Skunk Ape FLIR Footage?
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on December 3rd, 2012
Cliff Barackman’s analysis of purported Bigfoot/Sasquatch/Skunk Ape video.
This interesting clip of video was obtained by a father and son team from Florida on May 8, 2012, sometime between midnight and 1 am. Stacy Brown Sr. and Jr. are the minds behind the website, The Sasquatch Hunters. The two men were bigfooting somewhere on the panhandle of Florida around the town of Quincy on the night they got their footage. The exact location is between the property where the Bridges have their ongoing encounters, and where I recorded a “whoop” vocalization last year.
The night the two men were camping, they tried a passive approach by simply having a campfire and playing loud music on a stereo. Every once in a while the duo would go for walks without using any lights. No other campers or people of any sort were ever observed on that night, and both witnesses are sure they were the only people present.
Stacy Brown Sr. was armed with a FLIR Scout thermal imager with which he was continually scanning the nearby woods. He had the polarity switched on the FLIR, so that the warm things in the viewfinder appeared black as opposed to the more commonly used white.
At some point in the evening, they heard some knocks, so they walked in that direction. Every time they heard noises, it seemed like it was just a little bit ahead of them, no matter how far they went. Stacy Sr. then saw a heat signature from behind some trees a little ways off into the palmettos. Whatever it was stepped briefly out into the open. What Stacy Sr. saw was a large, man-shaped figure take one long step and disappear into the brush. He turned to his son who had not seen the figure at all and said, “We gotta go.”
Stacy Brown Sr. obtained this footage in northern Florida on May 8, 2012 between midnight and 1 am.
My interpretation of what is seen
For much of the footage, the figure is hiding behind a tree. It seems to be peering out from behind this tree, probably watching the two men as they stood on the nearby trail just over 120 feet away. It shifts its weight to the left foot, which is slightly away from the trunk of the tree, and steps out with its right foot while still touching the tree with its right hand. One very long step puts the creature nearby a stand of trees and bushes, behind which it disappears never to be seen again. This fleeting glimpse of the creature is brief, but more than enough to distinguish its shape from any other known animal in the woods. It can only be a human or a sasquatch.
If the figure is human, it is a strangely proportioned one. It’s head seems to sit very low on the shoulders, and it sticks outward from them as if it could be looking downwards as it walks. The creature that is shown in Paul Freeman’s 1994 footage looks downward as it takes steps. This has also been observed by eyewitnesses of bigfoots, sometimes noting that the creature almost seemed to be looking for something on the ground as it walked.
The figure’s head seems to be protruding outwards from the shoulders, possibly looking downwards as it walks.
By wearing pads like the kind football players use, it is possible to recreate this low head/high shoulder look if one was wearing a suit. However, the figure’s right arm extends directly out from its very high shoulder, strongly reducing the possibility that the shoulders are the result of any football-style padding.
The left arm extends down to at least the knee level even though the arm is not directly vertical, but rather angled forward. It is quite possible that the hands might extend slightly below the knee if the figure was standing upright with its arms hanging down at its side. The long arms are another congruence with what is commonly noted by people who observe sasquatches.
While we only get to see one of the subject’s steps, there are some interesting similarities to the gait used by the Patterson/Gimlin Film subject. This figure’s trailing leg in the initial swing stage of its gait reaches an angle of 89 degrees, far beyond that of a normal human gait, but very closely matching that of the Patterson/Gimlin Film subject. The leading leg is sufficiently obscured so that it is unknown whether or not the knees ever totally straighten out, or lock, as is typical of a human gait, or remain slightly bent, as would be typical of a sasquatch’s compliant gait.
~ Cliff Barackman
For the remainder of Cliff’s breakdown of this video, go to: The Brown Footage
Below is Facebook Find Bigfoot’s breakdown of the video:
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.
Actually, this looks pretty good to me. Not your typical Blobsquatch.
FLIR holds promise for more footage like this. Apparently, whatever the subject was, it was unaware of the FLIR’s capability.
Therefore, it is apt to be less cautious about showing itself.
dude in a suit.
Nice looking tribute to Patty….left to right….yeah. When oh when will someone produce a body!! lol
” He turned to his son who had not seen the figure at all and said, “We gotta go.” ”
Really? You get like two seconds of FLIR and its “We gotta go”?
I thought these guys were trying to find Bigfoot, not go out in the woods and run off as soon as they see something interesting. Geez, its like going to the store to get a gallon of milk, going to the store, looking in the dairy case, seeing a gallon of milk, and then “we gotta go”. What about the milk?
Looked to me like a guy hunching over trying to walk like Patty but not doing a good job.
I like this footage a lot… it’s got quite a bit going for it: it looks right, acts right, moves right, good solid complete form visible, fairly high resolution. Nice one.
