March 30, 2011

Bigfoot’s bLog: Leroy Blevins, Pareidolia and Blobsquatching in PGF Analysis

Bigfoot’s bLog has posted a rather lengthy two-part piece on the work of one Leroy Blevins, Sr..

Check it out here, part one and part two.

Read our previous blog entry touching on Blevins matters here, including an interview with long-time Bigfooter Larry Lund, and some words on Blevins matters from John Green.

Who is Leroy Blevins?

He is a Patterson-Gimlin Film debunker, an alternate historian, and Biblical researcher residing in Kentucky. He claims not only to have perfectly reverse-engineered a “Patty” Bigfoot suit, but also claims he has discovered the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, the true JFK assassins, and that the species of Bigfoot are actually the Biblical Edomites, not an ape. Rather than seeing every blurry image as a Bigfoot, as per the method of blobsquatch researchers, he sees many other things in the Patterson footage: he sees a “BlobGimlin,” for instance. He doesn’t like to listen to “what people tell,” but rather seeks to “See and Show” things in the films he studies. From these interesting observations, often with absolutely no factual corroboration, he constructs elaborate alternate histories of what must really have happened there in Bluff Creek in 1967. If you thought the ideas of MK Davis were, um, a bit “interesting,” you’ll find that Mr. Blevins’ strange notions exceed him.

The Blevins Bigfoot Suit in Action

Bigfoot’s bLog has been discussing PGF history with Blevins for nearly two years now, and every time we correct one of his assumptions he just dodges and reconstructs a new alternate theory; that, or he takes down his web site and YouTube videos, only to reappear again somewhere else. Blevins is, however, more than someone trying to “debunk” the PGF; he is also a Bigfoot believer. He had a sighting while driving, and is convinced of their existence. We don’t deny his sighting, but we do think his other research suffers from a clear case of pareidolia. This is the psychological phenomenon behind the blobsquatches, as well as the tendency of human beings to see forms in clouds, “faces” in wood grain, and generally to perceive patterns and forms that are not really there in ambiguous sensory data. Pareidolia is not a mental illness; rather, as Carl Sagan once proposed, it is a “hard-wired” aspect of the human mind, stemming from the earliest tendency of the human infant to recognize the face of its mother, for humans to see themselves projected outward upon the world. Due to this tendency, Blevins has constructed an elaborate version of the PGF history that is vastly more implausible than the already convoluted and sometimes contradictory given history of the events surrounding the filming of Bigfoot 43 years ago.

See examples below. Read more at BIGFOOT’S BLOG in a report and interview that spans some 70 pages in Word.

A classic example of pareidolia: the “Face on Mars”

What is Pareidolia, you ask? Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- – “beside”, “with”, or “alongside”—meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech) and eidōlon – “image”; the diminutive of eidos – “image”, “form”, “shape”. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.Wikipedia

Here follow some examples in detail of what Leroy Blevins “Sees” and “Shows” from the Patterson-Gimlin Film footage.

Blevins sees a “Bob Gimlin” hiding in the bushes behind the Patterson film subject

We looked at Blevins’ “Gimlin” and found not only another red-headed “man,” but also a deer, and some dancing “Baby Bigfoots”

In this Patterson footage preceding the Bigfoot part, Blevins sees a “Hat” pop in and out of the frame at lower right.

On the Bluff Creek sandbar, Blevins “sees” a “man” they “took out” of the film, and his “shadow.”

At lower right Blevins sees a “man” ducking out of the frame, here is his “arm” even showing a “watch” on its wrist.

Closer analysis reveals that the “man” with a “watch” on his arm is really just a tree branch or stump on the sandbar.

Alton Higgins defined the blobsquatch problem well at the 2003 Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium, saying:

Any photo requiring equal parts interpretation and imagination (photos sometimes characterized as ‘blobsquatches’) should be discounted.

Loren Coleman wrote previously on the blobsquatch phenomenon here on Cryptomundo. QUOTES….

“Blobsquatch” is specifically the object in a photograph of a supposed Bigfoot or Sasquatch that has a lack of definition and detail, an illusion created by a play of light within an often unfamiliar natural environment. It is literally a “blob” (an indistinct shapeless form) that may or may not, but probably is not, a Sasquatch.

The blobsquatch “creatures” seem to be shadows in the trees, dark spots in the tall grass, light-colored objects on trails, or crossing branches in the forest that assist people’s imaginations in “seeing” a Bigfoot (when one might not be there). One defunct group defined “blobsquatch” as “anything in a picture or film which might be possibly mistaken for a Sasquatch such as a tree stump, a large rock, [and/or] a shadow.”Loren Coleman

Here is a classic example of pareidolia: a burr-rich piece of wood revealing “demons” or whatever else your mind finds.

Here is the Leroy Blevins YouTube site for some examples of his work.

Read further about apophenia on Wikipedia.

Go to the main Bigfoot’s bLog page.

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