Faking Bigfoot: Recreating The Laziest Bigfoot Hoax Of The Year
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on June 29th, 2011
Here’s an interesting post regarding the Spokane River Bigfoot iPhone Video from a month ago.
Source: Who Forted?
Greg Newkirk
Originally published June 2, 2011 5:19 pm
If you’ve got an internet connection and a pulse, you’ve probably heard a lot about a certain video uploaded to YouTube last weekend that involved a couple hikers and a guest appearance by a legendary cryptid (we covered it in the Daily Weird earlier, should you need a quick look at the details).
To be honest, I’m surprised that the “Spokane Bigfoot” video has gained as much attention as it has. When the clip originally popped up in my google alerts feed last week, I gave it a watch, had a laugh, and passed it off, thinking that no one could possibly think the video was for real. I was, quite obviously, wrong.
At the time of this posting, the video has climbed to over 200,000 views, and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down, with bigfoot enthusiast websites like Cryptomundo running stories about it every other day, and regular attention from major media news outlets. Yet, how come, through all of this, the uploader known only as Samantha13950, refuses to do any kind of public interview?
Simple: the video is almost certainly faked. Why do I think so? Because after noticing the lack of real journalism going on regarding the extremely lame hoax (at least the “Georgia Bigfoot” a few years back had some effort put into it), we went ahead and shot the same thing yesterday afternoon to prove how easy it was:
Not too shabby, huh? Sure, maybe Dana didn’t have the lumbering gait of a Sasquatch perfected, but we didn’t feel like putting Tim Holmes on a plane to Ontario so that he could school us in the intricacies of Bigfoot trotting.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that our crude recreation isn’t enough to make up your mind. First of all, let’s take into consideration the context of the video. All we know is that a few kids went for a hike in the Spokane woods, and amazingly, as they rewatch their hiking footage at home, they notice something strange in the background.
Let me ask you, how often do people use their shitty iPhone cameras to capture riveting footage of woodland hikes? Sure, there’s a whole lot of boring stuff on YouTube, but shaky camera-phone video of hiking smacks of a sketchy set-up right from the start.
Several days ago, Samantha13950 gave a quote via email to Inlander.com about where the video was taken.
“I will let you know that we were in downriver park where the big hill starts to flatten out down by the river. The video is from my iphone. I was filming my friends slapping at ginormous mosquitoes and trying to get through some thick weeds.”
The portion of land in question, as evidenced by a quick look at google maps, shows that the forest they were “hiking” in, is just a thin strip of woods directly adjacent to Spokane Community College. Take a look at how the blonde in the video is dressed. Seems like she just came from some kind of sports practice, doesn’t it? Well, another quick google search confirms that there was a huge track and field meet going on at the college the weekend of the supposed encounter. We’re talking hundreds of bored kids sitting around by the woods while they wait for their events. Perfect time for a little fun with the iPhone, no?
Finally, take a gander at the Bigfoot itself. It doesn’t really look like anything like the Sasquatch that we’ve come to know over the years. It doesn’t appear very tall, muscular, or hairy, which is pretty contradictory of traditional reports. If you watch the clip closely, it honestly just looks like the silhouette of a dude in high tops sneaking through the woods. Are those Nikes?
Alright, so maybe, just maybe, these kids were hiking through the forest and innocently caught something they hadn’t planned on. But I highly doubt it. Too many things don’t make sense for it to be considered a serious piece of evidence in the hunt for Bigfoot, and until the uploader decides to cowboy up and step out from behind the anonymous mask of Samantha13950 for a proper interview, or uploads the full video, what we’re stuck with is an inconclusive clip that’s going to be debated and argued about in cryptozoological circles for years to come.
But that’s probably the point. So where is the reasonable journalism at?
Let me back up for a minute. I love paranormal hoaxes. They’re fun, and when they’re done right, they can provide years of mystery and magic to a subject that has a tendency to get a bit stale. Lots of people have been able to make a fun hobby out of sniffing out hoaxes. For example, look at the the excellent skeptic podcast MonsterTalk. While a sizable portion of the so-called “skeptic movement” like to busy themselves by telling stupid people to stop doing things only stupid people do anyway, people like the MonsterTalk gang are having fun educating people on the subject of cryptids and their rational explanations, and honestly, being true paranormal investigators while they’re at it.
Hoaxes are an inevitable part of searching out the weird, and you don’t have to identify as a skeptic to dispel any of your own bunk findings. I certainly don’t consider myself a skeptic by any means, and yet I don’t have a problem calling bullshit when it see it.
