Another Update: Tennessee Bigfoot With Cane?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on May 4th, 2007
Bill Appleton, Chief Technology Officer at California’s DreamFactory Software, Inc., shares with me these specific video captures from the Tennessee Bigfoot helicopter footage (earlier posted on Cryptomundo by Craig Woolheater here and here).
These two individual photographic captures from the video appear to show the bipedal walker carrying something in its right hand.
Appleton asks if this is might merely be an elderly woman moving rapidly away from the aircraft, with the help of a cane?
Others have suggested, could it be a hunter in a ghillie (camouflage netting) suit?
Could it be someone with a heavy coat?
Well, at least no one has mentioned a Bigfoot with a stick to dig roots yet!
What do you think these individual frames show?
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.
It’s either a hunter and gear or a backpacker and gear. It would be nice for it to be something more ‘crypto’, but I think this is a classic case of seeing something that just isn’t there. It does make for a lively discussion.
If a backpacker it’s one of the most oddly dressed ones I’ve seen. If a ghillie suit it’s pretty durn bulky, and it just seems an odd place to see that.
But I see human proportions from those stills.
It’s difficult to tell what time of year it is from the video. When is legal hunting season in Tennessee? Could this be a poacher in a ghillie? The object never seemed to look up and acknowledge the helicopter. I would think a bigfoot would at least be curious, or even a law-abiding citizen, as to why a chopper was flying around. However, someone who was doing something illegal would likely keep their head down and hope no ID was possible.
In the footage, I thought the object tried to hurry its pace a little. Maybe that’s just from the way the camera jiggled, though.
The stick is likely a gun if its a poacher or it maybe either some indigent person just walking along the road, or a local hiker.
But the way the object showed no interest in, or avoided looking up at, the chopper is not something I would expect from any normally curious bigfoot or law-abiding citizen. Still, I’ll keep an open mind.
I’ll vote for digging stick Loren.
I’m going to make a wild guess: Oldish person with cane, and heavy coat, not having any desire to aknowledge the annoying helicopter that keeps buzzing him.
Turkey hunters use full ghillie suits. Looks like a 12 gage camoed remington, with 3 rounds of no. 2 shot in the magazine. You can tell be how he has it balanced in his hand. The no. 6 shot would cause the barrel to not dip so noticeably. Apparently he also is carrying his lunch in a dark backpack under the suit. Obviously, made in china. The lunch is two sandwiches, with an opened bag of beef jerky. One sandwich is ham and cheese, pickle, lettuce, mayo and mustard. The other sandwich is of unknown origin. Is that one of those cheap 10 mile walkie talkies in his left hand? That’s about all the help I can give you guys, on this exciting exercise in creative analysis of large unclassified hominids.
No Mystery, it’s a backpacker.
This is pretty much the same frame that I paused it on when I watched the video and I also thought, like some others do, that it is a guy in some sort of ghillie suit get up. If you look at pics of these suits, they really are quite bulky and create the illusion of great mass. Some of the size estimates on the other thread are wild speculation, I’d say. To me, this looks like I would espect a hunter in a ghillie suit to look and that “cane” could be a rifle. Right now, that seems just as feasible an idea as any that this is an undiscovered hairy hominid. I don’t think that these pilots necessarily intentionally went out to make a hoax, but I think they may have made a misidentification here.
I tend to dismiss the ghillie suit. Why you ask? Well the suit is not built properly for the colors in the surrounding terrain. A hunter would want the suit to be several shades lighter. When stalking you don’t want to look like the big brown blob moving through the yellow/lighter tan grass lands. I see only varied bushes or trees.
I’m not saying it is anything in particular, but if I was in a ghillie suit, I would wave at the helo so they didn’t try to shoot the bigfoot walking down the road.
Why wouldn’t a backpacker be walking in the road? Or an old lady for that matter? However, something not wanting to leave tracks might avoid it. It could be an old sasquatch with a stick. Why not? Chimps use sticks to get bugs outa holes. Or it could be a hunter in a Ghillie suit and the stick is a gun…But maybe not…Where’d all the “blue jean” people go? I never saw that.
If this was shot in late February or early March, that fellow could be a turkey hunter. The odd thing is that he is walking the fence row or ditch line instead of the road, five feet away. I still think this was shot on the Cumberland Plateau. Lots of Eastern Red Cedars and old fields are in view.
