|
Post by Joanna on Feb 25, 2016 1:12:44 GMT -5
Bigfoot Museum Opens in GeorgiaCHERRY LOG, Ga. – It's a brand-new museum near Blue Ridge, and it's already being called North Georgia's "biggest" family attraction.
Expedition Bigfoot: The Sasquatch Museum opened in early February in Cherry Log – located about halfway between Ellijay and Blue Ridge on Highway 515. The 4,000-square-foot museum is filled with what owners David and Malinda Bakara call the largest collection of Bigfoot artifacts in any museum anywhere, much of which were gathered by fellow Bigfoot fans and researchers. That collection includes casts of alleged Bigfoot hand and foot prints, newspaper articles documenting reported sightings, a gallery of sketches, and even a life-sized replica of Bigfoot himself. Source: Paul Milliken, WAGA, February 17, 2016.
|
|
|
Post by JoannaL on Oct 21, 2019 22:55:16 GMT -5
Investigator Claims Bigfoot is a Government Experiment Gone Wrong Once a BYOB supper club, the unassuming wooden structure on a bustling four-lane highway that winds through the mountains of northern Georgia is now a Bigfoot museum. David Bakara is the owner of this intriguing piece of Americana at the southern edge of the Appalachians. A longtime member of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and Navy veteran, Bakara drove long-haul trucks and tended bar before opening the museum in 2016 with his wife, Malinda.
“I can remember my great-grandmother talking about having a cabin in the woods, and she saw Sasquatch,” says Sherry Gaskinn of Villa Rica, Georgia, who was driving by one afternoon and just had to stop. “I’ve always been curious.”
Her husband, Phillip Blevins, is skeptical. “If it was up to me,” he adds, “I’d already be on down the road.”
Bakara tries to provide both entertainment and enlightenment in an area known for its apple orchards and blazing fall colors. “I wanted to take what I know about Bigfoot as an active researcher and investigator, but I’m also a huge Disney World fan,” the 57-year-old Bakara explains. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe I can make this thing like a family attraction.’”
Instead of Space Mountain, the Cherry Log attraction near the Tennessee state line has an elaborate display of Bigfoot laying siege to a remote cabin with a hatchet-wielding mannequin desperately trying to bar the door as two hairy paws burst over the top. Color-coded maps document hundreds of alleged sightings, a towering reproduction depicts a hairy 8-foot-tall beast, and the famed 1967 video of an alleged Sasquatch sighting plays on a loop, along with the harrowing recollections of those who claim to have encountered a Bigfoot. “The reason I didn’t shoot it is, it was just too human,” a hunter says in one account. “I couldn’t pull the trigger because something told me this ain’t right.” There’s even a glass case of what is allegedly feces collected from a Sasquatch in Oregon.
Believers constantly add to the already ample collection. On a recent day, the mail carrier delivered two casts of footprints made by foreign man-beasts. “You want to see an Australian cast?” Bakara asks, tearing into the package.
He has filled up the former supper club and is planning to expand his museum, which welcomes about 50,000 visitors a year.
For those who believe Bigfoot is a phenomenon confined to the Pacific Northwest, where that grainy video from more than five decades ago gave Sasquatch its greatest brush with fame, Bakara is quick to cite the countless sightings the world over. In Australia, the mythical creature is known as Yowie. In the Himalayas, they call it Yeti. In Russia, it is Alma. Closer to home, there’s the Florida Skunk Ape, the Georgia Booger and the Missouri Momo.
“There are several subspecies of these things,” Bakara adds with sincerity in his voice. “Some have short hair. Others have long, red flowing hair. Some are multicolored, almost like a squirrel, where there’s grey and red and brown mixed together. Some of them have a very human-like face. They just run the gamut.”
He’ll also gladly tell you about the time he saw a pair of the elusive beasts. According to Bakara, in 2010, he was summoned by a Florida man who had spotted strange creatures on his property. Using a thermal imager, Bakara and his team were able to make out a pair of hairy humanoid beasts emerging from a nearby swamp. “We took turns looking at them,” he explains. “They finally figured out we could see them, so they left.”
Bakara can talk all day about what’s become his life’s work. but refuses to answer the obvious questions: What is Bigfoot? Where did it come from?
“That’s a secret we’re not supposed to know about,” he ominously replies, the implication being that the creatures are the unintended consequence of a government experiment gone haywire. He also hints that his life would be disrupted if he ever went public with his entire body of work.
Bakara has been interested in Bigfoot since a young age, spurred on by early news reports and the 1972 cult classic The Legend of Boggy Creek, something of a docudrama about a Sasquatch-type creature in Arkansas.
He realizes he’ll never persuade all the people – even most of the people – that Bigfoot exists and he’s fine with this. “Does everybody need to know everything you know?” he asks. “No. It’s best they don’t know.”
Of course, there are many doubters. One person signed the guestbook as “Bigfoot,” listing his home as the “Woods.” In the section that asks “How did you hear about us,” the visitor wrote: “People were taking my picture.”
Nevertheless, Bakara insists most visitors treat the museum with respect, at least while they’re on the grounds.
“I’m just curious,” admits Angie Langellier, who recently stopped in with her family while passing through on a trip from Illinois. “So far, I’ve had nothing that’s convinced me.Sources: Paul Newberry, The Associated Press, October 21, 2019, and USA Today.
|
|
|
Post by Sam on Oct 21, 2019 23:29:28 GMT -5
How does he explain all the Bigfoot sightings before whatever government experiments he's talking about started? What about the legends of hairy man-beasts passed down by the American Indians?
|
|