My point is that if the mainstream (and paranormal) media are going to circle jerk over a really bad hoax, they ought to do at least five minutes of research on the bit they’re promoting. Don’t worry, you can still have fun with it, and providing reasons that the amazing find might not be genuine won’t ruin your supernatural street cred or automatically make you a skeptic. It will, on the other hand, make you look a little more reasonable in your beliefs.
Or, at least, a little less lazy.
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.
further proof that it takes absolutely no effort to create a blobsquatch
Proof of nothing other than snarky losers can make a sarcastic video typical of their generation: snide, ignorant and narrow.
I don’t know if the Spokane video is real. But after watching this crap, it sure looks a lot more authentic.
I whole heartedly agree with Manders entirely.
Quite an ironic twist that it makes the original look more authentic!
Nice try, really….when I read their post I could really subscribe to most of the opinions expressed in their post. BUT: after I have seen their video I must say that the Spokane video now looks MORE authentic to me than BEFORE. Perhaps it really needs amateurs like these guys to appreciate the much more professional and convincing looking hoax of the Spokane folks. Honestly: since the Spokane video was released some weeks ago I never even thought for a second (well, at least not more than 3 seconds) that this could be really bigfoot. Now that I see how clumsy and unathletic average people look in imitating bigfoot walks on forest soil, the Spokane video deserves, in my opinion, a second consideration.
What aggravates me are the “leaf” squatches that are popping up everywhere.
Someone goes out, films some trees with brush around them, then goes back home and supposedly finds a peeking bigfoot when they review the film. All I’ve seen are trees, leaves, brush and shadows. Sometimes the wind blows and the stuff moves. Of course they say its the bigfoot moving.
Its amazing how they can zoom in on the leaf squatch and the picture becomes clearer, the lines more defined. When I zoom in on a picture, the pixels become bigger, not smaller.
Another pet peeve of mine are “smudge” prints.
sigh… people who want to see bigfoot will see bigfoot in EVERYTHING. people who want to hear bigfoot will hear bigfoot in EVERYTHING. this continues to display the utter lack of scientific thought that goes into any sort of bigfoot research. i wish there existed people who could put forth a more legitimate effort.
Thanks for the kind words, mandors. 😉
I agree that the video is silly and I assumed most people thought the same thing when they saw it. The person that made the video is probably just as surprised at the amount attention it has received as anyone else. I probably wouldn’t comment on it either if it were my video. I also agree that it was surprising that mainstream media ran with it. However it didn’t make me angry. I am little surprised at the reaction of the writer. I think his point would have been made by simply posting his video. They were just some kids goofing around. No harm done in my opinion.
@mandors – are you serious? it is people like this who help to debunk so called “authentic” bigfoot sightings. they do what BFRO does not. while on the show they will do something to try and show that a human could do this or that like in the video, but after that they always end up concluding that it was a bigfoot.
In this video they show you how close the are is to civilization. They show how easy that exact video could have been faked. If anything, this video shows how easy it is to recreate pretty accurately. sarcastic or not, this video does have merit. Do you really think that a bigfoot would be hanging out just outside of a city like that? It seems more likely that the kids decided to go to the little stretch of trees next door and film a “bigfoot sighting”. come on, if some kid with a sweater and a cap can accurately recreate it, then how authentic can it be? the chances are pretty slim.
In the “Spokane Bigfoot” video, it is very blurry and unclear. Is that on purpose? iPhones take pretty good video and you would expect better quality. As ridiculous as this video here may seem, it does point out something very important, how easily it can be reproduced by humans with very little effort.
As has been said before by me and others, the “Spokane Bigfoot” video could have easily been faked. They even showed just that on Finding Bigfoot, yet they still concluded that since it was of average human height, it must have been a juvenile bigfoot. Some people just see and hear bigfoot everywhere. The “Spokane Bigfoot” video is far from credible. Chalk it up to some kids going out to play in the woods and making a lil video to cause an uproar….and it worked.
As much as I’d like to say that I’m surprised by the comments, I’m really not. I don’t mean to offend, but those who are saying that the video is reinforcing their belief that the Spokane video is real are missing the point.
That video was shot in, literally, five minutes at a nature path just down the street from where I’m sitting. People were walking past us while we made it. My wife threw on a baggy sweatshirt and off we went.
If it doesn’t look like a “real bigfoot” that’s because we didn’t really try to make it look like one. Keep in mind, that’s a girl. Skinny legs, tight fitting clothing, and, sorry Dana, runs like a girl to boot. Of course she’s not going to look graceful as she’s trudging through the woods.
