The Mysterious Creature in Ice

The following is from a photocopied fanzine called “Freaks” published from 1996 to 1998 by Chris Fellner. Fellner put out 15 issues in all, and the following article appeared in #8 in February 1997. Fellner is also the author of this essay. I’ll include some of my own commentary in italics as a postscript following this essay.

My thanks to our former road manager Jan Gregor, for photocopying and mailing me this essay.

Hairy and horrible – It baffled science!

It was about six feet tall, covered with a thick coat of hair, and seemed to be a cross between a monkey and a man. I say “seemed to be” because the thing was frozen inside a cloudy block of ice, frustrating any attempts to take a good, close look. It would have been just another clever carny “gaff” if a couple of Abominable Snowman buffs hadn’t caught wind of it and stirred up a fuss.

Here, for the first time, is the story behind “The Mysterious Creature in Ice.” Read the facts and decide for yourself – was it really a Snowman or just a Snow-job?

The saga of The Creature begins with an innocuous item in the July 29, 1967 issue of Amusement Business, the “bible” of the outdoor entertainment industry. Titled “New Creature Show Bows,” the article went as follows:

“Among the outstanding back-end shows making its debut this season is Frank Hansen’s Siberskoye (Siberian) Creature. It apparently rolled up the record grosses with the No. 1 unit of Bobby Cohn’s West Coast Shows at the Portland (Ore.) Teen-Age Fair, with similar success at the Seattle and Omaha teen expositions.

“Kudos came from Don Burton, producer of the Portland event, who termed it ‘one of the cleanest and best conducted attractions we’ve ever had in our six years of producing fairs,’ and Joe Gunson, internal auditor for the KOIL (Good Guys) Teen Fun Fair in Omaha, who reported the Creature drew 40 percent of the approximate 58,000 attendance. Tab was 35 cents, 25 cents for kids.

“Bookings to date include the independent midways at the heart of Illinois Fair, Peoria; Wisconsin State Fair, West Allis; Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul; Kansas State Fair, Hutchison; and Oklahoma State Fair, Oklahoma City.

“A retired air force pilot, Hansen entered show business last year with his ‘Mystery Machine’ after it was returned to him from the Smithsonian Institution. He wound up at the Arizona State Fair in Phoenix, then moved to California to frame the new unit at an estimated cost of $50,000.

“The Creature is framed in a 40-ft. semi which can be folded up and on the road in 45 minutes. Trailer has paneled walls, carpeted floors, individually lighted, airline-type steps and watchman’s quarters in front. Camper-type quarters are air-conditioned and carpeted, with shower, lavatory, refrigerator, stove, oven and self-contained water, waste and electric units.

Exhibited in a specially-designed refrigerated coffin which maintains 10 below zero at all times, the ‘creature’ is frozen in a 3,000-pound block of ice, clearly visible through a double thermo-glass top which prevents frosting and acts as a heat barrier. A portable electric generator supplies power on the road and for emergency use on location”

So the Creature, whatever it was, had its origins in California in 1966, when it was framed by a retired air force pilot, Frank Hansen, for the 1967 season. A photo in the Amusement Business article showed that it was really a modern variation of the old-time “pit shows.” One side of the exhibition trailer stood open so that anyone passing by could look inside and see customers gathered around the Creature’s coffin. Simple curiosity would bring ‘em in.

The Creature made the round of fairs for a couple of seasons – then suddenly the poo-poo hit the fan…

In 1969, Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson was the goateed, distinguished-looking “science editor” for the brash men’s magazine Argosy, based in New York City. He also was a self-proclaimed authority on the so-called Abominable Snowman. In fact, Sanderson was a Snowman “apostle,” tirelessly trying to spread the word to unbelievers through his “Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained,” which he ran out of his home in Columbia, Warren County, New Jersey.

In the May 1969 issue of Argosy, Sanderson boldly declared that he had finally found what he was looking for – a real Snowman!

“I must admit that even I, who have spent most of my life in this search, am filled with wonder as I report the following,” he gushed. “There is a comparatively fresh corpse, preserved in ice, of a specimen of at leas one kind of ultra-primitive, fully-haired man-thing, that displays so many heretofore unexpected and non-human characteristics as to warrant our dubbing it a ‘missing link’…”

What had thrown Dr. Sanderson into joyous rapture was none other than Frank Hansen’s Siberian Creature.

In his Argosy article, Sanderson described how he had made his momentous discovery:

“Early in January of this year [1969], I was sitting at my typewriter and staring at nothing… when the phone rang. The caller was a Minneapolis man who introduced himself as a zoologist and owner of an animal import-export business specializing in reptiles… After a general chat, this fellow told me he had just returned from Chicago where he had visited the famous annual Stock Fair. While there, he had inspected a side show which consisted of a single large coffin in a trailer-truck. In this coffin, which was glass-covered and brightly lit with strip lights, there was a huge block of ice, about half of it as clear as the air in the room, the rest frosty or darkly opaque. In the ice was the corpse of a large, powerfully built man, or ‘man-thing,’ completely clothed in dark, stiff hair about three inches long. My informant urged me to go take a look at it, since he, being a real student of what we call ABSMery (abominable-snowman-related information) and having read everything available on the subject, felt that it was the real thing, despite it being a mystery.”

Sanderson’s anonymous informant must have been persuasive, because, according to the good doctor, “that little bell rang inside me as it used to when I discovered a new animal while collecting professionally for zoos and museums. I started packing one of our station wagons with my traveling office and recording equipment.”

Let me stop here a minute and make a couple of observations. What we have so far is this: a guy who runs a pet business happens to be a Snowman nut. (There are hordes of ’em, all sniffing around for Bigfoot or whatever, trying to inject some excitement into their pointless little lives.) This guy calls up the dean of Snowman “investigators,” Ivan Sanderson, and says that a carny grind show is really a staggeringly important scientific discovery. Sight unseen, Sanderson’s uncanny instincts tell him that the guy is right. That’s the story so far.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already pissed by the underlying arrogance of Sanderson’s account. Like Millions of “marks” before him, he naturally assumed that he was smarter than any carny could ever be. Did he really believe that a showman could own “the find of the century” and not know what it was? Or, even worse, did he think that a showman could know that he had a “real” Abominable Snowman and still be stupid enough to charge pocket change for folks to look at it? Let me put it to you this way: If you had a “real” Snowman, would you haul it around the carny circuit, making peanuts, or would you be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, raking in millions of dollars? Think about it. Now back to Dr. S…

In his account, Sanderson went on to mention that, in the same house where he worked (presumably his own) was “just about the only man in the world fully qualified to pronounce upon such an item as this, Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of his native Belgium, and author of, among others, a book entitled ‘On the Track of Unknown Animals’…”

In other words, Dr. Heuvelmans was a fellow Snowman nut.

