Attacking Patterson’s “Video”
Posted by: Loren Coleman on March 1st, 2006
The countdown is on. Next year will see the 40th anniversary of the so-called “Patterson Film,” more properly labeled the Roger Patterson-Bob Gimlin film footage of a Bigfoot at Bluff Creek, California, taken on October 20, 1967. Expect more and more attempts to examine this episode in cryptozoology in the coming months.
Let’s hope they all are not as awful as the one critiqued here today.
Andy Kaiser, a reporter at The Grand Rapids Press in Michigan demonstrates the foolishness that still exists among the media when Bigfoot is discussed. Kaiser wrote an article this week entitled "Do Video Enhancements Reveal Bigfoot?”
The guy does not seem to have a clue about Bigfoot or even the subject of the 1967 evidence about which he is trying to comment.
Besides the premise behind the very headline being used by that newspaper, Kaiser’s first paragraph reinforces and further reveals his ignorance:
One of the more popular pieces of evidence for the existence of Bigfoot is the "Patterson Bigfoot video," which shows a supposed Bigfoot striding away from an excited and shaky cameraman, the late Roger Patterson. Taken in 1967, no other video has been held in such high esteem and presented as proof of the monster’s existence.
Okay, stop the presses there! The Bigfoot "video"? The Patterson-Gimlin footage was shot on film, not videotape. Roger Patterson was using a hand-held movie camera. Specifically, he was using a 16mm Cine Kodak K100 with a mobilgrip handle, in which he took 952 frames of Kodachrome II, of a creature we all call Bigfoot, amounting to approximately 39.7 seconds of footage. Do reporters even do their Bigfoot homework, reading Daniel Perez’s, Mark A. Hall’s, John Green’s, Janet Bord’s, or Chris Murphy’s material on the film footage, or my books, before they jump into their attempts at ridicule and sarcasm? Apparently not.
This Michigan reporter cannot grasp the topic he is examining. It is film footage, not video. Next, Kaiser demonstrates a collection of half-truths, misinformation, and outrageous non-facts about Patterson. He writes:
Since the loss of the original film and equipment and the death of Patterson, evidence is hard to verify or disprove. Never mind Patterson was a known con artist and was arrested after the video shoot for stealing the movie camera.
This kind of thinking issues from a Michigan reporter whose sense of reality exists incorrectly in an overblown thought process that seems based on too quickly and uncritically reading a confused debunker’s minor book. You won’t read the title of that book here, as it is such a distasteful volume filled with comments that verge on pure character assassinations.
Unfortunately, such printed poison spawns trivia articles as this Kaiser one where his hastily written words can’t even get it correct that Roger Patterson, of course, would not have used video in his film camera.
As to Patterson being arrested, this 2006 reporter seems to be lifting what is a minor 1967 incident to the crime of the century. Fact: The "arrest warrant", issued five months before the famed footage, was for a camera used previously, which was returned only two days late, even according to the skeptics. Fact: Patterson was briefly taken into custody as he walked into the specific camera store that applied for the warrant. He reportedly was there to return the Bluff Creek footage camera. Fact: He was almost immediately released on personal recognizance (no bail) and the charges were dropped later. But such details don’t sound melodramatic.
The facts are that Roger Patterson was served with an arrest warrant on November 28, 1967, which was issued, on October 17, 1967, before the Patterson-Gimlin Bluff Creek Bigfoot footage was taken on October 20, 1967. But the warrant was based on Patterson failing, in a timely fashion, to return a rented camera on time in May 1967. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped some skeptics from writing over-the-top sentences like this one: "Patterson, in fact, was promptly arrested for grand larceny for stealing the very camera he used at Bluff Creek!"
Come on!
As to using the value-laden phrase "con artist," if Patterson was alive, he might be considering a law suit against the paper.
What is unfortunate about an article like this is that it has taken the passionate work of two people in two separate decades, Roger Patterson in the 1960s, and M. K. Davis, a former NASA analyst who has enhanced the footage in the 2000s, and diminished them to the usual media treatment in snippets of thoughtlessness. Kaiser sums up on February 27th his less-than-reasoned opinion with this one-liner:
To me, the "authentic Bigfoot" looks like a guy walking in a padded gorilla suit.
The article never details one item that this reporter sees in M. K. Davis’s enhancements for why he feels this way. It sounds more like pure faith in the misconceptions he has internalized about Patterson than about the footage, which has influenced Andy Kaiser.