The point of the video wasn’t to create a 100% accurate reproduction of the Spokane video, it was to show everyone just how easily a video like that can be made. Had we decided to recruit more friends and put more than heartbeat into it, I have no doubt we could have created something that even mandor would have fallen for… but again, that wasn’t the point. The media were giving this video a ridiculous amount of attention that was almost frustrating to watch because it wasn’t even a good video, and none of them bothered to even look into whether or not it could have been a gag. A bigfoot sighting several hundred feet from a college on the same weekend as a huge track and field meet? An anonymous uploader that refuses to be interviewed? That doesn’t sound fishy?
I’m not saying it was definitely fake, there’s no possible way that I could know that. What I’m saying is that it could and probably is, which is more than anyone in the media was saying at the time – the entire reason we bothered making the video.
Not to mention that it was a great opportunity to display the snarky, ignorant, and narrow views that were instilled in our loser generation. I can hear mandor now, sitting at his windows 98 PC:
“You kids and your new fangled Sasquatch hoaxes. What with your baggy jeans, Nike wearing Bigfoots today. When I was your age, bigfoot hoaxes needed an actual suit! With zippers! And we didn’t have those fancy camera phones either, we had to use 8mm film! This is bullshit! Slackers! Get off my lawn!”
@Kahil Nettleton
People like this are nothing but self-aggrandizing opportunists. They are part of the problem not the answer. I’ve never seen a bigfoot. I don’t know exactly whether they exist, but you can’t objectively search for and watch evidence without being inundated by dozens of no talent hacks like these.
(Oh, and will someone please tell Elastigirl she’s not all that.)
Worse, when someone apparently genuine comes forward with something out of the ordinary they are ridiculed by such half-wit nihilists. The Spokane video poster does not appear to be a hoaxer. My understanding is that she posted the video and since has not sought further attention.
I don’t know what a bigfoot’s habitat or range is. But I’m not going to resort to pseudo-intellectual rhetoric like “Do you think it would hang out in the city?” That’s a conclusion not an argument. I don’t know. My sister-in-law lives in the Bay Area. In her local park several joggers have been attacked by mountain lions. Gee, I wouldn’t think those animals would hang out near a city either. Oh, and if you look, Down River Park is less than a two day walk from Coeur D’Alene National Forest.
These “debunkers” didn’t accurately recreate anything. Their “faked” video does not look like the “real” video at all. As I said if anything, it makes the original look more real. And, FYI: most of the “mainstream” organizations, e.g., BFRO, this websight and others, have expressed doubts on the authenticity of the figure in the Spokane video.
As someone who has several children involved in both Cross Country and Track let me tell you this video is NOTHING. Heck, be glad the kid had clothes on. Our meets are up at the lake, certainly more ‘bigfoot friendly’ that the area the Spokane video was filmed at. And at any time during the meets you can wander into the woods and see groups of students lounging, stretching, pranking, relieving themselves, and flirting with each other. In fact we also have roving groups of parents in the woods to make sure it goes no further than flirting.
So knowing how close this was to an urban area, the fact that there was a sports event a few hundred yards away and knowing how kids are I can’t see this being anything other than one of the track kids having fun. The girl filming the ‘stalker’ may or may not have realized he was there when she was filming, but jumping to “Look a human figure in the woods near a school parking lot it must be a bigfoot” is a bit much to swallow, don’t you think?
(Some posters perhaps need to look up a definition of sarcasm) I thought the Who Forted (great site, just discovered it thanks to this) crowd did a cracking job on this… they’re perhaps poking a little fun at the ease with which a group of bored children can dupe the most desperate of adult bigfoot fanatics, and that’s all. If you got sucked in originally or generally and thus feel slighted by the Who Forted video, then perhaps take a look at yourself and ask yourself why you are such a rube… blobsquatch, leafsquatch, children-playing-with-camcorder squatch, and some people buy it every time. If you’re going to be gullible at least don’t be precious with it if you get a well-deserved slagging. Anyway…
Thanks to Craig for posting this, and to the folk at Who Forted… gave me a good laugh this lunchtime. Cheers all.
I’m sorry, but the folks here that are MORE convinced that the original is real have to be joking.
Look at the location of the original video and think again.
Of course I am sure I will hear 7984729384789236489 explanations as to why it makes sense for a bigfoot to be in this urban location. There’s no convincing those who want to believe in something no matter what the evidence.
@ Kahli
I think you make an excellent point. But I also say, it was one of the worse hoaxes I’ve seen in years. It didn’t even attempt to hide the fact it was a gaff. Now, the Gilesuit hoax, that was brilliant, and worthy of sideshow history.
