Audre’s convalescence has coincided with a revival in her bigfoot scribblings, and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m chiefly pleased because Audre is doing better, but I’m also thrilled she’s sending along Bigfoot content (“Footent?”) again.

This week’s submission involves a very lifelike—but, I would argue, clearly manipulated—image that purports to be a close-up photo of the big lug.  The picture looks very much like a person—indeed, I have worked with and seen people who look like the creature in the photo (no offense intended).

Audre has more to say on the matter, and dips into the often discouraging world of online Bigfoot investigating.

With that, here is Audre on the face of Bigfoot:

I would like for you to study this face – but don’t play the video yet. Just search that face; there is life in those eyes, the eye wrinkles from years of weather and years of age, there’s nothing at all frightening about this face. It feels familiar.

The first time I saw this photo, I studied it carefully, for quite a long time. I had, when I saw it, immediately thought of the two young ‘twenty-something’ men giving a bigfoot interview to a production crew regarding their bigfoot sighting. They were out hunting and had their rifles with them. They saw the back of the creature first and raised their rifles, at which point, the creature turned and looked at them. The interviewer asked if they shot it. They became quiet, hushed, in comparison to their demeanor at the beginning of the interview. They answered ‘no’. The interviewer, who was a little excited himself, asked why they didn’t shoot it. The one young man said, “Because it looked like us.” That statement and this image slammed together in my mind. It looks like us. And it does!

Through Portly’s unending kindness, he’s allowed me to share with you, videos and photos of bigfoot that I felt were compelling. Seeing that face, I would say I was a 99% believer in bigfoot.

In my bigfoot posts here on The Portly Politico, I’ve mentioned the bigfoot enthusiast’s favorite scientist/debunker, Thinker Thunker. Here, in this video, he managed to break my heart. The reason we respond to that photo that looks so human is because it comes from a compilation of manipulations based on a real human face. That explains the life in the eyes and wrinkles of age and that feeling of familiarity. Expert work created that image. I wish it were the Creator that created that face but no such luck.

Does this video crush my interest in bigfoots? No. It’s just a reinforcement of my belief that in order to make a reasoned assessment, it requires video – action – to determine what is real and what isn’t. There are (can be) so many reference points in a video that a photo can’t capture. I am disappointed but not crushed.

The search goes on.