Perhaps it is time for newspaper reporters who don’t know their video from their film to stop talking about the Patterson-Gimlin footage entirely. This one could not, for example, see the enhancements that M. K. Davis has produced, showing muscle movement under the hair, the hernias in the skin, and the reality of the October 1967 Bigfoot footage if someone gave him a roadmap.
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.
Amen!
If people could get their facts straight first, we could get down to the business of actually searching for the truth.
The reason why they are attacking ROGER PATTERSON more the BOB GIMLIN is simple BOB GIMLIN is alive and well and can defend himself. ROGER PATTERSON on the hand is dead and its ease to attack a dead man because he can’t defend himself in person and most of his friends are gone expect for a few
like BOB GIMLIN, JOHN GREEN who knew him which these few names comes to mind known. As for MK’S work on cleaning up this footage is great and I will said GREAT JOB MK and the news media does what they do best which is give out misinformation and facts the way they want to present it. Never mind who gets hurt they don’t care about the person or his family and friends and no repect for the dead. The name of the media game is ratings they do not care about the reputation of the person live or dead and his family and friends. Its RATINGS THAT’S ALL THEY CARE ABOUT and to get high ratings they will walk all over people and even their own family members if they get in the way. And with the 40th anniversary of the PATTERSON-Gimlin film in OCTOBER 1967 coming up fast. In OCTOBER 2007 is the 40th what will the news media bring up? what lies will they tell? Hang on to your hats its going to be a bumpy road to OCTOBER 2007.
As Rene Dahinden would say, “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, but if you don’t know all the facts, your opinion is meaningless.”
This kind of nebulous attack shows a complete lack of common sense on this reporter’s part, but this is the kind of thing we have to deal with. We should not be surprised when things like this come up, but should be prepared to take the initiative to defend good researchers and good research. M.K. happens to be a friend of mine, and he has done excellent work on the P/G film. If it were a hoax, he would’ve said so. The fact that he found the film to genuine and the subject an actual creature rather than a guy in a suit speaks to the credibility of the film and the absolute ignorance of the mainstream press.
Personally, I have yet to see any evidence supporting the possibility of a hoax. Far too many motormouths are attacking the validity but have nothing to back it up. I don’t see a zipper…I don’t see anything from the left field that would convince me otherwise. So until someone kills the debate once and for all and shows me how patterson faked it, I am more prone to believing the unbelievable and patterson film, for me, is proof of a bipedal, hairy creature…we call BIGFOOT.
BG
“So until someone kills the debate once and for all and shows me how patterson faked it, I am more prone to believing the unbelievable and patterson film, for me, is proof of a bipedal, hairy creature…we call BIGFOOT.”
And that’s the problem. It isn’t incumbent on the scientific community to show how Patterson faked it. Extraordinary claims require extra ordinary proof and the film just isn’t enough.
I don’t know if the Patterson film shows a previously unknown creature or not. It’s isn’t my job to disprove it. It does show something, but there isn’t a consensus on what. With a lack of evidence as to what it actually IS, I err on the side of “I don’t know what it is. It could be a suit, it could be a previously unknown creature, it could be something else.”
To me, that’s the only logical course.
vjmurphy,
It is incumbent on those that claim direct knowledge that the film was hoaxed to prove their claims. It is incumbent on those that claim they “wore the suit” to provide proof that they did in fact wear the suit. Provide the suit. Simple as that. Provide a suit that matches what is in the film. Prove that it was made before the film was made. That’s not too tall an order if it was indeed a suit.
Show me the monkey suit!
That’s like saying it was incumbent on Patterson to produce a body. Prove that the thing in the film IS a creature. Patterson was the one making the claim, therefore the burden of proof was on him.
All the existence of a suit does is give a reasonable explanation for the film. In fact, you don’t even need THE suit for that. I think that’s why people get confused: a man in a suit offers another explanation for the same film. And there is proof that monkey/gorilla suits existed. 🙂
If someone took a picture of a pie pan and called it a flying saucer, would you believe it unless someone produced the EXACT same pie pan?
It is an unreasonable burden to tell skeptics that they have to “disprove” the film with specific evidence (but yes, circumstantial evidence should be approached skeptically, as well). It’s the claimant’s burden to prove what they have.
The film is simply too grainy to tell if there is a zipper or bell hanging from the waist as I have heard. On the other hand, it is also too grainy to make out the facial features as well. I have also been unimpressed with the efforts to duplicate the film. So in the end, despite the romantic in me to want it to be absolute proof, it is, in my opinion, inconclusive. It seems that it is still going to take a dead one to prove its existence. Another forty years from now, it will probably continue to be a hotly contested film unless one of the creatures is found or a claim of falsehood can be proven.
