Bruno, Bigfoot and Yowee

A large room off the bar of Malibu’s Trancas Restaurant is turned over most evenings to hairy creatures who stomp to rhythmic beats in a ritual faintly resembling those of anthropoids before a hunt. They are called dancers.

They boogie to . . . well . . . music performed by groups like Jack Mack and the Heartattacks and drink an intoxicant identified as Corona beer. Sometimes late at night, stimulated by beer and the throbbing beat, they get together in sexually mixed pairs and perform a ceremony known as “scoring.”

Like gorillas in the Kivu Highlands, their habits and forms of communication have been studied by scientists for years and never cease to fascinate those who observe them.

I watched them myself recently, not to chronicle the simple, primitive pleasures of young primates after dark, but to draw some contrast between them and what that very same room becomes when the sun rises over Zuma Beach. There isn’t much difference. It’s a Bigfoot Museum.

I learned of its existence through a friend who said the museum’s curator, an unfrocked city planner and part-time cinematographer named Erik Beckjord, was about to search for Bigfoot in the wild terrain near Bishop.

Bishop?

Well, the friend said, Beckjord believes Bigfoot is everywhere. “In fact,” he added, leaning closer, “he’s spoken to one . . . mentally.”

Of course.

I am endlessly intrigued by oracles, trance-channelers, astral projectionists, hypno-visionists and those who, like Shirley MacLaine, enjoy communicating with space fairies.

It was therefore natural that I would track down anyone who has been in psychic contact with a creature variously known as Bigfoot, Yeti, Yowee, Sasquatch, Ogopogo and Little Bruno.

Beckjord, 39, is a pleasant and accommodating man who heads the National Cryptozoologocial Society, an organization interested in mysterious creatures.

His museum consists of a modest display of sketches, photographs, plaster casts of footprints and other bits of monster memorabilia.

A native Minnesotan, Beckjord received an MBA from UC Berkeley but gave up city planning when, as he explained, idealistic projects were shot down by unimaginative administrators.

That was 14 years ago. Since then, curiosity piqued by Bigfoot sightings in the Northwest, he has searched for, and claims to have found, the beast that lurks beyond reach, code named Little Bruno.

Beckjord saw his first Bigfoot in Washington state. It was six feet tall, hairy, skinny and did a “hoochie-koochie” in loose and spidery movements, not unlike the night-dancing primates of Malibu.

He has seen others since then and has gathered information relative to sightings in every state but Hawaii, including testimony to the effect that the creatures are able to float off in balls of light when startled.

“People I consider reliable have told me this,” Beckjord confided, detecting a flash of skepticism in my expression.

“Ah-ha,” I said.

His conversation with Bigfoot occurred at an altitude of 8,000 feet in the mountains south of Lake Tahoe.

“This is going to sound weird,” he said, studying me carefully.

He’s a bulky man of 6-1 and 230 pounds and might himself give you a start if you came upon him crashing through the forest.

“Try me,” I said, making every effort to look and sound like the kind of guy who believes Pete Rose didn’t bet on baseball.

“I was in an area taking pictures where Bigfoot has never actually appeared in person,” Beckjord said, “but where his image has shown up in photographic prints. You don’t see him, but there he is in the picture.”

“He’s invisible?”

“You’ve got it. There was no one there. But I received a mental message that said, ‘We’re here but we’re not here.’ ”

“That’s it? We’re here but we’re not here?”

He nodded. “I said, ‘What the hell are you?’ The voice replied, ‘We’re not real.’ ”

The contact was disappointing, but at least it has helped Beckjord formulate theories as to what Bigfoot is beyond a drooling fantasy in blurred photos.

He could either be an evolutionary throwback, a space alien, a time traveler or a creature who exists in a different dimension but is able to pop around like an agent at a cocktail party.

I came away believing that Bigfoot is real, that Pete Rose didn’t bet on baseball and that a man’s got to believe the voices in his head.

Mine is saying, Why not have yourself a little martini?

I believe I will.