“I am not going to pinpoint just where we went at this time,” Sanderson wrote, “other than to day that it was west of the Mississippi, because I know only too well what publicity can do, so I respect the plea of the gentleman [Frank Hansen] in whose care this exhibit is stored during the winter season – especially because it is on his private property.”

As we’ll see, Sanderson didn’t respect another of Hansen’s requests – that the creature not be represented as authentic.

Sanderson went on to describe how he and Heuvelmans traveled to a distant motel, where they stayed overnight before setting out the next morning to visit the Creature’s caretaker. “We got there,” he reported. “by back-tracking and using a compass” – [I guess they forgot their road map!] – “and eventually barreled into a beautiful snow-covered garden surrounded by a grove of planted conifers. And there stood a lovely ranch-type house on the one hand and a large trailer truck on the other. We were most graciously received, and, in fact, invited to stay as house guests.”

After some chit-chat, their host, Mr. Hansen, donned a parka, and they all went out to the trailer to stare at the Thing. It was a moving experience for Sanderson.

“Looking at the body of a descendant of one of my possible ancestors – especially since it looked as I had always expected it would – really shook me up,” he confided. “We spent the afternoon photographing it. I held the lights and things for Bernard while he tried to get shots in under the opaque parts of the ice. We left at sundown.”

The next day, the two scientists fetched some “added equipment” and drove back up the mountain to rejoin their “charming host and hostess.” They spent that evening and the next morning snooping around the Creature. In his article, Sanderson described what they found:

“On the whole, Bozo, as we nicknamed him, is a very sturdy, approximately six-foot-tall ‘human,’ covered with two – to four-inch, stiff, but thickly growing hair, except on the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, his penis and his face. He has nails, not claws or ‘overgrown’ nails, on both his hands and feet. He has practically no neck, the muscles from the side of his head forming a great triangle that flows into his shoulders, which are very wide and constructed like those of a powerful human wrestler. His torso is what is commonly called barrel-shaped and it tapers down, not to a waist, but to rather narrow hips. His legs are actually about the standard length for a six-foot man, but his arms are longer than the average.

His most outstanding features, and those which strike one first, are his hands. They are enormous, rather spatulate, but of entirely human proportions – except for one feature. This is the thumb, which is slender and excessively long, reaching, it seems, almost to the last joint of the first or index finger. The feet are more than ten inches wide, measured across the toes. The toes are larger and both stuffy and ‘tubby,’ and the little toe is almost as big as the others. The feet and the toes are covered with many long hairs that appear to be very stiff and curve, down. Most significant, however, is the fact that the big toe lies alongside the next one, as it does in us (it is what is called apposed, as distinct from the big toe of the apes which is opposed like our thumb). This is the one and almost only clear distinction between men (Hominids) and apes (Pongids).

“Bozo’s face is his most startling feature, both to anthropologists and anyone else – and for several reasons. Unfortunately, both eyeballs have been ‘blow out’ of their sockets. One appears to be missing, but the other seems (to some, at least) to be just visible under the ice. This gives Bozo a gruesome appearance, which is enhanced by a considerable amount of blood diffused from the sockets through the ice. The most arresting feature of the face is the nose. This is large but fairly wide, like that of a Pekinese dog – but not like that of a gorilla, which actually doesn’t have a nose, per se. The nostrils are large, circular, and point straight forward, which is very odd. The mouth is only fairly wide and there is no eversion of the lips at all. His ‘muzzle’ is no more bulging, prominent, or pushed forward than is our own; not at all prognathous like that of a chimp. One side of the mouth is slightly agape and two small teeth can be seen. These should be the right upper canine and the first premolar. The canine or eye-tooth is very small and in no way exaggerated into a tusk, or similar to that of a gorilla or a chimp. But – to me at least – the most interesting features of all are some folds and wrinkle lines around the mouth just below the cheeks. These are absolutely human, and are like those seen in a heavy – jowled, older white man.”

In short, the two less-than-objective investigators found what they wanted to find – a “real” Abominable Snowman!

Sanderson declared: “Let me say, simply, that one look was actually enough to convince us that this was – from our point of view, at least – the ‘genuine article’” – an amazing statement, coming from a so-called scientist!

Sanderson proceeded to explain why Bozo couldn’t possibly be a gaff:

“You just cannot ‘make’ a corpse like this, either out of bits and pieces of the bodies of other animals, or of wax, with some half a million hairs inserted into it,” he stated. “And you can’t get the kind of hairs that cover this corpse from any other kind of animal that I know of. Also, the proportions of this body, and several of its special features, are just not known at all – or, at least, have never been suggested either by paleontologists who have studied the fossil bones of primitive man-things, or even by the skilled artists who have fleshed out and made reconstructions of what the former have found. In fact, any ‘artists’ setting out to ‘make’ such a thing would have to have a model, and none is available. But, apart from that, you can’t completely fool two trained morphologists with zoological, anatomical and anthropological training. No! Bozo is the genuine article.”

It doesn’t take a genius to poke holes in Sanderson’s argument for “Bozo’s” authenticity. First, he says that “You just cannot ‘make’ a corpse like this, either out of bits and pieces of the bodies of other animals, or of wax, with some half a million hairs inserted into it.” Why not? Didn’t he ever hear of the Feejee Mermaid (half fish and half monkey)? As for inserting hairs into wax, maybe Sanderson should have visited the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” Museums, where he would have found two life-size wooden statues of the Japanese artist Hananuma Masakichi. Masakichi-san created the perfect likenesses of himself when he thought he was going to die young from tuberculosis. He plucked every hair out of his body (including pubic hair) and painstakingly inserted them into tiny holes drilled into the statue’s solid wood. Compared with that feat, putting hairs into wax would be a piece of cake.

Next, Sanderson says “you can’t get the kind of hairs that cover this corpse from any other kind of animal that I know of.” Well, maybe that’s because it wasn’t real hair! In any case, I defy anyone to identify where some hairs came from by looking at them through a cloudy block of ice! It takes microscopic examination to positively identify hair samples.

Then Sanderson declares that “the proportions of this body, and several of its special features, are just know at all…” Well, that could have been because the Creature was the creation of somebody’s imagination! That possibility must not have crossed Dr. Sanderson’s mind.

(The original Argosy caption reads; Right: Line drawing showing measurements taken from block of ice containing Missing Link. Creature’s characteristics include short neck, arms reaching to knees, disproportionate hands and feet and extremely husky body. These features agree largely with what is known of the classic Neanderthalers. Some scientists, mostly Russian and Mongolian, have held for years that scattered populations of these pre-historic men still survive in remote areas.)

