(Original headline: Unusual encounters )
Horse hair is seen intricately braided on Lisa Shiel's' horse, an incident which occurs frequently in the midnight hours and could possibly be linked to Bigfoot itself. Michigan Bigfoot Expert Lisa Shiel has been researching the phenomenon in connection with UFOs, having revealed her findings in her latest novel "Backyard Bigfoot: The True Story of Stick Signs, UFOs, and the Sasquatch."
JACOBSVILLE — Just before Lisa Shiel left her Jacobsville home for a morning walk last Friday, she gathered a small, handful of twigs and placed them in a pile beside her driveway gate. When she returned 15 minutes later, they had been moved. For Lisa, it was no surprise.
“They were in a ‘T’ formation,” she explained, citing this has happened on more than one occasion, most commonly at night. “First I thought they were marking trails, but now I think it’s part of some kind of communication.”
For the past five years, Shiel has been intensively studying two profound phenomena, Bigfoot and UFOs. Scouring libraries, sifting through old publications and prodding researchers, Shiel obtained as much knowledge as she could. Based on her research, evidence and several personal encounters, Shiel wrote two non-fiction novels, and her latest, “Backyard Bigfoot: The True Story of Stick Signs, UFOs, and the Sasquatch,” published by Slipdown Mountain Publications LLC, reveals her findings.
“I just outline all of the evidence that I have discovered and share my personal experiences with my own UFO sightings and strange calls that I’ve heard in the night and all the photos I have of bizarre things,” she said. “So the main part of it is my own personal experiences that I’m sharing and offering up the evidence for people to make up their own minds.”
Although Shiel hasn’t encountered Bigfoot herself, she has had several personal encounters near her home.
“I usually hear sounds when I’m laying in bed at night,” she said, recalling an incident one miserably hot evening. “I heard a very low yoop sound echoing off the trees. It was very bizarre and very deep. Something only someone with a very large chest could make.”
Discussing several findings in her novel, Shiel said one of the main bits of advice she highlights is to pay close attention to the environment.
“I think a lot of people don’t look around at the ground when they’re walking around,” she explained, “and you have to walk the same area every day to know what belongs there and what doesn’t. That’s the only way you’ll know when something’s different.”
Known as Michigan’s Bigfoot expert and certified Mutual UFO Network field investigator, Shiel said she’s currently focusing her research on further evidence possibly linked to Bigfoot.
“When I was living in Texas, I noticed one morning that my horses had braids in their hair,” she explained. “But they weren’t traditional braids. They were very intricate, very complex, almost impossible for a human to do.”
Initially, Shiel brushed off the unusual mane braiding, which mysteriously occurred overnight. But when the incidents continued on occasion, Shiel thought it could have possibly been traced to Bigfoot.
And in the past year, she said, it’s happened more than 30 times.
“It didn’t happen right away when I moved up here a year and a half ago,” she said of the mane braiding incidents. “It took a little while.”
“People tell me all the time that they followed me here,” she added. “But it could be that I’m just paying attention, just because I saw this in Texas. I’m kind of in tune with it. I’m looking for it. Who knows, sometimes it seems like certain things in your life happen because they’re supposed to.”
Shiel said people ask her all the time, “Do you think that you were directed to move here?”
“I did see five rainbows when I was driving up here to look at the house that I now live in,” she said of a drive from her aunt’s house in Boyne City, Mich. “So things like that, you can’t help but think, ‘Is this some sort of sign?’ So who knows. There are a lot of things in the universe that are very strange and unexplainable.”
Shiel has recently founded the Michigan Upper Peninsula Bigfoot Organization, MUPBO, to probe sightings in the region and provide U.P residents with a source for information.
For more information visit www.upbigfoot.com. Books may be purchased at www.slipdownmountain.com or by calling 523-6105.
