i assume Gef is pronounced like "Jeff"

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

Only because I didn't know he existed till just now! From this point on I shall give Gef the love he deserves.

As an American who's done night time deliveries out to trailers and farm houses in places with very few electric lights I can confirm that on those long drives down dusty roads it's so easy to believe that there are monsters lurking in the dark just out of sight.

Nothing stimulates the imagination more than traveling alone in the dark through unfamiliar territory.

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

I can confirm it is pronounced "Jeff" which I only just learned earlier today after calling him hard-g Gef for the last three decades

The_Doctor posted:

Oh yeah, I’ve driven a lot across the States, and outside of the cities, when night falls, it gets dark. It’s incredibly easy to believe things are watching you pass by. There’s just so much of it too. Even in smaller cities and towns, there’s dark parts. Creatures on the periphery is some ‘stay close to the campfire’ cavemen vine.

How! posted:

It’s the 300th anniversary of the first Bigfoot sighting near Natchez, MS. So we’re having a three day excuse to get drunker than normal.

“It was a journal entry by French explorer Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix, written in Natchez on Dec. 25, 1721.

The explorer wrote that on his first night at the settlement, there had been “a great alarm about nine o’clock in the evening.”

When he asked the reason for it, he was told about “a beast of an unknown species, of an extraordinary bulk, and whose cry did not in the least resemble that of any known animal.”

Whatever it was, no one could say they had seen it but “formed a judgment of its size entirely from its strength: it had already carried off some sheep and calves, and worried some cows.” The explorer tried to convince others that it could have been a wolf, but he could not persuade them. They believed it was “some monstrous beast.”

When it was heard again, everyone “ran out armed with what he could find, but it was to no purpose.”

The_Doctor posted:

M_Sinistrari posted:

Having grown up and been around cities and suburbs dark, first time out in the boonies it was surprising just how dark it gets. I call it Country Dark.

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

God this picture just captures that "lonely road at 1 AM in the middle of nowhere" vibe so well.

Snowglobe of Doom posted:

Yeah it was pretty clearly just a weird hoax/prank by the family's young daughter but the media of the day were more than happy to print stories about it and a whole bunch of paranormal investigators and psychical researchers and scientists got dragged into it, and 90 years later people are still talking about it.



One of the spooky paranormal books I had when I was a kid had a creepy illustration of Gef

How! posted:

It’s the 300th anniversary of the first Bigfoot sighting near Natchez, MS. So we’re having a three day excuse to get drunker than normal.

“It was a journal entry by French explorer Pierre François-Xavier de Charlevoix, written in Natchez on Dec. 25, 1721.

The explorer wrote that on his first night at the settlement, there had been “a great alarm about nine o’clock in the evening.”

When he asked the reason for it, he was told about “a beast of an unknown species, of an extraordinary bulk, and whose cry did not in the least resemble that of any known animal.”

Whatever it was, no one could say they had seen it but “formed a judgment of its size entirely from its strength: it had already carried off some sheep and calves, and worried some cows.” The explorer tried to convince others that it could have been a wolf, but he could not persuade them. They believed it was “some monstrous beast.”

When it was heard again, everyone “ran out armed with what he could find, but it was to no purpose.”

nonathlon posted:

Gef is such a weird story that looms so large in the the Fortean canon, then you find out that it was only seen a few times, in unconvincing circumstances, that it's so obviously a prank ... and yet investigators are still reporting on it.

Space Cadet Omoly posted:

Country Dark is great term and I hope you don't mind if I start using it.

stereobreadsticks posted:

They point out that from the very first episode, the tone of In Search Of... is positive, hopeful, and pro-science, while the tone of more modern stuff is negative, conspiratorial, and anti-science. Where In Search Of... might approach the subject of ancient visitors from another planet as (paraphrasing) "scientists don't currently understand these phenomena, but one day perhaps they will find more evidence to indicate that we've been visited by someone from somewhere else," Ancient Aliens would approach the same ideas with "mainstream science doesn't admit that the pyramids were built using UFO technology, but ancient aliens researchers have found the proof that the scientists are trying to keep hidden from you." One thing that really stuck with me that one of the podcast hosts said is that it's easy to imagine someone watching In Search Of... as a kid and being inspired to pursue a career in actual science, but it's much harder to imagine that happening with Ancient Aliens or Ghost Hunters or whatever.

And I think that's why, even though the ideas presented are just as out there as the modern stuff, and the factual errors are just as obvious (even down to pronunciation, the pronunciation of Zimbabwe in the first In Search Of... special with Rod Serling is something special, though to be fair at the time it was the name of a rather obscure African archaeological site rather than a country), and the racist and eurocentric undertones of some of these theories are if anything more pronounced, it's still easier to overlook all of that and be entertained by the old stuff than the new stuff.

Captain Hygiene posted:

I kept getting aggravated because pretty much every report went down the same path of (a) mistrusting scientists he interviewed because they were either under government control or out for their own ends, and (b) putting implicit trust in all the regular folks he interviewed, constantly falling back on the "Well John Q Public has nothing to gain from lying, therefore this testimony must be believed" mindset.

nonathlon posted:

It's a striking observation. I recollect the case where strange footprints appeared on a Florida beach, running for miles, and one of the arguements was that no one would have forged them, why would they? And it turned out that was exactly what had happened, some nobody did them for a lark. Likewise the early crop circles which were done by two friends regularly after their drunken pub sessions. Regular folk lie for all sorts of reasons.

Knormal posted:

eDNA is also the death knell for most cryptids. As I understand it it's pretty widely used in sampling what species are present in an area nowadays, and an unexpected primate or archosaur would certainly get you a much better grant if you found it. Granted if you're looking for a specific endangered frog or something a bigfoot probably wouldn't turn up, but I have to imagine there's enough general samplings done that something would turn up somewhere.

uber_stoat posted:

as if the Mothman is comprised of something so primitive as DNA.

big dyke energy posted:

I don't know why, but Gef scared the poo poo out of me when I was a kid. Wasn't he never actually 'seen', just a voice and like...poltergeist-esque activity?

alf_pogs posted:

i assume Gef is pronounced like "Jeff"