Interview with an Alternative Bigfooter: Christopher Noël

My name is Rictor Riolo and I am what you would probably consider to be a Bigfoot media personality. I have done a Bigfoot reality TV show “The Ten Million Dollar Bigfoot Bounty” on Spike TV and I make videos on YouTube making fun of Bigfooters “Off the Rictor” and I also taking them seriously “After Hours with Rictor: The Number 1 Bigfoot Webcast”. I wanted to talk to Christoper Noël about his views on Sasquatch because they are drastically different than mine. That doesn’t mean one is better than the other and I explain that later at the end of the Interview.

Christopher Noël has written many books about the creature known as Sasquatch and has given lectures on this mysterious cryptid. Some may consider him Woo-Woo (falling into the category where Bigfoot is your Forest Friend and can communicate with you through Mind Speak: telepathy). He once fell under the spell of Bigfoot hoaxer Rick Dyer thinking he actually shot and killed a Bigfoot. But that is no affront to Mr. Noël, many people got suckered by Rick Dyer in 2008 and again in 2012.

Recently Christopher Noël has joined in with Nathan Reo AKA Utah Sasquatch (a growing Bigfoot YouTuber who has a Patreon account where fans and viewers can give him money for exclusive videos, yet of course none has proven or shown Sasquatch). Is Christopher Noel falling for another hoaxer?

Christopher, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. We noticed you have been making videos on YouTube about Bigfoot since 2009. That’s almost ten years. You once said you thought Bigfoot comes down from their altitudes as “Olympic Gods” to consort with human beings briefly. What do you mean by that?

No, I said that this is what this species can be compared to because of how they seem to come out of another realm and to be a mightier, larger, wiser version of ourselves.

You also have been known to say Bigfoot is “other worldly.” You can see why people consider you to be out there in the cosmic realm of the Woo-Woo. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Why go there?

Nope. Here again, you’re getting confused between metaphorical and literal. I never said they are otherworldy; I have said they seem otherworldly, and everyone agrees that they do. Nobody who knows my work would have any reason to presume that I believe in inter-dimensionality, invisibility, portals, any of that. I can point you to my eBook Electric Sasquatch: How a Natural Force May Explain “Supernatural” Powers. And here is a video in which I explain my position: https://youtu.be/n-cpX-CwfZI. In my view, telepathy is a natural ability shared by many of our own species as well.

The Woo-Woo perspective is growing especially on social media. Since there is no evidence for Sasquatch based on current scientific academia, people are creating their own evidence. Their own reason for this creature’s existence. Using “what ifs” to explain an unknown. Author Thom Powell associates them with aliens called the “Star People” and Dr. Matthew Johnson says he is their teacher and can heal his prostate. Author Thom Cantrall says Bigfoot is his spirit guide and the late Jon-Eric Beckjord said he heard Bigfoot’s voice telling him: "We're not what you think we are, we're here, but we're not real, like what you think is real." Is Bigfoot that special when no other animal on this planet possesses these sorts of superpowers?

None of those theories resonates with me. I think Sasquatch flesh and blood and possesses genius-level cognitive abilities. There are more than a dozen striking parallels between Sasquatch and autistic savants. I cover this similarity and its potential significance in this video https://youtu.be/Rm1LvR9z9-A and in the books The Sasquatch Savant Theory and Next of Kin Next Door.

In one of your older videos you said that when you hear a wood knock, you feel like you are privileged. That you have been taken out of your world and landed in a timeless spot. let’s look at a story from www.bigfoot-lives.com where “In the late 1890s near the Chetco River in southern Oregon, a dozen loggers and their families encountered a great beast with disastrous results.” And Albert Ostman was abducted in 1924, and the Chinook Indians refer to Sasquatch as the Skookum, “Mountain Devils.” Let’s not forget the “Bukwas” and D’sonoqua from the Vancouver Indians being not too friendly with human child abducting and devouring. Would you still feel the same if the creature threw you against a tree and ripped you apart?

Of course not. My love for humanity would also take a dip if I had a run-in with a serial killer.

You once compared yourself to Noah from the Bible who protected all animals from the flood, but the difference is you are only interested in one species. Do you still feel that way?

Again, it’s just an analogy. And yes, I think that all Sasquatch researchers are a little like Noah in the sense that we are shouting the truth as best we can but that world at large only laughs at us. Each day, though, we’re laughed at a bit less.

You’re not the only person to compare yourself with a biblical figure. Dr. Matthew Johnson is known to say he is the new John the Baptist. You think quite highly of yourself. Why? Me personally, as the big attention whore of Bigfoot, I would never correlate myself with any Biblical reference…despite the many who would consider me to be Lucifer on a good day.

