Lost Monster Files is a cryptid bust

It would be awesome if there were no more faked-science TV shows. Back in 2017, I published a book on how amateur paranormal researchers pretend to do science. Around that time, there were so many TV and YouTube shows of people doing this – staging “investigations” using sciencey-looking gadgets and language and playing at being experts – that I couldn’t keep track of them all anymore. Unfortunately, they are still going strong.

Cryptozoology is my favorite fringe subject, but it’s not fringe anymore, it’s mainstream. We can credit Monster Quest and Finding Bigfoot for the current popularity of self-styled cryptozoologists looking for mystery creatures. The latest cryptid show is Lost Monster Files on Discovery channel based on the files of Ivan T. Sanderson. It’s not low budget, but it’s low on originality and almost insultingly dumb.

I realize that people want to be on TV and hope make a living doing stuff like this, but I argue that these shows make the audience less knowledgeable about the topic because of the dumbing-down of the presented scenarios, and the exceptionally poor content passed off as “facts”.

Recap

Episode 1 explored the Carolina Chupacabra and the content failed to include anything interesting or new except what they seemingly made up. A condensed show can hardly begin to explore the complex history of the legendary creature and its strange cultural evolution. However, all history and much of the interesting details were entirely ignored for a ridiculous plot and very silly conclusion.

Episode 2 covered Sanderson’s work on ABSMery (the study of abominable snowmen accounts). The cast goes to British Columbia to follow up on an old Sasquatch/Bigfoot account. They confuse us without enlightening or even entertaining us. They find nothing.

Episode 3 is on the Thunderbird where the team finds an eagle’s nest but concludes, laughably, that there might be a still-living Teratorn or unknown giant eagle here.

I took a break from watching the show because it was worthless to me. I was curious, however, so I binge-watched the (hopefully) last three episodes.

Bernard is ghosted

Episode 4 was on the Minnesota Iceman, or “wild man” as the show calls it. The Iceman was a very popular sideshow promoted by Frank Hansen in 1968 depicting a body of what people thought of as a “cave man” frozen in ice. The team, as usual, ignores much of the important parts of the tale – that the Iceman model that was used still exists, that Hansen made money off it, and that Sanderson conducted his inspection of the body with Bernard Heuvelmans. Mention of Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show, even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s. While these extractions were done for time limitations, it makes the cast appear clueless to those of us who know that actual history. For drama, one half of the cast goes to the old Hansen farm to look for the real Iceman body they believe is buried there. The other half goes to the remote location where Hansen supposedly shot the creature where they have an “infrasound” experience. (Again. They had a similar thing happen in episode 2, which was also dropped with no consideration). The best find they come up with is a footprint, which they do not show on camera in any detail, but gush over it, claiming it matches Sanderson’s information about the creature having a really big toe. They conclude with misguided blather about evolution connected to Denisovans. They totally don’t know what they are talking about.

Heuvelmans is entirely absent from this show
even though his history is entwined with Sanderson’s.

Deception island

Episode 5 sent the team to Kodiak Island in Alaska to find out about the Kodiak sea monster. This was probably the worst episode. It was boring and, tracking with all the other episodes, absurd in premise. Their suggestion is that a plesiosaur twice the size of a blue whale (just all sorts of wrong) could still be living in the offshore ocean trench. Really reaching for an exciting conclusion, they suggest that the chemicals dumped after WW2 could have caused a genetic mutant to appear as a monster 30 years later. Ironically, the episode closed with a voiceover of Sanderson talking about truth and deception.

The cave “dragon” final episode

Episode 6 took the cast into a cave in Arkansas where they actually found something! The subject cryptid was the Gowrow – a made-up legend of a giant, spiny backed lizard. What caught my attention for this was the appearance of a USGS hydrologist discussing groundwater. I’m certain his words were cut and edited to lose all meaning because the jumbled word salad spewed about aquifers and caves was rubbish. Summing up their misinformed ideas about how water moves underground, they suspected that the Gowrow creature was travelling between a surface pond and cave systems via underwater passageways (they erroneously called “the aquifer”). This is a well-worn and mistaken idea often proposed for lake monsters that large creatures use subterranean passageways (through rock) to the ocean. The average person doesn’t know how groundwater moves, and this episode shows that ignorance in spades.

