Yellow Top Bigfoot Video
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 25th, 2009
From the poster of this video at YouTube:
This incredible piece of footage is surely the most amazing record of a sasquatch since the famed Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967! It was recorded last July just outside of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. You can check out the details behind this incredible encounter, as well as a brief history of Colorado’s Yellow Top Bigfoot at our website. More proof will be forthcoming!
Colorado? Humm.
The site says this, in part, about the 2008 footage:
In late July of last year, encouraged by the flurry of sightings, myself and a friend decided to venture into the wilderness just outside Rocky Mountain National Park to try and photograph the Yellow Top Bigfoot. We brought enough sparse supplies for two nights in the woods, as well as a digital still camera and a video camera.
We initially kept to the empty wilderness, thinking seclusion would be a better bet for a sighting. But after after two days and no luck, we decided to head back to our base camp through a way which skirted closer to the border of the Park and its trail system. Early in the afternoon, we decided to rest for lunch. My friend was taking a nap when I heard noises coming from the east of me. Something was walking, but with far more bulk than a deer or elk, and faster than a bear would walk. Before I could grab the video camera, the creature had walked into a small clearing not 50 yards away from me.
The sasquatch was much smaller than I had imagined, 6 1/2 feet tall at most, but perhaps shorter. It had a conical skull and deeply recessed eyes. It’s hair was a light-colored brown, with a slight reddish hue. I could clearly see from its genitalia, which was eerily human, that it was a male. The creature made no sound as it sat beneath a tree, and stayed there, nearly motionless.
For almost five minutes (although it seemed far longer than that), I attempted to retrieve the video camera from its case without disturbing the creature. I had successfully opened the zipper, but overzealously pulled on the velcro holding the top of the case shut. The sasquatch looked quickly in my direction, realizing our presence. Knowing my cover was blown, I quickly pulled the camera out of the case and turned it on….
To be sure, it was an incredible experience – one which sparked our desire to catalog the sightings of the Yellow Top Bigfoot and collect as much evidence as possible to prove its existence. This website will be the fruits of our efforts.
The truth, dear readers, will be forthcoming.
So what is the “truth”? Why so mysterious? There’s someone in a suit? Why all the mystery? Is this a movie promotion?
Who is behind this? Greg102 shares some initial detective work: “Well if you do a simple domain whois on their website, it was created on february 5th 2009 by Noah Sodano. I’m skeptical.”
It turns out there’s a Noah Sodano who is an artist, sometimes filmmaker and the creator behind a December 2008 project called “This Aborted Earth” : “an animated series in production for Television. It’s a funny, twisted Don Quixote-meets-Monty Python-type-voyage through a Medieval universe that mirrors the worst of our own. Composed entirely of 19th Century imagery, This Aborted Earth looks and feels like nothing ever before seen.”
Noah Sodano is easily found online, a 27 year old artist last year, in Littleton, Colorado. He seems to have gone back and forth between universities and colleges in Colorado, for his filmmaking. He was the Winner, Honorable Mention, in the Student Film Category at the 2005 Fort Film Fest in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Nothing original about “Yellow Top,” of course. On many levels.
“Yellow Top” is a Bigfoot name traditionally associated with another part of the USA, not Colorado.
As the website notes: “The creature’s name (‘Yellow Top’) comes from another sasquatch which made several appearances in Ontario from the 1920’s through the 1940’s, and was known for having a light mane of hair on the top of its head. Colorado’s Yellow Top also seems to be fair-haired, which contrasts with the overwhelming reports of dark-haired sasquatch throughout their recorded history.”
Cobalt, Ontario, it will be recalled, is the site of the reports of the old Bigfoot with blond hair on its head called “Yellow Top” and then as it grew more mature, “Old Yellow Top,” in 1906, 1923, 1946, and 1970.
“Old Yellow Top” (of Cobalt, Ontario) drawn by Harry Trumbore in The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates, © Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe 1999, 2006; © Harry Trumbore 1999, 2006.
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.
Oh yeah, that’s “Amazing Footage”, all right!
The video screams “Fake!” to me.
The stride was very slow and purposeful as if someone was carefully copying the the stride of the figure in the Patterson-Gimlin film. Too many trees to get a decent sight of it.
Hoax.
