Tim Dailey, anti-gay marriage activist and former Senior Fellow for lobbying group the Family Research Council, described bigfoot as a "demonic virtual reality" projection in a radio interview. Described by Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch, Dailey proposed a radical conspiracy theory for both bigfoot and the UFO phenomena.
Appearing on Janet Mefferd Live, a show promising "good news to share with a dying culture" as part of American Family Radio, a Christian radio network with close ties to the Republican National Committee (its president has been a guest of both George W. Bush and Donald Trump's White House), Dailey explained the argument put forth in his book The Paranormal Conspiracy: The Truth about Ghosts, Aliens and Mysterious Beings.
"The paranormal conspiracy seeks to subvert and ultimately transform the rational view of the world through mysterious entities that thrive on instability, confusion and fear," Dailey said. "A demonic virtual reality is taking place."
The American Family Association needs you to know that Bigfoot is not only real, but in fact a "demonic virtual reality" cast by the devil himselfhttps://t.co/tsRMcWnnME
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) July 23, 2018
The ubiquity of high-quality cell phone cameras has made belief in bigfoot increasingly untenable. As more time passes and the paucity of photographic evidence becomes more apparent, the more unlikely an 8-foot, undiscovered ape roams the forests of North America. While groups like the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization continue to endorse a biological description of bigfoot, or sasquatch, Dailey positions the absence of physical evidence as evidence of a non-physical explanation.
"Number One: you have many, many reliable observers who have seen bigfoot, these are not kids on a prank. The second thing is: a virtual absence of any evidence of their existence," Dailey told Mefferd. "So it shows that what's going on is not really a physical phenomena. It's real, it's a projection, it's a demonic virtual reality, but it's not 'nuts and bolts,' or, in this case, 'flesh and blood.'"
For Dailey, bigfoot isn't biological, but part of a larger complex of paranormal activity, including UFO sightings and alien abduction. Together they form a syncretic conspiracy theory with the Biblical devil at the epicenter, instead of conspiracist standbys like the Illuminati, lizard people or antisemitism.
Mefferd brought up an anecdote from Dailey's book, in which a woman encountered a bigfoot at night and tried to shoot it, but the animal vanished. "That's one of many stories, but you know, bigfoot and UFO researchers are loath to admit that, because they're tied into the nuts and bolts, three-dimensional existence of these creatures," Dailey said. "They're not open really to a spiritual explanation, because then you'd have to discuss the reality of evil."
"This woman in Pennsylvania, she shot it at point-blank range in the middle of the night, when she saw this creature. It just evaporated. It disappeared and up in the sky there were UFO lights. So oftentimes, you wouldn't think it, UFOs and bigfoots and others of these kind of phenomena are tied, and often occur simultaneously."
While Dailey's theory, which replaces one paranormal explanation for another, is designed in opposition to existing UFO and bigfoot research, the repetition of a particular idiom—"nuts and bolts"—suggests Dailey may find more traction with traditional UFO researchers than he might suspect.
A "senior manager" involved in the secret Pentagon UFO program, first revealed by the New York Times in December, described the government-funded investigation as delving into similarly non-physical areas of research, including "invisible entities" and "poltergeist activity."
"The investigations by [ Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies] provided new lines of evidence showing that the UFO phenomenon was a lot more than nuts and bolts machines," the unnamed senior manager said in a statement to KLAS-TV in Las Vegas.
The phrase "nuts and bolts" is used to separate new theories from old, primarily because the lack of evidence requires extrapolation into a non-material unknown. In the case of the Pentagon program, the pursuit of dubious pseudoscience has led to the conclusion that eyewitness testimony is untrustworthy because of the UFO's power for "manipulating and distorting human perception," a remarkably similar line to Dailey's description of alien abductees as having a "demonic virtual reality imposed on their minds." In both instances, the lack of reliable evidence becomes the rationale for increasingly outlandish explanations, rather than undermining the existence of the paranormal phenomena itself.
"Why would the devil do this?" Mefferd asked.
"It's part of the devil's modus operandi. He has always used this kind of phenomena, to, once again, destabilize, engender fear, open us up to the possibility of other realities, other beings. Then we begin getting involved with demonic spirits," Dailey said. "All through history there have been many many varieties of beings, that are primarily spiritual beings, who have terrorized civilizations and people. Non-Christian cultures are very aware of this, because they have to deal with these beings all the time and that's what they have shamans for: to hold these spirit beings at bay. We're getting to that stage here in the United States."
Dailey further condemned Ouija boards, ayahuasca and newspaper horoscopes as additional vectors for possible demonic interference.
Newsweek has reached out to American Family Radio for comment and will update this article accordingly.
