Why don’t we have better and recent photo or video evidence for UFOs, Bigfoot, yeti, demons, and ghosts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I first got serious about photography and bought a single-lens reflex camera (Minolta XG-M) 45 years ago in 1981. Back then to take a still photo my camera first needed to be loaded with a roll of film. Then I had to manually focus it. The camera had auto exposure, so once I set the aperture it would select the correct exposure time. After taking each picture I had to advance the film. And for video your camera needed film (or tape) and a battery.

 

The iPhone appeared on January 9, 2007 – almost two decades ago. Now many of us (~93% of the global population) are carrying around smartphones which only take a few seconds to prepare for recording either still images or video. There should be zillions of high-resolution still images and video of UFOs and other paranormal subjects. If not, then they just are tall tales.

 

An article by Heslley Machado Silva in Skeptic magazine on February 26, 2026 asks Where Have All the UFOs, Yeti, Demons, and Ghosts Gone? She says that:

 

“Over the past decades, we have witnessed a quiet yet decisive transformation in the history of human beliefs: the apparent disappearance of major paranormal phenomena that for millennia fueled mythologies, religions, folklore, and countless reports of supposed extraordinary manifestations. UFOs hovered over mountains and deserts; colossal creatures such as Bigfoot, the Yeti, or the Sasquatch roamed remote forests; spirits, apparitions, and ectoplasmic entities materialized in abandoned mansions; miracles occurred before the eyes of the devout; demonic possessions defied rational explanation. Today, all these phenomena seem to have taken permanent leave, an intriguing coincidence emerging precisely at the moment humanity begins to carry in its pockets (or better yet, in its hands) ultra-high-definition cameras capable of recording every detail of daily life, or any anomaly, with unprecedented precision.

 

…. beliefs persist and remain widespread, but the supposed phenomena that should generate clear and reproducible evidence seem increasingly absent precisely at a moment when we possess technology capable of recording them with great clarity. This shift invites a skeptical exercise: Why have paranormal and supernatural apparitions disappeared exactly when it became possible to document them unequivocally? For centuries, human testimony was the primary source of such accounts. However, scientific literature consistently demonstrates that testimony, even when sincere, constitutes extremely weak evidence: It is susceptible to perceptual illusions, cognitive biases, cultural expectations, and reconstructed (and often false) memories.

 

…. From a methodological standpoint, this persistent absence of records is consistent with analyses in the philosophy of science applied to paranormal claims: If a phenomenon supposedly interacts with the physical world, it should be detectable by physical instruments; if it never is, despite the exponential growth in instrument sensitivity, then its existence becomes an increasingly implausible hypothesis.”

 

Look at Bigfoot as an example. An Instragram post by Adam Thorn on October 20, 2022 says that:

 

“On this day 55 years ago, the famous Patterson-Gimlin film was made. This was, and still is the best video footage ever taken of a Bigfoot (nicknamed Patty).”

 

The Wikipedia page on Bigfoot refers to it as a one-minute film. Why don’t we instead have something from the past two decades – both longer and clearer?  

 

A cartoon of a UFO was adapted from one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Bad names for paint colors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The F Minus comic by Tony Carrillo for August 21, 2023 shows a woman looking at a wall with three paint samples and lamenting:

 

“Sigh. Well, I know which color is my favorite.

 But why did it have to be the one named ‘Moist Phlegm’?”

 

I’ve shown two other bad color names. Sam Barer’s Four Wheel Drift on September 30, 2006 is an article titled Color Me Crazy – The Best and Worst Paint Names. He says some others you won’t ever see include:

 

Yellow Snow

Blue Balls

Gang Green

High Whore Silver

Stinky Pinky

 

Sam claimed that:

 

“…in 1970 the Chrysler Corp-supported Plymouth Superbird of Charlie Glotzbach started running NASCAR’s Gran National circuit painted in the factory color Plum Crazy. A creative journalist, however, gave the color a nickname that stuck with the media for years: 'Statutory Grape'.” 