The problem I have with this footage is why is it so short if the sighting was a longer one? Why would sasquatch have hung around with all the noise the cameraman makes? It looks like the movement of a human in a suit to me as opposed to the Patterson/Gimlin footage and finally the moo sound at approximately 20 seconds sounds like a human doing a bad impression of a cow.
This is a guy in a suit, a bad guy in a suit, wait, a bad guy in a bad suit. He states his friend is taking a nap in the woods at the same time he spots the creature. Explain why he isn’t in the shot, or maybe he is in the suit.
A promotional video for sure.
This is the disclaimer taken from their website:
And this is the best footage a ‘professional’ filmmaker could get?? ROFL
Lame.
maybe its manbearpig
It walks like I do.
To me, the video would seem more genuine if not for the hyperbole of the YouTube poster.
That being said, I don’t see the “suit” as a clear fake, unless someone has enhanced this video in some fashion.
Of course, history tells us that this will likely be a fake.
I fear, however, that this website is becoming overly ‘knee-jerk’ reactionary. The reason I enjoy this site is the insight provided by Mr Coleman and those that comment. Of late, however, it feels as if we are dropping the hammer on nearly all sightings or evidence produced for the purpose of humiliating the individual.
Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying always, or every time. I’m not for credulity. And a proven hoaxer should be ‘beat down’.
Still, what happens if someone has the genuine article, or a “perfect” sighting, and they feel there is nowhere to turn for fear of being humiliated, long before they have the opportunity to prove themselves? Biscardi and company dropped a real bomb on cryptozoology, and I think disheartened a lot of people. But we’re still here, and hopefully not going anywhere. It may seem I am rambling, but the willingness to fairly investigate or discuss a sighting or evidence is what has allowed cryptozoology to continue to gather steam.
OK, I’m convinced that, if this isn’t the most amazing video since P/G, it is easily in the running.
I mean, P/G just looked like a film of a sasquatch, on its home ground, departing a scene just as so many of them are described to do in encounter reports. BO-RING.
This amazing video, on the other hand, is a virtual anatomy – a step-by-step primer – of how to spot a hoax!
AMAZING!
1. The word “amazing” is used. Yellow flag right there.
1a. Other self-congratulatory stuff. Not always in a fake, but when it is, you have a fake.
1b. “amazing” and “incredible” in the same sentence! RED flag there.
2. The camera bumps aimlessly around, for no reason discernible, then focuses on something that the cameraman could not have jumped on that quickly unless he knew it was there beforehand. Apparently, if you don’t get tosssed from your horse and get up running, you just can’t get this part right.
3. Then the camera inexplicably loses the critter; does videoman lack Patterson’s cojones? No, there’s another reason he doesn’t want to get closer; and that is
4. Very plainly, guy in suit. Any sas looking and moving like that, I’d have tackled; and this guy stands in the same place shooting aspen trees. Yep, discovery of the century there! Nope, sometimes you just can’t get close enough to the truth.
Why do they bother? Has anyone questioning P/G seen enough of these to know that this may be one of the best fakes? The biggest mistake skeptics make is counting the fakes as evidence against the animal, when nothing could be farther away from what is being reported than the fakes are.
gavinf:
I feel you, buddy, and there are times – like the Peguis video of March 07 – that I do think people aren’t truly evaluating critically but reflexively dumping. And imagining clear hoax indicators where none exist.
Some deserve it, though, and this one does. The proportions and the stumbling – not just the videographer’s stumbling – give this one away. We’ve been hunters for 3.5 milliion years; the search image is human. Done.
No one who has a legitimate encounter should be afraid to step forward. Why are they? And why is it understandable? People who are too ignorant – or too fearful – to call a spade a spade. People who don’t look before screaming hoax.
Like the scientists who first saw the Patterson film.
I don’t know if I would call it a hoax, I think it is more of a promotional gimmick for Noah’s upcoming film “Yellow Top” and that is basically what it says on the website. To be taken with a grain of salt I would say.
And let’s not forget what I think is the number one tell of all hoaxes, which is lack of FEAR by the video shooter. Lessee…eight foot, 500+ lb unpredictable primate mere yards away and Johnny Photog is jumping around, apparently standing up, angling for a better (albeit purposefully unclear) shot. Any sane (or legit) person having a genuine sighting would be frozen to the spot in terror/disbelief or running the other way as fast as they could.
