Bigfoot is Not Undead

though that would explain the lack of thermal imaging

Search “infravision undead” on the Internet and you will find a lively debate amongst tabletop gamers. There’s a push-pull between those who just want their characters to never be blind (leading to 5e’s rules for magical darkvision and variants) and those more science-minded gamers who wonder how it all works.

It's worth a word on what sorts of creatures could not be seen with infravision. Creatures that are normally able to turn invisible, like pixies, should also be invisible to infravision but not to other senses like smell. Any creature that is roughly the same temperature as its surroundings, like a cold-blooded insect, fish, amphibian, or reptile, would be harder to see at night, though even cold-blooded creatures aren't always exactly the same temperature as the environment around them. (Live things move and so generate friction from moving, for one thing.) Magical beings that radiate no heat at all, like undead skeletons and zombies, would be almost invisible to infravision unless revealed by reflected infrared light or else blocking a much hotter source, revealing their outline.

Importantly, this debate is entirely fictional. People are arguing about things that they don’t believe in, for purposes of entertainment and social status within that group.

Let’s keep that in mind.

For Fun and Profit

Last week my wife was visiting a friend in the hospital and picked him up the most recent Skeptical Inquirer, the cover story of which happened to be “Is Bigfoot Dead?” I skimmed through the article and it was a typical listing of hoaxes and evidentiary failures. Meanwhile, the industry is alive and well. In fact, I’d say it’s growing. This list of 222 was the most complete one I could find immediately on IMDB.

This was last updated in 2022, so I doubt the recent downturn is real, or permanent. There’s tons of stuff on every streaming service that isn’t listed here. I was using what’s called a sample of convenience.

Of course, only a small subset of those movies were documentaries made by believers, or investigators. The market responds to whatever sells.

None of that includes YouTube. Seth Breedlove’s Small Town Monsters channel alone has over 500 videos, almost all of which have over 100k views. Production values don’t really matter. One of Breedlove’s latest efforts, Sasquatch Unearthed — The Ridge, has VCR-like static and tracking lines deliberately added to the digital video for flavor. Effects range from fur suits to low-end CGI loops, with the general intent seeming to be creating a vibe more than anything else. It’s marketing. People are making a living doing this stuff.

They aren’t getting rich (or sending people to jail), like the promoters of the Satanic Panic profiled in the new documentary Satan Wants You, who received a six-figure book advance in 1970s dollars, or like the rebooters (freebooters?) behind QAnon, who use exactly the same claims about massive child trafficking and ritual sacrifice to get people’s attention in order to sell them everything from essential oils to silver.

Or like Hell Camp’s Steve Cartisano, who spawned the “wilderness therapy” industry with a series of slick brochures and commercials. He made close to ten million dollars in a couple of years, kidnapping teens out of their beds and hiking them around the Utah desert for a few weeks. His group was kicked out of Utah after one of his campers died of probable heat exhaustion, but he just bought a boat and set up in the Caribbean, marketing to even wealthier desperate parents. His motto was not believe the children, no matter what, but its opposite, claiming that teens were master manipulators.

One of the journalists interviewed for Satan Wants You, who debunked the original book Michelle Remembers, catching the “victim” in obvious outright lies about her childhood whereabouts, seemed disappointed that all her work couldn’t somehow serve as a mental vaccine against delusion and fraud.

Yearbook photo proving that Michelle was not in fact in a cage, being tortured by Satanists during the time period in question. The scars left by said torture were conveniently healed by the archangel Michael.

But that’s the rub. Vaccines aren’t magic, either. People who’ve had the shot age out, and their brains degenerate, and they forget. New people are born who haven’t heard the old jokes. People have desperate moments where they are vulnerable to being scammed. As long as there are strong social and economic incentives to take advantage, some people will do so.

I made that point recently in a short story called “The Elder Colossus,” which should be out in an anthology by the British group CyberSalon sometime in March. I’ll let you all know when that happens.