 

At Mopar Connection Magazine there is a three-minute video by Kevin Shaw titled When Plum Crazy Purple was almost Statutory Grape: Mopar Connection Shop Talk. It’s close to being a Toastmasters Tall Tale speech.

 

My second Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The December 2020 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article by Kate McCLare titled True Lies, which discusses Tall Tales speech contests. On August 23, 2020 I blogged about My Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest. That first speech came in third at Pioneer Club. This year I tried a Tall Tale contest speech again, and got further, as shown above. My title was Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny? This speech had lots of deadpan humor and numerous props.

 

The first time I gave it was on February 22, 2023 at Pioneer Club. No one else competed, so I won by default. I went on to the Area 3 contest on March 25, 2023 and won (over one other contestant). For feedback I gave it again on April 5, 2023 at Pioneer Club. Then, in the Division A contest on April 15 I competed again, but came in fourth out of four, and only received a Certificate of Participation.

 

This speech topic goes way back on my blog. It begins on June 30, 2008 with a post titled Daddy, where do “Table Topics” questions come from? The full story first shows up on September 27, 2008 in another post titled Tales of the Table Topics Bunny and the Jackalope. In that version the back story for the Table Topics Bunny included eight children (four girls and four boys). A cartoon of the bunny carrying a basket of questions appeared almost a decade later, in yet another post on February 24, 2018 titled Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

For this year, I brought the number of bunny girls and boys up to five of each, so I could count them off on the fingers of each hand. One of the girls plays the role of the Energizer Bunny in TV commercials.

 

For the first version at Pioneer Club the only props were a couple of sheets of paper with a cartoon image of the Table Topics Bunny and one of the Energizer Bunny. Then I gave the speech to the Surpassing Excellence Academy advanced club on Zoom. My audience suggested that I instead needed to ‘be the Bunny’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I went to the Zurchers party store in Boise, and bought both blue and pink bunny ears. I borrowed a woven basket from my wife. White half-inch thick insulation foam was made into a stack of Table Topics Questions. On eBay I got some 10” wide pink gag sunglasses. At the Idaho Youth Ranch I got a 13” diameter cylindrical carboard box, which I spray painted white and fluorescent pink to make a drum. My drum stick actually was an inflatable microphone, which I had blogged about in a post on October 1, 2021 titled Inexpensive inflatable props for speeches. All those props are shown above. 

 

The final script [with prop use shown in brackets] is as follows:    

 

Were You Visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

 

Fellow Toastmasters. If you have small children, then eventually you will get asked:

 “Daddy, where do Table Topics Questions come from?”

 

We reply that the Table Topics Bunny brings them. [Put on blue bunny ears]. February 22nd is the birthday of Toastmasters founder, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley. That is when the Table Topics Bunny hops by and visits the homes of lucky Toastmasters. The Bunny reaches into his big basket, and leaves them a stack of questions. [Pick up basket, walk across stage, and pull out a stack of questions].There are more than enough to last for the whole year. When I looked in my office that morning, I found a new pile on my credenza.

 

The Table Topics Bunny is named Harvey, and his wife is Barbie. They live near San Diego and are proud of all ten of their children. The five blue boy bunnies are Bruce, George, John, Paul, and Ringo. [Take off blue bunny ears, and put on pink bunny ears]. The five pink girl bunnies are Amy, Britney, Lindsey, Miley, and Taylor. Britney plays a role in TV commercials that is much better known than the Table Topics Bunny.

 

Bruce originally was chosen as a famous mascot, the Energizer Bunny. Then lawyers for an ice cream maker objected. They said WE had trademarked a Blue Bunny for OUR advertising back in 1935, and YOU can’t have one too. Bruce suggested that they use his pink sister Britney instead. She got the job, but due to an oversight the ad copy never was fixed to read that SHE just keeps on going. [Put on pink prop sunglasses].

