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There’s something moving in the snow at the Formigal-Panticosa ski resort in Spain. It’s big and shuffling and as white as the ground. And it was caught on camera.
Update: It was a marketing stunt. On February 11, sunglasses company Hawkers and Spanish ski resort association Aramón took responsibility for the viral Yeti video as advertising for a sunglasses and discount ski pass promotion. Read on for the details.
As with pretty much all Sasquatch-style sightings, the video is short, fuzzy and shaky, but it is possible to see what appears to be a large humanoid shape moving in the distance. Two photos were posted to the Spanish-language forum ForoCoches.com on January 29, and the shaky video appeared on YouTube last week, causing a hullabaloo.
“Spanish ski resort bosses have been forced to comb part of the Pyrenees after the images sent the Internet into a frenzy,” reads a description of the video posted to the Viral Vds YouTube channel.
The ski resort posted on its Facebook page that officials had spoken with the witnesses and searched the area but found nothing unusual and most certainly didn’t discover evidence of a Yeti living among the trees.
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I have a possible explanation for the fantastical sighting. The Formigal-Panticosa ski resort hosts a celebration where skiers arrive in elaborate costumes in early February. Images from the celebration on the resort’s Facebook page show people in full-body cow costumes, tick costumes and wolf costumes. Perhaps the “Yeti” was someone getting into the celebratory cosplay spirit a few days early.
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Other possible explanations could include a marketing stunt, or maybe the Loch Ness monster went on a ski vacation while wearing a faux-fur coat. That’s just as likely as a fictional creature from the Himalayas showing up in Spain.
This isn’t the first (nor will it be the last) video sighting of a human-like hairy beast that matches the description of a Yeti or Bigfoot. Back in 2014, a Sasquatch seeker released a video showing an alleged creature matching Bigfoot’s description.
Video footage qualifies as a prize when it comes to cryptozoology, the pseudoscientific study of mythical beasts. It’s easy to dismiss photos at first sight as being manipulated, but videos require us to start asking about costumes and computer-generated graphics. It’s more effort to fake a video.
As fun as all this is, we have yet to see any real proof of the existence of the hirsute manimals. Most of us won’t be satisfied until there’s physical evidence and several teams of reknowned scientists saying, “Yes, Bigfoot is real and here’s the proof.” Until then, we’ll get a good laugh from the videos.
Update, February 10 at 10:15 a.m. PT: The original video was removed from YouTube. A different source is now embedded.
Update, February 12 at 7:30 a.m. PT: To reflect that sunglasses company Hawkers and ski resort business Aramón took responsibility for the viral Yeti stunt.
(Via Boing Boing)
