Today, January 11, in 1999 the color plate of
frame 352 from the Patterson/Gimlin film was carefully examined by imaging specialists at a color technology laboratory in Ventura, California. State-of-the-art scanners were used to magnify the image down to the color-point level.
All of this came about due to a press conference called by
Cliff Cook and the supporting testimony of his associate
Chris Murphy. Murphy claimed to of found a bell shape (aka zipper pull tab) within the grainy film image and even took the time to hand craft a pretzel-like, clay model of this bell shape.
The final image in the series shows the detail in question at approximately 1600% magnification. At this level of resolution the individual points of color are clearly visible.
Murphy's "bell-shaped object" is not readily discernible at any level of resolution. To the naked eye the "object" appears to be a diffuse blotch of light reflecting off the fur. At increasingly higher magnification this detail still appears to be a diffuse blotch of light reflecting off the fur. Several other parts of the bigfoot figure show similar blotches of light reflecting off the fur.
The detail in question has no clear edges, and has no visible "artificial" shape. The lab tests demonstrated that a clear magnification of the color plate does not reveal anything like the pretzel-like object displayed at Crook's press conference. The image analysts stated that Murphy seems to be relying on some "highly imaginative, Rorschach-like interpretations of fuzzy details in enlargements of the color plates."
It is important to note The Oregonian on this same day had a headline "BIGFOOT PROOF CALLED 'MAN IN MONKEY SUIT'" The
article was released by United Press International and begins with these two paragraphs...
BIGFOOT PROOF CALLED 'MAN IN MONKEY SUIT'
PORTLAND, Ore., Jan. 11 (UPI) _ Two longtime trackers of the legendary creature Sasquatch say grainy film footage that allegedly proves the existence of the beast also called Bigfoot shows nothing more than a ``man in a monkey suit.''
The Oregonian newspaper reports today that Bigfoot trackers Cliff Crook and Chris Murphy have determined that four magnified frames from the so-called ``Patterson-Gimlin Film'' show tracings of a bell-shaped fastener on the creature's waist, indicating that the image is likely that of a human being wearing a costume.
The Associated press chimes in as well with this
report reprinted below...
CLAIMS AGAINST BIGFOOT FILM SET ENTHUSIASTS AT ODDS
By JOHN M. HUBBELL
Associated Press
BOTHELL, Wash. (AP) - In the hearts and minds of true believers, Bigfoot's existence has long been enshrined in a single minute of jerky, grainy footage of a startled sasquatch retreating into the upper California woods.
But two enthusiasts of the legendary being are alleging four magnified frames of the 16 mm footage show tracings of a bell-shaped fastener at Bigfoot's waist. They say the creature in the so-called Patterson-Gimlin Film can finally be dismissed as a man in a monkey suit.
"It was a hoax,'' said Cliff Crook, a longtime Bigfoot tracker who devotes rooms to sasquatch memorabilia in this suburb north of Seattle. "How can an artificial, manmade object end up on a Bigfoot?''
The film, purportedly showing a female Bigfoot fleeing a stream-bed, was taken by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin on Oct. 20, 1967. It has largely withstood independent scrutiny and, for many steeped in the lore of the man-beast, has become bedrock evidence of its very existence.
"There's no way of really detracting from it,'' said Ray Crowe, president of the Western Bigfoot Society in Portland, Ore. The image captured in the footage "has a fluid motion. It's a wild creature of nature.''
The film is important because many Bigfoot believers compare all plaster casts of telltale footprints against those made by Patterson the day he purportedly filmed the creature slinking across a sandbar in the Six Rivers National Forest.
Discredit the footage, experts agree, and the gold standard for Bigfoot tracks will be washed away.
Crook bases his assertion on computer enhancements performed by Chris Murphy, a Bigfoot buff from Vancouver, British Columbia, who maintains he discovered an aberration in the footage in 1995 while helping his son Daniel prepare a class project.
Murphy declined to be interviewed, instead supplying a written narrative detailing his discovery.
According to that account, the Murphys used a color photocopier to duplicate a frame of the Patterson film. Zooming in again and again, Chris Murphy became suspicious.
To him, something geometric - vaguely the shape of a bottle opener - seemed to take shape at Bigfoot's waist. Murphy maintains that four sequential computer-scanned frames of the film show the object in different positions, as if it were swinging. He theorizes something is cinching the sasquatch costume in place.
Murphy made a clay model of the object and in October gave that and the enlargements to Crook, a charter-bus driver transfixed by sasquatch stories since 1957. That's the year he made a camping trip with teen-age friends on Washington's Olympic Peninsula that ended with telltale signs of a sasquatch encounter: a rustling of brush, a throaty growl and an ever-worsening hallmark musk.
Decades later, at 58, spare rooms in his home are dubbed "Bigfoot Central,'' stuffed with photos, plaster casts and maps dotted with push-pins that chart sasquatch sightings.
Now his hoax assertion is giving rise to a howl that would make a Bigfoot proud. Longtime enthusiasts smell a deserter.
One recent e-mail was typical of the incredulity Crook's allegation of a costume fastener is up against.
"Cliff, Cliff, Cliff,'' it scolded. "That's matted feces.''
"There are two witnesses (and) there are footprints,'' said Rene Dahinden, a Richmond, British Columbia, researcher who shares the film's copyright. "We've never had anything like it previously, and anything like it since.''
Dahinden, 68, discounts Murphy as an amateur. "He wasn't involved in this until 1993,'' Dahinden said. "He couldn't spell the name 'sasquatch' before that.''
Grover Krantz, a Washington State University anthropology professor and Bigfoot expert, also believes firmly in the old footage.
"I fully accept the Patterson film,'' Krantz said. "If there was a fastener, it could not be seen in an enlargement. The film grain is such that it cannot hold an image of something that small.''
The truth of the Patterson-Gimlin film remains as elusive as Bigfoot itself. Enthusiasts such as Krantz and Crowe see the film as a building block for their faith. And the faiths of Crook and Murphy endure in spite of it.
Crook knows that, in dissent, he and Murphy are "far outnumbered.''
"There's a few broken friendships because of this,'' Crook said. "I just figured, 'This is a search for the truth. When it becomes something different, that's when it should stop.'''
Maybe a Bigfoot will one day view the film, Crook figures, and offer its own disapproving grunt.
"There's just too much evidence that these creatures do inhabit certain areas out there,'' Crook said, ever sanguine. "Even though the Patterson film is a hoax, it doesn't mean Bigfoot doesn't exist.''
