SPEAKER_03 0:01

For nearly 60 years, One Minute of Film has refused to give us a definitive answer. Did Roger Patterson really film a Bigfoot on October 20th, 1967, or was it one of the biggest hoaxes ever filmed? With the new documentary Caturing Bigfoot bringing the Patterson Gimlin film back into the spotlight, we decided to go back to the beginning, examine the film, the footprints, the anatomy, the expert witnesses, and all the evidence for ourselves in this two-part series. This is Enquerium.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

And testify.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

I don't either.

SPEAKER_03 1:26

You're wearing the same hat and t-shirt that I am. It's like paranormal. Yeah, so no, we've got starting off weird. We've got hats to add to our swag now. Um they aren't available to the public right now, but uh these are just handmade by me. But I thought it'd be a nice touch to add to the recording of the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

So they're nice. Well done.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

Thank you. Um so Steven, I know this is gonna be a topic that it's one of our favorites, and I'm really excited we're finally getting to talk about it, and that's Bigfoot, but more specifically, the legendary Patterson Gimlin film captured back in October 1967. How are you feeling about today and what's your excitement level?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Uh it's it's pretty high because we have the capturing Bigfoot newer video that very few people have seen that is apparently you're gonna talk about here in a minute, but uh that's definitely throwing in a curveball, which makes this really, really interesting. So it doesn't necessarily debunk uh does Bigfoot exist or not, it's just really more tied to the film itself. So that yeah, that's got me my curiosity way up.

SPEAKER_03 2:43

Yeah, I agree. I I think it's important to distinguish the two that regardless if the Patterson Gimlin film turns out to be a fake or not, it it doesn't change the whole narrative of whether Bigfoot Sasquatch Yeti is real or not. Agreed. And so that's a good point. Before we jump into this episode, let's address that because there was a big development earlier this year in the Bigfoot community. A documentary titled Capturing Bigfoot premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival, and the documentary claims to contain previously unseen 16 millimeter footage that its filmmakers argue shows a rehearsal or some kind of uh dress rehearsal for the famous Patterson Gimlin film, along with interviews and other evidence that they believe supports the conclusion the film was staged. Now, as you mentioned, Stephen, at the time of this recording, we're recording this at the end of June, and by the time this episode airs, it's probably gonna be October, November. This documentary may be fully released to the public. And if and when that time comes, we'll watch it, go back, and we'll come back with an update uh and see if this documentary changes our feelings on the Gimblin film one way or the other. So I think today's episode is gonna be more like a baseline. We're gonna just dissect the Gimlin film as we know it, talk about expert testimony for and against it being a hoax, and uh and see where that takes us. Is that kind of what your thoughts were about this episode?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I don't I don't know how far we're gonna be able to to prove anything to or we're not, you know, but no just talk about it. And I'm actually uh really curious as to what the viewers uh what input they may have because Hive Mind is is good in this case, you know, so it could be that you know they know a lot more about it than than we do. But it's oh for sure. So so if you have any input, you know, leave it in the comments below and and let us know what you think because that'll help us with the uh the next episode.

SPEAKER_03 4:47

Yeah, I th and just to reiterate, uh basically we're just gonna kind of go through the expert testimonial for and against it being a hoax and just present the data, present the information for you to make your own, come up to your own conclusion. And like you said, there's people out there who are way who are way more experts than us in this, even though we've been uh talking and studying this for a long time. There's people who have a lot more intimate details than we do. So I went back in preparation, I went back and watched, I don't know, 20 plus documentaries, some that I had seen before that refreshed my memory, some I hadn't seen before. And I think it's important we go back to the beginning of these early documentaries because this is the age before really any special effects in film as far as uh like computerized special effects. It's age before AI, it's the age, you know, it's it was very kind of at the beginning stages of special effects in movies and stuff. So this gives a good baseline to start with because there wasn't as much technology back then. So I think it's a good place to start. And so one of the first documentaries I went back and watched was Bigfoot, America's Abominable Snowman, which was released in 1968. So this would have been roughly a year after the Patterson Gimlin uh film was released. And there was a gentleman named James Dutch Holler. Uh he was a Washington game hunter. He had an encounter with a Bigfoot in the mountains near Spoken sometime in the early to mid-1960s. He was really close to it, and he described it as being around seven foot tall, hair all over its body, legs more proportional to its body like a human than an ape. It was standing upright in an open field, so he could see it very clearly. But what stood out to me what he said was, and this is relevant to the Patterson Gimlin film, and I think just a preface, just for brevity, I think I'm gonna just say the Patterson film because that's what it's kind of mostly known as, just for brevity. So if I say Patterson film, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, he describes that when it walked, it swung its arms really wide, just like the Bigfoot in the Patterson film. So I thought this was interesting because this encounter happened before the Patterson film was released. And then uh another gentleman named Don Hunter, he's from the University of Oregon. He witnessed a Bigfoot while they were camping near Todd Lake in the Cascade Mountains. He said it looked to be about eight to eleven feet tall, and then they got out of the car to get a closer look at it. It kind of startled the creature and it started uh walking across the lake from where they were viewing it. Another thing that kind of stood out to me in his description, he mentioned that it had long legs, seemingly longer and out of proportion to its body, and had huge strides similar to the Patterson film. And again, this was an encounter, I believe, that took place before the film was released. And according to this documentary, the Bigfoot in the Patterson film, the length between the footprints was roughly 43 inches. One of the experts they interviewed, and I'm going to bring up his name quite a bit because he appears in a lot of these documentaries, is Dr. Grover Krantz and Jeff Beldrum. And one of the things they argued was the length of the stride, the knees remaining flexed when they took a step, the smooth gait, the little, very little vertical bounce, the apparent body mass, the long arm swings. They argue that producing all those simultaneously would be very difficult to do. Now they interviewed another doctor, Dr. Wim Mantanga from Oregon Primate Center, and he seemed to be thrown off by the fur around on the breasts. He states that to his knowledge that if it were real, it would be the first example of a mammal with hairy or furry breasts. But that's not true. We all know that uh we've seen dogs and cats. I I have a cat, a female cat, you can't even see her breasts or nipples unless you you're rubbing her belly, you can feel them, but they're just covered in fur. And then also if you look at a brown bear, a female brown bear who's who's standing up, you can clearly see that the whole breast area is covered with fur. So I'm not sure that's a very strong argument. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I I totally agree with that. Yeah, I think that that's a lack of imagination on the part of just people in general, whether you're a scientist or not.

