San Diego Reader

Dangerous Skating

My name is Michael Esordi, and as a longtime and legitimate member of the cryptozoology community, I would like to address a few points in this article by James Snyder (“I Just Found Bigfoot,” Cover Story, January 14).

Mr. Snyder contacted me sometime after his 2002 discovery of the footprint in Ramona, California. When I met with Mr. Snyder, he showed me some photographs and his cast, but when I inquired about the possibility of seeing the site to obtain better evidence, he refused. However, I respected Mr. Snyder’s wishes and decided to see what we could determine based on the evidence collected. I posted the amateur photos Mr. Snyder took to the website to allow researchers across the nation to examine them and comment. As a result, I did have a number of well-known and highly respected researchers comment. However, given the quality of the images, it was difficult for any real determination to be made at that time regarding the footprint.

On the occasions I met with Mr. Snyder, he conveyed two things to me. One was that he wanted to determine what had made the footprint, and the other was to see what kind of monetary compensation could be made from his find. After some discussion, I obtained Mr. Snyder’s permission to make a cast from his original and to offer it for sale on the website. I personally covered all costs of production and manufacture on the item and did place it into commerce on my website. However, there was minimal interest in the item, and no profits were ever made on it. Given this fact, I discontinued sale of the item after a relatively short period of time.

Around the time of my relocation to the East Coast, I attempted to contact Mr. Snyder on a number of occasions, as I wanted to follow up with him on my decision to pull the cast and to discuss feedback from the researchers who were interested in the footprint. Unfortunately, Mr. Snyder chose to not respond back to me, and I was left assuming his interest in the matter had waned.

I feel Mr. Snyder’s article is skating a dangerous line with some of the litigious verbiage he uses to describe our interaction. I’m certain if he realized he was committing what is considered libel that he might have chosen to more closely examine his recollections of our meetings and would have described things quite differently. Again, I would like to set the record straight and say I never made a profit on the cast I produced and I did attempt to contact Mr. Snyder on numerous occasions with no response back from him. In all of my interactions with Mr. Snyder, I only conducted myself with the utmost professionalism and with a high level of integrity, as I have a reputation in the research community I have spent many years building. Unfortunately, in his article, I feel Mr. Snyder has portrayed legitimate and highly qualified researchers in the field of cryptozoology in an unfavorable and unfair light.

Michael Esordi

James A. Snyder responds: I apologize if I misspoke about what transpired after Mr. Esordi moved to the East Coast. But honestly, I didn’t receive any messages from him or I would have responded.

I was very grateful for his interest and help. He took the time to share his extensive knowledge on this Bigfoot enigma and provided an avenue for feedback from others in the world of cryptozoology. He was one of the best experts I spoke with, and I still hold him in high regard. It was not my intention to portray him unfavorably. I sincerely apologize for this unfortunate misunderstanding.

Burned-Up Bigfoot

After reading several paragraphs I knew exactly what this story was (“I Just Found Bigfoot,” Cover Story, January 14). It has been on the internet floating amongst the Bigfoot sightings. The conclusion is Bigfoot could not have left a footprint in molten lava that later solidified into granite. He would have burned up. The other conclusion is granite is too hard for Bigfoot to step strongly enough for a print to be impressed into the stone.

If Mr. Snyder had taken his sample to the SDSU geology department, I am sure they could have explained this to him in great detail. Of course he would have to show the original site and prevent the constant guessing.

For people who research Bigfoot stories, this one is old news. Having a mold of something that looks like something else doesn’t make it so. If there is one BF print, why not thousands in the area, forgetting the heat problem for a moment? Why no human prints in granite? Maybe because it is physically impossible to do so.

There certainly have been BF reports in the San Diego area from the time of the Spanish friars. None have involved rock prints.

Earl Kline

via email

See This Before 2012

In a follow-up to the Bigfoot article by James A. Snyder (“I Just Found Bigfoot,” Cover Story, January 14), I have my own related story that takes place in the same general area where the footprint was found. On July 1, 1990, I accidentally captured ten UFOs in a single daylight photo hovering over the San Diego River. This is where the Bigfoot impression was discovered, according to the article. I also had a difficult time getting a professional opinion of the objects in the photo but did my own research in the meantime and discovered a repeating pattern on one of the objects that I also discovered in other UFO photos as well as ancient artifacts, crop circles, and the Nazca Lines in Peru. The Los Angeles Times broke the story in 1991, and numerous front-page features, radio interviews, and TV spots followed. My 2006 CBS special on KFMB Channel 8 as well as my recent United Kingdom article confirm that a lost sacred pattern has been rediscovered. While it may be the Reader’s policy not to cover any local story that has already been covered, there are thousands of San Diegans who have never heard of this UFO photo or the three important rock faces connected to the event. To see the evidence the L.A. Times labeled “unsettling,” just Google my name or “Inaja UFO Photo” or go to orreman7.com/BestUFOphotoever.html.

This is more than a local story as you will see by exploring all 30-plus linked pages on my nonprofit website, which over a million visitors have witnessed. With 2012 rapidly approaching, mankind is hungry for the truth about aliens, UFOs, and Bigfoot, and here is a native San Diegan who claims to have stumbled onto the Rosetta stone that has unraveled some of mankind’s greatest mysteries. So what if some other publications have covered this groundbreaking event in the past? It’s time for the Reader to step up to the plate and fulfill your obligation to cover this historic event for your community. Click on the link to my United Kingdom interview to see the possibilities. If you’re interested, I’ll charge you the same price I’ve charged everyone else to use my photos: nothing.

Mike Orrell

via email

Thanks For Calling

Hello, I appreciate your concern about the traffic to our website and your deft attempts to make me look naïve (“Media Hawk,” January 14). But allow me a minute to clear up some just plain mistruths.

I, Scott Lewis, am the CEO of voiceofsandiego.org, not the editor. That designation belongs to my longtime friend and associate Andrew Donohue, who runs one of the most productive and inspired teams of reporters I’ve ever known.

You say our traffic went down according to quantcast. com. May I direct you to that measurement source again (http://www.quantcast.com/ voiceofsandiego.org). Not sure what you were looking at, but you completely misread it. You say our traffic has “taken a free-fall to 20,000–25,000 per month.” There’s nothing on the Quantcast graph that comes close to those numbers. And as you can see, we’re right back where we were before the website redesign (and its new comment policy) at more than 94,000 people per month.

You write that I seemed unconcerned. That’s because I’m not concerned. I hate even talking about those numbers because we measure our success based on our impact, our loyal readership, and our number of members, which are all growing well. But nonetheless, I figured that if you’re going to play the part of a media columnist and use these graphs to make your point, you might want to read them accurately. Furthermore, if you want to use that measurement, I wonder why you don’t highlight sandiegoreader.com’s estimated numbers on Quantcast (http://www.quantcast.com/ sandiegoreader.com), which show it at well below half our readership. I don’t think that means anything about attendance at your own “congress” or whether you’ve gone “soft” but “some have speculated…”

Which brings up the last point: you say “some have speculated” that Jim Madaffer provided the tip on the SEDC investigation. That’s hilarious, if only because the man wouldn’t even speak to us after we called for his resignation in 2006. We followed the SEDC story through for two and a half years of hard-nosed investigative reporting. While we certainly miss Will Carless as a person and an incredibly talented journalist, he wasn’t the first, last, or only investigative reporter on our staff. We’ve replaced him and even grown our reporting staff since he left six months ago. In fact, we’re in the process of finishing up what will be our third multi-part special report in the last two months.

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