Update: Manitoba Bigfoot Video
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on March 14th, 2007
Updated with embedded video from youtube:
As I stated in my initial post here on Cryptomundo concerning this new Bigfoot video footage at New Manitoba Bigfoot Video, I would post any additional details from Doug Thomas if he provided any.
Mr. Thomas responded to my initial request on Monday, March 12, stating the following:
Today my son and I returned to the sight. I realize a week has past and people have a lot of questions but this next video may help answer a few questions.
Doug Thomas
Peguis ManitobaP.S.
I just started uploading todays video please give it about an hour.Doug Thomas
He then sent me the following later that evening:
I’m having some problems uploading ill try again. Doug Thomas
I received the following from Mr. Thomas last night, March 13.
I regret to inform you that I will not be posting the follow up video or respond to comments for questions, in respect to my wife and sons wishes.
Thanks
Doug Thomas Doug Thomas
I don’t know if the comments here at Cryptomundo made Mr. Thomas change his mind, or if the notoriety of having publicly posted a supposed Bigfoot video did it.
Here is the video again to refresh your memory.
Here is the link to the video on metacafe for those that aren’t able to view the video here on Cryptomundo.
View latest update on video with commentary by Doug Thomas here on Cryptomundo at:
Latest Update: Manitoba Bigfoot 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.
I should have added here: the evidence seems to indicate that the joke may be on the hoaxers.
If of course they’re hoaxing something they don’t think exists.
In the Photoshop example above, the “debunker” presumed fake a totally plausible, if rather exciting, natural occurrence, something the motivation for faking which would be hard for me to figure out. (Red fox and golden eagle, in Finland, fighting over a carcass. That happens, and the fox doesn’t always win. He didn’t here.)
If a hoaxer – or a debunker – is acting in ignorance of the evidence…who’s the ignoramus?
I’m not a “debunker” DWA. I just figure it makes sense to start with the most obvious objections first so as to not waste our time.
Are you proposing we ignore everything else except for the part it shows the BF?
Well, I don’t really want to shout HOAX. I would not do that without all the facts, which are lacking here so far. In fact, I am waiting for good video as much as anyone else. But I am trying to look at this video from an unbiased viewpoint of what it really shows and to me, what it really shows to even a casual observer and it doesn’t show much that I can’t honestly say is not a man. I personally am not trying to willfully debunk this video, and I don’t think I am being cynical to question what I think is quite probably not what it is claimed to be from the evidence I see so far. To me, this is not cynicism and anyone who has read my posts knows I am not a “scofftic”. I will support anything I see as compelling. But darn it I am looking at what is there, and this video to me does not show anything particularly out of the ordinary that cannot be explained as something more mundane. I am just not seeing the incredible size or agility that is being seen by some.
I do want a thorough investigation and I want it before I proclaim this to be anything other than what it appears to me to be, which is something that is maybe not a spectacular discovery at this point in time and quite possibly a man with a hood or parka. I really don’t think this is debunking or scoffing. This is what it in all honestly appears to be and I cannot find anything out of human norms to lead me to believe otherwise. In fact, i don’t think I should have to watch it over and over trying to will myself to think it is Bigfoot. I think true believer-cals can be just as bad as cyn-icals here in these cases. Maybe some more evidence will come back and it will turn out to be as huge as people claim and I will be happy to have been wrong about it. I have no problem with being wrong here, I just want to get to the bottom of these things.
I am being skeptical in that I am questioning what people are claiming about this video and I think my reasons for thinking this way are not unreasonable. To me, questioning it in this manner IS true skepticism and I think cryptozoology needs this. DWA, I respect your opinions quite a lot, and I see where you are coming from on this video, but I just can’t agree with you on this one. There is nothing wrong at all with you going with your gut here, but I can’t see this as a Bigfoot just yet without something that will put it beyond the realm of possibility for being a human. I just had my skep-tical prescription renewed 🙂 and I am not buying this peice of evidence without more investigation done.
No, skeptic. At least not quite. (Didn’t say you were a debunker. You don’t appear to be just that.)
But swnoel says it more succinctly than I have, so let’s go to him.
“Certainly is an incredible video of something.
Only problem is, you can’t tell what that something is.
I’ll keep waiting.”
That thing looks, just, WEIRD, when you sort out the noise and focus on it. Weirder than guys in hooded sweaties (a common “looked like” in sighting reports, before they realize what it is) or ape suits tend to look, to me.
I want to see EVERYTHING. And then sort. I haven’t sorted this one fully, yet. But I know what looks different. And I’ve already allowed it could be hoaxed. But what looks different says that if it was, these guys are for sure paying attention.
Now the noise needs to be dealt with. Others will have to do that, and I await what they say.