Most amazingly, Sanderson states that “any ‘artists’ setting out to ‘make’ such a thing would have to have a model, and none is available.” I beg your pardon? Why would somebody need a “model” to create an ape-man creature? You fashion a wire frame; you get some skins; you make the face, hands, and feet out of rubber; you freeze it all in a block of ice. There- that wasn’t too hard to imagine, was it?

Here’s something else that Dr. Sanderson apparently never thought of… Maybe that block of ice was there to obscure, not to preserve!

Sanderson went on to say that “the agent who has handled this exhibit and who acts as caretaker for it during the winter off-season told me that it was first heard of through a group of Americans whose official duties took them back and forth across the Pacific. From these, it was learned that this ‘curiosity’ was lying in a 6,000-pound block of ice, in a sort of super plastic bag in a large commercial deep-freeze unit in Hong Kong. It was offered for sale, by an exporter who is in the business of marketing all manner of goods, including curios. It was bought by an American.

“The seller offered various stories as to the origin of the thing. According to one, it was found floating in a block of sea-ice in international waters somewhere in the Bering Sea by a Russian sealing ship, and was hauled aboard and put in the hold. The ship put into a Chinese port and the Chinese authorities seized the specimen and off-loaded it, whereupon it ‘disappeared’ into Red China. By this account, the specimen (still in some 6,000 pounds of ice) finally turned up in Hong Kong.

“An alternate story told how it was found by a Japanese whaling outfit somewhere off the coast of Kamchatka, taken to Japan and then sold to the exporter in Hong Kong. There are also other versions, but none can be confirmed; no names of any ships involved have been ascertained, and nothing further is known.”

It sounds like Sanderson and Huevelmans were being fed a lot of ripe “baloney,” which they eagerly devoured. Despite their university degrees, they were still just a couple of “marks,” ready to fall for some good, old-fashioned flim-flam. Frank Hansen, however, was more straight-forward with them than they deserved or appreciated. As Sanderson described it:

“There was an initial almost furious resistance to any suggestion of publicizing this thing in any way, thought I was shown published write-ups of it in trade magazines.”

The big difference, which apparently escaped Sanderson, is that he wanted to publicize the Thing as “authentic,” whereas the so-called trade magazines – which presumably included Amusement Business and other show-biz publications – recognized. Hansen’s creature for what it was: a show.

Sanderson went on: “It was explained that the owner ‘did not want to fool the public’ and had therefore billed this exhibit as a mystery, and as most probably being some kind of Oriental fakery. Moreover, he does not want to know what the thing in the ice really is because, if it is a phony, he feels that by advertising it as some sort of ‘ice-age man,’ he would be committing a fraud on the public.”

Well, it sounds like Hansen gave Sanderson and Heuvelmans as much of the “straight skinny” that he could – but to no avail. In a postscript to Sanderson’s article, Heuvelmans laid it on the line:

“For the first time in history,” he declared, “a fresh corpse of Neanderthal-like man has been found. It means that this form of Hominid, thought to be extinct since prehistoric times, is still living today.

“The long search for the rumored live ’ape-man’ has at last been successful…”

Heuvelmans proceeded to describe the Creature and to repeat Sanderson’s reasons why it couldn’t be a fake. He then added an observation that Sanderson had failed to mention:

“The peculiar structure of the ice and the presence of a pool of blood around the head show that, immediately after death, the corpse was placed in a freezer tank and filled with water and artificially frozen.

“The specimen was apparently killed by a large caliber bullet entering the right eye. The impact blew out the rear of the skull and forced the left eye out of its socket.”

On that Gruesome note, Heuvelmans concluded his statement:

“To sum up, this specimen is a contemporary representative of an unknown form of Hominid, most probably a relic of the Neanderthal type.

“The belief, based on strong testimonial evidence [called “hearsay’ and ‘tall tales” by us non-scientific types- C.F.], that small, scattered populations of Neanderthals survive has been held for years by some scientists, mostly Russian and Mongolian.

“A full scientific report of the resent finding, with a description of this new form of living Hominid under the name Homo Pongoides (i.e. “Apelike Man”) has been published in February [1969], in the ‘Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Natural Sciences of Belgium’ (Vol. 45 No. 4).”

End of story.

So, not only did Sanderson and Heuvelmans ignore Frank Hansen’s request that the Creature not be presented as authentic, but Heuvelmans rushed their “finding” into print a mere month after visiting Hansen. That, as they say, just ain’t cricket.

What amazes me the most is that purportedly reputable “scientists” would bestow a new zoological name on a grind show attraction that they had only peered at through a block of ice! That’s enough to give pseudo-science a bad name!

Well, after the smoke cleared, Hansen and his creature went their merry way, leaving our intrepid investigators looking pretty silly.

Six years later, in October 1975, the Creature came to my neck of the woods, New Jersey, where it was exhibited at the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown. The Oct. 31st edition of a local newspaper, the Asbury Park Press, ran the following item to publicize the event:

“EATONTOWN- Man or monster, illusion or real, these are two of the questions that surround ‘The Mysterious Creature in Ice.’

“No, it is not a Halloween hoax. There is something frozen in ice resembling an oversized man covered with hair.

“The creature, exhibited in a glass-enclosed, refrigerated coffin on a platform at Monmouth Mall this week, has been the center of controversy between scientists [Sanderson and Heuvelmans], who contend the creature is a missing link to man’s past, and its owner and exhibitor, who contends it is an ‘illusion.’

“Frank D. Hansen, Rollingstone, Minn., has taken the creature in its frigid coffin on tours of fairs and shopping centers throughout North America since 1968 [actually, 1967 –C.F.]. Hansen does not own the creature, and he would not divulge the owner’s name to The Press yesterday.

“Hansen said the creature was found on a fishing trip in the Bearing Straights, was thought to be a fish, and was sent to Hong Kong. From there it was sent to Long Beach, Calif., where its owner hired Hansen, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot and fair circuit exhibitor, to take the hairy creature on tours of the country.

“A Belgian scientist heard of the exhibit and the mysterious hairy figure in ice and came to the United States to examine it. Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans of Belgium’s Royal Institute of Natural Sciences, and Ivan Sanderson, science editor of Argosy magazine, together, after much pleading with Hansen, were allowed to examine the creature. In their examinations, the glass to the coffin was broken and the smell of rotting flesh filled the trailer where it was kept. It was then that the scientists knew the creature was real.

“However, when stopped on a crossing of the U.S.- Canadian border, Hansen said the creature was actually a fabricated illusion made to seem real. Even yesterday Hansen said the creature on exhibit was not real, adding that in due time the owner will turn the creature over to scientists to determine the validity.’

Hansen said about 200,000 people saw the creature during exhibits in shopping centers last year with an estimated $50,000 being made in profit. Hansen said half of this money was turned over to various charities.