You’re misreading me again. The comparison with Noah was only about one aspect: someone telling the truth who is not believed. In this respect, I am not claiming to be any different from anyone who knows that this species is real and is surrounded by people who don’t. I have nothing but disdain for Dr. Johnson’s ego.

We think that when and if the day comes that Bigfoot is shown to be real, the world won’t care like we do. For example, the recent outing of UFOs being real and studied by the Department of Defense was Trumped, for lack of a better word, because of the current governmental scandalous climate. We live in a world where the Kardashians rule social media, our President’s Tweets make headlines, and threats of nuclear war with North Korea make Bigfoot or UFO acknowledgment seem mote [do you mean moot?]. Do you still think Bigfoot will be the big news story like you have always thought it would be? That the media will propel hysteria over Bigfoot? Is Bigfoot that important? That special? If so, why?

Good question. As Melba Ketchum has shown, Sasquatch are a fellow species of human, within our genus, Homo. The widespread recognition that we share a planet with a close cousin—our next of kin—cannot fail to be a convulsive and historic paradigm shift, after which our species will never be able to view ourselves quite in the same way again.

I have made jokes about Bigfoot YouTubers not being legitimate researchers because one take precedence over the other. YouTube makes you money, whereas Bigfoot doesn’t. You don’t see Dr. Jane Goodall making YouTube videos or Dr. Jeff Meldrum. Archaeologist Kathy Strain and Derek Randles don’t either. They don’t have Patreon accounts and ask people to subscribe to their channels. What is your defense against the charge of being a self-proclaimed legitimate researcher making YouTube videos? Because my argument is, you’re not a researcher. You’re a YouTuber.

This is a dumb question, I have to say. I make about $10 per month on YouTube and have chosen not to go the Patreon route. YouTube videos are one of our best channels through which to share our research. I could cite many examples but the question is not worth it so I will just cite one: MK Davis and his decisive analysis videos of the Patterson/Gimlin Film. There is absolutely no sense to the notion that being a researcher and being a YouTuber are mutually exclusive categories. You have just pulled that distinction out of your ass. (Hey, you asked me to be honest.)

You have experienced personal loss by being so involved with your study with Sasquatch (as have I). Is it worth it? Why keep going? (For example, losing your job, income, personal relationships, etc.)

It’s worth it or I wouldn’t keep going, of course. I think it is crucial for all of us students of Sasquatch to contribute to a conversation that will continue to expand and shed light over time.

Nothing in 50 years since the Patterson Gimlin film has come out has been comparable evidence of Bigfoot being real…59 shaky seconds of footage. What are researcher doing wrong?

Too many researchers (such as, most recently, Todd Standing) are under the impression that the only way to encounter Sasquatch is being going deep, deep, deep into the wilderness. This is incorrect. Seeking Sasquatch far from cities, suburbs, and tows will occasionally put us in position to have more dramatic encounters than we can have by seeking them near our settlements, because Sasquatch have to be much more careful and subtle here, but the fact is quickly becoming clear that they do indeed spend time at the edge of civilization. The trouble is that those dramatic encounters won't teach us anything new; though profoundly exciting, they all boil down to the same predictable set of experiences that people have already reported thousands of times over—hearing wood knocks and vocals, being surrounded at a distance, maybe catching fleeting glimpses, being frightened by an occasional bluff charge, etc. It is evidently against Sasquatch nature to offer us one iota more during these typical encounters—so our learning curve has flatlined.

Genuine progress, in my opinion, will come only through high-quality audio recording in their nearby pockets. This recording will need to include infrasound sensitivity, so that we can "hear" far more broadly than when we simply "go and see." Audio recording in general--to say nothing of full-spectrum audio recording--has been a vastly under-employed method in Sasquatch research, I think because it's not as sexy as the effort to catch sight of them. But if we've learned nothing else we've learned 1. that video access is 99.9% off the table and 2. that first-person experiential data is fruitlessly repetitive.

That leaves audio recording, which for some reason our subjects don't seem to mind. This pathway alone seems to carry the potential for more intimate contact, for learning their expressive range, their language, their movement patterns, and certain aspects of behavior previously off limits. The current problem with this approach, however, is that infrasound/ultrasound microphones are very expensive; I am saving up for one at $699, and that's the economy model. Ideally, we would deploy these systematically throughout their territory (where we find evidence of ongoing activity), and for practical reasons, we'd do so in spots close to home: micro forests, greenbelts, ravines, river corridors. A second reason for this close-to-home strategy is that we know (based on sign) that they consistently spend time in these spots, whereas off-grid, in the wilderness, they have so many choices--as Reo shows in his excellent video "Why I Don't Pose a Threat to Sasquatch"--that figuring out where to place our recording array would be an impossible shot in the dark.