“Finding all that water in [the cave] was a gamechanger,” says Brittany, who seems to be the one to say the most ridiculous things in the show. Caves are created by water and typically still have water in them because they are under the surface.

The team descends into a cave. The location is not shown, but the implicit suggestion is that they “found” it, and it’s unexplored. This is clearly false, because the cave is too large and accessible for it to be unknown. It is extremely dangerous for inexperienced people to go a mile into a cave system like this, and there were no safety precautions shown for white nose syndrome protocols.

They find evidence of an alligator in the cave. And, they actually find the alligator.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/d2LWxeWEGIo

I searched for more information about an alligator discovered in a cave in Arkansas and found nothing. According to the show, they were 80 miles from natural alligator habitat. There is no way this animal was native to this cave because it was too cold to comfortably exist here. It seems likely that it was let loose here. I’m not saying it was planted, it could have been released by an irresponsible person, but I can’t trust anything on this show.

Common threads in the episodes

Over the six episodes, there were common threads:

1. Oversimplification. In order to appeal to the non-technical viewer, to fit in an hour time frame, and to help the narrative, every scenario, find, and explanation was oversimplified, often to the extent that it was wrong. It was framed as “Sanderson studied this” + “There is a uptick in sighting of something like that in this area.” Therefore, “Sanderson was on to something, and we are going to just jump in and finish what he started.” This is a dull, banal, and misleading premise. Thus, my opinion is that this show makes people less well-informed on the topics covered.
2. Lack of expertise. Almost no experts appeared in the show. As I noted in the first review, the cast were hardly what I would consider “experts”. They spoke unintelligently about complex topics like evolution, zoology, geography, and history. The writers and research team for this show did a poor job. Brittany, in particular, was not even coached on how to pronounce words correctly. For example, “Cuvier” as in Georges Cuvier, is pronounced “curvier”. Twice. There is no excuse for such sloppiness.
3. Sham inquiry. I was entirely unconvinced that the investigation shown on screen was legitimate. It looked staged, heavily edited, and scripted to serve the pre-set narrative. This is typical of all paranormal nonfiction shows that attempt to portray a “scientific” approach, which instead shows the cast playing pretend scientist. It’s a cheap and lazy ploy.
4. Extreme conclusions. The obviously weak and questionable evidence was hyped as convincing and used to bolster their pre-existing narrative that they were successful in showing that something mysterious was going on. That’s how an entertainment show is structured. This is not for educational purposes. But that message is not always understood by the audience.

In conclusion, this was a typical scientifical paranormal TV show with hype and no substance. It wasn’t even entertaining. For anyone who knows anything much about cryptids, this show was a total dud.

#alligatorCave #ArkansasAlligator #Bigfoot #cryptidTVShow #cryptids #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #evidence #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #MinnesotaIceman #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #science #television

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9045

Lost Monster Files Thunderbird episode flies in the face of reason

Here I am again with a review of the third episode of the Discovery Channel show Lost Monster Files (LMF). In the previous posts, I explained how I was left unimpressed by the quality of evidence and the dramatically overreaching explanations suggested by the cast. This episode continues the trend of mashing together the existing lore, the background from Ivan Sanderson’s (not) “lost” files, eyewitness stories, and their field investigations to produce an incoherent and rather insulting show for anyone who knows anything much about cryptid history.

This episode, they took up the Thunderbird – a legend of an enormous bird in the forests of Pennsylvania. It’s a history I know fairly well. LMF forgets all that or just condenses it into one stinky regurgitated pellet of barely recognizable bits, and, instead, focuses on recent claims along Chestnut Ridge, part of the Allegheny Mountains southeast of Pittsburgh.

As with the previous two episodes, it starts with the sensationalized claim that “a creature has been terrorizing” the place…

Except they can’t find it, so… not very terrifying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_ImR9_Y4Bo

They do tell us about the most famous account of a thunderbird: the attack on 10 yr old Marlon Lowe in 1977. Marlon is still alive. They interviewed him at a Pennsylvania location. The details are sparse, as usual, but they fail to mention this incident took place in Lawndale, Illinois. That’s rather important considering this is all about PA. They also never examine the implicit claim that the bird lifted him. The drawing shown with the story depicts a child lifted by his foot into the air even though Marlon was never actually lifted this way (or at all). It is not possible for birds to lift more than their own weight, and they are very lightly built. But, nevermind, whatever.