“’If they (Heuvelmans and Sanderson) had not created such a big fuss and if Heuvelmans had kept his word, the owner would have probably turned it over to someone in 1969, and we would know whether it is real or not,’ Hansen said.”

Whatever the Creature was, it certainly qualified as one of the greatest grindshow attractions of all times, leaving a lasting impression on everybody who saw it. In the 11-11-96 issue of Circus Report, sawdust showman Don Bridwell recalled a memorable encounter with the Creature (or its close relative!):

IN the mid-1970s,” Bridwell wrote, “I played the Saginaw, Mich. Fair with a circus in front of the grandstand. I always loved the fair dates, as I’m a real side show devotee, having worked side show magic on the 1968 Carson & Barnes show myself.

I had plenty of time to check out the midway, and that year there were quite a few side shows and pit shows at the fair, including Ward Hall’s big 10-in-1; a Lion Girl single-O, a drug abuse show; and a number of others.

“The one that got my attention and has stayed with me all these years was a small, actually rather shabby-looking exhibit in a 24 ft. trailer, called ‘Big Foot.’

“I figured, why not? It was only $1.00, and I thought I might see at least a fair wax figure, or some decent put-on at least. What I did see has boggled my mind for a long time now.

“The front of the exhibit was a rather crude painting on plywood of the Sasquatch, the legendary ‘Big Foot’ character. Also some blown-up newspaper reproductions, giving stories of the Big Foot phenomenon over the years.

“Inside there was a large, about 9 ft. long, clear glass coffin, with climate control and refrigeration. Inside was a most definitely humanoid body, about 7.5/8 ft. tall, a totally nude male. The facial features looked much like a gorilla and somewhat like an Australian aborigine. The exposed skin was something like a deep suntan, very leathery. The hair line was sloped back, and the hair was a dark reddish brown.

“The body was hairy, but not overly so. A very muscular frame, the arms longer than normal for a man. The teeth were large and prominent, but not ‘fangs’ or canine at all. What was really startling was that the finger tips and toes were both calloused, and had whorls and characteristics of prints. You could stay in the exhibit as long as you cared to, and could examine the body extremely close. If this was s fake, it was the best one I had ever seen.

“Several years after that, there was a news story about a body of a Big Foot that had been exhibited at fairs and carnivals for a while and then totally disappeared.

“The author of the article, like myself, did not quite know what to make of it. I’m convinced this was the exhibit I had seen.

“Now with a recent documentary sighting and filming of a new ‘Big Foot’ in Northern California, apparently authentic, I wonder all the more whatever became of this strange and unusual exhibit that I had the opportunity of seeing.”

I’m not sure that what Mr. Bridwell saw was Frank Hansen’s original Creature, since Bridwell puts its height at nearly 8 feet, more than 2 feet taller than “Bozo.” And what Bridwell saw appears to have been less hairy than Hansen’s “Siberian Creature.” It may have been a rip-off of Hansen’s exhibit. If it was the original “Bozo,” then Hansen’s show had certainly fallen on hard times, going from a fancy 40-foot semi in 1967 to a seedy 24-foot trailer with a cheap plywood front a few years later.

I almost got to see “The Mysterious Creature in Ice” about 15 years ago, and now I wish that I had. It was on exhibit at the last New Jersey State Fair held at the old Trenton Fairgrounds. That must have been in 1980 or ’81. I remember recognizing the name of the show from the Asbury Park Press article of 1975, but, for some reason, I didn’t go in. As I recall, it was set up like a pit show, inside an open, canopy-like tent. I’ve never seen it since.

Acknowledgment: My thanks to Walt Hudson for supplying the info from Amusement Business.

I learned about the “Minnesota Iceman” as a child, as my mother collected magazines like Saga and Argosy for the Bigfoot articles. I totally forgot about the “Iceman” until I heard Loren Coleman lecturing about various cryptozoological issues several years ago. I was kind of shocked that he took the “Iceman” seriously. Since I was previously a sideshow performer, I was familiar with gaffs, and more specifically how sideshow is promoted.

The “Iceman” crops up in the Bigfoot world from time to time, though it seems to garner far less serious attention than other topics. Loren Coleman seems to be one of he few advocates who still promote it as being real.

For me as a former sideshow performer, the issue is really a “no-brainer”; the thing was a gaff from the beginning. I wholeheartedly agree with several of Fellner’s points. Just because Sanderson and Heuvelmans were educated individuals does not make them immune from being deceived, especially by those whose very job it is to deceive.

Fellner puts it well here:

I don’t know about you, but I’m already pissed by the underlying arrogance of Sanderson’s account. Like Millions of “marks” before him, he naturally assumed that he was smarter than any carny could ever be. Did he really believe that a showman could own “the find of the century” and not know what it was? Or, even worse, did he think that a showman could know that he had a “real” Abominable Snowman and still be stupid enough to charge pocket change for folks to look at it? Let me put it to you this way: If you had a “real” Snowman, would you haul it around the carny circuit, making peanuts, or would you be on the front page of every newspaper in the world, raking in millions of dollars? Think about it.

Ivan Sanderson in particular was an individual who was more than willing to embrace some really off-the-deep-end concepts. In particular, Sanderson claimed that large three toed tracks found in Florida were made by a 15 foot tall penguin!

Florida Giant Penguin Hoax Revealed

Sanderson certainly earned the appellation of “mark” for buying so strongly into a sideshow exhibit, but seriously advocating 15 foot penguins is really beyond the pale…

An Experimentally Produced Desiccation Ridge That Mimics an Arch

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

In late 2004 or early 2005, I began to bring a number of test coupons that exhibit desiccation ridges to meetings held at the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries. At the time, I knew very little about the nature of these ridges. I spoke to a man whose name I no longer recall, who told me that he had done plaster casting of figurines in molds. He said that entrained air bubbles were a big problem, and that the way to avoid them was to add a very small amount of “soap” to the plaster slurry. This man was from the UK, and so we had no common reference to brand name of “soap” he might have used. Further, I was unclear if he meant soap or detergent

Nevertheless, I was intrigued enough by his claims to investigate. Since I was investigating what casting cements do when in contact with desiccant substrates and not waterproof molds, I had no idea what the outcome might be. But since a surfactant will alter how the aqueous phase acts upon the solid phase, I suspected that it might affect the pattern of resulting desiccation ridges.

My first test was successful, though I didn’t photograph the result. The resulting desiccation ridges might be characterized as a pattern that mimics dysplasia.

It was not until some time later that I tried the test again. This was an informal test, one in which I didn’t record all the parameters. I simply added a small amount, perhaps a milliliter, of Dawn brand dishwashing liquid to the cement slurry. This was poured over a foot-shaped depression in a bed of desiccant, probably pumice. The resulting band of desiccation ridges was unique and unprecedented in my experience.

