From Erik Knatterud to Michael Trachtengerts

September 03, 2006

Tapetum licidum and the glow

Eye shine: A sighting that support your view. Here is a part of an interview with Scott Herriot that you will be able to read in full at the site http://txsasquatch.blogspot.com/ It contains his sighting with glow in the eyes that is turned on and off, two brown eyes that started to glow, then the glow fading only to glow again. After reading your paper on eye shine, I thought I`d forward you this. Having read various sightings from all around for years, this intense glow that seems to be turned on in a very few cases, I find highly intriguing. You seem to be able to explain it!

Erik Knatterud, Norway.

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<Question: Have you had a sighting? If so please explain.
Scott Herriott: I believe I have. Can I say with absolute certainty? No. But I'm currently 99.87965 percent sure... :)

Following a sighting report I found out about in Sept. of '92, myself and the father of one of the two kids who had the sighting took a 1 1/2 - 2 hour trek up the hill, at the base of which, the kids had the sighting at. Near the top, we noticed, low down, and about 40 feet up the hill from us (at that point the hill had flattened out from around 40 degrees most of the way up to around 10-15 degrees) was this darkness, part of which we could tell was a fallen tree. Within that darkness were two big brown eyes. After looking at them for about 10 minutes (slow head swaying..no apparent blinking... wasn't acting like any bear or large animal in the woods I'd ever seen) we decided to get closer to try and get a better look and that's when..coupled with an apparent eye dilation...a very distinct reddish glow appeared. Within a span of about 10 secs...the dilation decreased, then occurred again. As I've told others, it approximated, I would say, about 2/3 the intensity of an Exit sign in a darkened movie theatre. It was freaky.

That's when we decided we would separate, working on the theory that it, whatever it was, would feel we might be trying to surround it and then, hopefully, it would move off in another direction and then we would, hopefully, get a better view and subsequent video of it. I began moving to the right of Daryl and got about 10-15 away from him when I heard him wheel around and begin shooting. To say the least, he was freaking out. He was pointing and talking about what he was seeing. He described to me later that, peripherally, he saw something big kinda sidestepping out of the general area we were shooting previously that had the eyes. He then locates it in the view finder (it had stopped moving by then) and he taped for about 30 seconds. The camera then went limp in his hand and he began crying. Now, remember, at this point, in this thick of foliage, if you move just a few feet, your perspective completely changes. So while he was taping I couldn't see what he was seeing. But it was clear he was reacting to something. When we got back down the hill and popped the video in the tv that's when I saw what the gif illustrates. It's on camera the whole time. The head tilts out twice within the time period he shot. The following day we went back up the hill and, in my opinion, the area where the eyes were was too small to accommodate the humanoid form Daryl caught on video shortly thereafter.

Now, I'm as susceptible to a well-orchestrated hoax as the next guy, but I saw friggin' glowing red eyes! I'm supposed to believe that that 1) somebody had a fake swaying set of eyes with lights set up? and 2) If somebody in some type of suit was waiting alllll the way up the hill, they were able to stand next to another relatively big animal (the eyes) and not scare it away? Plus, Daryl didn't lead us all the way up the hill, I did a lot of the leading. So, what I believe probably happened was that a smaller squatch, hearing us head up this gnarly hill that probably hadn't been visited by humans in God knows how long, was curious. We happened to see it and Mom, Dad, or Big Bro. was closeby in the super thick stuff (a lot of rhodedendron) doing the ninja thing. But when we made the potentially threatening move of separation, it did what a lot of big mammals do, it got between a young one and a potential threat.

That next day we returned up the hill and roughly 30 feet behind whatever was standing there we found an approximately 25 foot long and 15 foot wide area that had been clearly matted down by some type of animal. It reminded me of a gorilla nest...a nice little fortress near the top of a hill. I've run through every scenario I can think of, and the above makes the most sense to me. And again, I know it's not, and nor do I offer it up as, proof.

Question: Did you even think this animal could exist before your "sighting"?
Scott Herriott: Yes, primarily based on the sheer volume of sightings reported over the years.

Question: Is their anything about your own sighting, that you still think about today?
Scott Herriott: Oh, I definately still think about it. Contemplating whether or not a hoax or a misinterpretation was involved. But I, personally, put the odds of that being the case at incredibly low knowing that I definately saw an animal whose eyes glowed red.>