Oh, and getting the camcorder out of its case? Puh-leez…I’d have that thing duct taped to my head before I got there with a solar cell juryrigged to it constantly charging the battery so all I’d have to do is press the record button and look.
Or at least in my hand at all times…
OF all bigfoot sightings the creature NEVER
faces the camcorder. FAKE!!!!!
Movie promo.
…that this is a promotional spot. 🙂
Again I ask, if you’re that close to the creature, why not give chase?
Sure, you’re likely to be injured, perhaps gravely, maybe even killed.
But the mystery will be forever solved.
Oh and its fake. A promo video for a film.
It screamed fake to me when Bigfoot mooed.
Head in hands smashing key board!!!!
Best video since Patty? Give me a break. This doesn’t even come close. What a joke. I thought we were really going to see something. Something to actually compare the Patty footage with. Next Please!!
The animal/performer can be seen rising from a sitting position when we first view it. That’s a few seconds after the camera was turned on, and that, in turn, is a few seconds after the operator made the Velcro noise taking it out of the case. Seems pretty slow for a “spooked” animal.
S.O.P for Sasquatch in credible sightings that resemble this one is simply to walk away. But this one (after being “spooked”) pauses in a stand of trees so it’s there, but hard to film clearly. Hmm.
If this is a real encounter, I’d second grafkiman above: If you have a camera anywhere but in your hands and already turned on, you don’t have a camera. I can forgive that in a tourist or hiker who misses a chance encounter. But if you’re out there looking for BF… if you’ve read even one sighting report, let alone the thousands available… putting the camera in its case is out of the question.
jdoughty:
Good comment. You hear this “where’s the photo?” stuff too often.
This is the easiest skeptical objection to brush off, for exactly the reason you point out. Every time a skeptic says, oh come on, not even one? here’s what you say:
What do you mean? We have a MOVIE. Look at P/G and don’t tell me that’s fuzzy. You can see what that is. Patterson is the only man in history who spent the time AND had the camera ready. And look what you say to that. And you think a weekend grabshooter will get The Shot? What are you ON, pardner? Get educated or get medicated; you need one or the other.
Then you can laugh and go talk to someone serious.
“It screamed fake to me when Bigfoot mooed.”
^^This comment made me laugh out loud. Yep, bit of a giveaway there.
Nothing further to add, since this is pretty conclusively proved to be a promotional video designed to drum up interest in the guy’s site and work. At least he put the disclaimer out there where it could be found with a little looking, I respect that.
First thing I thought of when I read “Yellow Top Bigfoot”: Aww, Sas – I know we’re all getting older, old buddy, but bleaching your hair to look younger is just pathetic. Go with the silverback look, it’s MUCH more dignified.
Well, I see still no one has been able to to successfully recreate what we see in the Patterson film, even a film project aiming to simulate a realistic looking Bigfoot. I’m waiting to see if anyone comes up with a film that really is “The most amazing record of a sasquatch since the famed Patterson-Gimlin film of 1967.”
Not saying PG is definitely the real deal, I’m a known skeptic (not scoftic) here, but it is curious that even now no one manages to emulate it even with modern technology.
mystery_man: That is so scoftical. Stop it and BELIEVE. 😀
Well, you know, it is interesting, isn’t it? It is so much easier for almost anyone to do something so much better than even the best could do in 1967. Yet no one seems able to do it, and this is supposed to be a career-maker. And the guy who made his career doing it – supposedly – has never talked, and thus never gotten a thing from it, and no one who helped him (Bob Hieronymous. Puh-leeze. Do you believe in the Great Pumpkin, too?) has ever cracked, despite the much more than 15 minutes of fame to anyone who could ever show how it was done.
A very logical point that scoftics can’t seem to get their minds around, eh?
Long time lurker, first time poster here…
“It screamed fake to me when Bigfoot mooed.”…LOL
Yes, everyone should crank up their volume and get ready for a good laugh as the “creature” slips behind the trees and lets loose his best impression of a distressed cow…lol
While fakes like these can be irritating, they do, in my opinion, actually bolster the P/G film as they only make it look more and more realistic. You would think if the P/G film was a fake, as many scientists and cynics have claimed, that in the 41 plus years since, we’d have atleast gotten 1 film that can out do it, or even compare in quality…and I haven’t seen it yet.
JohnAdams:
Not to keep on going here. lol
But one of the hardest things for a human to do is to imitate another animal, in a way that consistently deflects sophisticated scrutiny.
