Short Post on a Tall Tale

Hi folks. Merry three days before Christmas. To celebrate that, this is a Three Toes before Christmas post. Well, OK... just a coincidence.

The reason for my posting this weird thing is that two weeks ago I got an information request here inquiring about something Ivan Sanderson did in 1948:

Did you find any files relating to Sanderson's investigation of the 1948 incident involving mysterious three-toed footprints found on Clearwater beaches in Florida, in which he theorized it might have been from a giant penguin? I think it was his first involvement in a cryptozoological investigation.

I didn't have time nor motivation then to look this up, and let it slide. But I'm trying to be helpful when I can, so yesterday I stumbled out into the SITU archives, not expecting much. This WAS after all a VERY probable hoax, and my own motivation was/is pretty low. But it turns out that Ivan spent a huge amount of time on this thing. {Warning: I'm still not going to go very deeply into this here --- it would be a full-blown research project.}

And, if you are a bit boggled by the "illustration" above: my system is still in malfunction mode as concerns scanning anything --- so, I decided for this to use the "Photo Booth" facility on this iMAC laptop to just take a few pictures for this. {comments on my own "alien bizarreness" as thus pictured should remain unspoken out of kindness.}

What I found in the archives was an entire three-ring notebook file on the claims. WAY too much to write a review on, particularly if the core reality is probably a hoax. But... of some interest to be sure.

There is a ton of original material resident in this file. And it dates right back to the beginnings in 1948-1949. The telegram above is from November 1, 1949, and original typed transcripts of radio program exchanges go back to 1948. Materials trickle forward through the 1950s. What this shows is that Ivan sunk his teeth into this potential anomaly and tenaciously held on for a long time. In other words, he took the thing very seriously.

But did he take it seriously as a possible Giant Penguin??? Well... whether this bothers any Ivan supporters or not ... Yep.

Hmmm... so was Ivan Sanderson a complete lunatic after all? Any skeptical debunker type person would probably jump on this as proof positive that Sanderson was indeed a lunatic. But, my view is much more moderate even given this.

What Ivan was was a romantic. He was hopeful of wonder and mystery. To begin with, this case was not at all obvious to anyone down at that Florida beach area who was investigating and reporting on it [i.e. police and newsmen.] AND, there were claims of many different witnesses, some in multiples. None of them claimed "giant penguins" but they did claim a large animal of some kind.

So what's with the "Penguin" hypothesis?? Ivan was a zoologist and a good one. He investigated the material available and noticed the dominant three-toe theme. This threw out [given the size] any known living beast, and tossed his mind back into palaeontology. Once there he began judging reptilian footprints and rejected that these current prints looked like any such things.

But maybe birds. He then noted similarities with the prints of penguins, and researched extinct possibilities. There he found the "giant" form of penguin --- not, I believe, anywhere as giant as shown in the drawing above, but Ivan-the-Romantic thought that if an outsized penguin existed formerly, maybe a larger variety of it had survived, maybe even as a much more aquatic dwelling form. He corresponded with fossil scientists about this [ummm... studiers of fossils, I mean; I don't think that any of the scientists were actual fossils themselves].

Years later, when the original hoaxer was being celebrated by a smiling press, SITU DID publish the notification of the hoax. Ivan's second wife, Marion Fawcett/ Sabina Sanderson, appended a note to that publication doing the wifely thing: she, who REALLY adored Ivan, wrote that it should be said that Ivan believed that the penguin prints were hoaxes all along, but just pursued the mystery thoroughly. Well, God Bless your loyalty my lady, but it's not true.

What IS true is that Ivan thought quite a lot about the hoax theory [several variants] and in the end rejected them as unlikely. He was intellectually honest to the end about this though, and said that nothing about this mystery had become resolved [anomaly vs hoax] in his mind. He stated his reasoning processes in detail in several chapters of a surprisingly long report.

What does all this say about Ivan? We shouldn't be down on him at all. His work on this was intense and full of adventure. ... and "honest". He tells what he thinks and why. So what if what he thought here was erroneous? It's OUR job to do our own thinking.

What does this say about cryptozoology? Just what we already knew: it's a "dangerous" field to take simply on face value. Separating the hoaxers from the gold is a real trial. Just like any of our interests, it is rife with human meatballism. Maybe worse, given the hunter and fisherman "traditions" of telling whoppers, and screwing around.

My bottom-line on this is: I like Ivan even a bit more. he saw a possible amazing thing, made a BIG commitment to study it, refused to easily throw it away, and told me exactly what he was thinking. I'd invite him over for Christmas dinner and a good bottle of wine if he was still with us.

Bless him in the afterlife; hope it's still a bit of an adventure for him to enjoy. And Holiday Blessings to you.