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| Bob Gimlin was there when the most famous Bigfoot footage was filmed and Bill Munns has done the most signifivcant analysis of it. |
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| Bob Gimlin was there when the most famous Bigfoot footage was filmed and Bill Munns has done the most signifivcant analysis of it. |
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| Bob Gimlin did not even dignify the accusation that the bigfoot in the P/G film was a costume. The arrow points to where skeptics believed a zipper was exposed |
Sasquatch: Man in a Monkey Suit?Joseph Rose 01.19.99YAKIMA, Washington -- The scratchy movie footage shows a big, brown, hairy creature retreating over a stream bed into dense forest. But wait. Is that the glint of a belt buckle on Bigfoot? Or have skeptics gotten carried away with Photoshop?
Loyal Bigfootologists and some computer-imaging experts are giving disapproving grunts to two researchers who claim that a computer analysis of a famous 1967 film shows a man in a monkey suit, not the legendary giant of the Northwest woods.
Bigfoot buffs Cliff Crook of Bothell, Washington, and Chris Murphy of Vancouver, Canada, say enlargements and computer enhancements of the film's frames reveal an object hanging from the fur that resembles metal fasteners used on clothing at the time.
"When the guy in the suit turned to look at the camera, it probably snapped loose and dangled from the fur," said Crook, who has been searching for the elusive creature for 42 years. "It's a hoax. Why would Bigfoot be wearing a belt buckle?"
The claim has howling-mad Bigfoot enthusiasts branding Murphy and Crook as traitors on Internet newsgroups and attempting to discredit their findings as a publicity stunt.
"It's like picking a sheep out of the clouds," said Western Bigfoot Society president Ray Crowe of Portland, Oregon. "They've blown up the images beyond the size of recognition. So, they can pretty much see anything they imagine."At issue is the footage taken 32 years ago, when Bigfoot trackers Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin of Yakima were investigating reports of sasquatch footprints in Six Rivers National Forest, near the California-Oregon border. They purportedly spotted a female Bigfoot darting across a sandbar, and Patterson let his 16-mm Kodak movie camera roll.The minute of jerky, grainy film and the plaster-cast footprints Patterson made that October day became the veritable gold standard for trackers and enthusiasts, the evidence by which all things Bigfoot are measured.Murphy began questioning the film's validity after discovering an aberration in the footage while helping his son with a class project in 1995. Using a computer, he zoomed in tighter and tighter on the frames, finding what appears to be a glimmering ornate latch in the shape of a bottle opener.Four sequential computer-scanned frames on the film appear to show the object in motion, said Crook, who reviewed Murphy's findings, which were released 12 January. He said the object appears to be cinching a costume.
Murphy said he's convinced "there's something out of place" in the film. "I have now sent my material to an expert in the [photo-enhancing] field," he wrote in an email.Steve Armstrong of Tampa, Florida-based Pegasus Imaging said he would like a shot at examining the evidence. He believes the film is such that it wouldn't capture an image of something as small as a buckle. And then there's the bit-mapped nature of digital compression and enlarging."Zoom in on an image too much, and you get a lot of blocky artifacts," Armstrong said.The result, said Jennifer Polanski of Adobe Systems, might be "a blob" that looks something like a belt buckle. Even with Adobe's popular Photoshop software, it's hard to see how someone can take a faraway figure like that in the Patterson-Gimlin film and zoom in on a metal fastener, she said.In Yakima, on the edge of the wooded east slope of the Cascade Mountains, there have long been rumors that the late Roger Patterson paid a Hollywood costume designer to make the suit and a big Yakima Indian to wear it for the film. Just last week, there was talk that the owner of the suit had hired a local attorney and was getting ready to bring it out of the closet for the world to see. Like the other rumors, that one has yet to be proven true.While Patterson died years ago, Gimlin, 67, still lives in Yakima. He dismisses the rumors and the new computer analysis as "wacko.""I was there. I saw [Bigfoot]. The film is genuine," Gimlin said in a telephone interview. "Anybody who says different is just trying to make a buck." And he hung up.Washington State University anthropologist Grover Krantz, one of Bigfoot's stalwart backers in academia, agrees that the Crook-Murphy analysis is amateurish and irrelevant."Look at the way it walks," Krantz said, referring to the figure in the Patterson-Gimlin film. "Even if Patterson had hired someone to get in a suit, there's no way he could have trained him to walk in this manner. I know, I've tried to reconstruct the motion."
