Gorilla Sightings and Gorilla Suits
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 10th, 2008
Are we entering an era when gorilla-suit-wearing workshop may become the next big rage (see the story at Boing Boing) and help people out in their cryptid hoaxes? Actually, using what Charles Fort called the “Wipe,” here’s the latest example of a quick explanation for something anomalistic, this time using the old chestnut, a gorilla suit, out of Tupelo, Mississippi.
With four gorilla sightings on Thomas Street on Wednesday [April 9, 2008], it seemed the infamous Oliver inspired a copycat or copy primate.
According to police, two postal workers and two parents picking their children up from school claimed to have seen a huge primate run into the woods behind the post office shortly after 2 p.m.
Because all the accounts were separate instances, School Resource Officer Lt. Terry Sanford said he doesn’t doubt that people saw something, but he’s almost sure it wasn’t a gorilla.
“We got a few calls about the gorilla, but we didn’t see anything,” said Sanford. “People said they saw the animal run into the woods. I think what they saw was a person dressed in a suit trying to get a reaction out of people.”
A local costume dealer said a man and a woman bought a gorilla head and hands Tuesday, stating that they already had a suit.~ “Gorilla spotting said to be hoax,” by Danza Johnson, Daily Journal, 9 April 2008 6:44:42 PM.
At least, the infamous Morris Costume Company isn’t involved in this debunking!
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Wouldn’t surprise me if more alleged sasquatch sightings than we think are the result of people dressed up in gorilla suits. At least those in or near more urban settings. Can’t imagine too many people dressing up in ape suits in the middle of British Columbia etc.
Isn’t it rather dangerous for hoaxers/pranksters to dress up in gorilla suits?
People are ingenious and its a matter of time until the fakes become high quality and very difficult to dismiss.
Hmmm….Maybe they will become good enough to convince the skeptics 🙂
Tupelo is only about 125 miles from me, and there has been Sasquatch activity near there, including the lost “Mississippi Film.” But this seemed to take place within the city limits, which would preclude it being a genuine Sasquatch or gorilla sighting. It seems like a belated April Fool’s prank to me. Interesting story though.
I can’t decide if I want the boot cut ape suit or the bell bottom ones. . .
The common practice of dismissing sasquatch sightings with the words “ape suit” does not rule out the possibility that there is, indeed, some fool running around in an ape suit. That’s especially true when, as in this case, there is a witness who says someone just bought an ape suit, or parts thereof. While most people these days wouldn’t be fooled by a gorilla suit at close range, it could certainly be effective at a distance, especially when the perpetrator runs into the woods to prevent being seen for too long. (It could also, of course, get the perpetrator shot, and it’s surprising that’s never happened.)
There will come a day when some NUT will think it is a great idea to dress up in an ape suit and another NUT will shoot him . Then what ? Will the nuts stop……………I don’t think so and I must agree no one doest this dumb stunt in the middle of the Canadian woods or in the middle of the North West wilderness……… People who think this is fun will get hurt and also slow the real research when it comes to investigations.
There was a homeless guy out by my parent’s ranch that killed a bear and wore its coat in the winter time. The sheriff and forestry officials told him not to wear it for fear someone would mistake him for big foot and shoot. Not sure if anyone did, no one has seen the hobo for a little while. That would be my main concern (especially more rural the area) that someone would get scared and the idiot in the gorilla suit. Although this reminds me of the episode of MASH when Hawkeye and Trapper get gorilla suits and Frank needs a hernia operation.
Greywolf is right on the money!!! This is NOT funny and sooner or later someone is going to get hurt..or worse. This happened last summer up here in Manitoba but the doofuss was caught by the R.C.M.P..
(It could also, of course, get the perpetrator shot, and it’s surprising that’s never happened.)
Sooner or later it will happen MattBille. Then maybe those that are fools enough to do such stupid things might get the point.