 

Britney learned to play the bass drum for her junior high school marching band. The sandals, shades, and attitude came later in high school when she started to hang out with the bad beach bunnies. Then Britney headed up to Hollywood to become a singer and actress. [Pick up drum and drumstick, and walk across stage beating the drum].  She just keeps going and going because she has stimulant abuse issues with diet pills. Reportedly Britney again is in rehab somewhere near the Energizer headquarters in St. Louis.

[Take off pink bunny ears, and put on blue bunny ears]. What do you think of the Table Topics Bunny? Does he sound like a Tall Tale? Was he just made up to put something in the calendar between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny?

 

Some of you want to ask why you weren’t visited by the Table Topics Bunny. That’s simple. Think about another holiday. Do you remember the Peanuts Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? Just like the Great Pumpkin, you have to sincerely believe in the Table Topics Bunny. Otherwise, he won’t visit you. So, do you truly, sincerely, believe? Fellow Toastmasters.

 

The Spooklight in Hornet, Missouri just is a superior mirage from car headlights on Route 66

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some writers like to tell us tall tales. Their breathless stories are about unexplainable strange things rather than well-understood phenomena. There is an article by Amy Bizzarri at BBC Travel on October 7, 2022 titled Route 66’s glowing mystery orb. But then it was clearly explained by Brian Dunning at Skeptoid on November 29, 2022 in a second article titled Illuminating the Hornet Spooklight.

 

Mr. Dunning also links to a third article by Ron Warnick at Route 66 News on December 17, 2018 explaining that the Spook Light legend was debunked more than 70 years ago. As shown above, it just is a superior mirage – from colder air above a river bending images as car headlights go around a curve.

 

Both Amy and Brian’s articles link to an article in Popular Mechanics magazine by Robert Gannon from back in September 1965, on pages 116 to 119, 207, 208, and 211. To me it’s a compelling explanation, but Amy just says her witness somehow disagreed.

 

The image of a superior mirage was cropped from this one by Ludovica Lorenzelli at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Humorous Exaggeration in Cartoons and Speeches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One way of providing humor is via exaggeration (employed by Toastmasters for Tall Tales speeches, as described in a December 2020 magazine article by Kate McLure titled True Lies). I have been looking at some old cartoons from the English humor magazine Punch with wild exaggerations. As shown above, rather than just a double decker bus you could imagine one with five enclosed stories, more like a skyscraper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You also could imagine speeding up an escalator to where it flung passengers onto a mattress.

 

The bus cartoon came from page 241 of a pdf at the Internet Archive from 1923, and the escalator cartoon came from page 98 of a pdf from 1925.   

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two more examples with baggy trousers and daily newspapers are from pages 288 and 526 of that pdf from 1925.

My Tall Tale for a Toastmasters speech contest

At our August 19, 2020 Zoom meeting Pioneer Toastmasters Club held a Tall Tales Speech Contest. I was one of three contestants and came in third. A Tall Tales speech is nominally three to five minutes long (but can run thirty seconds over or under those limits). Its subject should have a theme or plot, and be of a highly exaggerated, improbable nature. My contest speech about the stealthiest cover band in the country was cut down from a 5 to 7 minute humorous speech I had given way back in 2010. I still had some props based on thrift store purchases. Here is the script:

This story is absolutely true, like all the stories I tell you. I heard in Pittsburgh from a friend of Stan Ruckzynski. You’ve never heard of the Ruczynski brothers or their rock and roll band from Youngstown, Ohio. And you never heard them play. They only released one record on their own label. But that’s all right with them. They didn’t have to play to make money. But you probably have heard the name of their band hundreds of times - without ever realizing it.