Nevertheless, not a Bigfoot IMHO.
Joppa, as a fellow Tennesseean, I agree.
chrisandclauida2- Why should he wave at the helicopter so he doesn’t get shot? Is that a common problem for someone wearing a ghillie suit? Why would he think someone would mistake him for a bigfoot? That thought might not have even crossed this hunter’s mind, and I know I don’t wave hello to every helicopter that passes overhead. If it is a ghillie suit, then this might might not be the terrain he’s headed for and that is why the color is off. Maybe he’s on his way to a stand of bushes or in the trees that can be seen in the video in which case the color may be fine.
hey thanks this newer update about this film footage i think the creature is carrying a large stick not a cane. bill 🙂
Hmmm, maybe the old guy is walking near ditch looking for cans and bottles?
mystery_man: there’s another issue lurking beneath chrisandclaudia2’s comment and your response, and I think it deserves more examination here.
It’s said, but not thoroughly enough. Ben Radford and Daniel Loxton have relied on it in their statements on eyewitness testimony. Sure, this testimony is unreliable. But not as unreliable as we’d be had to believe. The argument skeptics make seems to rest upon sighters (and hoaxers) “having sasquatch on the brain,” or otherwise responding in ways that, under more normal circumstances, one would NOT and should NOT expect. (This’ll take a bit. It’s worth it.)
When I go in the woods – and I may be rare in this regard – it’s always with the hope I’ll see a sasquatch. Most of my hiking is in places where they’ve been seen, or not far at all from such places. I’m always – and I do mean pretty much every moment – on the scan for dark bipedal shapes in the woods. But when I see a bear, or a wild pig (like last month in Congaree NP in South Carolina), my first thought is not, SASQUATCH! It’s, hmmmm, bear? Wild pig? If it’s bipedal, it is sure as hell human until I can verify otherwise. That’s VERIFY.
Now you KNOW most people in the woods, really almost all, given the public image of the sas, either (1) don’t think it exists, or are doubtful at best, or (2) don’t think it lives where they are. Reports describe, over and over again, the witness’s shock and awe, the frantic attempts to make sense of what they are seeing, the fear that is, in case after case, stronger than any they have experienced (and they are frequently armed). This does NOT happen with a quick glance of an animal, of whatever size. (The sense that you are being watched – one of the most common aspects surrounding sightings, and suggested to be a pheromonically-triggered reaction that may relate to the sas’s intimidation display – is something that I have almost never experienced, in any circumstance, in my life. Except in my cubicle at work. 😀 Just tossing that in.) I have seen one large animal in the woods in my life that I could not identify. There are, as far as I can tell, three candidates for what it was. And a sasquatch is not one of them.
My point? I’m getting to it. If you didn’t see a sasquatch, YOU KNOW IT. There is no way that anyone can mistake this critter for any known animal. (Except the gorilla, which seems to happen quite a bit. And note that. I’ll come back to it.) There is, however, an extreme likelihood that someone could get a fleeting glimpse of a Bigfoot and think it’s something ELSE, something they know. This is what you should expect, not the reverse. By the way, it’s never happened to me. I don’t think. 😉 Skeptics trot out psychology and misidentification. But this is one aspect of psychology that they tend to ignore, because it doesn’t fit their thesis. And they need to be called on it. So let me say it again: you can mistake a sasquatch for something else. YOU CANNOT MISTAKE SOMETHING ELSE FOR A SASQUATCH. The human mind simply does not work that way. The question is not: are these people mistaking known animals for Bigfoot? The question is, for anyone who understands psychology: how many people thought bear when it was a Bigfoot they saw? Why would one think the gorilla – an African animal – could be running around the woods in the US? Simple, Psych 101. IT LOOKS LIKE A GORILLA.
And we come to the waving ghillieman. I MIGHT wave. But there is no way I’m gonna wave so they don’t shoot a sasquatch, or shoot anything. I’m gonna wave to say Hi! Not hi, I’m human, but Hi, fellow human! I’m feeling friendly is why I will wave. People don’t generally shoot anything from a helicopter, not anything bipedal anyway.