I don’t know if gorilla suits explain the majority of bigfoot sightings. We might reasonably suggest the sighting attached to the Jerry Crew incidents might have been such a suited hoaxer, given the suspicions concerning prints found there. On the other hand, if we accept William Roe’s account, we have to rule out a gorilla costume because Roe had a clear sighting in proximity and of some length of time.
I’m glad our Kind Host included photos of Patterson’s bigfoot and a Phillip Morris gorilla suit. In Greg Long’s THE MAKING OF BIGFOOT, Morris makes the claim that he immediately knew he was looking at one of his costumes when he first saw the Patterson film. (He claimed he sold Patterson one of his gorilla suits). Morris claimed that Patterson altered the suit’s face. Bigfoot advocates have taken this revelation to task, arguing that the entity in Patterson’s film is no man in mere gorilla costume.
I agree, to a point. I think Patterson modified a gorilla costume. He had to, for instance, to create the breasts Roe claimed to have seen. It looks to me that Patterson girdled his suit with a short hair body belt (the fellow who claims to be the one in the suit says Patterson told him he used horse hair and hide to construct the costume).
Enough of Morris’ costume survived in the making of the suit for him to recognize his own product. Maybe it is in the eye of the beholder, but if we compare the photos of the Patterson animal with the photo of Morris’ gorilla costume presented above, I, for one, see the same (if not literally) “sagittal crest” and shoulder and arm hair in both shots.
As a side issue, I wonder if Fort’s notion of a “Wipe” is not itself a Wipe. Mundane explanations for alleged paranormal events are dismissed out of hand using the Wipe Wipe.
I love some things about Youtube and have been a longtime member of the site and make my own vlogs, however, this idiotic rash of “fake sasquatch” films, sightings and pics have really put the entire crypto field in an even more unfavorable light to the public. Shame really. All the work that has been done by those who have tried to bring class, science and professionalism to the field can be wiped clean by a pair of morons in an ape suit. Just wait, someone will get shot and killed while wearing an ape suit. Sadly enough, that may be what it will take to stop these imbeciles from doing these childish pranks. Oh well, we just keep on plugging away for credibility and it can all be swooshed away in an instant by a foolish prank. Sad.
Hey!
That’s not Frame 352! Looks like Frame 353 or 354!
(The real Patty, I mean. And maybe a better frame, if not so “iconic.”)
As to Matt Bille’s “(It could also, of course, get the perpetrator shot, and it’s surprising that’s never happened.)”
Indeed. It’s also “surprising” that “no one’s shot one,” or that “no one’s hit one with a car,” or that “no hunters encounter them, or someone WOULD have shot one.” In fact, all those things, if you believe reports, HAVE happened – hunter encounters, for one, are the most frequent kind, if you take my informal survey – and they don’t stretch credulity any more than no one faking in a suit EVER getting hit, or shot. And contrary to what seems popular belief, there is considerable incentive – just read the reports – for folks NOT to want to be the one “making the zoological discovery of the century.”
And why couldn’t it have happened that one or two guys in suits HAVE gone missing, and for obvious reasons never told anyone what they were going out to do, and so no one ever knew why they went missing, and the guy that shot them went HO-ly…, and just shoveled, prayed and shut up, and they just wound up in missing-person reports, unsolved…?
All I mean to say is: we don’t know it NEVER happened.
i agree: most hunters i know wouldn’t shoot at a “bigfoot” because their first instinct would not be, “hey, i’ll shoot first and ask questions later,” but… “gee, do i REALLY want to do time for shooting some crank who was wearin’ a Morris Costume job?”
think about it: it presumes hunters KNOW what they’re aiming at is a real cryptid rather than a hoaxer.
again, despite the redneck stereotype, most hunters i’ve encountered err on the side of caution. does that mean there aren’t trigger-happy types out there willing to squeeze off a round?
nope. but hey, folks are being shot in LA right now by a sniper(s), so obviously, it’s not only cryptids that are in any unbalanced person’s crosshairs!