- Hi, Jeff:
-
- Re: "Rebuttal To Patterson Bigfoot Hoax Claim Due
On Monday" http://www.rense.com/general50/rebut.htm
-
- Of course, it is POSSIBLE that that footage is a hoax,
but HIGHLY IMPROBABLE.
-
- Please review my thoughts on the matter below.
-
- Best,
-
- -Richard
-
-
- The Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot Film '...the most important
piece of wildlife film, ever!'
-
- By RBB December 23, 2001 ©2001
-
- One, two, or even ten accounts of a hard-to-believe event
may warrant dismissing the thing, but dozens or more of such testimonials
make doubters appear as ignorant fools.
-
- There exist thousands of accounts of Sasquatch, or bigfoot--the
legendary ape-man of North America.
-
- The extant records of testimonials about bigfoot sightings
over the last 100 years, here and in Canada ((the records go back much
farther)), are so extensive, that it is the doubter who appears to be the
ignorant fool; and so-called scientists being the most ignorant of fools.
-
- - - -
-
- This is an analysis of Discovery Channel's "The
X- Creature" program called "Bigfoot and Yeti" (2001): -
narrated by Mike Pengra; - written by Chris Packham; - edited by Mark Fox;
- produced by Jenny Ash; a BBC/Discovery Communications Inc. co-production.
-
- - - -
-
- I HAVE IN MY POSSESSION, in my humble opinion, "the
most important piece of wildlife footage, ever!" [those are the words
of the narrator of The X- Creature program, but in the context of dismissing
the likelihood of such evidence ever being authentic].
-
- I came into possession of the footage a couple of months
ago, after my son handed a video tape to me containing, this scribbler
believes, near-irrefutable evidence of the existence of the famed/legendary
bigfoot creature.
-
- It was a copy of that Discovery Channel presentation.
-
- I'm 53, and over the past several decades I've seen still
shots from frames of that footage in magazines and books, but not any copy
of the running film itself.
-
- My first reaction?: "That's an animal!" but,
then, the narrator of the program had already been dropping negatively
biased points of view, which had raised no doubts in me about authenticity,
but had raised concerns about the inductive/deductive reasoning skills
of narrator, writer and producer of that show.
-
- Now why would the creators of that "documentary"
plant doubts in the mind of viewers from the get- go?
-
- The reason is given near the end of the segment:
-
- Narrator:
-
- "The bigfoot of legend runs contrary to primate
philosophy and the fossil record."
-
- Well, we can't have anything upset the apple cart of
contemporary primate philosophy and the fossil record, can we?
-
- Too many professional careers and opinions would need
adjusting. And think of all the textbooks in need of revising or discarding.
-
- - - -
-
- My transcription of the Patterson/Gimlin bigfoot segment
follows, with my analyses behind double brackets, and with any necessary
clarifications about the presentation's contents put between single brackets:
-
- Narrator:
-
- It's a far-fetched story, men attacked and even injured
by irate giant apes in the U.S.A. Yet, it was taken seriously, reported
on the front page of the state newspaper along side the world news.
-
- [[ That loaded comment follows reenactment of the Estacada,
Oregon, miners' story, about being attacked by one or more of the critters,
after one of the miners had shot one with his rifle.
-
- [[ The narrator's intonation leaves no doubt about his
intention to cast the story in a negative light.
-
- [[ Read bigfoot researcher John Green's account in his
book, "Bigfoot" ((1973)).
-
- Narrator:
-
- Could there really be a giant ape living in modern North
America?
-
- The pacific northwest is bigfoot country. These forests
cover 21,000 square miles, from Alaska in the north all the way to California
in the south . . .
-
- [[ So begins the biased segment of the program dealing
with bigfoot in North America, and which negative bias is made perfectly
clear with these words:
-
- "Yet, it [the story of miners being attacked by
giant ape-men] was taken seriously."
-
- Narrator:
-
- How often do people come across bigfoot?
-
- In British Columbia, John Green has logged many of the
modern encounters, 3000 in the last 30 years. But he thinks these are only
a fraction of the sightings that actually occur.
-
- One of them has a piece of film attached, shot in California
by the late Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin in October 1967.
-
- John Green:
-
- [running Patterson film on his projector] This is the
start of the role that they eventually got the picture of the creature
on . . . riding their horses up the bed [see one horse rider leading another
horse carrying supplies in a heavily wooded area] of Bluff Creek . . .
There's Bob now, with the pack horse . . .
-
- Narrator:
-
- It all looks a bit like a home movie. And with just a
minute left on the film, it changes dramatically [bigfoot is seen near
the edge of the forest, walking from left to right while the camera shakes
badly].
