Now I can’t say for a fact that Bigfoot is real (even though he is), but I will leave you with these sites so you can decide for yourself (just know that the overwhelming evidence can’t be ignored). So grab your low-quality camcorders and your best camouflage, because we’re going on a hunt of the cryptozoologic nature!

Our Bigfoot

We’ll start the links off with something a little more personal. Well, it is only personal because the word “our” is in the title of the site, and I figured that you might like that. Just go with it.

Our Bigfoot is a rather gaudy looking site (just as you would expect) that is full of surprisingly detailed information. Click around, and you’re sure to find something worth reading. Beyond that, the site has plenty of evidence archives, photos, and videos to scour through.

Bigfoot Encounters

A lot of these sites will be rather similar, but it’s good to have a lot of different resources at your disposal when you are Bigfoot hunting. You never wrote your university research papers using only one source, did you? (don’t answer that).

Bigfoot Encounters provides a lot of the same information that Our Bigfoot does, but it also includes Bigfoot-related news, sightings, and even events all on the site. Also, as far as the techie stuff goes, the site includes a nice search function.

Bigfoot Forums

My friends, I have good news. If you believe that you’re the only one in the whole wide world that actually believes in Bigfoot, you’re wrong. There are plenty of people on the Bigfoot Forums that are into this stuff, and you can be one of them, too!

Granted, the site may take you on a trip to the world of nineties web design. However, the forums are a fairly active community that is definitely worth visiting if you feel like discussing the possibility of Bigfoot being in your area. Go ahead – plenty of people use it, and so can you!

Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization

The BFRO is a scientific research organization that is authentically bent on gathering every bit of information about Bigfoot that it possibly can. On their Bigfoot site, there is a sighting submission form if you feel so inclined to share your Bigfoot story, and furthermore, there are quite a few tips to enhance your Bigfoot hunt.

Speaking of hunts, the BFRO actually has quite a few expeditions to search for Bigfoot that are available to non-members throughout the year. If you check the site, you may actually find one in your state or within traveling distance.

Bigfoot Sightings

When I first arrived on the Bigfoot Sightings site, I honestly wasn’t that impressed. By all appearances, it’s a personal blog, and I’m not too crazy about writing about such things for MakeUseOf.

However, there are quite a few valuable links related to Bigfoot sightings on this site, and with that being said, I felt like the site was worthy enough to include on here. Granted, you must take this with a grain of salt considering our subject matter.

Listverse’s Top 20 Bigfoot Sightings

Instead of totally copying this article from Listverse (which is the lowest thing I could do), I decided to give credit where credit was due and link you to their top 20 Bigfoot sightings. All of them have video recordings, and each one comes with a detailed description of the event.

Granted, it’s up to you to decide whether or not the sightings are legit. I’ll keep my personal opinions to myself, but I’d love to hear about yours.

Conclusion

Is Bigfoot real? Honestly, I don’t know. There’s a chance of him being real, but there’s also a chance of me falling off of the bed I am sitting on while I write this, smashing my head against the floor, and dying instantly. It’s not likely, but it could happen. Granted, that’s me just being logical for the rest of you.

What interesting finds did you see on these sites? What other Bigfoot sites do you know about?

Image Credit: earl53

As a person who spends a great deal of his spare time researching old and new conspiracy theories, folklore and legend, I find the prospect of traveling to a remote part of the world for such exploration one of my greatest dreams. However, with a small family to support and responsibilities to my employer and my writing clients, there is very little time left over to travel around the world. With that said, there are times when some claims or legends really require an examination of the land, buildings and civilization surrounding a specific area.

In this update I’d like to take readers on a few amazing adventures to explore some mysterious areas of the earth where local folklore and legend makes claim of strange creatures, scary encounters, secret military bases and countless other conspiracy theories. If you’ve got all of your gear ready and you’re ready to board the flight, let’s head out on our first adventure.

Exploring The Island Of Malta

Back in 2006, I wrote a speculative article about underground caverns around the world, and in particular about the amazing story published in Borderland Science magazine where an employee of the British embassy, Miss Louis Jessup, claimed that when she explored the catacombs beneath the Island of Malta, she had a surreal and terrifying experience where she saw large creatures walking around in the darkness.

To give this story a little bit of reality, it would be interesting to explore the Island of Malta, in particular Valletta, to see if we can’t spot at least the entrances to these underground passages, or determine whether or not these places even exist in the first place. According to the archeological website I found that described the excavated caverns under the temples of this island, these temples with many underground levels of catacombs are scattered all throughout the island. The map below shows a significant temple, called the Hal Saflieni, an ancient site that dates back to 3,600 to 2,500 B.C.

