February 21, 2007

The Wallace Line in Bigfoot Studies

A Startling New Discovery

Sometimes proof is so definitive, so compelling, it is difficult to ignore. Let me tell you today about the Wallace Line within Bigfoot studies. For those of us that consider Bigfoot a fact, I feel it is something we can no longer brush aside as unimportant in future discussions.

I have purposely coined and am using a phrase that can have many meanings as we look at this situation. But the bottomline is this: some Bigfooters, many of whom routinely say to scientists, “If only you would look at the evidence with an open-mind, you would see what we are talking about.” I say to all Bigfooters, do the same thing regarding the Wallace Line. Look and you will easily see.

Dale Wallace displays Ray Wallace’s Bigfoot wooden fake feet. (David Rubert Photography – used with permission)

In zoology, the Wallace Line is a boundary that separates the zoogeographical regions of Asia and Australasia. West of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, mostly organisms are related to Australian species.

Within Bigfoot studies in North America (or more formally, hominology as it is noted by the Russians, Euroasians in general, and academics globally), there is also another Wallace Line. This Wallace Line has come to be recognized as a reality since Ray Wallace died in December 2002.

Within serious intellectual Bigfoot examinations among those that consider Bigfoot worthy of searching and researching, in others words a real primate versus a folkloric element in our culture, there has developed two separate camps divided by a new Wallace Line. The Bigfoot-linked Wallace Line is a boundary that separates those Bigfooters who consider Ray Wallace did leave some prank footprints at some Bigfoot track sites versus those Bigfooters on the other side of the Wallace Line that think the claims made by Wallace’s family are bogus and have not shown up in the record.

Misinformed individuals in the media do exist who don’t understand the Wallace Line exists between these factions. To harsh and skeptic reporters who have understudied the Wallace fakes, these media writers have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, that “Wallace was Bigfoot” and have overlooked the glaring differences between, for example, the Wallace fakes presented as being used in 1958 and the Jerry Crew cast from Bluff Creek, 1958. Moving on from this agreement within both pro-Bigfoot camps on each side of the Wallace Line, the media has missed that there are these two camps within the field that see the role of Ray Wallace quite differently.

Within Bigfoot studies, on the one hand, the pro-Bigfoot, totally anti-Wallace people on one side of the Wallace Line have dominated most of the discourse through forum discussions and books by John Green, Rick Noll, Chris Murphy, and Jeff Meldrum.

Matt Crowley

On the other side of the Wallace Line, through essays, books, and presentations, Mark A. Hall, Matt Crowley, and I have spoken of the “bad data” in the database. Hall and I have especially called for throwing out the Wallace fakes shown in the print photos in books. Our position is that what will be left is stronger evidence in support of Bigfoot.

Please note, once again, most of the people on both sides of this Wallace Line consider Bigfoot real primates to be discovered.

As far as my position, as I have indicated here before, there is the obvious match-up between the wooden carved fake Wallace foot and the track it has left behind (as shown directly above).

What if I said there is a real and tangible Wallace Line that separates the camps, as well.

Now comes more firm evidence that has been right there in those photographs showing that some Bigfoot track photos are clearly footprints made by Ray Wallace and his associates. The images I am talking about are the ones from Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain for 1967.

First look, in the image above, at the Wallace wooden fake foot on the right, at that line in the wood on the bottom left; click on the image to make it bigger. (David Rubert Photography – used with permission.)

Matt Crowley has pointed out an interesting reflective artifact in certain photographs that only goes to further reinforce the case that the Wallace fakes are right there in front of us.

Study what Crowley has to say about what can be seen remarkably well in the photographs found below:

We can clearly see in [John] Green’s and [Doreen] Hooker’s own photographs that the putative Sasquatch tracks on Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain are not much more deeply impressed than the men’s own shoe prints! Green’s own testimony, plus the obviousness of the dusty conditions seen in the published photographs, shows that the substrate was fine and easily impressed….

Doreen Hooker photograph.

Look carefully at the putative Sasquatch track in the [Doreen] Hooker photo above. It represents a right foot. Note that there appears to be a very straight, light colored ridge very close to the lateral (outside) margin of the track in the heel area. Now take another look at the wooden right-footed Wallace prosthetic, and you will see a corresponding crack or furrow in the same area. Another clear photo [below] taken by René Dahinden shows a similar longitudinal feature in the heel area.Matt Crowley

René Dahinden photograph, according to Chris Murphy.

Now guess what I found? Look at the following photograph of John Green with a trackway of these same footprints from 1967, at Blue Creek Mountain – Onion Mountain below. Focus in on that footprint closest to the photographer, at the bottom of the frame. See what is visible there? You can clearly observe the imprint of the groove or line found to the right side of the footprint, which is visible as a split in the wood of the Wallace fake.

The Wallace Line is real, in more ways than one. Fake footprints only mean that those footprints are fake, not that Bigfoot does not exist. But to ignore the Wallace Line is not real now is just foolishness.

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