Every “critter hoax” I have seen – and every artificial animal, in a suit or on a computer screen – points this up, emphatically. We simply cannot – we CANNOT – make it look, sound, or act like a critter, not in a way that withstands more than a few oohs and aahs in a movie theatre. Those – and I mean the absolute best of them – are always WOW! GREAT!, for a fake.
Sasquatch evidence has received very tight scrutiny, by qualified people who took the risk to step outside the strict hidebounding of their disciplines to look into the unknown.
It still stands.
And everything like this simply serves as more material to build up, ever higher, the pedestal upon which the evidence rests. It’s only an unsophisticated scoftic, or an ignorant layman, who sees the fakes as evidence against. It’s really evidence in favor. You can’t accept reverse proof. But I have never seen or heard of anyone reviewing the evidence – with the requisite technical and scientific chops – that is considered solid by Bigfooters and thinking anything other than: wow, this could be the real thing,.
In fact, it could be the fakes that wind up convincing me the animal is real. Imagine that.
So like JohnAdams says: don’t get frustrated at fake after fake. the truly knowledge-based attitude goes like this:
Every fake makes the case stronger and stronger.
I don’t understand how two amateurs capture video footage of a Bigfoot after spending only two days in the woods, while some scientific teams spend weeks out in the woods and never see a thing. I have to believe that it’s a fake.
And I don’t understand this – “Every fake makes the case stronger and stronger.”
Uhh… have you ever heard of the boy who cried wolf? Eventually people will start ignoring videos like this (not that they aren’t already) and someone will get the real bigfoot on camera, but no one will believe him/her, and then it’ll go extinct and we won’t find any proof. Even I at one point in high school wanted to get some friends to go make a Bigfoot video in the woods behind my house.
DWA- By the way, I have a question for you, since I know that you are quite read up on sasquatch sighting reports. What do the sightings records for Colorado look like anyway? I know that this video is not the real thing, but I’m curious as to what the density and types of sightings are like in Colorado. It has occurred to me that I cannot recall any sightings from there, yet it seems like there are just as many good potential sasquatch habitats in Colorado as anywhere else. Rather than go trudging through the sightings databases, I figured I’d ask you.
Any information or insights into sasquatch in Colorado would be appreciated.
lol Winn, I don’t think there’ll be much worry about them going extinct, seems their numbers almost might be on the rise. Regardless, they’ve survived for…however long they’ve been here, despite the technological scarring we’ve subjected this continent to in the form of major highways, cities, railroads and shopping malls. People just don’t realize how vast this country is, and how much of it is just not inhabited by, never has been and quite likely never will be by humans. Matter of fact I remeber some brainless knowitall on some other site proclaim there wasn’t a place in the U.S. that wasn’t further than 5 miles away from a road. I had a good guffaw from that. I know a few remote places I could drop that guy in that would have him pluggin’ his pampers…
Mystery man,
I live along the front range in Ft Collins, Colorado. Aside from a few sightings in the 70’s east of I-25, most of the sightings here occur around Pikes Peak west of Colorado Springs (they have an official “Bigfoot highway” road sign up there) and the Routt Nat’l Forest in the NW part of the state near Walden. I was astonished to find out there seem to be a lot more sightings in Illinois/Indiana near where I grew up in the midwest than here.
mystery_man:
Oh, come on. Must I do all your research? 😀
CO actually has a sighting history that is not as rich as some Upset Winners like OH, PA, TX and GA. But some of the most compelling reports of encounter I have read – with descriptions that dovetail quite neatly with descriptions I have read from many other places – come from CO. And remember: lots of people don’t report sightings. I would pay to know, if paying would get it done, how many scientists have seen one and have never let on. “Woodpecker? I don’t think so. Nothing in a month of looking. But I…um, never mind…”
I should add that the encounter reports – many of which don’t even involve sightings, how weird is THAT for a hoax? – are anything but a trudge. To someone who has been into animals since he could walk, the sighting reports are candy, and you can eat them by the bag. Appearance, food preferences, fe(e)ts of derring-do that no human could perform, shelters, wood-knocking, intimidation, hog killing, deer killing, swimming after salmon and steelhead, whole deal. You’d think the scoftics would want to have a little fun. But then, they don’t seem to get out much.