-
- [[ Well, it is a "home movie"! But the comment
was made for purposes of planting a doubt in the viewer's mind about any
authenticity of the critter captured on that film.
-
- Narrator:
-
- Whatever your first impression of this footage, there
is no in-camera trickery.
-
- [[ This is a nice touch, to present an air of objectivity,
after planting a strong doubt.
-
- Narrator:
-
- Examining the film shows that something really walked
in front of Patterson's camera. And let's be clear on one thing, either
this footage has to be a hoax, or it's THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF WILDLIFE
FILM, EVER [my emphasis]!
-
- That's the footage. Here's the story that goes with it.
-
- It was around 1 p.m. on October 20th, 1967. Patterson
and Gimlin were riding north, up the Bluff Creek in California.
-
- They rounded the bend and saw the creature. Patterson
pulled out the camera from saddle bag and began filming.
-
- After about 11 seconds, he began to run closer. And as
he did, Bob rode closer still, within 60 feet of the creature, covering
Roger with his rifle, until the creature walked away.
-
- Using a computer, we've stabilized the footage. It looks
like a man in a suit, but so would the bigfoot of legend.
-
- The question is, which is it?
-
- [[ Does a gorilla look like a man in a suit? Gimlin reported
that his first reaction to it was, 'that is an animal.' So bigfoot researchers/believers
take two hits here: 1) "It looks like a man in a suit," 2) "[B]ut
so would the bigfoot of legend."
-
- [[ In other words, because all sightings appear to be
men in suits, they are ALL MEN IN SUITS.
-
- Narrator:
-
- From what we can see, the fur is pretty convincing. It
flows correctly down the back.
-
- [[ Yes, and if one looks closely at the enhanced footage,
one sees - to put it coarsely - the creatures butt crack defined by its
hair pattern, as well as the spinal column and more.
-
- [[ But something not mentioned is how oily the "suit"
appears to be.
-
- [[ That's one glossy critter, as sunlight reveals a highly
glossy sheen reflecting off the critter's hair, which is strong evidence
of sebaceous glands at work--evidence of skin glands secreting sebum to
coat the hair.
-
- [[ No suit would appear so animal-like--such as how,
say, the black hair of a teen-age boy would appear if he hadn't washed
it for a couple of days.
-
- Narrator:
-
- And in some places you can apparently see muscles moving
under the skin.
-
- [[ The narrator fails to inform the viewer here, or anywhere
else in the segment, that moving/pendulous breasts are clearly visible
when the creature turns its upper torso to glance at Patterson and Gimlin
((in the enhanced - or magnified - version of the film clip)).
-
- [[ This oversight, purposeful or not, is a major one!
-
- [[ Why would that not be mentioned? Well, what hoaxer
would go to the trouble of fitting an ape-man suit with pendulous breasts
while a successful hoaxing would depend so much on NOT providing a too-close
and too-detailed filming of a suited man? Such an effort would be a waste
of time and money if not clearly seen on film, keeping in mind that the
narrator makes a point ((later on)) that shaky camera work and distance
were used to fool the viewer.
-
- Narrator:
-
- Reacting to men on horse-back by just strolling off is
very strange behavior for a shy, wild animal.
-
- [[ Actually, the creature is not strolling but moving
at a near-clipped pace, as if in a purposeful hurry. So the narrator continues
to distort and/or omit facts.
-
- [[ To say that that is "very strange behavior"
is a very strange exaggeration, as animals often just turn and go off in
another direction when seeing a human in their habitat.
-
- Narrator:
-
- Film is one thing, but animals leave traces. And there
were footprints in the creek sand.
-
- They were deeper than the ones left by Bob's horse when
he rode along side the trail.
-
- [[ Those tracks, and their apparent depth, are an important
clue to the authenticity of the sighting.
-
- Narrator:
-
- Their combined weight was almost 1500 lbs. The depth
of the prints suggest the creature was even heavier. Yet the average weight
for a male gorilla is 400 lbs.
-
- [[ How many gorillas have a standing height of over 6'5"?
The critter on the film appears to be massive--a gigantic ape-man.
-
- [[ So, allowing for a margin of error here, resulting
from misjudgment and mismeasurements, it's not unreasonable to put the
creature's weight at 800 pounds or more.