It would be interesting to see what the area actually looks like. According to the archaeology site, the area should be free of buildings and structures, but with plenty of pits and recesses in the earth.

Let’s jump in our Google Earth plane and see if we can visit the island of Malta and locate the temple.  Typing in “Valletta, Island of Malta” in the “Fly To” field gets us there.

Just from this distant overhead view, it’s pretty clear that the island is a beautiful place. The inlet of water must provide some beautiful scenic spots. Exploring the area on foot must be a real treat, with so many old palaces and other buildings to tour. However, we’re here to find the ancient temple Hal Saflieni – which, according to the archeological maps, was located just southwest of Valletta itself.

Sure enough, zooming in a bit closer and rolling the mouse over a few of the site markers lands the right one. Marker C is the legendary Hypogeum itself. Zooming in as much as possible without the map becoming blurry reveals a few details about the real location.

Sure enough, while there are buildings and structures around the area, the Hypogeum itself is an area of land that remains untouched. You can see the brown indentations of Earth where there’s no vegetation and the above ground parts of the ancient structure remains. While you can’t zoom any closer than this, you can click on the Wikipedia symbol to learn more about this particular Hypogeum.

Just reviewing the images of these subterranean caverns, it’s very easy to understand how so many local legends exist about these ancient ruins. To think that this is only one of the many multi-layer underground catacombs throughout this entire island is fascinating.  Thanks to Google Earth, you can actually check out the location and read more about each one.

The Human-Alien Conspiracy Theory – The Military Base of Dulce, New Mexico

This is a very fun conspiracy theory to explore because it’s one that I’ve seen debunked so often it’s almost pointless to pursue. But in this second half of this article, I wanted to show how you can explore even the most remote areas of the earth. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed in solidifying my case for no secret base…read on.

According the the various silly legends and stories within Ufology throughout the years, the legend of the human-alien base near Dulce, New Mexico is an old conspiracy theory that claims that the military created the base around 1969 when Project Blue Book (the Air Force investigation of UFOs) was officially closed. According to the stories, the base entrance is at Mt. Archeleta, and the base itself exists on the Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation (I’m not sure how the government got the Apache to allow such a project – go figure). Considering that there are actual, geographical locations to check out with Google Earth, this is an excellent exercise to show how you can use Google Earth to debunk such conspiracy theories.

The first thing you’ll notice when you map out the distance from Mt. Archeleta to the Jicarilla Reservation is that it’s well over 40 miles from one location to the other. An entrance to a base over 40 miles from the base itself? Not very likely. Forgetting about the Indian reservation, we’ll zoom in on Mt. Archeleta to show that the terrain is so rugged and the mountain so remote that nothing could ever make it there to enter any sort of “secret base entrance.”

You can zoom in pretty close in this territory, and following the various roads shows both roads or riverbeds traveling between the enormous mountains, but not a single road or trail headed up toward the steep incline toward Mt. Archeleta. There’s no obvious structure or even anything that looks like a cave anywhere around the isolated mountain.

However, with that said, as I was scrolling around the peak of Mt. Archeleta, I noticed a very strange, faint track that looked like an old dirt road. Sure enough, when I looked a bit closer it was – and tracing it back along the winding peak I found that after a very long and twisty journey it joined up with the main road at the base of the mountain. The image below is the road along the ridge, headed toward the Mt. Archeleta peak.

Eventually, the road passes just below the peak of Mt. Archuleta, fades out quite a bit (I thought it ended there because the trail faded), but it does continue on well past the mountain.

Regardless of the very odd existence of the road (I could find no similar roads along the top of nearby mountain ridges), there was nothing at all in the area to suggest any sort of entrance or even a structure in this isolated and desolate area. Why don’t you take a look around yourself and see if you spot anything out of the ordinary? As you can see, exploring some of these isolated areas can be a lot of fun, especially when you base your searches around the Earth on the very strange and surreal conspiracy theories and legends you’ll find throughout the Internet.

Do you know of any locations on Google Earth that might be fun to explore? Are you able to spot anything strange at any of those locations? Tell us about your Google Earth adventures in the comments section below!

Let’s put on our tin foil or armadillo hats an take a stroll down manic-depressive lane shall we?

10. The Unhived Mind

This is one of those sites that suffers from poor design, yet still seems to be immensely popular.  The strength of this site is in the breadth of topics covered in it’s forums. Now, forums aren’t usually the bastion of intelligent debate and this site is no different. Some good ideas and views are presented, but the conversation usually devolves into something that would make a 4Chan’er blush. There also seems to be a leaning on this site against the Catholic Church and more specifically, the Jesuit order. The Unhived Mind also seems to advocate esoteric or downright gross health care messures (urine drinking anyone?). With the focus on the forums and the lack of organization, the Unhived Mind becomes more like the Unhinged Mind.