I notice that the show never seems to give ample time to note all the critical information that might help viewers understand the stories – they have a set agenda to push and can’t fit too much into a short format. This is the rotten part of TV shows like this; they present a skewed story to the audience, who probably won’t fact-check and will assume these actors are doing something akin to actual research.

They head to Chestnut Ridge where a farmer says a huge bird, larger than he’s ever seen, has been spotted three times on his land. Unfortunately, he compares its size to the large birds in the area including pelicans and storks, except neither are not found anywhere near here. Oops.

The attempt to lure a large bird at the farm with (trigger warning) dead rabbits is a failure, but the producers can’t stop themselves from giving Brittany an ambiguous “hit” by claiming she sees a large bird (that looks for all the world like a super common turkey vulture). It disappears without her seeing it fly away. Nevermind, whatever.

The show then throws at us a ridiculous story that the local airport has caught mystery objects in the air over the ridge that are unidentifiable as planes. Therefore, these might be large birds or they might be military planes. Is it really possible that several large birds are flying repeatedly, unnoticed, but show up on radar and are mistaken for planes. Really? REALLY?

The team hikes up to an area they think might have nests spotted by a drone. (It’s a tiny hot spot among the roasting rocks. Nevermind, whatever.) They find a deer skull that Brittany says was pecked at by a beak. And they find a large “pellet” regurgitated by a bird of prey. It’s 3-4 inches long. A 3-inch pellet is not unreasonable for an eagle. They also find remains of a normal-sized raptor nest, long abandoned. All of this is not very unusual, except they make it so.

The DNA result on the pellet shows it’s from an eagle but the DNA is mixed with all the animal remains in it. So they suggest it might be something that ate an eagle. I am not making this up – they really are reaching that far. They end up concluding that the animal might be a (long-extinct) Teratorn or an eagle with gigantism, both of which are baseless because a regular eagle will suffice to explain the findings.

There are a few more obvious points where the episode egregiously misleads viewers.

Location, Location, Location

They fail to explain locational information about the Thunderbird. The main tales of modern Thunderbirds took place in Illinois, and in the “Black Forest” of north central Pennsylvania in the 1970s. They could have at least mentioned that. Sanderson had known about the reports in the Black Forest area, but I never heard Chestnut Ridge mentioned until extremely recently.

Perhaps the people producing this show are just clueless about the US. When they showed examples of the Alleghenies, they stuck in what appears to be a photo of the Alps. This is not Pennsylvania or anywhere in Appalachia:

Area of High Strangeness

The area of Chestnut Ridge has recently been surging as an area of all kinds of paranormal activity. The fact that Thunderbird sightings have also been escalating in the past year is certainly related to more people looking for strange things, and more people willing to take their claims seriously. However, that does not mean that large unknown birds really exist here. You name it and people have claimed it in the Chestnut Ridge area – Bigfoot and other cryptids, UFOs, Bigfoot coming out of UFOs, earth lights, hauntings, portals, etc.

How to hide a huge, flying thing that millions of people are looking for

Of all mystery animals, those that fly, and that are excessively large, are the hardest to keep hidden. Millions of people are active bird-watchers and migration routes are monitored. Every year, citizen scientists all over the country take part in a bird count, actively cataloging birds. It’s absurd to suggest that even off track migrants won’t be noticed (they frequently are, and it makes for big news), or, that they deliberately hide from human binoculars.

After three episodes, LMF is formulaic, contrived, and non-credible. There is a pattern of outright carelessness, ignorance, and disrespect for the topic of cryptozoology and, frankly, it dishonors Sanderson’s memory. It’s very difficult to fit nuance and reason, let alone an entire investigation, into a 45-minute program. When you try to do that with a cast who pitch sensationalistic nonsense, and producers that are making stuff up, you end up with a very awful result.