As you can see, the ridges mimic the fingerprint pattern known as a “arch”:

Or possibly even a “tented arch”:

This process is interesting because it represents a rather striking emulation of a biological process (fingerprint development) by a completely non-biological process. While it’s tempting to say “inorganic” process, this would be inaccurate, as the surfactant is of course organic…

Of further interest is that the size of the ridges are commensurate with genuine dermal ridges, although somewhat bigger:

I believe that this development is novel and intriguing.

The Testimony of Perry Tuttle of US Gypsum

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

The bulk of the following essay, and the ensuing discussion, originally appeared here.

Recently an associate of mine sent me a link to a blog entry of an individual thought of throughout the subculture of Bigfootery as a groupie, and one prone to false accusations if not outright lies.

Amazingly, after all this time, this individual finally follows the simple directions I suggested more than 2 years ago and gets exactly the results I suggested would occur:

In fact, the result is a rather striking match for the texture we see 9cm anterior of the heel on CA-19:

At this point, the rational and scientifically minded person would simply say, “Wow, it looks just the same, and nothing like real dermal ridges”
But no, The Groupie has to go through conniptions to explain away the obvious match. She decides it’s all my fault because at one time I used chopsticks to mix my plaster slurry! She equates this to a wire whisk and implies that the ridge artifacts are due to entrained air!
First off, this is a direct personal attack against me, as it implies I’m utterly incompetent to even mix plaster of Paris. A baseless accusation of course, but by now this is common practice for The Groupie.
Ever notice how The Groupie never names the experts she claims to consult? Ever notice how The Groupie never records or publishes the correspondence she has with these experts? It’s always phone calls, and second hand anecdotes. We see it in her blog entry:

In this specific situation, had I payed more attention to the expert with USGypsum.com, this may not have gone on so long. Instead I allowed myself to be bogged down in arguments over water temperature and pancake batter. I should not have doubted this man from USGypsum.com’s 25 years of experience with this product he has such an incredible knowledge of. We really should listen to those who have expertise in areas, especially when that expertise or knowledge can help us.

Who is this expert? What is his name?
To cut to the chase, I knew that her claim that the ridges we see are due to entrained air is complete and total bullshit. There are a bunch of reasons for this.


1. If these ridges were due to entrained air, we would see them on every substrate, but we don’t.


2. We don’t see them on casts made in substrates that have had a proper application of a barrier spray.


3. We don’t see them occur on non-porous surfaces, like latex molds.


4. Entrained air produces little pits, not ridges! And so on…


But hey, why listen to me, I just have a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. I decided to follow up with The Groupie’s source of information; US Gypsum.

I sent the following e-mail to Kym Heitke, a technical representative with US Gypsum:
Hello, my name is Matt Crowley, and I’m writing from Seattle Washington. For some time now, I’ve been investigating a strange property of some of your casting compounds including Ultracal 30, Hydrocal B11, and ordinary plaster of Paris. When I make casts of impressions made in certain fine, dry substrates like pumice or silica without a barrier spray, I sometimes get very characteristic ridges and furrows. For some time now, I’ve been trying to understand the mechanism of this process. An associate of mine with a PhD in Geology advises me that they are “desiccation ridges”, caused by the strong capillary action of these particular substrates pulling the water from the cement slurry strongly away. To understand on a visual level what I’m talking about, I’ve created a number of webpages on the subject. Here is a good example:

http://www.orgoneresearch.com/testing_silica.htm

I fully recognize the subject of “Bigfoot” is “fringe science” but I assure you the spontaneous ridge phenomenon is absolutely real and easily reproduced. I appreciate you taking the time to read and respond to my request, which is simply this; can you help me to understand the physical mechanism that would produce these spontaneous ridges?

I’m usually home from work after about 4:00 o’clock if you want to call me at home. My home phone number is 206-XXX-XXXX

I didn’t get a response from Kym Heitke, but she forwarded my e-mail to Perry Tuttle, who has given me permission to publish his answers to my question. Here is his response to my first e-mail:

Matt,

It appears to me that your geology friend is correct. The porous nature of the material you are making the impression in is “wicking” water at uneven rates from the plaster. To rehydrate plaster properly, the slurry needs to lay undisturbed after vigorous mixing. If wicking is occuring, the suspended solids compact due to the water being withdrawn, and that creates ridges and water starved (desication) cracks on the cast.

Since this has happenned on various USG products of a wide range of formulation difference, I’m pretty confident. Also, if the dessication and ridging does not occur after you “seal” the pumice or fine silica impression, then that supports a wicking problem. We recommend to seal any surface that plaster is poured against.

Here is something to try if you don’t seal the impression before pouring plaster. First, mix the plaster vigorously for at least five minutes – this will ensure that the plaster crystals are already using the water before you pour. This will also create a faster setting plaster which could solidify before the full effects of wicking take hold. I believe the fix is to use a sealer on your “mold”.

We have a good website called gypsumsolutions.com that has great literature on mixing, casting, drying, etc. to help you read up on the details.

Perry Tuttle
Region Sales Mgr-West
Performance Substrates, USG

Imagine that! A technical expert at US Gypsum agrees with what Anton Wroblewski, a PhD in geology and therefore an expert in inorganic processes has been saying all along: these are DESICCATION RIDGES! Who would have thought!

I sent Mr. Tuttle another e-mail:

Mr. Tuttle;

Thank you very much for responding to my e-mail inquiry. I was fairly confident that slurry desiccation was the most likely mechanism involved in this process, and I’m glad to have received your confirmation. As a follow-up, I have read a public claim that the ridge-artifacts are due to entrained air, and not desiccation. I don’t believe this to be correct for a number of reasons, the least of which is that I’ve never seen little bubble-pits on any of the ridges in any test casts I’ve made. I’d like to get your take on this claim as well.
In addition, I would like your permission to publicly quote your answer, as well as this portion of your previous e-mail:

Matt,

It appears to me that your geology friend is correct. The porous nature of the material you are making the impression in is “wicking” water at uneven rates from the plaster. To rehydrate plaster properly, the slurry needs to lay undisturbed after vigorous mixing. If wicking is occuring, the suspended solids compact due to the water being withdrawn, and that creates ridges and water starved (desication) cracks on the cast.

His response:

Hi Matt,

It’s fine to post my opinions. Air entrainment problems, when created by poor mixing practices, tend to show up throughout a cast and do not create one isolated feature. Many times, when a mold has a particular section of contour where air can’t be fully displaced to the backside (top) of the casting, then you can get isolated air entrained features. In both cases, you should see air bubbles in cross section.

Additionally, pouring a plaster product against a porous medium can also create bubbles even though you may have mixed the slurry without entraining air. When the slurry enters an open porosity system, the air has to be pushed out somewhere and typically, it will simply find its way into the slurry. Sealing your pattern material is the way to go.