Winnerbauer: you, um, need to read my posts again, I think.
You seem to think that the sasquatch is going to be discovered by Some Lucky Weekender With A Camera. I’d wait for a free Jaguar (either kind); it’s much more likely.
But actually, your post makes the opposite point, in its first paragraph. You should just note that no “scientific team” of the kind you describe has ever spent the time you describe looking for either yeti or sasquatch. There’s Patterson and Gimlin. And, um, that’s the list.
What has me confused is your reaction to my (true) comment that the fakes make the case stronger and stronger. You are making the exact same mistake the scoftics make, and that I explicitly point out: thinking that the fakes are evidence one way or the other. They are nothing, and they count for nothing.
Boys, wolves, whatever. Inapplicable, doesn’t matter, beside the point. The sasquatch will be confirmed when – and only when – a
scientific team goes into the field, for whatever time is required – and for proof I don’t think weeks will cut it at all – and obtains proof that no Youtube debunker can deny. Which will be far more than a Youtube clip, oh trust me there.
Every fake makes P/G stronger. Every fake shows just how unlikely – as it stands now, virtually zero likelihood – it is that that film was faked. As does every year that goes by with the alleged maker of history’s alleged greatest deception not stepping forward to claim his beyond-statute-of-limitations credit. Compared to P/G, a faked Rembrandt is kindergarten. And the suspicion continues to mount – and should, as we have thoroughly shown here, with every single fake – that it is way beyond Rembrandt. Like, real, and living right under our noses without arousing the scientific mainstream for five centuries.
People should ignore every single bingle gingle zingle Bigfoot video. (Except P/G, which gets harder to ignore with every one like this one.) Until one comes out that is backed by additional evidence, gathered by convinced scientists, that amounts to proof.
The same way science does everything else.
And I do have one more generic question.
Anyone notice – particularly those conspiracy mavens who think that things like the Roe sighting provided Patterson with the inspiration for a fake – that, for all the footprints produced before 1967, THERE WAS NEVER, EVER A SINGLE SUIT FAKE DONE? And that every single one POST-DATES P/G? And that not one is even anywhere close to being in its league?
Oh, just a coincidence. Gotcha.
there is a simple phrase for everyone who videos a “REAL” Bigfoot in the wild. “Follow the damn thing”!! Why do all these groundbreaking documentations always film a wandering “animal “but never decide to chase the damned thing??? Even if it is your best friend in a monkey suit , run and give chase . We need entertainment since you aren’t proving anything!! Entertain us!!!
m_m:
Since you asked about CO, and that’s the state this thread is about, here are some of the more compelling accounts I’m aware of from there:
1. The woman who got a very good, close-up look at one, while backpacking. It was about eight to twelve feet from her; her look was good enough for a pretty evocative artist’s sketch. Her description of the face is the best I have ever heard, given what I’ve seen of conceptions of it: “just on the human side of halfway between a human and a gorilla.”
2. The elk hunters who flushed one near the end of a long day in the Routt National Forest. It raced up the opposite slope of the canyon they were in, grabbing trees and brush to pull itself up the slope at a very high rate of speed. One of the hunters got a good look at it through his rifle scope; he had no doubts. Not that the others did, either. The three hunters thought enough of their encounter to (1) follow the roughly three-mile cross-country route of devastation the critter left in its wake – they were bone tired before they started this – and (2) report their sighting to a ranger, who went right out and got classic footage. (Riiiiight. You know what the ranger said; and liquids of the kind popular at loud parties figured prominently.)
3. The father and son who had no doubt what kind of huge, bipedal, muscular creature with vivid eyeshine was caught in their headlights one night – but were so flabbergasted they couldn’t get out the word to tell the investigator what, precisely, it was.
4. Hunter and wife in Moffat County, who heard one: “This sound was so primal, so intense, so big, that it raised the hair on my arms and the back of my neck, and I was chilled as I have never been before in the wilderness. I know what bear, elk, raptors, and big cats sound like in Colorado, and I assure you, this was nothing like I have ever even imagined.”
5. From Pitkin County, more eyeshine: “As a comparison, later in the trip we were camping and had a fire burning when a whitetail deer came into our view. The full-grown doe was approx. 20 feet from me, and looking straight at me. The doe’s eyes were no more than one-quarter the size of the eyes of the critter standing 70 feet away from me that I’ve mentioned above. In other words, the eyes were big. Also, I stand at 6-foot-1-inch and this thing had to be over 8-feet tall.” Only one bit of detail from a detailed report with more incidents on one night of backpacking – including a sighting of more than eyes – than you can shake a tree at.
