{"id":176,"date":"2015-11-19T16:31:36","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T21:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acutabove.wpengine.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2015-12-03T15:37:28","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T20:37:28","slug":"social-studies-teacher-showcased-on-animal-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acutabove.mipamsu.org\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"Social studies teacher showcased on Animal Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Daniel Lockhart & Amari Giles<\/strong>
\nScriptor
\nWylie E Groves HS
\n1st Place
\nDivision 3, News Writing
\nPersonality Profile<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Social studies teacher Jim Sherman scoured the woodland terrain of the Lost Nation gaming country on a chilly night in February, following a set of abnormally coordinated footprints. He crept down to the ground and eyed a fresh deer corpse, finding strangely large and humanlike bite wounds on the deer\u2019s decaying neck and stomach. With the steep landscape that led to the fallen deer, and the abnormal footprints making a trail down the hill, Sherman knew no human was behind this.<\/p>\n

As a cryptozoologist, a scientist who studies creatures and organisms that other scientists do not yet recognize, the primary subject of Sherman\u2019s research is the elusive Bigfoot. Sherman\u2019s meticulous research caught the attention of Matt Moneymaker, the star of Animal Planet\u2019s show \u201cFinding Bigfoot\u201d, and Sherman was featured on an episode of the show\u2019s fourth season. The episode, which was filmed near Houghton Lake, utilized Sherman as a medium for verifying the legitimacy of witnesses, as well as a source for pre-expedition research. Sherman also examined the forests to\u00a0make sure it was accessible to the show\u2019s cast and crew, and set up the town hall meeting to collect eyewitness accounts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my second year actually working with Animal Planet; however I\u2019ve been researching with the BFRO, or the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, for over three years,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

As a member of BFRO, Sherman reviews a multitude of Bigfoot accounts, as well as photographs and videos snapped by supposed witnesses of the creature, and investigates ones that he finds especially peculiar.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day we get new reports in through the BFRO\u2019s website. When I heard about the maimed deer, I went out and looked at a possible track near Lost Nations, which is by Hillsdale. It was interesting; it was hard to find a reason for these footprints to have occurred. The footprints looked like a very large person, but the hill was way too steep and marshy,\u201d Sherman said. \u201cI tried to walk down this hill, and I fell, which isn\u2019t abnormal, but it was just tough to do. Then I found a dead deer that was partially consumed. So\u00a0maybe there\u2019s a homeless person who really likes venison, or a rather large, unrecognized primate using this place as a hunting ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sherman shares his audio clips and other findings on the BFRO website, which is a public page where Bigfoot enthusiasts such as Sherman share their research. When Sherman led his first expedition, he met a handful of individuals with connections to producers who observed Sherman\u2019s thorough investigative style and believed he could be a valuable contribution to the show. Sherman was asked to initiate a Bigfoot expedition program in Michigan, as, at the time, there was none.<\/p>\n

Sherman employed the use of auditory means to capture the unusual sounds he heard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of changed the game a little bit, because I brought audio into it. Everyone had always been after pictures and videos, but I had tons of audio recordings, and everyone listened to it and saw that I had some pretty cool stuff,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

After Sherman\u2019s appearance on \u201cFinding Bigfoot\u201d, his investigations caught the attention of Mark Henry, radio show producer of The Edge of the Unknown. In February, Henry asked Sherman to be a key source on his paranormal talk radio station, All 1 Broadcast, or A1B.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud to announce that two of BFRO\u2019s finest, Ron Bolles and Jim Sherman, will be on my radio show February 16. Email or call in if you have any questions about Sasquatch,\u201d Henry said before the show, adding his e-mail and telephone lines so that listeners could ask questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that really got me hooked happened right around the year 1990. I was camping in the Upper Peninsula and had three nights of something messing with my tent and walking around my tent and I could\u2019ve sworn at the time that it was a big guy. I thought it was a person who was messing with me and I was up there with my dad and he snored through the whole thing. But what was weird about it was that it occurred basically every night at the same time right after the fire\u2019s gone down and right when my dad started snoring. Then something walked around the tent culminating in something touching the tent. It was an unpleasant experience for me. It was very frightening and it got to the point where I stopped hunting, I stopped hiking, and I skedaddled out of there as soon as I could,\u201d Sherman told Bolles.<\/p>\n

Sherman\u2019s interest and soon to be journey in his search for Bigfoot started around the year 1976, when \u201cIn Search Of,\u201d which was a TV show hosted by Leonard Nimoy, came out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI watched his program on Bigfoot, and it scared me\u2026 horribly! And it made it very difficult for me to play in the woods as a kid. But that began my interest in things that really can\u2019t possibly exist,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

Sherman was merely a child when he first saw the television series, and the drive to forgo everything else to find the truth didn\u2019t really occur; however, his interest in the possible existence of creatures like Bigfoot did.<\/p>\n