Still the best piece of footage there is of this suspected creature.
My name is Dan A. Hall, I wish I was as smart as Mark A. Hall on the subject, but here it goes….
As a Baptist pastor, I have many of my older folks that believe ABC, CBS, NBC is the “gospel” when it comes to a news subject. If they read it in the local paper or see it on the TV, it MUST be fact! Which leads me to the article above… articles like his has been going around in one form or fashion since 67 and will continue until we have a Bigfoot “alive or dead”. One day the TRUTH will be known when the world can finally see and study/test one. My hope is, it’s before October 20th, 2007… can I get an “Amen” on that!!!
Forgive my ignorance on this subject, but didnt patterson come out and admit that it was a hoax? Im probably wrong, but its plauging my mind, and im sure ive heard it…. somewhere.
NO, Roger Patterson did not ever say anything about his work being a hoax. Patterson died in 1972.
Cradossk, you must be mixing your memories with the 1990s’ “claims” of various writers who have felt thusly, but they never received any such admission from Patterson.
you will all forgive me as a new poster, but there seems to be way too much importance on the differance between “video” and “film” in this article. semantics, anyone?
“This Michigan reporter cannot grasp the topic he is examining. It is film footage, not video.”
does it really matter what format someone is viewing the footage in? does it make that much differance?
please, if it truly does, inform me as to why.
that is my only problem with this article. but it does bother me a lot.
my mistake then 🙂
scatterbug ~ if there is an original piece of FILM to look at, it can be examined in microscopic detail for fudging and foolery ~ if it is VIDEO (TAPE or CD or WHATEVER) it is an entirely different story ~ digital images can manipulated in all sorts of ways, and it would take a supergeek to uncover some of it!
So it IS important for you to know that the Patterson-Gimlin evidence was shot on film, and that it has been available since 1967 (I clearly remember the jaw-dropping, gut-level feeling of satisfaction I had on seeing it for the very first time then!), and that every frame of that FILM has been examined in detail…
As for the zipper, I have a ridge of sorts running down the middle of my back, formed by my spinal column ~ if I were hair-covered, I’ll bet the hair there would be distorted somewhat ~ my dog’s is, and he’s a Ridgeback!
This shows that one of the best known maxims of propaganda is still accurate – attack something repeatedly, no matter how outlandish the attacks are, and eventually people will believe the attackers, despite the repeated refutations of the truth.
Or, in other words, tell a big enough lie enough times and people will buy it.
The idiocy of journalists nowadays goes beyond polite comment. There is no such thing as a real investigative journalist in the mainstream anymore.
As for the Patterson footage, I still feel it is strikingly realistic. When you watch old and new movies with people in ape suits and/or makeup, it is always obvious that you are looking at a human portraying an ape– even with the advanced technology we now have.
This film shows a large creature with arms disproportionately long for a human, with a stride much to long and comfortable for a human (with a simian crook at the knee), what appears to be hamstring and leg muscles showing during flexing, pendulous breasts that would have been impossible to fake so naturally, a head that makes an extreme turn to look which would look completely unreal in a monkey suit, and hair that shows bare spots where natural friction from daily activity would wear it away.
This footage was the real thing.
Let me start off by stating for the record that I do NOT believe a giant ape could roam even the most remote, dense forests of the lower 48 without bones or other irrefutable evidence being discovered.
On the other hand, after 40 years, nobody has been able to replicate that video. It moves like an animal, not a man in a suit. The shoulders, the stride, furitiveness all just FEEL real. And while the burden of proof can be assigned to anybody you want to assign it to, the fact is numerous journalists, scientists and other skeptics have been unable to punch any real holes in that footage. Instead, they keep coming up with elaborate explanations for challenges Roger Patterson is highly unlikely to have anticipated (e.g., in 1967 could he have foreseen computer analysis of the subject’s gait???)
So, what’s my conclusion? I can accept, based mainly on this film and the sheer number of tracks reported, that maybe there are 200 or so large bipedal apes roaming the Pacific Northwest, and the stories of them being 10 feet tall are bunk, and the stories of them living in Ohio and Illinois and Arkansas, etc., etc. are bunk.
Or maybe Roger Patterson is the best (meaning luckiest) hoaxer ever.
Yeah ~ trouble is the debunkers and other negativists (Randi, Klass et al) can afford to dump money into promoting their preposterous claims, while the true researchers have to put their dough into expensive equipment and gear and travel and expeditions and publishing etc…
Doesn’t seem fair, but that’s life in this crypto-world, eh?