Perry

As you can see, NOWHERE does he suggest that these ridges are due to air entrainment , and in fact accepts the mechanism proposed by Dr. Wroblewski: desiccation.

Perhaps it’s time for The Groupie to reconsider her constant resorts to anecdotal, second-hand accounts of unnamed individuals whom she claims to be experts. Since she has demonstrated time and time again that she has no clue what real science is all about, perhaps she should consider a move to the UFO field, where second hand accounts from unnamed and secret sources is standard operating procedure. The UFO field is rife with personalities like hers; I’m sure she would fit right in.

The Solid Science of Sam Rich

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

Some years ago, I posted on a popular Internet forum rather simple directions on how to create casts that exhibit desiccation ridges using volcanic ash as a substrate. Since that time several individuals have successfully followed these directions, and obtained the results I suggested they would. Being that duplication of results is one of the fundamental qualities of science, I believe that the methodology and results of Bigfoot advocate Sam Rich deserves to be publicized and praised.

Sam carefully documented his methodology and results in his own series of blog entries, starting here, and further offered them for public discussion here:

I can find nothing at all to criticize in Sam’s work. His style is even more scientific than mine in the sense that he eliminated one more variable than I did; he used a standardized impressioning tool to create his “tracks” whereas I simply made mine “freehand” each time. Since we both achieved virtually the same results, I would argue that this variable is not greatly important in the grand scheme of things; You can make cookies by hand or use a cookie cutter. I made mine by hand, Sam used a cookie cutter. Our cookies both tasted the same…

Sam has given me permission to re-post his findings on my own website.

Starting with a chunk of clay, Sam created a “male” master for his final impressioning tool, which, understandably, was a Big Foot:

Through a series of steps, he arrived at a final impressioning tool, complete with handles with which to pull the tool cleanly away from the test substrate:

Removal of the tool, which he painted dark green, perhaps as an homage to The Incredible Hulk, resulted in a cleanly detailed “track” in a bed of volcanic ash:

No fixative was used, and a plaster slurry was poured into the “track”. Note where the plaster slurry is contacting the substrate, and how the propagating wave front of the slurry is more or less curved. This is an outstanding photograph as it illustrates the initiation of two fundamental features of the desiccation ridge process; the “point of first slurry impact”, and the arched furrows which curve in toward the point of first impact.

The resulting cast exhibited every single subtle feature which I had discovered to have occurred under such circumstances; a subtle ring recording the point of first slurry impact, furrows that abut bands of desiccation ridges, with the ridges on the inside of the furrow, relative to the point of first slurry impact. The “ridge flow pattern” that followed the sidewall contours of the track. Desiccation ridges of the same size, shape, and pattern of distribution that I’ve seen again and again in my own tests:

Having done this myself, I can personally attest that photographs alone do not do justice as to how much work and meticulous preparation goes into doing this kind of test. Because Sam went to the trouble of creating a standardized impressioning tool (his Big Green Foot), his conclusion is unduly modest:

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Given that these casting artifacts (and their similarity to alleged “dermal ridges”) was anticipated the results came as no surprise.

What's All This About Volcanic Ash?

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

The following is a modified version of a post that I made some time back on the JREF forum. Because I have been the victim of a smear campaign suggesting I was lying about where or how I obtained volcanic ash I decided to document in detail how I came to buy this stuff. The original post appears here.

Some of you might be caught off guard by all the commentary regarding volcanic ash. How exactly did I come to work with this weird, exotic stuff?

Well, just so we have it on record and right out in public, I’ll tell you. Several years ago I began a sort of study to find out if there was a mineral powder that could be added to epoxy to create a useful putty. It’s foolish to pay epoxy prices for mineral powder diluants. Think of it as a sort of high-grade “Bondo.” Eventually I found that fly ash, a byproduct of coal burning, was an outstanding material for this purpose. But until I came upon fly ash, I had bags and bags of mineral powders in my basement. I have a friend who works at System Three epoxy near Seattle; he even gave me some tech-grade mineral powder additives.
Once when I was at Wal-Mart, I came upon this:

A product called Spill Magic. Believe it or not, I bought it not to absorb spills, but to mix with epoxy! Freakish, I know…

Frankly I can’t remember how it worked out as far as adding to epoxy goes, as I settled on fly ash soon enough. Fly ash mixed with epoxy makes an excellent filler putty, which adheres well to the surfaces it’s applied to and can be sanded after hardening.

Some time passed, and I became interested in the dermals business, late in 2004. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, I built a wood box to contain these mineral powders and soils for testing.

Late in 2004, Rick Noll was made aware of my tests through the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries. He met me there, and photographed a number of my test casts. He then proposed that my tests needed to be “documented”, which means that he wanted to videotape me doing various tests. In reality, this means that I would create content for free so that he could profit later by marketing the footage to television or including it for sale on his own DVD. I began corresponding with him about my tests. Rarely did I get any kind of answers from him, though I had understood him to be a “casting expert”. But I thought it wise to keep him abreast of what I was doing.

Eventually it occurred to me that materials besides fly ash should be tested, as the casts containing purported dermal ridges were made in natural soils. I tested various natural soils. Now, for some reason, Noll began to start suggesting that industrial contamination might be a cause of these plaster cast ridges, and that fallout from Mt. St. Helens might be the source of casting artifacts seen in Pacific Northwest casts. The “proposal” in the following e-mail is his script to “document” my tests. Here are two excerpts from an e-mail I sent to Noll on January 26, 2005:

My second concern is the “focus” or “direction” of your proposal. It is obvious to both of us that rather spectacular casting artifacts can occur in fly ash. I am certainly willing to demonstrate that on video. But since fly ash does not occur in nature I have been doing tests with natural clays and soils. To me it is interesting but ultimately not relevant to Bigfootery if the effect only occurs in fly ash. So far, my tests show casting artifacts occurring in natural soil, but not to the same pronounced effect as in fly ash. I would be more game to focus on showing that these casting artifacts can and do occur in natural soil. I sort of gather that you may want to present this as a “fly ash” effect. I don’t know enough about inorganic chemistry, soil chemistry, or volcanology to be confidant in suggesting that PNW casts might be “puckered” due to Mt. St. Helens fallout.

Italics mine. As you can see, it was Noll himself who suggested to me that Mt. St. Helens fallout might be involved!

And later in the same e-mail:

I believe that you may suspect that industrial contamination of soil could be at the root of causing cement to “pucker”, and you may be right. But currently my focus is to determine if capillary action or “wicking” is the cause. Why do I suspect this? Simply because I have never seen “puckering” effects to occur from casting non-porous surfaces. I suspect that fly ash produces a stronger effect simply because it is so finely divided, whereas natural clay-like soils are more clumped. The greater surface area of finely divided particles provides a stronger “wicking” capillary action.