9. Freemasonry Watch

Although the layout and organization isn’t very good, this site has been around as long as I can remember and archives all things, and anything, remotely related to Freemasonry. There is the odd grain of truth on this site from what I understand, but for the greatest part, it presents a lot of very loosely related items and tries to push the Freemasons as the underpinnings of the Illuminati or New World Order and just about any illegal or immoral event that ever happened.

8. Illuminati Conspiracy Archive

One of the trademarks of a lot of conspiracy sites is really poor web design. Is this the sign of a cluttered mind or just ignorance about the importance of how information is presented to how well it is received? The Illuminati Conspiracy Archive (ICA) has a very nice, almost academic design, with well-organized information. There are no real rants here, thank goodness, which leads to the site having greater credibility. The usual fare is here: Bilderbergers, Trilateral Commission, and of course, Freemasonry.

The ICA also has a bibliography of sorts, that is really an Amazon affiliate store. That’s fine, gotta pay the bills somehow right?

7. Godlike Productions

Another forum-based conspiracy site. The focus here is on UFO’s and aliens, but they branch out into the Illuminati and NWO and Bilderberger type stuff as well. Although, most of the discussions just end up leading back to the cause behind anything being UFO’s and aliens. Godlike Productions is probably best known for it’s interview with an alleged former-Illuminati Grand Master, Leo Lyon Zagami, who spills the beans – sort of.

6. Third Eye Concept

Third Eye Concept really has it all – ancient mysteries, government cover-ups, and all the Illuminati stuff. It’s easy-to-use layout features articles, a movie room, music and even some good old fashioned conspiracy humour in the form of those demotivational posters. The topics are serious, but there is a light-hearted tone to it all which makes the gloom-and-doom a little more palatable.

5. Above Top Secret

Probably the most popular site on the Internet for all things conspiracy-like. The focus here is mostly on UFO related stories and ‘evidence’. The stories aren’t always terribly well researched or written as a lot of them are reader-submitted, but the layout is easy to use and read. It’s definitely worth a look.

4. TinWIKI

TinWIKI helps explain the basics behind the terms of different conspiracy theories. You see, conspiracy theorists often have their own sort of jargon.

You know some of the slang probably. Words like Area 51 or Grays or NWO have been bandied about in the X-Files and other such shows, but how about Reptiloids or The Third Rank? Get the low down at TinWIKI. Become an educated lunatic fringer.

3. DavidIcke

Footballer, sportscaster turned philosopher/conspiracy theorist, David Icke has published several books and had several very successful speaking tours, including such hallowed halls of learning as the University of Toronto and Oxford University. Just a tip – his last name is pronounced like Ike, not Icky.

His philosophy, as far distilled as I can make it, is that the world is run by alien/reptilian overlords, who are responsible for every government or religious organization and that they seek to make us their slaves and/or food.

His defense suggestion? Just say no and start loving your neighbour as you love yourself. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a pretty good way to live in general and would take care of a lot of the ails of this world. But I’m thinking if a big alien lizard is pointing his phaser at me, I can love all I want but I’ll end up scrubbing his toilets and becoming
hors d’Å“uvres anyway.

2. ConspiracyRealityTV

If you’re like me (and if you’ve read this far, you probably are) you get tired of reading all the time and just want to kick back with a good documentary. Paranoia takes so much time to develop from words, but pictures speed up that process exponentially. ConspiracyRealityTV has a list of hundreds of videos relating to all the major conspiracies and they are all free. Really, who wants to pay for paranoia? Oh yeah, crack and smack heads.

1. Infowars

Internet headquarters for radio host and documentary maker Alex Jones, Infowars is a gateway  into the Alex Jones media empire. Maybe empire is a little optimistic, but he reaches hundreds of thousands every day and has had some extremely popular Internet videos. There are news articles every day, two podcasts (one by Alex Jones, the other by protege Jason Bermas), forums, and special reports. Alex Jones is the undisputed king of conspiracy. But here’s the catch. Mr. Jones doesn’t talk about aliens, Elvis, or spontaneous combustion, or anything else that he can not support! Alex Jones predicted an attack on New York involving Osama bin Laden two months before 9/11 happened.

A lot of his stories seem to have hard facts behind them and he has the paper trail to back his opinions up. He frequently has congressmen, economists and other legitimate movers and shakers on his show to talk about the conspiracies that Alex uncovers. Yes, everything there requires a grain of salt as all media does, but the grain is much smaller than what you would require for say, The Unhived Mind, or even Fox News for that matter.

That’s my Top 10 Conspiracy Web Sites list. How do you get your paranoia on? What’s your favourite conspiracy? Let’s talk about it in the comments, but no real names please. They’re watching….always watching…….