Episode 1 review: Lost Monster Files – Carolina Chupacabra review
Episode 2 review: Lost Monster Files produces some abominable research

#cryptid #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #eagle #IvanSanderson #largeBirds #LostMonsterFiles #Pennsylvania #ReviewOfLostMonsterFiles #television #Teratorn #Thunderbird

https://sharonahill.com/?p=8832

Lost Monster Files produces some abominable research

The Discovery Channel’s new series “Lost Monster Files” (LMF) is promoted as a cryptozoology program that uses a team of experts that consult the archives of “founder of cryptozoology”, Ivan T. Sanderson, in their investigations of modern claims of unclassified animals. See my review of the first episode for more background. The second episode, titled Snow Beast of Ruby Creek, is about the team looking at Sanderson’s files about ABSM or the Abominable Snowmen in British Columbia.

ABSMery

It may be a jolt to viewers fairly new to the subject of cryptids to encounter the term ABSM, which this episode drops early and fails to explain adequate. Sanderson used the term ABSM as shorthand for abominable snowmen – his generic umbrella term for what we now might call “hairy hominins” referring to Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti (and variants), almas, relict hominids, etc. Sanderson wrote the 1961 book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life. It’s a good book, fun to read, and an excellent history of the search for these creatures worldwide. I would recommend this books to anyone who watched this episode, particularly the cast, who show no sign that they even knew it existed. By consulting just this book, you can get a much-expanded version of the historical bits mentioned in this LMF episode.

Portions of the episode that reference Sanderson’s files include the Chapman incident in British Columbia (see more below) and “classified” documents in Russian regarding research into creatures in Asia. They treat the Russian research files as something new and surprising. All reasonably well-read cryptid researchers know that Russia has a long and continued history in seeking out the Yeti and other hominoid varieties. This is neither new nor shocking. But the show says nothing more about it, leaving the viewer more misinformed than when they started.

Source of the files – not “lost”

In the last post, I mentioned that I didn’t know anything about this collection of files by Sanderson stored in Michigan. I have since found out more thanks to input from others who knew about it. The files are held by Michael Swords who received them in 2011 via contacts from Sanderson’s society, SITU. From Swords’ blog:

“There is an internet legend that these archives have been severely depleted by sticky-fingered knowledge-thieves. Again, who knows what all MIGHT have happened in the past, but my eyeballs say that the VAST majority if not all of the famous SITU files [even dating back to Sanderson and the early years; i.e. Sanderson’s own file creation] ARE STILL EXTANT AND RIGHT HERE IN KALAMAZOO.“

They are not hidden or lost. Others have been able to access them on request as Swords welcomed as “keeper” of the collection. The comments to that announcement run for years and include a March 2024 comment by Swords noting, “We are engaged with a documentary team as I write.” This is undoubtedly the LMF team.

Search for the Canadian ABSM

When introducing Sanderson’s ideas, Charlie describes the ABSM characteristics: 9 feet tall, sharp teeth, white-haired. This is misleading in so many ways. This is the old fashioned idea of the Yeti, a term never used in the show. The Yeti is known from the Himalayas, not North America. The show chooses to use the clunky, outdated term ABSM throughout while clearly talking about a Sasquatch/Bigfoot in British Columbia. I expect this might be confusing to viewers by not mentioning the word Bigfoot but clearly describing it in its well-known locale. The idea of white-hair makes little sense either since even Yetis (and variants) usually were brown- black- or red-haired. Certainly, the ABSM of the Pacific Northwest is rarely described like this.

The Chapman case from 1941 involves a close up sighting of a not-white-haired wild man creature experienced by a mother and several children at their homestead in Ruby Creek near the Fraser river. A 7.5 ft tall being came out of the forest, entered the house, and removed a barrel of salted fish as the family stayed outside. Sanderson visited the Chapmans and refers to the mystery creature in the 1961 book as a Sasquatch. The LMF crew do an extremely cursory review of the case. They speak to one modern witness, Dave Victor, who describes encountering a rock-throwing creature while fishing in the Fraser River. The viewers are asked to accept the witness story as described, as correct and accurate, and to extrapolate that the creature experienced by both the Chapmans and Victor is the same and is still in the area. Even though no one has collected solid evidence of a Bigfoot/Sasquatch after over 100 years of active searching, this cast of a TV show is convinced they will be the ones to do it in a few days of camping. Sure.