So please forgive my long digressions but better to straighten things out before they turn into a conflict. So to summarize; I am willing to demonstrate casts I make in fly ash but I would rather focus on casts made in natural clay-like soils. Your idea of collecting the soil at the source is a good one.  At this time I do not suspect industrial pollution to be the cause of puckering cast artifacts. I’m not sure I would be willing to go along with this line of reasoning.

From a second e-mail sent by me to Rick Noll the same day, January 26, 2005:

Rick;

OK, I’ll bite. But could you please follow up on your video suggestions regarding both Mt. St. Helens ash and industrial waste. I am certainly willing to discuss on camera experiments done with FLY ASH but I am not competent to speculate on Mt. St. Helens ash or Industrial waste because I have not done experiments with either. I have no idea if the clay sample I took from the Duwamish river is contaminated or not.

I think I spend too much time on the Internet.

It’s obvious that Noll is the one trying to “direct” the course of my investigations, based on his ideas about Mt. St. Helens ash and “industrial waste”.

Here is a portion of an e-mail I sent Noll the very next day, January 27, 2005:

Rick;

Well my understanding of fly ash is at a beginner’s level but you bring up some interesting concepts. I believe all fly ash comes from coal-fired power plants. Many coal fired plants are in the Southern US. I think since the 70’s with EPA regulations most plants now have electrostatic precipitators that remove most ash from entering the atmosphere. Still, some must escape, and it has to fall somewhere. A couple of summers ago Dana & I camped overnight in Ape Canyon. We didn’t see anywhere near as much ash on the southeast side as we did coming in from the northwest. I wish now I would have grabbed a soil sample!

As you can see, I’m still reacting to Noll’s notion that fly ash is an “industrial waste”. Note that I freely admit to Noll that I’d been to Mt. St. Helens; Ape Canyon in particular. The Forest Service posts signs in the area, and if memory serves, includes in pamphlets the phrase “Don’t be a pumice picker”. When you get to the Plains of Abraham at the top of the Ape Canyon cliffs, you start seeing big chunks of dark pumice, just like you might expect to find in Hawaii. Not pleasant to try to sleep on! But no, I didn’t take any pumice chunks, or any volcanic ash. First of all, Dana and I were there months or years before I became interested in the whole “dermals” business. And, despite the oozing self-righteousness of Melissa Hovey, frankly I don’t think it would have been much of a “crime” to have taken a few pounds of ash anyway! A big Ziploc bag full wouldn’t have put much of a dent in the 0.3 cubic miles of ash produced in the 1980 eruption… But the bottom line is, I DIDN’T TAKE ANY ASH OR PUMICE ROCKS, AND I EXPLICITLY TOLD NOLL THIS IN JANUARY, 2005!

I can’t prove that Noll made these suggestions about “industrial wastes” and “Mt. St. Helen’s volcanic ash”, as I believe my computer has purged inbound e-mail from that long ago, and I wouldn’t post his e-mails to me without his permission anyway. But as you can see, Noll is going into “director” and “script writer” mode very early on. Noll’s game is not science, which is open-ended and honest discovery, but production of cinematic product to be packaged and sold.

After I tested fly ash, I began to test the other mineral powders in my basement to see what would happen when cement casting compounds were poured over them. Indeed, I eventually made a test cast using Spill Magic.

I obtained rather spectacular desiccation ridges in this cast. This was in January 2005.

Here is an e-mail I sent to Rick Noll on January 31, 2005:

Rick;

I just finished an experiment that produced the most intense “dermals” yet! I carefully tested how well fly ash “wicked” water by sprinkling little bits of fly ash into small water droplets. It wicks water very well. Then it dawned on me to try something that I had kicking around the house that I had not tried before; a product called “Spill Magic” which I got in the auto section of Walmart a couple of summers ago. It is sold as a spill cleaner, mostly for motor oil spills but it wicks water even better than fly ash. I poured out a few grams of powder and dropped on a blob of Hydrocal B11 slurry. Holy cow! The most intense “dermals” yet! Dude, you gotta see this! I am truly convinced now that the effect is due to “wicking” of the substrate into which the cement is poured.

Guess what “Spill Magic” is made of? The label says ‘Amorphous aluminum silicate”. That’s pumice! Pumice wicks water like a mofo! Time to get some Mt. St. Helens ash and test it! I think your intuition was correct; volcanic soils may very well produce the conditions in which “wicking” occurs and may be the source of some “dermal” casting artifacts.

The company’s website spillmagic.com is working so I assume they are still in business. I hope Walmart still has it.

As you can see, I’m now beginning to think that Noll may have been right all along about a potential causal relationship between volcanic ash and casting artifacts.

But by this time I had run out of Spill Magic. I went back to Wal-Mart for more, but they were out.

As I noted in my e-mail to Noll, I simply figured out what Spill Magic actually contained:

I must have googled the term “amorphous aluminum silicate” which gives READE’S website as the first hit, at least every time I’ve tried it.

Pumice! Yeah, I didn’t have to buy Spill Magic–I could just get some pumice! I can’t remember what I did next: I’m sure I searched the Internet for a source of pumice in Seattle. Eventually I found Seattle Pottery Supply. My memory is that they told me that they labeled their pumice as “volcanic ash.”

Indeed, this is exactly how Seattle Pottery Supply identifies their product:

In retrospect, it all makes sense, as Spill Magic works its magic because it’s an effective DESICCANT.

Sometime during this period, I discovered a remarkable interview with Jimmy Chilcutt. In this question and answer interview, Chilcutt suggests that CA-19 was made in “volcanic ash dust”:

Just about every one of them that had dermal ridges was cast in a creek bed, or in real soft soil. I think one of them…was in volcanic ash dust, and it’s the clearest actually, it’s the best print. The best cast.

Note that this is Chilcutt’s suggestion, not mine. I have NEVER claimed that Onion Mountain is composed of volcanic ash. But his statement tied in with what I had been finding with my own tests with volcanic ash. So I sent Chilcutt an e-mail. I cc’ed Jeff Meldrum, Owen Caddy, Dana Fos, and Rick Noll. Here is part of that e-mail:

I found an online interview recently that interested me. A man named Jon Olsen posted interviews with you and Jeff Meldrum on his “Angry Monkey Reader” website. I did not see when the telephone interview with you was conducted. One element of the interview caught my eye. You mentioned that one particular cast that contained what appear to be dermal ridges was made “in volcanic ash dust, and it’s the clearest actually, the best print. The best cast”. Which cast was this? Was this Green’s 1967 Onion Mountain cast? I spoke at some length with Jeff Meldrum in Bellingham about this cast but I don’t remember him mentioning that it was made in volcanic ash. I have seen a bunch of photographs of the area where the cast was made and it was a fresh road cut with very fine powder, so clearly the substrate had essentially no organic matter mixed in. Whether it was volcanic in nature I can’t tell from the photographs.