The four Ruczynski brothers started a band called the Kielbasa Brothers in the late sixties. A kielbasa is a big, long Polish sausage. Their day jobs were making steel pipe at the Youngstown Sheet and Tube mill. Theo played guitar, Leo played bass, Dan played keyboards, and Stan played drums. Every weekend they played covers, versions of other people’s songs. Their gigs were in bars from Pittsburgh to Wheeling. But they never made enough money to quit their day jobs.

In 1975 Theo decided to get advice from the wisest man in the family. Their old uncle Thaddeus, or Tad, worked as an attorney for the Democratic political machine over in Pittsburgh. It started running things back in the mid 30’s and kept on going. They and Tad had their fingers in everything and knew how to make money. Tad listened to Theo and told him to change how you think. You need to become a record company, not just a band. Theo asked how will that help?

Tad explained, “We rename the band Dozens More. Then we trademark and copyright it. We start our own record company and release an album on an LP record. Every night I see TV ads for collections of golden oldies. They all say things like contains ‘Rock around the clock’, ‘ Leader of the pack’ and dozens more. Every time someone runs an ad that says the magic phrase Dozens More I send them an angry letter. It says they damaged us by infringing our trademark and copyright. I tell them they need to change their commercial to remove that phrase. Otherwise we’re going to sue them here in Pittsburgh.” When they ask around, they’ll find they can’t win. I play poker or golf with every judge in town. After a while I will agree to instead settle for some money, provided they don’t tell anyone else. Paying us will be cheaper and easier.

September 19, 1977 was Black Monday in Youngstown. That day Sheet and Tube closed the mill. They laid off 5000 people including all four brothers. That fall lots of Youngstown residents were sitting at home all day watching TV. The difference was that the Ruczynski brothers got paid from doing it. Each brother watched a different network to check out the commercials.

Record companies all over the country and the alphabet tripped over their trademark. Folks like: Atlantic, Columbia, Decca, Mercury, Vanguard, and Warner Brothers. Uncle Tad threatened to sue them all. Enough money rolled in so the brothers never worried about losing their homes. They kept changing formats to keep the album alive. There was a 8-track, and then a cassette, and finally a CD.

Their uncle said that when you pick a few dollars (just a tad) out of enough pockets it adds up to a very nice living. Things picked up further when record companies started running thirty minute long infomercials on late night TV. They definitely didn’t want to redo them. Eventually the story about how Dozens More operated leaked onto the WorldWide Web and blew their cover. But for two decades they were the stealthiest cover band in the country.

  

Very little of that story is true. There never ever was a band called Dozens More. But there really was a guy named Ruckzynski in the Air Force Reserve unit I belonged to in Pittsburgh.

The idea is based on the concepts of a copyright troll and a trademark troll. You do need to have a product to keep a trademark alive. I was making fun of how in trademark law there can be absurdly broad claims. For example, Amstar Corporation, who owned the Domino Sugar trademark once sued Domino’s Pizza to keep them from also trademarking a Domino.  

The image of Jack and the Beanstalk is from a WPA poster at the Library of Congress.

Were you recently visited by the Table Topics Bunny?

Where do Table Topics Questions come from? One answer is that each year the Table Topics Bunny (TTB) hops down the chimney and leaves a bushel basket of them for good little Toastmasters. The TTB does this on February 22nd - the birthday for the founder, Ralph W. Smedley.

If you didn’t get a basket on Thursday it was probably because the TTB won’t visit unless you already believe in him. He’s like the Great Pumpkin. Or, perhaps he’s just a tall tale from a decade ago.

So you have to make up your own questions, or borrow them from someone else. I’ve discussed six dozen in three recent blog posts. On January 27, 2018 I blogged about 25 Questions for Table Topics from Claire Lew. On February 12, 2018 I blogged about Falling in love and Table Topics questions – the famous 36 Questions. On February 14, 2018 I blogged about 11 Table Topics questions from the 2017 book Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss.

