Woodwose

I am not a skeptic. Far from it, in fact- I believe in everything, but I don't believe in anything all that much. What do I mean by that? That I'm inclined to grant some measure of my belief to just about anything magical, supernatural or legendary, but that I'm never all that attached to any specific belief. If a whole bunch of people say there's a Sasquatch out there somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, I say “sure.” If they try to convince me of something more specific, such as the theory that the Sasquatch is a species of large primate, I say “maybe, maybe not.”

The first claim is only that something is out there. I can accept that claim, because I believe the way the universe really works is a lot weirder and a lot looser than what most scientists would be willing to accept. I don't know exactly what Sasquatch is, but if a lot of people say they saw it, I say it must be something. It could be an almost infinite number of weird things, but the theory that it's a large primate species is one of the least convincing to me. Why?

 

Because while it's true that the Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest have legends of a hairy wild-man of the woods, it's equally true that the medieval English, French and Germans did. The English called them Woodwose, and they appear on a number of heraldic designs such as the one above. Looks a lot like a Sasquatch, doesn't it?

 

So if the Native legends are evidence for the literal biological reality of Sasquatch, the Woodwose legends must be as well. We could speculate all day if we wanted to. Were the Woodwose a Stone Age people surviving in deep forests in medieval Europe until the forests got cut down? Was there a large species of non-human primate in medieval Europe? Were the Woodwose just a distant folk memory of Stone Age lifestyles? Were they a legend based on distorted rumors about African apes?

 

Or do weird things just happen sometimes? That's my personal favorite theory, because it doesn't require you to explain away the lack of any Sasquatch bodies in the woods, or the absence of a sufficient breeding population. (For them to exist at all as a species of primate, there would have to be more of them than there appear to actually be, based on the frequency of sightings.)

 

No, I'm inclined to see both the Woodwose and the Sasquatch as “fey” creatures rather than big apes. What do I mean by that? I mean something otherworldly, a creature of myth, manifesting in our consensus reality for brief moments before disappearing Elsewhere. That's what I believe- but I don't believe in it all that much. It's an idea to play with, not a hypothesis to be proved!