For starters. 😉
Oh. CO has 99 reports on the BFRO database. Pretty healthy, actually.
DWA- Awesome. Thank you very much for the information and doing my research for me. 🙂
I think the best bet for such a long term study to come together right now is for some intrepid researcher to get private funding and have at it. The more evidence they then come up with (if anything) that is solid and peer reviewable, the more credibility that line of research would gain in the eyes of the greater scientific community. Right now, we need scientists who are willing to break the mold and commit to such an endeavor on their own dime, it seems. One thing is for sure, complaining or moaning about it (as tempting as it may be), is not going to be the thing that sways anyone within the scientific community.
Believe me, finding a sasquatch would make a biologist’s career. They are not going to willingly ignore and turn down the chance to make the biggest zoological discovery in history if they think there is a chance it could be out there. As soon as they are more convinced that something is there to be found, funding will start to come in.
grafikman- Thanks to you too for sharing that information.
Yea, clearly a FAKE!
m_m: Oh, I’ve long since quit crying and moaning about the lassitude of the scientific mainstream.
I agree with you that private individuals funded privately are the thing for the moment. Indeed, all I ask from the mainstream is for them to stop pooh-pooing without even looking at the evidence. “I haven’t looked at the evidence, but I haven’t seen proof yet either” is as negative as I think a scientist should get on this topic. I mean, science lives by evidence. How can you pronounce what you are doing true to science when you aren’t even examining the evidence?
Not too much to ask, is it? 🙂
And of course, with reports, there’s much more where those came from. Candy, I tell you.
DWA- Hey, I’d be willing to give it a crack, If I had the funding. And lived in the States. And if I wasn’t caught up in research regarding known animals. And, yeah, knew my credibility as a scientist wouldn’t suffer. I can’t even get something decent together to go after the Honshu wolf. But the point is hey, not everyone in the scientific community thinks sasquatch is a pointless pursuit. 😉 It’s just the ones who pay the bills aren’t seemingly among them. The research has to be seen as more viable, and quite frankly, less fringe by the greater scientific community before it acquires any large scale support.
Right now, for many scientists, the evidence just has not made much of an impact on established paradigms. That may change, but not anytime soon I think. It’s sort of a vicious cycle that the evidence that would be collected and presented in an acceptable manner won’t likely be found unless someone does a study, and the study won’t happen without the evidence. Those who want a serious study done are going to have to do it out of their own pocket for the time being.
I’m much more hopeful that well funded research on other animals or habitats will perhaps turn up “spin off” findings related to sasquatch. For example, a group of biologists out studying bears might come across sasquatch or solid physical evidence of one. A group of serious biologists coming face to face with thses creatures will find it hard to ignore. They’ll likely try to collect what evidence they can in an acceptable manner for scientific review (after first changing their shorts, I imagine 🙂 ), even though it wasn’t the original purpose of their research.
Lots of new species have been discovered in this way.
Not only is this a cruddy, clearly fake, video, but it’s also a lousy promo: Why would I want to see this guy’s movie on the basis of it? I guess he figured he’d get enough attention from this (like the Penn & Teller Bigfoot video) that he would generate interest in his film, but the signal-to-noise ratio of BF videos these days is way too high for that.
Hi guys. I’m new here.
I’ve been doing private, recreational research on cryptozoology subjects for the past couple years. I’ve been to YouTube, searched for sasquatch vids, and similar stuff, and I’ve come across some obvious fakes.
At least THIS one pretends to be legitimate.
To DWA: thanks for the list of stuff to look for. I never noticed or thought of that before. I’ll keep it in mind.
smbcomix: don’t take me TOO too seriously. 😀
OK, yeah, most all of that stuff is in most all of the fakes I’ve seen. But the other extreme to the “amazing incredible sttooooopenyoopus!!!!!!!!” tack is the one that says: saw this on the way to work this morning. Just wondering what you all think.
Those are fake too. I know because I read sighting reports – essential training for anyone who wants to be able to spot fakes. The reactions you read in the Youtube fakes bear no resemblance to what people filing reports tell you they felt.