The reason I bring this up is that my tests with Plaster of Paris in volcanic ash have produced ridge artifacts that I believe closely resemble the ridges seen on Green’s cast. I got my volcanic ash from a pottery supplier here in Seattle. When I called to ask them if it possibly could have come from Mt. St. Helens I was told that no, it came from Hawaii.

Why did I mention Mt. St Helens to Chilcutt? Because it occurred to me that since Onion Mountain and Mt. St. Helens were both in the Cascade range, that perhaps they had similar geology. If I was testing Mt. St. Helens ash, perhaps it might be similar to what Chilcutt was now suggesting CA-19 was made in. As you can see by the tone of my e-mail, at this point I’m speculative and questioning. Remember, it was Noll who suggested that I test Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash in the first place

But lets repeat a critical portion of this e-mail I sent to Chilcutt: I got my volcanic ash from a pottery supplier here in Seattle. Now the clincher; This e-mail was sent on June 27, 2005! This was months before Melissa Hovey’s encounter with Rick Noll at the Bigfoot conference in Jefferson, TX and almost a year before Melissa Hovey began her bizarre series of posts on Bigfoot Forums.

Here is further proof that Seattle Pottery Supply sold volcanic ash and volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens at least as early as 2002:

Inside the front cover of catalog 111 we see the date; 2002:

Here is a scan of page 16 of that catalog:

Some time ago on an internet forum, I began to interact with Melissa Hovey regarding casting artifacts. At the time, I rather naively thought she wanted to duplicate the tests I had been doing. Thus, I publicly suggested she obtain some volcanic ash at a pottery supply store for testing. She did not do so, and instead obtained something else entirely. At one point claiming it was Tricalcium Sulfate and at another point Tricalcium Phosphate;  products I had never tested and totally different chemically than pumice, which is mostly oxides of silicon and aluminium. She further asserted, publicly, that Tricalcium Phosphate is “full of iron,” an egregious error, and one that exposed her rather pathological ignorance of basic chemistry.

At this point I could see the battle was lost; I would never be able to meaningfully direct her to reproduce these tests. It was obvious that she was woefully ignorant of one of the basic tenants of science; to reproduce a test, you need to use the same methods and materials. If she had tried this in an academic setting, her paper would probably receive a “see me after class” notation in red pencil…

I stood by and watched as Melissa began a series of ever-more escalating claims about what she claimed I “had told her to do.” I suspected at this time that Melissa Hovey was lying, as I had no recollection of “saying” many of these things I was alleged to have said.

Unfortunately, I had also deleted most of my forum “PM” mail, so I had no way to prove that I never said the things she claimed I said.

Over time I witnessed Melissa Hovey make ever-more exaggerated claims, many of which implied that I was lying about where I got my volcanic ash. The implication was that I had obtained volcanic ash directly from Mount St. Helens, an illegal act, according to her.

And now we get to the really interesting part, which is to review the statements that Melissa Hovey and Rick Noll made in 2006:

( Melissa October 29 @ 2006)
“Are you going to tell me to Learn to Walk before I run ?? I can not use VOLCANIC ASH – as it is illegal to ship. How you come into contact with Virgin Volcanic Ash is beyond me.”

Then, two days later, Rick Noll weighs in:

“My understanding is that it is against the law to sell volcanic ash, at least from Mt. Saint Helens.”

Wow! That’s coming from the guy who had suggested to me that I study the stuff? I had various interactions with Noll following this, and I eventually concluded that he is simply not an honest and forthright person. Oh yeah, there’s that elk cast thing, too…

Being that ash from Mt. St. Helens was blown hundreds of miles away, it’s obvious you don’t have to get it from Mt. St. Helens itself. But hey, it’s a nice, backhanded way to imply that I’ve done something illegal…

I suspected that if I remained silent on the matter Melissa’s hubris would eventually get the better of her, and she would eventually make a mistake. This is part of the reason why my friend Dana and I obtained the bag of volcanic ash from Seattle Pottery Supply and saved the receipt:

I waited for Melissa to “cross the line.”

Indeed, she eventually did “cross the line” and publicly claimed that I was lying about where I had obtained my volcanic ash:

“Fact is Tube – your (sic) not being honest and you know it.”

This is a demonstrably false claim, as my receipt posted here proves. Thus, Melissa’s claim amounts to libel and defamation.

Melissa Hovey claims to have called Seattle Pottery Supply and claims she was told that they didn’t have this stuff. Unless Hovey recorded the call, we have no way of independently verifying what was asked and what was answered, and by whom. Even conceding the possibility that whomever Hovey spoke to told her they didn’t have volcanic ash, that person was mistaken. When Dana and I bought our sample, there was plenty in stock, and this was just a few days after her ludicrous claim that Seattle Pottery Supply didn’t have volcanic ash. Much more likely of course, is that Hovey is either grossly distorting the nature of her phone call conversation or flat out lying.

This kind of hearsay, second hand, reportage seems to be a pattern with Hovey. The usual form is something like this; “I called this expert person on the phone who wants to remain anonymous because they don’t want to be associated with Bigfoot, and they told me such-and-such”.

This is not how historical, or in particular, scientific research is done. Real research includes names, credentials, questions asked, and answers given, in written form, and dated.

The facts that I’ve presented on this page totally falsify Hovey’s claims. Seattle Pottery Supply sold volcanic ash years before I was involved with this investigation. I e-mailed several people in 2005 advising that I had purchased volcanic ash from a pottery supply store here in Seattle. I purchased volcanic ash days after Hovey make her bizarre public claim, saved and posted the receipt.

In retrospect, after reviewing e-mails I sent to Rick Noll, I find it hard to imagine how Melissa Hovey would come to launch her attack on me about such an esoteric subject as the availability of Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash, unless Noll forwarded her the e-mails I sent to him.

The great and strange ending to this whole pathological event is that Melissa Hovey ends up buying volcanic ash from Seattle Pottery Supply for herself!

Melissa Hovey buys Volcanic Ash From Seattle Pottery Supply by you.

After all the implications that I’ve broken laws, after all the bullshit about selling volcanic ash being illegal, after the explicit JREF claim that I’m a liar, here we have Melissa Hovey buying the stuff herself! What is this woman’s major malfunction?

Why, you might wonder, didn’t I present all this way back in 2006, on that internet forum? Because I quickly discovered that rational discourse with this individual is impossible. Dr. Anton Wroblewski discovered the same thing, and departed as I did.

Further input from others can be found within this Bigfoot Discussions thread.