Anomaly Academy 2024-09 – Sept – Rob Riggs (Circa 2014)

Audio Sample (approx. 9 minutes excerpt)

Anomaly Academy 2024-09 – Sept – Rob Riggs (Circa 2014)

From the Archives… Rob Riggs and the Texas Bigfoot Enigma – Presented July 26th, 2014

This audio recording was made at one of the last public presentations by Rob Riggs in 2014, before his passing in late 2015. Rob was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. I was honored to speak about his paranormal & cryptozoological pursuits at his memorial which was held at a local Satsang space in Austin, Texas. I was very excited to introduce his lecture at this event.

The Anomaly Archives was proud to present Rob Riggs to our fellow Anomalist Austinites, Texas Bigfoot Researcher Rob Riggs (September 7, 1945 – November 3, 2015). Rob was an anomaly within the cryptozoological world of bigfoot research. He leaned away from the simple “blood and guts” interpretation of bigfoot as simply an elusive and undiscovered hominid of America’s wild-places. He tried to account for the stranger aspects of tales of encounters with the mysterious creatures by exploring the possible relevance of parapsychological research. He was very well read across a wide range of related paranormal fields of study and applied these far-flung areas of inquiry to the enigma of bigfoot. He believed the keys to unlocking the mystery likely involve a deeper understanding of aboriginal Native American cultures and their views on the psychic abilities of the creatures. He also felt that there may be clues to understanding these creatures within explorations of shape-shifting shamans, altered states of consciousness, and the mysterious energies associated with luminous ball-of-light phenomena known as Ghost Lights, which occur in both the dry desert West Texas region of Marfa to the humid swamp lands surrounding Bragg Road that runs through the Big Thicket in East Texas.

I first met Rob shortly after the 2001 publication of his fantastic book, In The Big Thicket: On The Trail of the Wild Man. In late 2002 I participated in an extensive interview with him that was published in two parts within the Austin Para Times news-magazine (see video link to that interview below), and I was lucky to see him speak at a few bigfoot conferences and to accompany him (and another East Texas bigfoot researcher, Chester Moore Jr.) on an overnight investigation along a remote stretch of the Sabine river that was accessible only by boat. Rob tells that story in this audio recording and it is also detailed in his Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth and Discovering the Truth.

Nick Redfern’s Memoirs of a Monster Hunter: A Five-Year Journey in Search of the Unknown, contains a brief account of the Ghost Lights Mini-Conference put on by the Anomaly Archives in 2005 with the help and sponsorship of Rob Riggs and Natural Awakenings magazine. Anomaly Archives founder SMiles Lewis MC’d the event which featured Nick Redfern, England’s earth lights researcher Paul Devereux, and Marfa, Texas mystery lights researcher Jim Bunnell. And or course, Rob Riggs. You can read those retellings at the links below.

[Photo above (left to right): Jim Bunnell, Renee Lewis (behind), Rob Riggs, Miles Lewis (behind), Paul Devereux, and others from the trip to the Big Thicket after the Ghost Lights Mini-Conference in 2005.]

[Photo below taken by Nick Redfern during our trip to East Texas after the Ghost Lights Mini-Conference. In it, SMiles Lewis is imitating the lumbering gate of bigfoot’s most famous representative, “Patty,” from the Patterson Gimlin film footage. “Preparing to investigate the Big Thicket in 2005 (on the left) SMiles Lewis and (on the right) Paul Devereux.” Photo from Monsters of Texas by Ken Gerhard & Nick Redfern]

Links

[Below: Nick Redfern and Rob Riggs at the 2014 Texas Bigfoot Conference in Jefferson, TX. Photo courtesy Nick Redfern – via Cryptomundo]

Link at Patreon.com/AnomalyArchives