Bob Gimlin with Bill Munns will be speaking together about new digital renderings that Bill will show as an exclusive to the 2012OSS. The two of them will go over the PG film step by step with new evidence to verify what many have already suspected. |
| The 2012 Oregon Sasquatch Symposium will be in Portland, Oregon. |
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| Bob Gimlin of the Patterson/Gimlin fame. |
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| Bill Munns with his recreation of Gigantopithecus |
What: Sasquatch: The Sightings, the Science, the Stories
When: June 5 @ 10:30 a.m.
Where: Washington State History Museum in Tacoma
1911 Pacific Ave
Cost: $18 includes museum admission and program. Museum member price $10.
Background: Two giants of Sasquatch research will be at the museum hosting an audience discussion of all things Sasquatch. Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum and Robert Gimlin will be discussing their collected evidence, taking audience questions, and meeting with attendees.
Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, of Idaho State University and author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, is frequently seen on the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the National Geographic Channel among others. His book is the companion volume to the highly successful Discovery Channel documentary of the same name. A professor of anatomy and anthropology, his work encompasses the evaluation of hominid footprints, including those attributed to Sasquatch, both in the lab and the field. The Giants in the Mountains: The Search for Sasquatch exhibit features casts Dr. Meldrum made in Eastern Washington.
Robert Gimlin and the late Roger Patterson filmed the infamous piece of Sasquatch evidence known as the Patterson-Gimlin film, notably frame 352, made in northern California. This film features a female Bigfoot striding next to a sandy creek. Expedition partner Robert Gimlin will discuss his experience on the Bluff Creek expedition and the famous encounter on the trail, made immortal in the 24 feet of film Patterson recorded.
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Dr. Jeff Meldrum, Discovery Channel expert and professor, and Robert Gimlin, of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot film (frame 352-seen here), will be presenting and discussing evidence they've collected about this elusive creature deeply rooted in the Pacific Northwest, on June 5, time TBD, at the Washington State History Museum. May be a good opportunity to talk to those who have collected evidence, ask questions, and then draw your conclusion!
EXHIBIT FACTS
What: Giants in the Mountains: The Search for Sasquatch
When: Jan. 23-June 27
Where: Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
Museum hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. On the third Thursday of each month, the museum is open until 8 p.m. with free admission from 2-8 p.m.
Admission: Adult (18 and over), $8; Senior (60 and older) $7; student (6-17 years old) and military, $6; family (two adults and up to four children), $25; child (5 and under) and Historical Society members, free.
Information: 253-272-3500, www.washingtonhistory.org
Then there was the day Meldrum and Bob Gimlin spoke at the museum. Gimlin is famous for being part of the group that filmed what they claim was a Bigfoot in Northern California in 1967.
“We held two programs that day, but we still must have turned away 200 people,” Rohrer said.
“I never had an exhibit when I had to stand between a speaker and the public so the speaker could go get dinner,” she added. “Meldrum was on the floor of the museum for 12 hours that day, people just wanted to speak to him, show him evidence.”
Gimlin is scheduled to speak at the Tacoma museum in June.
“It’s an exhibit that has a really focused interest group,” Rohrer said. “There are scientists, naturalists, pop culturists, ethnographers, the hobbyists, people who enjoy the unknown. It’s kind of one of the last unknowns, kind of like UFOs.”
“We understand this is a topic that is very strongly under debate. We’re trying to portray a very balanced view,” Perkins said. “In a sense, whether the creature actually exists isn’t as important as the impact it has had on the people who live out here.
“If you come here looking for an exhibit poking fun at people or mocking the story, this is not your exhibit. This is too important to many people, like the tribal communities, the people out there researching sasquatch. We want to present those sides of the story as well as the side about people who are making money off of this.”
EXHIBIT FACTS
What: Giants in the Mountains: The Search for Sasquatch
When: Jan. 23-June 27
Where: Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma
Museum hours: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. On the third Thursday of each month, the museum is open until 8 p.m. with free admission from 2-8 p.m.
Admission: Adult (18 and over), $8; Senior (60 and older) $7; student (6-17 years old) and military, $6; family (two adults and up to four children), $25; child (5 and under) and Historical Society members, free.
Information: 253-272-3500, www.washingtonhistory.org
The Patterson-Gimlin film (also referred to as simply the Patterson film) is a short motion picture of an unidentified subject filmed on October 20, 1967 by Roger Patterson (Wall, South Dakota, February 14, 1926 – January 15, 1972) and Robert Gimlin (Missouri, October 18, 1931) who claimed the film was a genuine recording of a bigfoot. The film has been subjected to many attempts both to debunk and authenticate it. Some qualified scientists have judged the film a hoax with a man in an ape suit, but other scientists contend the film depicts an animal unknown to science, or cryptid, claiming it would be virtually impossible for a human to replicate the subject's gait and muscle movement. Source:Wikipedia
