Recent sightings of a “Bigfoot” in the Cannock Chase, a wooded forest area in the UK, as well as legends of “cavemen” living in caves beneath the area, have made headlines numerous times in the last several weeks. I sent one of the recent stories along to my friend Nick Redfern last night, having to do with an alleged eye-witness account in the area reported by British news sources. Today, Nick (who grew up ten minutes from the Cannock Chase woodlands) chimes in on what he thinks may actually be going on:

http://manbeastuk.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-british-bigfoot-report.html

“Indeed, having grown up only a couple of miles from the woods, I know the exact area that the witness is talking about very well.

“And,” Nick says, ”there is no way that a 7-to-8-foot tall man-beast can exist on the Cannock Chase (yes, it’s of an impressive size and very dense in places, but it’s not that big and it’s surrounded by towns and villages), avoid detection and also leave behind no evidence of its “den” (or wherever it lives) or its eating habits – which would have to be huge, given the sheer size of the creatures reportedly seen in the woods of the Chase.”

Many believe that Bigfoot could indeed be some kind of interdimensional entity. Nick also suggests this view in his blog, saying of the Cannock Chase Bigfoot, “Literal ape-men? No. Some sort of phantom of the night? Yes.” His book Man Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot goes into greater detail about this concept, looking into reports of a Bigfoot-like creature in the area spanning several decades, and often noting the spectral qualities of the encounters.

Nick Redfern’s book Man Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot, deals with the issue of Bigfoot being reported in localized areas along the British countryside.

Personally, this brings to mind a lot of tulpa activity I’ve read about, a theme popularized ever since the late 1960s by paranormal researchers like John Keel. I have also written about this myself, specifically in an article called Ghostly Receptors which appeared in FATE Magazine. Could there indeed be something more to the idea of certain cryptozoological creatures being “spectral” in nature, perhaps even stemming from the human mind in the right circumstances, or as Nick also suggests, could many (if not all) just be hoaxes?