I've been over at Loren Coleman's new CRYPTOZOONEWS blog reading Are Zooforms Cryptids? and this was my response.
Loren I've always admired the terrific way you've negotiated the potential hazards of cross-contamination between your twin interests in the realms of noumenon and zoomenon as it were.
With this piece though it seems you're not only visibly fully expanding your garuda like wings as you emerge from the limitations of the 'egg' you inhabited over at Cryptomundo but you seem to be declaring an intention to more willingly openly explore precisely the interface the two areas inevitably share even if only to make a clearer demarcation between the two.
I hope though you won't just concentrate on the matter of demarcation because when you say an outsider's bound to be confused by media leaping from eyewitness accounts concerning the likes of hairy bipeds or Lake/Sea Monsters to stories about phantom dogs or glowing swamp creatures I'd suggest its scholars like yourself from other fields who're more likely to be confused or more likely I suggest irritated by the apparent lack of scholastic discipline.
The vast majority of consumers of such media though're more likely to wolf down whatever they're served up so long as it gets their goosebumps going and in many ways they're more important because it's precisely from those legions the next Loren Coleman will emerge since even born scholars have to learn whatever currently passes for 'good' scholarship and even to this day what usually passes for 'good' scholarship is the renouncing of precisely all this "hokey cryptid nonsense".
John Downes 'maintains that many zooform phenomena result from complex psychosocial and sociological phenomena, and suggests that to classify all such phenomena as “paranormal” in origin is counterproductive'.
I'd add to that even the tag "paranormal" can be so vague as to become almost nonsenical.
For instance I've been known in my time to make jokey statements along the lines me and Nick Redfern believe Sasquatch have secret ninja X-men superpowers because of course there are reports almost to that effect.
The thing is though based on numerous personal experiences with 'ordinary' animals not to mention research conducted with such animals by the likes of Rupert Sheldrake [as well as historic accounts of the likes of witches purportedly having paranormal interactions with 'ordinary' animals] those claims may not be quite as outlandish or even paranormal as they initially seem.
For instance ever since I was a kid I've had these phases where something's woken me up in the middle of the night or summoned me to another nearby location solely to come to the rescue of some poor distressed insect like a cockroach [even though my poor white trash early childhood existence consisted of being bombarded on all sides by an insistence such critters should be mercilessly stomped on a task me Dad used to pursue with relish].
But I'm also celebrated in certain quarters for knowing when a spider's present no matter how well hidden because I seem able to detect them throwing out the command to be so frightened or nervous enough of them to avoid any contact [which might explain some animal based phobias].
How this's done I don't know. It might be electromagnetic it might be pheromonal it might even be telepathic but a sensitivity to creatures who can produce this effect may explain some accounts of 'Sasquatch' seemingly mentally ordering people to be scared for their very lives.
It may also explain something that seems to be happening an awful lot lately.
Friends relatives and acquaintances who've hitherto had little or no knowledge of alanborky's nutcasery've suddenly started anxiously bombarding me or people known to me with tales how normally when they're suspicious an intruder's on the premises they improvise a weapon and raise their voices yet on certain recent occasions they've sensed an unseen 'presence' moving about their house or even their bedroom projecting at them such seething menace they not only couldn't get out of bed to protect their kids but they actually pulled the sheets over their heads and shamefully cowered there as if they were little kids for hours on end until the dawn finally arrived.
Then again maybe me an' Nick're right and Sasquatch [and spiders] really DO have secret ninja X-men superpowers!