Claire Lew’s article was titled The 25 most popular icebreaker questions based on four years of data. When you search for other questions, remember to use the phrase “icebreaker questions” to broaden your search beyond Toastmasters. You will find an October 24, 2016 article by Carly Sims at MuseumHack that lists a hundred titled The only list of icebreaker questions you’ll ever need. There also is a January 5, 2015 article at Icebreaker Ideas titled 600+ Icebreaker Questions – Biggest List EVER!

The TTB is a mash-up of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. His image is a PowerPoint creation using two OpenClipart images - one of a rabbit-with-eggs and another of papers.   

Humorist Dave Barry tells tall tales about his visits to wild Idaho

Last year Dave Barry was interviewed at the Sun Valley Writer’s Conference. That entertaining interview was shown in November on Dialogue, a half-hour long Idaho Public Television program.

Along with lots of books he used to write a humor column in the Miami Herald, and back in 1988 won the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism (Commentary):

“For his consistently effective use of humor as a device for presenting fresh insights into serious concerns.”

You can learn a lot about writing and giving a humorous speech by first reading his columns and then watching how differently Dave tells those same stories, accompanied by many gestures.

At 3:50 he begins to discuss fishing for mythical trout, which was in a 770-word column titled Fear of fly-casting. He makes arm movements both for fly casting and trying to run in waders. Dave tells about having a Fish and Game warden ask for the license that he had left in the car. At 5:22 he adds a new detail - that guy had a little siren on his head.

At 13:10 he begins to discuss tree climbing, which was in a 920-word column titled Dave meets the Death Tree. He gestures with his forearm to show how that tree was at a 45-degree angle.

At 18:10 he begins to discuss snowmobiling with his sons at Smiley Creek, which was in a 900-word column about Getting Stuck on Snowmobiling. At 18:45 his hands move like he’s grasping a steering wheel. At 20:00 minutes he makes expansive arm gestures to show the banks of a river, and how in a movie a snowmobile wouldn’t drop downward as it tries to cross. Reportedly it gets stuck so deeply that removing it requires waiting for global warming.

Tales of the Table Topics Bunny and the Jackalope

Folk tales often come from attempting to craft explanations to questions posed by children. (The Table Topics Bunny first appeared in a June 30 post on this blog).

1) Daddy, where do Table Topics questions come from?
The simple answer is that the Table Topics Bunny (TTB) brings them.

2) When does the TTB arrive?
Every year he hops by on February 22nd and leaves a stack of questions. He visits many Toastmasters on that day in memory of the birthday of their founder, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley.

3) Is he related to any other famous bunnies?
The TTB recently was interviewed by a supermarket tabloid late one night in the Geisel Library at UCSD. Harvey revealed that his daughter, who actually is the famous Energizer Bunny (EB), possibly has “stimulant abuse issues” and currently is in rehab at an undisclosed location “near St. Louis”.

She learned to play the drum for junior high band. The “sandals, shades, and attitude” came later in high school when she started to “hang with the bad beach bunnies”, began taking diet pills, and then headed to LA to become a singer or actress.

Her name really is Miley, and her 3 pink sisters are Britney, Lindsey, and Amy. She also has 4 blue brothers: Clem, Leroy, Brad, and Ethan. Clem (Clement) originally was going to be the battery company mascot. Then an ice cream manufacturer objected that they already had long used a Blue Bunny as a trademark on their packaging. So, Clem suggested that they use his sister instead. She got the job, but due to an oversight the ad copy never was corrected to “she just keeps on going”. Harvey and Barbie are proud of all eight of their their children.

Right now the TTB is much more obscure than the mighty Jackalope (a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope), which is a mythic horned creature from Wyoming. The jackalope’s legend reportedly began with Douglas Herrick, a taxidermist from Douglas.

An entire tourist industry soon developed selling stuffed jackalopes, etc. Videos of jackalopes are rare, but you can glimpse one on Youtube in the song Creepy Jackalope Eye by the Supersuckers. If you can’t understand the lyrics, you can just read them at Steve Earle’s web site.