Grover Krantz and the Footprint From Indiana

Let’s get the story on Krantz straight. Yes, he was fooled by the Indiana footprint. I was there when Doug McCoy confronted Krantz to his face with indisputable proof that the footprint was manufactured by J W Parker of Bloomington in Indiana with the avowed intent of deceiving Krantz. Parker revealed his methodology to Michael Dennett and one can read about it here.

Parker created one of the best fake sasquatch prints I have ever seen because it looked very plausible and so much work went into making it look authentic. This wasn’t your usual wooden feet in the ground type print. It was meticulously created.

Therefore it was no surprise that Krantz was fooled. So were a lot of other people, such as Bob Titmus and Ed Palma of the San Diego Police Department. Krantz did make some incredible statements in his life, but all in all he was pretty darn scientific in his whole approach to sasquatch when his ego wasn’t in the way. I knew Krantz and found him sometimes too sure of himself when others wouldn’t be. But he was not a bad guy nor was he a dunce. Perhaps his two secret traits of a genuine sasquatch track were flawed. I believe that one of them was dermal ridges which we know can be faked because Matt Crowley has shown it can be done. I believe that Krantz was also fooled by the Mill Creek tracks obtained by Paul Freeman because they have supposed dermal ridges in them as well.

David Daegling boasted he could imitate the compliant gait from the Patterson film. I have a copy of a video him doing it. In my opinion: FAIL. While he stretches his legs well, he walks totally unnaturally, unlike the sasquatch in the Patterson Film who does so with naturalness and fludity.

That film must stick in the craw of scofftics because they still haven’t debunked it. Skeptics are fine, but scofftics who argue poorly are not. Skepticism is something I respect, but cynicism is not.

corrick’s riposte says that Krantz retired after that incident with the fake print. Not from the sasquatch world he didn’t. He was still involved after that incident at the International Sasquatch Symposium in 1999 and gave his opinion on the Skookum cast on which he was consulted in 2001. He started to drop out of the Sasquatch scene soon after because he began an eight month battle with pancreatic cancer which he lost on Valentine’s Day in 2002.

Now onto corrick’s assessment of Melvyn Georgekish. Did you listen to the man’s interview? If you did then you heard him say that the footprints were in the location where he saw the red eyes. Did he find bear prints there? No. What he did find were unusual prints that may have come from a sasquatch.

Melvyn Georgekish doesn’t sound to me like a publicity seeker. He sounds like a man who has had a distressing encounter with something that upset him. Even if the eyes were from a bear, that doesn’t explain the footprints. Don’t tell me Georgekish created them because you have absolutely no proof that he did.

I have known corrick for over a decade and I think he’s a great guy, but I am sorry I must disagree with his presentation of error as fact in regard to Krantz and speculation as gospel in regard to what Melvyn Georgekish witnessed. Only Georgekish knows whether he saw a sasquatch or not, but to say it was his imagination is unwarranted..

John Kirk About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998). In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur. Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC. In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.

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