We need to stop allowing the thesis of misidentification to continue unchallenged. None of the rickety struts of the skeptical argument is load-bearing, and this is, I think, the most fragile one. ONE DOES NOT MISTAKE ANYTHING – ANYTHING – FOR A SASQUATCH.
And now for a Radford Question. Defend that position or let it drop. Where are the psychological studies that show people are seeing known stuff and thinking Bigfoot? Particularly since that turns most of psychology right onto its pointy little head?
Based on the information, I am of the belief that it is a two-headed wally wogger!
No, not really, but we sure can pull out the most bizarre speculations. The stills aren’t good enough to say anything other than it’s a something carrying a something. Scientific process? Anybody???
So why does a helicopter that can hover over something not bother to do so when it’s apparently quite curious about whether it’s “bigfoot” or not? Simple answer: the videographer knew it wasn’t. The swift passes don’t allow the cameraman enough time to really sink his lens into the subject because to do so would give the game away.
I also was wondering why the helicopter wouldn’t just hover and get a closer look at whatever was walking along that fence.
I agree, why would a helicopter just keep circling around this subject and not just hover in place to get a better look?
silvereagle: orb on over, buddy. You da man!
DWA- Well, if this turns out to be a guy in a ghillie suit, then they ARE mistaking it for a sasquatch. This is a bit different from mistaking it for a known animal. It seems these guys in the helicopter either can’t or won’t come in close, hover, or otherwise get a better view of the subject. So what they see is something apparently large and humanoid walking across terrain that could support Bigfoot, so of course they think it could be Bigfoot when it may be nothing of the sort. If I saw fleetingly a guy in, say, a ghillie suit and especially if I had no experience seeing this or wasn’t expecting it somewhere, then I see no reason why someone could not mistake that for a sasquatch. I would think “what the heck!?”! and considering the large awareness of Bigfoot in the public consciousness, a misidentification could happen, I feel. You see it, you think big, bipedal, weird looking, large, and your mind may come to some conclusions such as it is a Bigfoot, especially if it wasn’t glimpsed very clearly. In some situations, the misidentification could happen, so I am not personally ready to make any broad statements that it never happens.
I want to add that although skeptics can rely on this sort of misidentification hypothesis to the point of absurdity, I also think it is time for people to stop accepting any large dark shaped, bipedal object for a Bigfoot and jumping to that conclusion. There comes a time when you have to look at a clip and ask your self
Is this a large, hairy hominid walking along the side of a road carrying a walking stick (a behavior that as far as I know is not a particularly common thing in sighting reports), or
Is it a guy hunting in a ghillie suit carrying a stick or a rifle in an area where people could be hunting.
Yes, it COULD be a Bigfoot, and Bigfoot COULD use walking sticks, and there are reasons why it COULD be walking on the side of a road, but which is honestly more likely upon waying the evidence here that we see?
I just get a little disappointed when footage like this is accepted on the basis of speculation in favor of a Bigfoot when there are other, perfectly plausible reasons why this is not. Skeptics can be criticized for not looking at all angles, but a lot of people who support the existence of Bigfoot do the same thing.
DWA says, “When I go in the woods – and I may be rare in this regard – it’s always with the hope I’ll see a sasquatch.”
Right with you there, buddy. My wife and I are going to the UP (Michigan upper peninsula) in a couple of months. She calls it vacation but I’m going bigfoot hunting. (She doesn’t know that yet). At the very least, I’m going to keep my eyes and ears open and non-shaky, in focus camera ready. Also going to take some plaster of paris, plastic bags (in case of samples) and anything else I can think of, including Loren’s e-mail address. It doesn’t hurt to have a “bigfoot preparedness kit” handy in the trunk whenever you go out.
mystery_man: duly noted, and revised:
“No one who hasn’t become fully inured to reckless irresponsible hope, resulting in overwrought, eye-damaging video hyperanalysis, can confuse anything else with a sasquatch.”
There. Man, I am contributing to this field by the DAY.
the big guy must really love “House”
1. The helicopter may have been running low on fuel and hovering uses more fuel, so they didn’t hover.
2. Obviously they were close to an airport flight path and it may have been prohibited to hover there. Looked like the end of the runway. It could have been a restricted airbase (military) and they were cutting the corner of it as is, which would make sense if it were a man in a ghillie suit.