In October 2008 I participated in a BFRO expedition in Florida’s panhandle. Using FLIR equipment on the second night I saw what appeared to be a humanoid figure standing in a gully. It stood next to some bushes. I saw a head on massive shoulders and no neck. I noticed that it was lightly swaying back and forth. I also noticed what appeared to be thermal signature gaps between the torso and what I imagine were its left and right arms. I knew about the aforementioned gully and bushes because I had walked through the area earlier in the day. The gully was approximately 5′ deep. What I saw was truly unexpected to me.
I thought the same thing as Ragnar. And in the analysis video (which is about 18 minutes too long for me to watch) it looks like the guy behind the tree is waiting for his queue then walks, making sure he doesn’t trip, since he can’t see very well through his mask. Nice effort, boys. The jokers are getting more and more sophisticated as more videos like this are taken seriously. You guys are shooting yourselves in the foot by identifying every video that comes along as authentic.
“Finding Bigfoot” does an excellent job of not using its principals’ skills well.
This was a pretty durn good analysis, and makes this – which wouldn’t be without it – better than just about any sasquatch video other than You Know Which One.
Ragnar:
By itself, “we gotta go” isn’t going to influence my opinion about this one. I care about what we see, not about what they say.
The encounter literature is full enough of people whose abject fear had them beating a hasty departure, even when the animal didn’t appear threatening to them. Following further into dark woods to confront whatever that was might suddenly seem to them not the best idea. Remember, most bigfoot hunters haven’t seen one. It might not exactly have been the right situation to encounter your first one.
PoeticsOfBigfoot: don’t know about everybody else, but I’m not identifying every video that comes along as authentic.
There’s a plausible reason for the behavior we see, supported amply by the encounter literature (if you bother to read that), if it’s a sasquatch. If it’s a person, well, one has to tell me how to fake one of these shooting in daylight, because anyone who has been in the woods, off trail, in the dark (you probably haven’t) knows that is one heck of a confident (and huge) step to take when you don’t have a light.
The analysis makes the case that if that is a human, it’s one of the largest recorded members of our species. Off trail, in the dark, in FL, at just the time two people showed up to find him….um…help me here…hiding in the woods…???
I frequently have to tell people unfamiliar with the evidence: ‘Sasquatch’ is a mundane possibility for anything purported to have to do with sasquatch. Sometimes, it’s the most mundane possibility.
This actually would be one of those cases, unless somebody can show me how to fake one of these. (Or why one of the largest humans got caught in the act of, well, what…?)
That this is a human is an extraordinary claim. Doesn’t mean it isn’t; just means that if you are going to say that, you have to prove it.
Looks better to me than 90% of what gets on youtube.
The structure and leg movement is very “Patty”, but looks to be in more of a hurry.
These posters who say “fake” right off the bat are just as wrong as those who think everything is a “Squatch”.
sasquatch: no kidding.
We have somehow gotten it ingrained in our society that it is critcal thinking to slag, without a thought, everything on which the peanut gallery agrees with you.
Led Zeppelin (YEAH!) just got The American Equivalent Of Knighted at the Kennedy Center in DC. Anybody remember what people said about their music when they were conquering the world with it?
Today’s haha! is tomorrow’s how could anybody but an idiot have missed an EIGHT-FOOT APE…?
Either it’s a Sunk Ape or Nikola Vucevic hiking nekked at night… personally I agree with DWA and think SA is a more likely explanation.
As I was saying to DWA earlier this morning on this subject: We are all, all of us, experts on human locomotion. We are all qualified to draw conclusions when analyzing the gait/carriage/stride shown in any motion study of a bipedal animal. (Says so right here on my birth certificate) This is one of those opportunities. For this footage, I’m applying my incisive “walks like a duck” evaluation. On the WSA 1-10 unlikely-to-likely scale, I grade it a 5.5.
As you say DWA… I’ve never seen anyone who walks like Patty. Me neither.
It is either a Sasquatch or Smeagol, but the smart money takes the former.
Looking at Cliff B’s site and treatment of this I saw something he doesn’t note. So I’m not sure I’m right about this.
In the “Initial size comparison” section, where the human and the potential skunk ape are juxtaposed, the human figure’s torso looks considerably whiter than the other figure. Could this be interpreted as clothing? Then, you might have to postulate that the other figure, if he’s human, is not only huge, but buck naked!
Melba Ketchum actually might like that analysis. 🙂
Re: my speculation about clothing. Heard from a thermal-savvy guy over on the Bigfoot Forums that the white on the human figure may be just intervening foliage. Barackman found that their re-creation of the scene wasn’t shot from the precise spot the original footage was, so the vegetation looks different. Sounds reasonable to me.
This is a really old blog, but I thought I would add a comment for posterity.
I too am impressed with this footage. It shows something not porportional to a human, but very much porportional to Patty.
Also, to those discounting “we gotta go”, these were two men in deep woods, with no lights, far from camp.
I’m here to tell you when you are in that situation and you hear/see any large animal, you feel very vulnerable. Your first thought is “it’s time to go”. If you stay, it is only because you have won a battle with fear. Without a firearm, I would definitely have high-tailed it to camp.
Having trapped, I know even the little critters like opossums and raccoons are strong enough to f*ck you up when they are pissed.