SPEAKER_03 9:25

Yeah, and those are just the few that I come to my mind at first. I'm sure uh animal experts can list a whole whole list of other mammals who have furry or hairy breasts. Um and then supporters argue that in 1967, commercially available gorilla or ape costumes almost never included anatomically realistic female breasts. Now, this has kind of been one of my actually I didn't even notice the breasts because in the original film, when it was released, it was very poor quality. It wasn't until later people enhanced it that you could really see the breasts for the longest time. I didn't even know it was a female. But I guess my thought on this, and I want to get your thought as well, if you're gonna make a costume and spend all that time and effort and energy and money, why would you add more cost, more time, more detail that you could get wrong to a costume?

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Because they added it after the fact. If it like the the video already existed, it was mentioned in that video that you're talking about, the uh American Obama snowman, uh large pendulous breasts, that was mentioned. Right. Uh so the early on that was mentioned. So if they're gonna make if you if you're gonna make a costume after the fact, you're gonna add that in.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

No, but what I'm saying is beforehand. Why would you do it beforehand? You wouldn't. Yeah, I don't think you would. No, why why would you go the extra effort? That's just my opinion. I just think it's my opinion. It's already if it is a fake suit, it's already an incredibly detailed. I mean, I don't know you'd even think to put breasts on it.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Well, they don't even they don't even look the same, really. I mean, in that outfit. So just putting that out there. I know you're gonna mention that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

Now um they also mentioned that the breasts appear to move independently with the body's motion, suggesting that soft tissue rather than a rigid costume components were in play there. And if the film were a hoax, creating convincing, naturally moving, pendulous breasts as you described them, would have been technically challenging for that time. Then they interviewed Dr. Theodore Grant from the Oregon Primate Center, and he noted that the creature appeared to possess an unusual combination of anatomical traits, a grill-like head, upper limbs, a torso pair with more human-like lower legs. He found this mixture difficult to reconcile with any known ape or human anatomy, leaving him skeptical of a straightforward explanation. And I guess I would argue that, yeah, this is an unknown creature and it's not ape-like, it's more human-like, it seems, to m in my opinion. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So I don't know if that's a I don't I don't think they're expanding their imagination broad enough. And and and they do that with the intelligence of it. They're like comparing the its intelligence with with apes. It's like, well, maybe this thing's like as intelligent as we are or close to it, or at least close to us in a way that when they're out in the wilderness, they're they're like super aware, you know, and their intelligence is is is uh contributing to their awareness to on a whole new level, you know, even more aware than us in that environment. Because they are evolved for it and and super intelligent, way beyond Gris.

SPEAKER_03 12:39

They're evolved for survival in that environment.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, maybe they're an offshoot, you know, somehow from us and they they inherited the intelligence.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Well, we'll we're gonna get to that uh here in a in a minute. There's some uh there's some uh experts who weigh in on that. So yeah, I don't think that's a really strong argument. Um so then they um interviewed Dr. Richard Van Gelder from the Museum of Natural History in New York, and uh one thing he noticed is that the sole of the foot, in his opinion, uh does not have the same characteristics as the footprints. In fact, he quotes uh rather it looks like an old pancake to me with no sole characteristics. Now you and I have viewed both the footprints and there's a clip in the film where the creature raises its leg up and you can see that clearly the the bottom of the sole of the foot. What are your thoughts on this? Do you do you feel they match or no?

