December 3, 2012

Skunk Ape FLIR Footage?

Cliff Barackman’s analysis of purported Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Skunk Ape video.

The Brown Footage

This interesting clip of video was obtained by a father and son team from Florida on May 8, 2012, sometime between midnight and 1 am. Stacy Brown Sr. and Jr. are the minds behind the website, The Sasquatch Hunters. The two men were bigfooting somewhere on the panhandle of Florida around the town of Quincy on the night they got their footage. The exact location is between the property where the Bridges have their ongoing encounters, and where I recorded a “whoop” vocalization last year.

The night the two men were camping, they tried a passive approach by simply having a campfire and playing loud music on a stereo. Every once in a while the duo would go for walks without using any lights. No other campers or people of any sort were ever observed on that night, and both witnesses are sure they were the only people present.

Stacy Brown Sr. was armed with a FLIR Scout thermal imager with which he was continually scanning the nearby woods. He had the polarity switched on the FLIR, so that the warm things in the viewfinder appeared black as opposed to the more commonly used white.

At some point in the evening, they heard some knocks, so they walked in that direction. Every time they heard noises, it seemed like it was just a little bit ahead of them, no matter how far they went. Stacy Sr. then saw a heat signature from behind some trees a little ways off into the palmettos. Whatever it was stepped briefly out into the open. What Stacy Sr. saw was a large, man-shaped figure take one long step and disappear into the brush. He turned to his son who had not seen the figure at all and said, “We gotta go.”


Stacy Brown Sr. obtained this footage in northern Florida on May 8, 2012 between midnight and 1 am.

My interpretation of what is seen

For much of the footage, the figure is hiding behind a tree. It seems to be peering out from behind this tree, probably watching the two men as they stood on the nearby trail just over 120 feet away. It shifts its weight to the left foot, which is slightly away from the trunk of the tree, and steps out with its right foot while still touching the tree with its right hand. One very long step puts the creature nearby a stand of trees and bushes, behind which it disappears never to be seen again. This fleeting glimpse of the creature is brief, but more than enough to distinguish its shape from any other known animal in the woods. It can only be a human or a sasquatch.

If the figure is human, it is a strangely proportioned one. It’s head seems to sit very low on the shoulders, and it sticks outward from them as if it could be looking downwards as it walks. The creature that is shown in Paul Freeman’s 1994 footage looks downward as it takes steps. This has also been observed by eyewitnesses of bigfoots, sometimes noting that the creature almost seemed to be looking for something on the ground as it walked.


The figure’s head seems to be protruding outwards from the shoulders, possibly looking downwards as it walks.

By wearing pads like the kind football players use, it is possible to recreate this low head/high shoulder look if one was wearing a suit. However, the figure’s right arm extends directly out from its very high shoulder, strongly reducing the possibility that the shoulders are the result of any football-style padding.

The left arm extends down to at least the knee level even though the arm is not directly vertical, but rather angled forward. It is quite possible that the hands might extend slightly below the knee if the figure was standing upright with its arms hanging down at its side. The long arms are another congruence with what is commonly noted by people who observe sasquatches.

While we only get to see one of the subject’s steps, there are some interesting similarities to the gait used by the Patterson/Gimlin Film subject. This figure’s trailing leg in the initial swing stage of its gait reaches an angle of 89 degrees, far beyond that of a normal human gait, but very closely matching that of the Patterson/Gimlin Film subject. The leading leg is sufficiently obscured so that it is unknown whether or not the knees ever totally straighten out, or lock, as is typical of a human gait, or remain slightly bent, as would be typical of a sasquatch’s compliant gait.

~ Cliff Barackman

For the remainder of Cliff’s breakdown of this video, go to: The Brown Footage

Below is Facebook Find Bigfoot’s breakdown of the video:

About Craig Woolheater
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.

Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoology, Evidence, Finding Bigfoot, Photos, Sasquatch, Skunk Apes, Swamp Monsters, Videos