Tin-foil hat wearers and skeptics share beers, sasquatch sightings at cheeky Calgary society

You could say ClaudiaBustos has a thing for outlandish birthday parties. In fact, it's something she'll happily tell you herself.

To mark her 30th, the Calgarianhosted a swanky taxidermy party andinvitedher guests to dress to the nines and join her in stuffing small mice.

Faced with themoral imperative to top that the next year, she enlisted the help of the sasquatch and Ogopogo. Sort of.

She and her friends hosted a public forum exploring cryptozoology, thepseudo-science and subculture of those and other mysterious creatures that may or may not actually exist.

"Before we knew it,we had 140 people sell out the Legion downtown, where we had a group of both skeptics and the curious learning about everything from Bigfoot to unicorns over pilsners and ale," Bustos told the Calgary Eyeopener on Monday.

And with that,Calgary's Faculty of Lesser-Known Arts and Sciences was born.

'Cheeky approach to fringe topics'

"We describe ourselves as acrawlspace of a university," she said, noting the organization has no affiliation to any particular post-secondary institution.

"We're mostly comprised of people who can be loosely classified as scientists or topic experts using conventional research toolslike the internet," said Bustos, who, in her day job, works at the University of Calgary.

Bustos, who has a background in behaviour cognition and neuroscience, serves as the admissions chair and organization co-founder. Like her, most of the faculty's other members are "science communicators" who enjoy taking a "cheeky approach to fringe topics," she explained.

"We're kind of winking at our audience as we're talking about these in a playful manner."

Since their inaugural event a few years back, they've continued to host public gatherings.

Topicsrangefrom Canadian witches and their hexes to a series of lectures on time travel (for which there's no traveller's insurance, despite the elevated risk of personal injury anddisappearance that one could safely and quite rightly assume, cautioned a concerned Bustos).

As for the audience, Bustos said 90 per cent of the colloquium's attendees are typically in on the joke, while the remaining 10 per cent are "verified tin-hat wearers" not that that generates any friction in the audience.

"They're just really, really grateful that we're talking about unicorns at a public forum," she said.

While some might dismiss the "Lesser-Known Arts and Sciences" as pointless psuedo-science, Bustos maintains there's value in probing and contemplating mystery, especially when done with a dash of playful irreverence.

"I think that in life what we don't know is more interesting than what we do," she said.

"Alot of science can sometimes focus on known variables, but this allows you to explore the hypothetical. And I think that's wherecuriosity and wonder happens."

With files from the Calgary Eyeopener.