Field work

The cast splits up with the two trackers, Troy and Justin, following a trail up Hope mountain from the Fraser River. They find tracks that they never show in detail or try to identify (seemingly because they are mundane), but never see any animals. They assume they are tracking a bear. The show pushes the idea that there may be a “grolar” hybrid bear here. A “grolar” or “pizzly” is a rare hybrid grizzly-polar bear. There is no logical reason to propose such a creature here and it’s done simply to make an unexciting episode more dramatic. These hybrids are very rare and are found farther north, closer to the Arctic polar bear range. It’s one of many ridiculous claims made in the show to jazz it up.

The rushed and non-believable climax of their adventure is during the night at the summit where it appears (it’s not clear) that logs are moved or thrown at them, and they experience “infrasound” blasted in their direction. None of this is verified or even decently described. I burst out laughing at the several “What the hell was that?!” exclamations. It’s just like watching Ghost Hunters! They never reveal that “THAT” is anything at all beyond their fear-stoked imagination.

Meanwhile, Brittany and Charlie have hauled a crap-ton of equipment of all sorts into the woods to try to find the creature they are “convinced” exists here. They use laser beams, infrared cameras, and a drone. Equipment display is the most common ploy to be scientifical. The beams and IR cameras do nothing useful here. The drone appears to spot a cave that they investigate but the dots are not connected. All the events feel contrived, even faked.

Brittany sits alone at night waiting for something to happen. She hears scratching and runs out to find a tree ripped up by a bear. We are made to think this just happened. The lasers and cameras saw nothing. This certainly looks like bear scratches, but that the scene feels manufactured to look surprising. Later, she’s in a hunting blind after stringing salmon up as bait. She hears a noise, rushes out and finds a disturbed patch she calls a footprint. They use the scanner to record it, and later make an effort to match a cast in Sanderson’s archive of a Yeti footprint (from Asia, but none of this is mentioned). This is another ridiculous claim. You see nothing but noisy data over which they have drawn toes.

But wait, there is more. Brittany and Charlie investigate a rock cave where they find fish bones. They declare they are fresh (without any justification) and take samples that are sent for DNA testing. They also insist no bear could have done this (but ignore the possibility that a raccoon or other smaller could have). The DNA tests come up inconclusive. That means – you guessed it – it’s a mystery animal because it doesn’t match a known species! (That’s not how it works.)

Conclusion

The premise of this episode is absurd. We are asked to accept that a group of newcomers who helicopter into the woods looking for the abominable snowman will solve the mystery of a sighting from 1941.

Nothing of any interest is found in this episode. They can’t even find normal animals. However, in sifting through the dregs of data, they draw bullseyes and say “SEE! We are awesome.” Outrageously, they conclude that they have ruled out all known species and that this is a new species they were so close to documenting. They suggest they will leave game cameras out and revisit the place in 6 months.

The quality of the show is not improving after the first episode and I can reasonably guess that it won’t. The writing is dumb, and the cast appear as ignorant and like phony performers to anyone who knows even a little bit of cryptid history.

I realize that I am not the audience for this show. I know too much and can’t shut off critical thinking while watching. Furthermore, I have set expectations too high. This is the incorrect way to consume any TV show, even those portrayed as nonfiction. Television is intended to be passive and entertaining, a distraction from real life. The viewer is not supposed to check facts. It doesn’t matter if the presenters are unqualified. It only matters that it is interesting to watch. The problem arises when the programming tacitly asserts that it depicts legitimate research, that the events are real and happened as shown, and that the “talent” are doing science so the results are solid. That’s what Discovery Channel programming does best – play up pretend research as new, credible knowledge. Thanks to a generally poor understanding of how reliable knowledge is formulated, the audience has been lulled into thinking that what one sees on TV (or on the news station, or said by a person with a platform) is true and should be accepted. Instead of being disposable entertainment, viewers will unfortunately retain the idea that investigations can be meaningfully done by actors doing sciencey things and hyping their baseless claims on a small screen. This is how we all get dumber.

#AbominableSnowmen #ABSM #Bigfoot #cryptid #Cryptozoology #DiscoveryChannel #grolarBear #IvanSanderson #LostMonsterFiles #paranormalTelevision #RubyCreek #Sasquatch #sciencey #Scientifical #Yeti

https://sharonahill.com/?p=8811