We just tend to jump to judgment. Which is different from, as you note, posting your reservations. Now we have to see those reservations dealt with. I just don’t want the noise to drown out the signal, if signal it is.
A good example of what I mean is that thread here on the new clouded leopard. The scientific findings I read on news clips had me rolling my eyes and thinking, what, a few coat differences and it’s a new species?
Then I saw the photo when the blog went up on this site. That’s a different animal. Skull: different. Coat, yep, different. Tail, different too. Build: different.
DIFFERENT animal. Yet no one saw it, for a century, and even the articles in the news didn’t note the most prominent differences, differences that kittenz and I picked up in about four seconds.
You have to look, account for everything, and sort. Not – as apparently happened with the two leopards – just seeing what you want to see. Kittenz and I saw it so quick because, for one thing, we’ve seen lots of pics of the mainland clouded leopard and second, we weren’t in that “specialist” box that often screens new data TOO effectively. That’s one of the strengths crypto – and sites like this – can bring to the zoological table. If you’re here, you tend not to be in a scientific box.
We’re seeing different stuff with this video, for sure. I’ve heard people say short arms? Really? I instantly thought: those arms are LONG. And I still think so. The proportions and interactions don’t look, to me, human, or artificially acted out. If this is a guy, GREAT costume (many sighters would say “that’s what I saw”) and he was coached well and is an excellent, natural actor. (And he’s either one tall dude or someone did a great paste-in job.)
If Mastertrack faked this, and I’m a bigshot producer, I wouldn’t care. I’d bring ’em to Hollywood and say, here’s the big leagues. Do this for me and you’ll be rich!
If they did this….they’re not smart enough to shop it where it should be shopped? They sure look smart enough. Maybe this is the pilot. 😀
mystery_man: just saw yours. And I hope you don’t think I was lumping you in with HOAX! shouters. I know you better than that, and I know that like everyone who looks at this, you’re evaluating what you see.
There’s a lot of noise here, and what may be a signal. The noise makes the signal – or whether there is one – damned hard to evaluate.
You said it, I think: “I am not buying this peice of evidence without more investigation done.”
Me neither. (Why do you think I’m yelling for a measuring tape? :-D)
DWA- I didn’t think you were lumping me in with the HOAX shouters or scofftics, at least I hoped not! Now where is that darn measuring tape? 🙂
O.K. I finally got to see it; I’d say it’s maybe 60-40 real. The odd angles that the line of site from the camera create make the arms look short at first but later in the video you get a better profile shot with the arm down and slightly swung back and it looks quite long. It looks big, the neck maybe a little longer than Patty’s, but then again the up angle doesn’t help here. There are similarity’s in the camera bump at just the same place in the Patterson film, odd I’d say, but then again maybe we have a tendency to re-adjust when we think we have something extraordinary in view. I don’t know, but not an obvious hoax. Nowhere near the quality of Patterson’s film though, so you can’t study as in depth. Patterson’s has stood the test of time, science etc. This film is just a head scratcher and inconclusive, but I’d mount a search in the area if I had the resources and was close by…I’d definitely take a big gun and some friends with same.
Hey, I have a question. Has this video and story been on any local news broadcasts? Don’t you think that a reporter would have brought a little attention to this piece of evidence(even if alot of people don’t believe in the squatch). I just thought that if a local news team went out there they would have maybe got some better shots of the local area. Or is Mr. Thomas not talking to them? Somebody please clue me in on this.
Craig: somebody needs to encourage this guy, particularly if he’s reacting to perceived scorn.
If he isn’t hoaxing, and I still doubt that, he has something here. If he could at least point some serious researchers to the site to measure that would be cool.
Keep us updated.
I’m not going to say that I think its a hoax, but the thing I find most troubling is in the very beginning, before the camera zooms in to catch the figure on the other side of the knoll. They had to have spotted this figure and thought it was something highly unusual from a very long distance off, if as was reported, the son had to climb in the back to grab the video camera. That strikes me as suspect.
jchip: don’t be troubled at all.
That’s what (they say) happened; they saw it crossing the road. When the son got the camera, after first checking the whole field to make sure, he zoomed to the place they expected the animal to be. You can see (he imagines) an instant of hesitation, around the moment the son says he can’t see it, when he seems to be panning back toward the road, then, there it is.
The camera movement is one of the pluses for me; things happen on camera the way they say they happened in their heads.
If the father saw this thing crossing and thought it was that unusual, that starts to rule out, for me, the idea that these were two innocents getting hoaxed. (In fact, panning straight where they did makes it almost impossible that they were hoaxed, unless they were telepaths. 😀 ) Either they were the hoaxers, or that thing is as unusual as it looks to me.
We aren’t going to know until we hear more. And I have to admit the sneaking feeling that when we hear more I’ll roll my eyes.