3. Hovering is for experienced people only, especially over non covered ground. The rotors down-wash and when it hits the ground billows up and back down into the rotors lessening the lift, with the possibility of hitting debris.
4. Hovering right over the subject would not allow viewing.
5. If they thought it was a human, hovering could be considered harassing. If it were a hunter, they could be fined for disturbing the hunt or a form of terrorism like with greenpeace.
6. The pilot could not have had a license to land anywhere except from where they took off from.
If he hadn’t died seven years ago, I’d say it was Edward Gorey.
I say it might be a guy who secretly whittled a pool cue in the woods and he’s taking a shortcut past the old abandoned airstrip, to try it out at the local tavern. Sorry, I can’t stop myself sometimes. I think I am beginning to lose faith. One thing I keep going back to with all of these videos…..do you think that if Mr. Patterson were alive today and had just filmed what he believed to be a real Sasquatch, that he would post it on Youtube? I sure as heck would not.
Nachzerer, I’m not as gifted as Gorey was, but here goes:
A man in a coat oh so furry,
Was strolling, in no urban hurry.
As he sauntered along,
In his bigfoot sarong,
He pondered an east Asian curry.
Come back M.K.Davis, all is forgiven.
The crazy dude was right all along.
When you start looking at these vids, there are sticks everywhere…
DWA- Nice revision. 🙂 I just think as far as these videos go, there can be a little hyperanalysis going on from both sides. A firm skeptic (see, I can be rserved with my use of the “other term”), may look for reasons why it must be a human to the point of making some pretty big assumptions or seeing things that may not be there, and others who want this to be a video of a sas will do the same thing. A lot of things can be read in to this particular clip, but one of my usual yardstick mental experiments is to imagine showing this to a person who knew nothing of Bigfoot and wasn’t told what this is a video of, and guessing what they would say when asked “What do you see?”. I doubt the first reaction would be “It’s a hairy bipedal primate!” I am certain that colleagues of mine would not make that first guess. So that suggests to me that it is possible that some hope might be involved with making the connection with what is seen here and Bigfoot.
Some will stare and stare at this video until they convince themselves that that is what this must be and not give weight to the reasons why it might not be a sasquatch. They will see a sagittal crest rather than a hood, or a baby bigfoot on its back, or behavior involving using sticks, where there may be no grounds for these hypothesis other than speculation and wishful thinking. Skeptics will do the same. I am in no way close minded to these videos, but I do consider myself capable of seeing both sides of the coin. I am really trying to weigh what is seen in the video with an open mind, while maintaining a dose of realism and healthy skepticism. Looking at this particular clip, I can see so many reasons why it might be a hunter, and not so many that point to this being a Bigfoot. As far as I can see, this video is not as convincing as a Bigfoot as the more mundane possibility of a hunter. Maybe I am wrong and it IS a Bigfoot, but I am not about to make that presumption without looking at other possibilities as well even if those possibilities may not point to a sasquatch. I am looking for the truth here, not what I want to see.
mystery_man: yup. We got shape shifting truth-twisters and video-scramblers and stick-carriers on both sides of this discussion.
But I still think silvereagle says it best above. I laugh my head off every time I read it. Perfect.
DWA- You’re right, that IS a hilarious post! Somehow I missed that one. I’m definately going to have to tell my Bigfoot buddy about it. 🙂
WildmanMarty made a good point about if you actually caught a bigfoot on tape you wouldn’t just upload it to youtube.com straight away like a sad giddy idiot who just wants to capture something strange on camera so they can get their youtube ratings. I guess you would try and get it researched by a professional in this field first, but everyone has different ways about going about things and I respect that also.
Occam’s Razor folks! Most likely, it’s a blobsquatch. (Duh! So obvious…)
If Patty can wear a bone scünci, I see no reason a Bigfoot can’t carry a cane.
I definitely agree with this ‘creature’ being either a hiker or a hunter with a large coat & hood, and either a walking stick or rifle.
I believe very much in Bigfoot, but to me, this is obviously a human bundled up in wintry outdoor clothes. And, particularly in that 1st pic, you can see where the bottom of a coat possibly ends and then the little calves, ankles and feet begin.
I would like to be wrong about that and it is a Bigfoot, but this is very unconvincing footage IMO.