-
- [[ In his book, John Green gives these dimensions:
-
- "No precise measurements are possible, but taking
as a standard the length of the foot, which is known from the track to
be about 14 1/2 inches, the creature measures about seven feet in height
and not much less than three feet in width across the shoulders. This is
half again as wide as a heavy-built man, and other dimensions are proportionately
heavy. Her thigh is as big as a normal man's chest, her ankle as big as
his thigh. Her arms are long enough to span close to nine feet; two feet
more than her height, but her body is also very long, so that her arms
do not appear to hang very low. Her legs are shorter than those of a normal
man. These dimen- sions . . . add to the problems for those who would like
to dismiss the film as a hoax."
-
- Narrator:
-
- Roger reloaded his Kodak and filmed them [footprints].
Then they took plaster casts. Some measured 15 inches.
-
- John Green:
-
- [he's shown displaying one of the Bluff Creek footprint
casts] This is perhaps the best of those casts.
-
- You have to remember the track is not the shape that
the foot makes, necessarily. It's the shape that the foot made in the ground.
-
- This one, for instance [he points to one in a display
case], it looks as if it had stepped on something. But, in fact, that's
the way it drove the heel in and shifted the weight to the front of the
foot.
-
- Narrator:
-
- The tracks are varied but very natural, and with the
dynamics of a flexible walking foot.
-
- But the depth suggests that the weight of the creature
was over three times the weight of a gorilla the same size. And Patterson's
film of them has vanished.
-
- [[ So the creature must be a man in a suit because there
are no gorillas the same size?
-
- [[ No doubt, that film had been stolen by someone wishing
to possess an important piece of evidence pointing to the existence of
bigfoot.
-
- Narrator:
-
- So, is there more biological evidence about these creatures?
-
- These forests stretch south from British Columbia, through
Washington State and Oregon, to California. And John Green has investigated
many stories from the Sixties and Seventies.
-
- Seventy years of stories about bigfoot have failed to
produce a single, credible photograph, let alone a body. So we're back
to footprints.
-
- [[ How many still photos are there in that film footage?
Maybe "seventy years" of stories about bigfoot have produced
300-plus photo frames con- nected in a movie strip, presenting us with
THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF WILDLIFE FILM, EVER!
-
- [[ We're to ignore the movie strip of bigfoot, to dismiss
it because there has been no "single" photograph of the critter
in the past?
-
- Narrator:
-
- In 1969, near Bossburg, Washington, there were a staggering
1,009 of them [foot- prints] left in the mud and snow--the tracks of a
very long-legged creature. But, curiously, also a crippled one.
-
- It's right foot had twisted toes and mis- placed bones,
something that would be unusual but very natural.
-
- [[ The "very natural" remark is strategically
placed at the end of the description, to have the viewer dismiss the inhuman-like
long stride between foot- prints. Those long-legged footprints - barefoot
in mud and snow, and with one crippled foot - point away from human categorization
and toward the legendary bigfoot, as the extant record of such bigfoot
prints is extremely large and compelling.
-
- Narrator:
-
- At Washington State University, the prints have been
studied by primate anatomist and bigfoot author Grover Krantz.
-
- Footprints are just dents in the ground, but they can
tell an expert about the foot that made them.
-
- Grover Krantz:
-
- From the position of these bulges [he displays plaster
cast of a Bossburg print, with line drawings outlining the relative position
of bones producing the bulges] I was able to deduce some of the key bones
in the center of the foot and reconstruct all the bones of the foot-- and
found, most interestingly, that the center of weight of the angle was substan-
tially forward of where it is for a human.
-
- If we had an erect biped 8-feet tall, and it was going
to walk in a human manner, how much farther forward would the ankle have
to be placed?
-
- I did some simple arithmetic calculations on that - got
an exact answer - and, then, went back and measured my reconstruction.
It was exactly correct.
-
- That was enough for me to be absolutely sure that those
feet [prints] were made by a living creature.
-
- [[ Krantz ought to have been bold here and used "bigfoot
creature" not "living creature" since a man on stilts fitted
with the chopped-off feet of a giant/crippled human cadaver could also
have made those prints. No?
-
- Narrator:
-
- Is there no way that these could be hoaxed?
-
- Grover Krantz:
-
- If the Bossburg tracks of a crippled individual were
made by a hoaxer, there are several considerations.
-
- One is that he had to know human anatomy with great detail;
he had to be able to devise distortions of the anatomy; and he had to calculate
exactly how an enlarged individual would have to be constructed in order
to walk properly.
-
- That requires an elaboration of thought and knowledge
that I don't think anybody in the world has.
-
- Narrator:
-
- John Green was the first to investigate the [Bluff Creek]
bigfoot film.
-
- He reconstructed the event just 9 months later.
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