But if we don’t….hey, anybody want to run an expedition to Manitoba? OK, you can bring your sas hunt gear…but I’m talking about finding this guy and making him talk!
Hi. I’m DWA, and I’m hoping for a job in cryptozoology.
My question: will becoming known as “The Manitoba Video Obsessive” be sufficient qualification?
Whoops, this isn’t the CZ FAQ thread, is it…?
Just thought of another thing.
(No, that isn’t Patty.)
After the video runs real time, they stick in a slowdown to virtual frame-by-frame speed.
Does that look more like:
1) Somebody who wants, really, to know what this thing is?
2) Somebody who is confident – at least at the time he did that – that what is on here isn’t human?
or
3) Somebody who hoaxed it, and wants to give you the maximum opportunity to spot it? And is utterly confident there is no way you will?
I know, I know. Hoaxers work in mysterious ways.
Mysterious things show up on videos, too.
Hello, I am new to cryptomundo and this is my first post here. Before posting a comment on this thread I’d like to present my position regarding the Sas. I believe they are real creatures from the prehistoric age before humans existed.
As for this Manitoba film clip it’s apparent the creature covers a great deal of ground in a very short time. We can see it travels on two feet. It has swinging arms and human like head. It does not surprise me there was as much camera shake given the level of surprise we experience when experiencing a bigfoot event. However it deeply troubles me that it never occurred to these people to look down at the tracks this creature has left behind. After all just about 99% of the evidence on this science is based on foot tracks. But these people claim it never occurred to them look down.
Like I said I have trouble accepting this so called oversight. I give this material only 25% chance of validity.
I have looked at this video a couple of times fellows and it still looks like a guy in a parka with the hood up, maybe wearing cross country skies, out for some exercise on some deep hard pack snow.Probably has snowmobile bibs on under the parka and a full face ski mask.What was the temperature out side?
I just think these two guys saw somebody where they didn’t expect to and let their minds play games. Watch when He reaches up to knock a branch away. Probably some guy out checking his trap line. Didn’t even seem bothered by the approach of the vehicle.
I know we all want to see a real Bigfoot, but fellows, I just think that is what this guys drinking buddies call him.
DWA- That is one thing that is very odd, isn’t it? If this was a planned hoax, why bother to give a frame by frame version of the video in slow motion and thereby risk debunking? It wouldn’t make any sense to include that if you were a hoaxer. At first I was thinking maybe they weren’t in on the hoax and they were essentially hoaxed themselves, but then why would they mistake a guy walking through the snow in a parka(something probably pretty common around those parts) for something so fantastic that they had to get the video camera out? I’ll admit, these are two things that are hard to explain. My stance on this video hasn’t changed, but it is curious.
I know this area and ridge popular trees are not very tall, this would make this “creature” only 5-6 feet. One thing to add, the “Interlake spectator” (local newspaper), recently did a report about a film crew heading out into the area to document sightings in the interlake area. Therefore one would conclude that the “muffin topped” stature of this creature would be more of an opportunity than a reality. Of course this is only my opinion.
YAK YAK YAK, 66 times!
And what have we learned, boys and girls?
Well, apparently, mischievous folks in Manitoba (which is well-known for its mischief-makers) like to put on strange costumes and wait around on snowy hilltops in the cold for someone with a camcorder to come along, and then they run away, in case said camcorder-wielders also wield big guns.
So, it’s either a REAL cryptid video, or it isn’t.
It’s either a guy in a parka, or a real creature, or neither.
The camera loses focus at a critical point, but it might have been a bump in the road, or not.
The figure is either too big or too small to be a Bigfoot.
Its head is too big (but it could be a guy in a parka).
Its arms are too short, or too long, to be human.
It walks really fast and smoothly, or maybe not.
The snow is light and fluffy, and waist deep.
Or maybe wet and heavy, and ankle deep.
To a guy in a parka, that is.
But not to a seven foot basketball player.
It looks ape-like, but it’s too far away to tell.
The cameraman looks where he thought the figure might show up, and there it is! Suspicious.
The inexperienced, non-professional father and son team, flustered, excited and maybe even a little scared, “didn’t even think” to video the footprints, or whip out a measuring device to document their size or step or stride! Suspicious.
This team also didn’t think to run into the woods after the beast to try to get better video. VERY Suspicious!
They then took the video to a professional group to process it, including slo-mo and labeling! HOAX!!
Then they posted it on MetaCafe, a money-making site, instead of YouTube, which isn’t (yet). HOAX!! FRAUD!! MONEY SCHEME!!
Or, maybe not?
Good thing the video wasn’t closer, more focused, better lit, longer, from a different angle, with stereo sound (including a grunt or two), with original commentaries – can you imagine how many comments there’d be then??