(BFRO.net; Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. They’re the best sites I’ve seen.)
But anyway. I read where people are imagining all kinds of stuff that ain’t there. One of the standard fake labels – the camera panning, as if the shooter has ESP, to the place where the ‘animal’ walks into the frame some moments later – was pulled out for critiques of the Peguis, Manitoba video. This video (it’s on Youtube), for my money, is the only one I’ve seen other than Patterson-Gimlin that I think could be the genuine article. And everybody says: the camera went to the spot and waited for the critter to show up! Well, yeah. Because, if you read the backstory, the driver told the passenger to dive into the back for the camcorder when they saw it crossing the road. By the time he came up with the cam, the critter had gone behind a hillock in its direction of travel. You can hear the shooter mutter “I don’t see it” and start panning back to the road, when suddenly the head pops out from behind the hillock. No way a hoaxer can time that. (Oh. Looks to be about nine feet tall, walking in snow off road. Tough to fake.) Peguis looks feels and sounds like an actual encounter – the only video other than P/G (which has no sound) that does, to me. I argued Peguis the other night with a guy – an IT tech no less – who kept telling me it looked Photoshopped. I thought he knew more about computers and I know he knows tons more than me. Peguis ain’t photoshopped; it beats P/G if it was. The things he was telling me were the indicators I could tell, just looking at the video, weren’t. Too many people invent Photoshop artifacts that just ain’t there.
But, in the end, what cinches it is the figure. My read of many many sighting reports makes one thing very clear: sasquatch don’t look human, or like people in suits. If something does…then it IS.
smbcomix:
Something else that might be a good addition to your debunk software.
When somebody tells you it was Photoshopped, tell him to do it.
This has been the best response to the P/G film critics for 40 years. No one has been able either to duplicate it acceptably, or even to provide a decent postulate for how it was done.
Photoshop is standard-issue software; anyone who’s a competent user should be able to show you how a fake was done. Anyone who says he doesn’t know how to show you that isn’t competent enough to assert that something was Photoshopped. Anyone who can do it, will do it, to show you up. No they WILL; human nature is at work, and you are talking to someone who knows human nature. Anyone who begs off, you can blow off, because he is simply making an assumption, based on zero evidence, that he cannot defend.
I didn’t have to resort to this to tell off the tech guy I was arguing with the other day. I just told him: your assertions don’t hold water. Those aren’t Photoshop effects; they’re what a video looks like. He couldn’t get past his simple(minded) assertion that no, they WERE. Well, no, they WEREN’T. My kind has been evolving as a hunter for 3.5 million years; and unlike some who spend too much time indoors looking at screens, I am one of the ones who hasn’t forgotten that. If I think it was not Photoshopped, it was not. And if you cannot show me, you cannot assert that. You simply lack the technical knowhow to even make the assertion.
One of cryptozoology’s biggest handicaps is that it doesn’t tell off scientists (like that Eugenie Scott person who’s been showing up here lately) who come to the discussion without having done their homework. Cryptos need to fire back. They’re shooting, they should know, at an opponent who is unarmed.
m_m:
“A group of serious biologists coming face to face with thses creatures will find it hard to ignore. They’ll likely try to collect what evidence they can in an acceptable manner for scientific review (after first changing their shorts, I imagine ), even though it wasn’t the original purpose of their research.
Lots of new species have been discovered in this way.”
Now THIS is how to frame the assertion “why wouldn’t a scientist want to make the discovery of the century?”
Because one of them, by himself, won’t. That’s why one of them, by himself, wouldn’t.
It almost seems as if a mutual-dare mentality needs to take hold in the scientific mainstream. Like a game of zoological chicken. A group of scientists, who have decided that the Uncomfortable Silences around the office, and the knee-jerk, hip-shooting dismissals, have gone far enough, say: Hey. Why don’t a few of us go on stakeout? We’ll keep each other honest. If there is something out there – and all three (5, 6, 13, 55, whatever number) see it, or we are satisfied that more than one of us did, l think we might get ourselves some notoriety, some fun (read, A WHOLE LOT OF FUN), and a little less likelihood of black lung from the library stacks. Wot say?
Geez, mainstreamers, think of it as a debunking exercise with an edge. Do your homework and you’ll see how much of an edge.
Wouldn’t this be FUN? (And think of the fun your dry cleaners will have when you come back!)