Although Sherman\u2019s interest in helping to find Bigfoot didn\u2019t reemerge for a decades, the show left an indelible mark that lingered into his adult years. Bigfoot soon caught up with him again when he had his own mysterious encounter while camping in the woods.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had forgotten about it and grew up, until about 1990 when I had something very strange happen to me while I was camping, involving something that liked to throw things at me from the woods, mess with my tent and walk around my tent late at night. And it freaked me out enough that I wanted to do more research in the subject because I was honestly scared to go in the woods,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

Sherman knew that he would have to go sprawling through the woods for clues. Sherman\u2019s wife and science teacher Cynthia Sherman attested to her husband having been a woodsman and hunter for many years, which made for his expeditions no surprise to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have any concerns. You know, he\u2019s always been in the woods. That\u2019s who he was before I met him; that\u2019s who he is now. That\u2019s the guy I married. So he\u2019s always been in the woods whether it was hunting or just taking hikes,\u201d Cynthia said.<\/p>\n

With an experience traversing woodland terrains, qualified recording & capture equipment, Sherman peruses any location with Bigfoot sightings. Sherman\u2019s collection of equipment includes a parabolic microphone, shotgun microphones, a fine-tuned audio recorder, and long-duration film recording\u00a0units. Sherman has also manipulated some of his equipment so that he can capture the sounds and sights that suggest a previously unrecognized and large primate.<\/p>\n

However, Sherman knows that what people see in alleged Bigfoot photos are not always genuine and may simply be a hoax.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have a tendency to take random pictures of the forest and then they see things that don\u2019t exist apart from leaves, but then they send them thinking that they have the newest Patterson Gimlin before which was the famous video of Pattie. But usually almost 100 percent of the time it\u2019s just a leaf, bark, or stump,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

The pictures and sound recordings don\u2019t always disappoint as Sherman\u2019s own image capturing equipment have caught peeks of something bizarre, along with its vocals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen BFRO founder Matt Moneymaker heard the howl right after he got into his ghillie suit, I knew that this something genuine. He called me right afterwards and described it, and it was consistent with what he has recorded of possible Bigfoot vocalizations. So we talked about it, and I told him that the Upper Peninsula was the area to be and that was a good spot to hear things because I\u2019ve been there before and heard some strange things,\u201d Sherman said.<\/p>\n

Cynthia Sherman said that he does an amazing job of balancing his teaching, research and family. She finds her husband\u2019s field of research interesting and wasn\u2019t surprised when he began his Bigfoot investigations.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a big interest in science. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve had him as a teacher, but you know, he talks about animals and their behavior. He knows a lot about what\u2019s going on, and he\u2019s studied animal behavior when he\u2019s deer hunting. I think it\u2019s only human to start to hear sounds or images that are on photography and to start to wonder, \u2018What is this?\u2019 and to do more research on it. And there\u2019s always this mysterious, \u2018Oh well it could be this.\u2019 Funny ha-ha, but then as you start learning more about it and other people have had those sightings it does kind of make you want to investigate and check things out. Was I startled? No. I think it is human nature and I find it not fascinating but interesting that there could be something out there,\u201d Cynthia said.<\/p>\n

As a scientist, Cynthia keeps an open mind about her husband\u2019s research, despite her desire for more empirical data.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo I think there\u2019s something out there? Not until I actually have more evidence. Any scientist is open-minded until there\u2019s enough evidence one way or another. So, am I skeptical? Yeah. Am I going to tell him he\u2019s wasting his time? No. I think it\u2019s cool. That\u2019s what research is all about. You can tell a scientist in the lab, \u2018You\u2019re wasting your time\u2019, and boom, he found something called DNA. So, it doesn\u2019t faze me,\u201d Cynthia said.<\/p>\n

Sherman didn\u2019t just bring his Bigfoot research home but to his teaching too. He tells his students brief tales of his research and shows videos, articles, and even reveals critical information that legitimized his research.<\/p>\n

Senior Jordan Yunker will never forget what she learned about keeping an open mind when she took Sherman\u2019s US history class.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe would always make one or two mentions about Bigfoot in U.S. History class while he was talking but he was just starting off with his Bigfoot research back then. He didn\u2019t just specifically set aside class time or anything to give us a lecture on Bigfoot. But when there was free time available during class, usually at the beginning or end of class, he would tell stories about his research, his daughter, or anything else that came to mind. He\u2019d tell us about times when he took summer trips into the woods with other researchers to record various sounds, run tests on the sounds, and then check their findings against known animal sounds,\u201d Yunker said.<\/p>\n

Yunker enjoyed how Sherman not only told stories of his research, but also showed visuals and vocalizations of what could be Bigfoot.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe showed us the website where they kept stored their audio files and said how they didn\u2019t match with known animals which was pretty cool and a little spooky,\u201d Yunker said. \u201cI also remember Mr. Sherman talking about how he worked behind the scenes for the TV show \u201cFinding Bigfoot\u201d, and I love that he\u2019s now gotten some face time on the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The results of Sherman\u2019s work will continue to be featured on the BFRO official website, BFRO.net. Sherman\u2019s compilation of recordings and research can also be found on his Soundcloud page under the name Jim Sherman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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