What Atlas is—and is not
Atlas is an evolving research system for organizing published accounts, submitted sightings, locations, environmental context, and calculated patterns. A plotted report means that a database record is associated with that location. It does not independently prove the event occurred or that every coordinate is exact.
Atlas does not claim to contain every Bigfoot report. Coverage and totals change as sources are added, duplicates are removed, evidence is reconstructed, coordinates are corrected, and human review is completed.
Human publication authority
No AI-reviewed record is automatically verified, published, or exposed. Automated review can flag issues and organize evidence, but it always ends at human review required. Publication remains a human-authorized decision.
Geographic authority
AI may suggest a possible encounter location, but it cannot overwrite authoritative geographic status. State, county, coordinates, water, shoreline, and polygon checks remain controlled by deterministic database and geographic validation.
Evidence and exclusion rules
Missing or incomplete evidence cannot, by itself, justify rejection. Bibliographic, catalog-only, blank, truncated, or illegible material remains questionable pending reconstruction when there is no affirmative basis for exclusion.
| Situation | Atlas treatment |
|---|---|
| Confirmed fiction, advertising, sports usage, nickname, or vehicle | Excluded from creature-report analysis as not applicable, with the positive basis preserved. |
| Claimed spirit, ghost, alien, interdimensional entity, apparition, portal, mindspeak-only entity, or materialization | Classified as nonphysical and kept outside the flesh-and-blood report set. |
| Strange, old, weakly documented, or questionable physical account | Preserved for human judgment unless affirmative exclusion evidence exists. |
| Near-water or apparently offshore coordinate | Reviewed for precision; proximity to water is not a rejection basis. |
Why can a marker appear near—or sometimes in—water?
The source may name only a county, town, lake, shoreline, or landmark. An initial converted or approximate point can fall on the water side of a shoreline.
Atlas treats that as a location-precision issue: when the source does not establish a reliable water coordinate, an appropriate nearby land or public-access reference point should be used when the evidence permits, while the original location description and approximate status are preserved.
The popup and location-precision information—not the dot alone—provide the proper context.
What do heat, clusters, and corridors prove?
Nothing by themselves. They are analytical aids derived from available data. They can reflect reporting density, access, population, source coverage, duplicates, or environmental factors as well as a potentially meaningful pattern.
Why can totals change?
Atlas totals change as records are sourced, reconstructed, reviewed, deduplicated, corrected, accepted, or excluded. Public totals should describe the currently publishable dataset—not every record waiting safely in a research queue.
What do marker colors mean?
Colors identify layers such as historical reports, public user sightings, local records, and analysis. A color is not an evidence score. Always read the popup and source-quality information.
Managing or Canceling Your Atlas Membership
Atlas subscriptions renew automatically each month unless canceled.
To manage your membership, open your Atlas Account page and select Manage Subscription. You will be taken to the secure Stripe billing portal, where you can review your subscription, update your payment method, view billing information, and cancel your subscription.
If you cancel, your Atlas access remains active through the end of your current paid billing period. You will not be charged for another billing period after the cancellation takes effect.
Historical report publication status
Cataloged means Atlas has retained a historical account as part of the research collection and it has not been explicitly rejected or excluded. Cataloged reports may appear publicly without individual human review. Their appearance verifies the existence of the catalog record, not that the reported encounter occurred as described.
Automated screening and CRIS/Gatekeeper recommendations are advisory and may help identify duplicates, exclusion-rule conflicts, source problems, and questionable locations. Records requiring judgment can be escalated for human review. Human-reviewed status is shown separately when applicable.
Requesting a correction
If you have first-hand knowledge or a traceable paper trail showing that a report, location, date, source, or classification may be wrong, document the issue for Atlas review. A useful request includes:
- The record identifier or enough popup details to identify the report.
- The field believed to be incorrect and the proposed correction.
- A link, scan, citation, public record, publication page, map, or other supporting evidence.
- Your contact information if follow-up is permitted.
A correction request does not directly alter the public record. It creates a review trail. Atlas staff evaluate the evidence, preserve the decision history, and authorize any resulting change.
Responsible field use
- Do not trespass or enter unsafe terrain to reach a plotted location.
- Protect witness privacy and sensitive habitat or property locations.
- Separate witness statements, source material, and Atlas-generated analysis.
- Prefer original, page-specific, traceable sources whenever available.