Sasquatch fest to add new features

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The Whitehall Sasquatch Festival has become bigger and better each year and Barbara Spoor has had a hand this year with the organization of festival events from Emily Fleur of Long Island, who had the idea to have topics selected for the presentation.

“Whitehall is what inspired me to begin my research into bigfoot,” Fleur said. ‘When I was 13 years old, I watched a documentary on sasquatch from the 70s.”

“My grandparents heard about Whitehall, and I begged my parents to go and check it out and they said alright! We planned the trip and drove about five hours.”

Fleur has multiple years of experience with event planning from working as a sales coordinator and has put together an organized list of presentations for locals at the festival. She even attended the second year of the festival, and it was a great way for her to network with other researchers.

“Last year I had a booth and presented,” she said. ‘I met a ton of people from the area and one man I recruited to be a member of my organization! When I can’t get to the remote areas of the Adirondacks in the winter, this previous law enforcement officer will go out and investigate,” she said.

Fleur has worked with Spoor on organizing the event and the presentations that will happen throughout the day. In years past, presenters brought their own topics; this year they are assigned.

“Each presenter will have a different topic this year. There will be a presentation about hoaxes, one about all the different hominoids that once existed and all the great ape ancestors, one about fieldwork and how to document evidence, local sightings by Paul Bartholomew, and my team will talk about the future of sasquatch and how to protect the species and their habitat,” she said.

As for Fleur’s research on the protection of the bigfoot species and its habitat, she said it’s common for people to use loud and dangerous methods to bait the creature. She said from blasting loud music to leaving him donuts or candy bars, they could harm the species.

“I’m going to be going into detail about how other primates are affected by human action. Another thing is heavy metal music and going out into the woods screaming, knocking on trees, and trying to draw as much attention to yourself as possible. In the past, people used these as a tactic to find bigfoot but that method of finding these animals is very dated.”

“Doctor Jane Goodall didn’t go in the woods screaming, throwing things, hitting bats on trees, or blasting music. She went into the field quietly and observed chimpanzees from afar until she could gain their trust enough to study them up close.”

Fleur has gone as far as creating a line of merchandise as well as a product line of field gear. She referred to the plaster casts made of footprints as harmful to the environment as researchers would mix their plaster for the casts in plastic bags. She wanted to create a product that researchers could use over and over.

“I thought to myself, we’re trying to protect this species and their environment yet we’re creating more waste by looking for them and just throwing out all this plastic. So, I decided to create a collapsible bucket that you can easily snap onto your backpack, put it in your bag, it’s lightweight and you can take it with you,” she said.

Fleur will have another booth at the festival this year and her presentation will be at 2:45 and 3:30 p.m. There will be a panel discussion with all the presenters at 4 p.m. Fleur is counting down the days until the festival comes to life in Riverside and Skenesborough Park and said it’s going to be another great year.

“It’s a great area, it’s definitely a hotspot, I think that these things pass through Whitehall all the time,” she said.

You can learn more about Fleur and her research at www.theforestfleur.com.

Sasquatch Fest presenters