Kahil,
Regarding your comment above. Matt states quite clearly in this Finding Bigfoot Web Exclusive, posted previously here at Cryptomundo, that it is either a misidentification of a human, or a hoax.
I must say that after all of the recent brouhaha over the scientific value of cryptozoology you would think there would be a mindfulness of what it means to be scientific. To be scientific is to not only use evidence to draw conclusions, but also to have those conclusions stand up to scrutiny. I understand that if the original video of the unexplained blob got your heart racing it might be quite disappointing to have a couple of young people, who have been doing this for a very long time, make a video so similar that none of the naysayers can in any way qualify the differences between the Whoforted video and the original. Not only can those differences not be explained, the posters do not have enough ability in the area of logic to start their posts with anything but personal attacks and ageist diminishing of Greg and Dana’s expertise. The truth remains that in a few moments these “kids,” who are married and contributing more to society than most of the members of the BFRO, showed without a doubt that the original video is most likely a hoax because of Occam’s Razor. It takes NO EXPERIENCE to look at a blob video and start screaming “bigfoot.” It does however take a lot of experience and effort to shoot a duplicate video, logically examine the evidence and then come up with a conclusion based upon real investigation data and not just a gut reaction. Mandors, you are not doing this hobby any favors.
He may have said that in the exclusive there, but we all saw what was shown on the show that aired. They still concluded in the end that despite it easily could have been a human, that it was a bigfoot. If this is a direct, creative edit by the production company, then I would suggest that Matt either deal with them as a lawyer would or just be more careful about what and how he says things. He has every right to confront them as it is their direct actions in editing that diminishing any credibility that Matt and his team has.
Again, as I have said before…for all I know, Matt is completely sincere in his search for bigfoot. The issue is that while here and on camera he makes a lot of really bold claims and refuses to lend credence to those claims with evidence. He really does need a PR person to act as a filter. If someone only watched the show that airs and not any of these web exclusives (which are always different), then they see the same things I have been talking about here. Show after show we have bold claims with no proof. He has stated here and else where things that anyone using Google can see just aren’t so. He has backtracked or pulled complete 180s on things he has said. I know he will probably come here and just call me a liar,try to insult me and try to discredit me, but that just isn’t going to work as it isn’t my credibility that is in question.
So far on the show, every sighting they investigate has been easily shown that it could have been a human…yet we still hear them saying that they are sure it is a bigfoot. That is the issue at hand here.
I’ll throw in my two cents here too and thank Craig for posting this and for allowing the debate. I really enjoyed this “experiment” by Greg and Dana. WhoForted is fun site. And, yeah, you aren’t going to agree with everything but discussing while remaining civil is a cool human behavior.
Just because an animal is seen within city limits does not make it fake.
Remember last year when a mountain lion was running through Chicago?
Bears and coyotes and mountain lions make their way into Metro areas all the time.
A pair of coyotes were in the park right across the street from my house a couple months ago. Kids were out there flying kites, riding their bikes and everything!
I agree with many here that the original looks WAY better than the new one.
Not to say it’s not a hoax either, but some pretty bad arguments here.
How many times have we heard about Bigfoot raiding dumpsters and trash cans right behind houses and businesses? Plenty.
@loopstheloop,
Please don’t include me with the rubes. I don’t fall for all that stuff, I am just tired if seeing it. I liked the video. To me it’s not just funny, but educational.
The only reason I still look at blobs, leafs and smudges is because with so many being posted these days, the odds are good that someday one may actually show something interesting. But since the person is sincere, I fear they may post it quietly, hoping it will be stumbled upon, because they are worried that if they publicize it they will be lumped in with all the bs artists out there.
@nopaosak,
I was just talking to a friend about how many out there forget that one of the steps of the scientific method is letting others look at your findings and see if they can validate or duplicate them. Back in the 60’s my father developed a theory in microbiology. He told me the hardest part wasn’t the discovery, but answering questions and defending it until it was accepted.
Aside – We need more debate teams in school. They would be great training for people with our interests.
remember how science works. Science has to prove that the blobsquatch IS Bigfoot, because science assumes it is not. With that in mind, the original video serves as proof of absolutely noting other than there are shadows in the forest. Some people have to turn a more critical eye on so-called “evidence”.
I’m not even of the opinion that this was an attempted hoax. I think it’s likely to be a random stranger walking (stumbling?) through the area at that time. The uploader may have noticed the dark-dressed person in the background upon viewing the footage and cried “bigfoot” as a joke. I’m not convinced any more effort than that went into it.
You can clearly see the pant cuff and shoes this person is wearing, so those few of you that still want to give this video serious consideration worry me a little.