Hey cradossk is right – they came out and admitted it was a hoax.
I actually thought that was pretty well established. Apparently not.
Okay I saw the film years ago and have just viewed the cleaned up version, My immediate impression was someone in a suit. Here is why… watch someone walking away from you or from the side (like in the footage) you will notice their buttocks move up and down in relation to the strides, the bigger the better. In the footage the buttocks do not move it is like the legs are hinged seperately underneath ie like someone in a suit or so it seems to me….
Of course this does not say that Bigfoot or something similar does not exist, to me it just says this footage is suspect.
Norm Al responds: March 4th, 2006 at 12:10 am
White visitors didn’t actually find gorillas until 1917. They were hunted and killed with pointy sticks and such for centuries, even millenia, prior to that by the Africans who were actually living in Africa. Europeans had their hands and hides as curios way back in the 17th century. Nobody has slain a squatch, or purchased a tooth, etc. Plus, this ain’t 1917. People are hunting for this thing with night vision goggles, motion triggered cameras, bionic ears, etc., not pointy sticks. With modern technology, you and I could get off a plane in Nairobi and find a troop of gorillas in less than 4 hours. We haven’t found a single squatchy in 40 years.
Anyway, in the end, it’s not that there is insufficient SPACE for them to fit into, or even enough cover if we’re talking about the Pacific NW only, or maybe the everglades, or maybe even the swamps of East Texas. That’s obvious. But they have to EAT and BREED and raise BABIES as well as hide, wherever they live. The more places people see them, the less likely they are to be real.
An 8-foot gorilla would weigh about 700 – 900 lbs. It would have to eat (literally) like a horse. Gorillas are relatively easy to track in areas where they live because of the broken branches, etc. they leave behind when eating. They are just too freaking big to hide. In Africa. Imagine a troop hiding in the hills of Ohio . Factor in that this sasquatch is supposedly at least 1.5 times the size of the largest silverback, about double or even triple the size of an average female gorilla.
Hiding and feeding a breeding population of these critters would be a lot more like hiding and feeding a herd of buffalo than it would be like hiding a group of people. When is the last time a herd of previously undiscovered buffalo, or for that matter ANY terrestrial creature that weighs over 100 lbs., been discovered? About 1917, I’d guess.
Believe me–I want to believe. Until I was about 25, I did believe. Vehemently. But Loch Ness and Lake Champlain were frozen solid only a few thousand years ago, and no way an ape that dwarfs Shaq can stay so well hidden.
But that DARN PATTERSON FILM!!! How do you explain the back muscles? The gait? The arm length? The breadth of the chest? I know it just has to be a suit, but it DOES NOT LOOK/MOVE LIKE A SUIT!!! THIS SUCKS!!!
Hello everyone, Andy Kaiser here. I wanted to respond to some of the criticism of my article and explain my own beliefs on this issue.
First, looking at the original critique, the point made more than any other is that I don’t know the original collection of moving images is a “film”, not a movie or a video. This is because my source materials were an MPEG video file and an animated GIF. I had that terminology in my head, and that’s where my references in the article originated. Also, I don’t think the distinction is as important today: When we go to the movie theater, we watch a “movie”. Never mind it’s actually played on a reel-to-reel film projector, but we let the terminology slide. But, my grandmother, and those in her generation, call these “films”. Who’s right? Watch episode 4 (“The Inferno”) of the British comedy “Coupling”, and they’ll refer to VHS tapes as “films”. Whether cultural, generational or social, today’s concepts for film, movie, tape, digital video, et cetera are becoming interchangeable.
The original critique also says, “The article never details one item that this reporter sees in M. K. Davis’s enhancements for why he feels this way. It sounds more like pure faith in the misconceptions he has internalized about Patterson than about the footage, which has influenced Andy Kaiser.”
I am given a limited amount of space in the newspaper to make my point. Usually about 500 words. So I have to pick and choose what I want to say, and clearly stick to my point. In this case, I wanted to illustrate how technology is allowing us to uncover mysteries and help answer and clarify previously unanswerable questions. The article was not about detailing why I thought M.K. Davis’ work was faulty. However, let me address a little of that now.
Craig Woolheater says: “Provide a suit that matches what is in the film. Prove that it was made before the film was made. That’s not too tall an order if it was indeed a suit. Show me the monkey suit!”
If I did that, you’d think the film was a hoax? I don’t see how finding a suit similar in age and appearance to what appears in the Patterson film is relevant. While it may affect the film’s credibility, how would that prove or disprove the existence of Bigfoot? It may add credence to the hoax belief, but doesn’t conclusively confirm or deny the issue.