Personally, I’m happy with whatever happens in regards to what the end outcome is with Sasquatch. If Bigfoot isn’t real, great. If it is, even better. Because at the end of the day, it’s about truth and not personal belief systems as you say “survey the Bigfoot landscape.” If Bigfoot is proven to NOT be real, and everything has been misidentification or hoaxes, are you okay with that end result?

The question does not compute. Sasquatch is obviously real.

In your YouTube videos, you come across as having a lot of belief in Sasquatch. Has anything challenged your beliefs?

Nope.

Is it possible that over time, your thoughts and grand perceptions of what Sasquatch is have influenced your beliefs and reality? Can it just be a basic animal that knows to avoid Humans at all costs? Why does it have to be something more like Jon-Eric Beckjord claimed?

I have never said it is anything more. It is not supernatural. I think you need to pose this question instead to someone who believes that it is.

In 2014 you wrote a book called “Our Life with Bigfoot” where you wrote about Rick Dyer killing a Sasquatch (he didn’t – By the way, I can vouch he didn’t). How do you protect yourself from falling for another hoax like that? You wrote a book and put it into literary form. Was that embarrassing?

Here is why I still think Dyer may well have at least shot a Sasquatch, whether or not he killed it: https://youtu.be/_RPQ8HTGOsk

I have been known to say hoaxers keep the legend of Bigfoot alive. The Native Americans don’t nor does the creature itself. How do Bigfoot YouTubers such as yourself fit in?

We are trying to learn about the species and share with viewers what we are learning.

Speaking of hoaxers, it seems that you have fallen under the charm of another alleged hoaxer, Todd Standing (based on one of your recent videos). He is a YouTuber (like you) and an entertainer like (Les Stroud). His sister is a make-up artist. If he had truly captured video of Bigfoot, wouldn’t that have been on National Geographic? At least made the news on science.com?

I am agnostic on whether Standing is a hoaxer. I was surprised at the quality of his new documentary, “Discovering Bigfoot.” As I said in my brief video about it, I am impressed with his latest facial close-up “unless I’m being fooled.” I definitely hold open the possibility that he is hoaxing, but I just can’t tell yet.

You call Todd Standing a researcher. If that’s the case, you need to include Rick Dyer as a researcher too. Tom Biscardi as well. They all have something in common. They want your money. And they depend on people like you to make videos about them or write books detailing their fairy tale adventures. If you could step out of your shoes for just one second and look at what’s before you, do you see what the world sees? Am I being cynical or a realist?

The word researcher, to me, means someone who studies a subject, at whatever level.

I personally consider Nathan Reo Mr. Utah Sasquatch to be a hoaxer. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. He’s the next Matt Moneymaker. In my opinion he has taken the Rick Dyer and Matt Moneymaker recipes and refined them. That’s why I chose him to be the winner of Off the Rictor Season 2. He’s the next Matt Moneymaker, especially with his “Go and See” project. Why are you associating with him? Is he the new Christ figure of Bigfoot? I mean people like you and Matthew Johnson equate yourselves to biblical characters so why not make him the next one?

I have zero reason to believe Reo is a hoaxer. From my perspective, he has contributed more in the past two years to our subject than any other researcher.

I realize the world thinks we’re nuts for thinking Bigfoot is real. I get that. It’s turned into a huge joke because of blobsquatches and hoaxers mocking the field. How do we fix that?

By trying to do good work and not participate in muddying the water. For my part, I have just released a new book called Next of Kin Next Door: How to Find Sasquatch a Stone’s Throw Away. I am proud of it and hope it will make a positive contribution. https://www.amazon.com/Next-Kin-Door-Sasquatch-Stones/dp/154696536X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1515171150&sr=8-1&keywords=noel++next+door

Would you agree Bigfoot (online) is nothing more than a war of personal opinions? Beliefs gone awry? What has been the most outrageous Bigfoot war you have seen?

Sorry, but I am utterly uninterested in this topic.

Why is that?

It’s all just empty noise.

You said you are going to be creating new podcast called “The Nearness of You” that will focus on Bigfoot living in our cities and towns. That’s quite an extraordinary claim. In a field where absurdity is running more and more rampant, why add to it? If Sasquatch was abducting children from soccer games and freaking out their soccer moms, then okay, we get how their extreme proximity could be taken seriously and be worthy of discussion. But that’s not happening. So why add more “what ifs” to something where people are using “what ifs” to explain answers?

If I thought my claim about the nearness of Sasquatch was absurd, I would not be making it. I have been brought to this conclusion by my own research and by the work of many others. I lay out the evidence in the new book, and either readers will find it convincing or not.

Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. I know they are not easy and I hope they were not too pointed. Your beliefs on Bigfoot are as equal to mine. Why? Because there is no Sasquatch body to derive answers from. So, Woo-Woo and science are all on the same playing field at this point.

You can check out Christopher Noël's many wonderful Bigfoot books here.

And be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel "Impossible Visits" here.