You’ve heard of “Occam’s razor”? It’s the concept that states “when given a choice of possibilities, the simplest is usually correct”. Let’s examine the case of Bigfoot, and look at the possibilities and how they relate to the Patterson film/MPEG/video:
1) The Patterson film, while interesting and well-designed, is a hoax, and Bigfoot does not exist. Other Bigfoot evidence consists of unexplained, misinterpreted, or hoaxed data.
2) The Patterson film is real. Bigfoot does exist. However, there is no independently verifiable evidence. No physical samples where DNA testing shows a new species. No bodies have been found, indicating these creatures, living with us for millennia, apparently disappear into thin air when they die.
Option one logically makes the most sense to me.
Being a skeptical thinker, I am open to the idea of Bigfoot, but don’t see the proof that science demands. Show me a body. Not a picture. Not a movie. Not stories from those who claim to have seen it. Show me something that can’t possibly be a hoax. Something that can be peer-reviewed and verified by everyone, and can be put through the scientific testing necessary to qualify it as a new species. Bigfoot proponents claim Bigfoot exists. Prove it by showing objective evidence.
Andy,
Finding a suit that is comparable to the subject in the P/G film is relevant. It’s relevant because the technology to build such a complex suit, especially funded by an out of work cowboy, was not available at the time of the filming, in my opinion.
The costumes used in the Planet of the Apes, a Hollywood movie with a decent budget, were nowhere near as lifelike as the subject of the film. This movie was released in 1968, so I presume that it may have been filming during the time frame that the P/G film was shot.
The rumour that John Chambers, who was responsible for the ape suits in Planet of the Apes, created the suit in the P/G film is just that. In the late 90’s, it was bolstered by director John Landis, who claimed that Chambers revealed the secret to him while they were working together on Beneath the Planet of the Apes in 1970.
But that’s a whole ‘nother story for another day.
The existence of the creature we call Bigfoot doesn’t hinge on the veracity of the P/G film for me. You see, I have seen one of these creatures with my own eyes. I KNOW they are out there. I have interviewed many credible witnesses who claim to have had an encounter with one of these creatures. I have found large 5-toed footprints miles from any road in the wilderness. I don’t need to be convinced.
Masisoar, where are you getting this information? I would like to read it my self.
Hey cradossk is right – they came out and admitted it was a hoax.
I actually thought that was pretty well established. Apparently not.
“These days, the Razor is used mostly in the context of discussions about scientific method. It is often said that the Razor means choosing the explanation that is simplest. This is almost always a mistake: the search for the “simplest” is a semantic minefield. Besides, this so-called Law of Parsimony is far from true, as a browse through some of the devious and often wasteful mechanisms of evolution will soon show you. (Divine whim is a much “simpler” explanation of the remnants of a whale’s back legs.) The Razor is most sensibly used to advise against explaining the unknown by inventing things that are themselves unexplained”
source
The importance of film vs. video, and referring to each as the other:
The Internet has bred its own form of ignorance. I have actually talked with people who have claimed such things as remembering how primitive laptop computers were in the 70s (laptop computers DID NOT EXIST in the 70s), and a hypnotically brain-dead conversation with an 16-year old computer whiz who boasted his high school had been web-savvy well ahead of its time by having one of the most dynamically designed websites back in the 60s (and no, I could not convince him he was wrong).
Why is it good to remember something was shot on FILM, as opposed to video? Why is that distinction important? It’s irrelevant, you say? I beg to differ.
I differ, because eventually someone will enter this discussion with “you can tell Patterson used CGI… duh!”
Folks… this is one of the negative byproducts of the Web’s influence. We have adults walking the planet who have no concept of what life was like before, and worse yet, have no concept that there WAS a “before.” What if you picked up a copy of Rolling Stone, read it, and it became apparent that none of the writers knew anything about music before, say, the Techno Punk era? That they weren’t necessarily bad writers, but it was obvious that their scope of knowledge about their subject was not broad enough to truely qualify them? These are the kinds of people that take charge of nuance in the 21st Century… people not truely qualified to be the gate keepers of the nuances of history and information. Therefore so much that was learned at a painful cost, through history, is lost… and it will eventually have to be learned all over again. We are already seeing it. It is why we have evil crackpots running the country. Why a worse attack than Pearl Harbor on 9/11 is now considered trivia by a nation of curly-fry gobbling, Blackberry wearing, text-messaging, mental Lilliputians.
You’ll have to look up “Lilliputians,” grasshoppah. You must LEARN to fish… not have someone else fish for you.