SPEAKER_00 13:39

They they look very close. If you were to to match the digits, but but even doing that, they took a picture of the bottom of the foot as it was lifting up. That doesn't mean those toes are going to be in the same position anyway as when they are pressing against the ground. So overall I would say they they look like they they would match.

SPEAKER_03 13:58

Yeah, I think he's saying more uh grossly they don't match rather than fine, fine toe placements and stuff like that. And you make a great point, is you know, when the foot's up in the air and the toes are being pulled by gravity, they're gonna be in a different position uh than in when you press them on the ground and put weight on these creatures are based on the measurements, are estimated to be 800 to uh or 600 to 800 pounds. So when you could put that kind of weight, especially um in this soft dirt or sand uh bar that the the creature was walking in, it's gonna leave a different, slightly different print than from when the foot is lifted up. So that's a that's a good fair point. And then John Napier, he's kind of he was kind of the narrator of this documentary. He's a primologist, primatologist, sorry, and a director of the primate biology program at the Smithsonian Institute. And his critiques were that it had exaggerated walking and was unnatural, walks like a human and not like a primate, walks like a male human and not a female, meaning the stretching of the hip, arm swaying, an exaggerated way to compensate for the long stride, exaggerated picking up of the foot, the center of the gravity said a creature that size, unlike a human, where the pelvis is kind of our center of gravity, said a creature of that size, the center of gravity would be more towards the center of the spine, and therefore it would be more of a waddle instead of a long striding gait. And he also said that only humans in the primate world have buttocks, you know, um because we block were bipedal. And then I think he proved his own point there by trying to disprove because it is a bipedal creature, so of course it's going to have you know a developed buttocks, you know, uh glutus maximus region in the back tor, you know, torso.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

So so you're saying he you're thinking he's still making the the ape connection?

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Yeah, he's saying that this doesn't make sense to him that there's a large buttocks, you know, glutus maximus there. Yeah. But at the same time, he he kind of disproves that himself because it is a bipedal creature, so of course it would have um developed uh muscular structure back there. Um and then he says if it was primate related, it should have a bony crest on the skull. And the reason why apes have bony crests on the skull, particularly males, is because they have a large jaw and their their head sits away from the spine, uh you know, towards the front, and that's so they can extend their jaws really wide, and then so they have all this muscle that muscle needs to attach to something, so they have these crests that the muscles attach to. So that that was his critiques. I I don't know, and we'll talk about this more because uh other experts weigh in, and these same points that he's making make it to them seem like it is real, and it is uh uh because of the exact same points, and we'll go into that a little bit later. And then at the end of the documentary, most of the people, the normal, everyday people, believed that the footage was real, and all the scientific experts, except for maybe one, thought it wasn't. So and then so then we move on to Bigfoot Man or Beast. This is uh came out in 1972, also very shortly after the Patterson film was released. They interviewed Janos Prohashka. Um he was a Hollywood animal performer. He'd been doing it for 30, 40 years, a stunt man, and he was a premier ape suit performer. And he watched the film and he was convinced that it was a real Bigfoot. That it he said the movement threw him off a bit because it walked more like a human and less like a primate, which again makes more sense. Uh he could clearly see muscle features in the body, which you're not gonna see, especially in a bodysuit or a costume back in 1967. He said that didn't move like a costume at all to him. He noted that it would have to find a very, very large man to fill that costume if it was a costume. When asked if the costume like that could have been made, he responded, I don't think so. And if it was a costume, he said in over 30 years in the business, it was by far the best costume he had ever seen. So that's coming from somebody who actually wears costumes and has performed in them in movies and films and such. And then they interviewed Ron Olsen, he's an American Wildlife Research Association. He he was convinced after studying the film and conducting scientific measurements that the creature of the film was real. He estimated the height to be around seven and a half to eight feet tall. We know now with better digitized images and uh clearer pictures that that estimate is a little off. It's it's probably more in the six and a half to seven foot range.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah, that that's what I saw in a report on that. I think it was six foot seven, I think, is what they determined. Yeah. Which is shorter, but still tall. You know, but it's not all like still tall.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Yeah. And that you know, he was working off that original footage, which was shaky, you know, and uh hard to uh stabilize. To get stabilize, hard to get an estimate off of. He's also noted that the normal gait was around 43 to 47 inches, and um after the creature was spooked, apparently the measurements got bigger, like around the 60-65 inch range. And he also noted that the arms were uh unusually long and disproportional than what a human would have. So that was that documentary. Um then we move on to Bigfoot, the mysterious monster from 1975. Again, Dr. Grover Krantz, the professor of physical anthropology from Washington State University, was interviewed. Then Dr. Donald W. Greve, antonomist and biometrics researcher from the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London, and then Dr. Dmitry Donovsky, professor of biomechanics from Russia, and they all concluded that there was no reason to suspect that the authenticity of that the creature was real in the Patterson film. And then John Napier, a primatologist and director of the primary biology, we've talked about him before. He noted that uh in his book, he wrote a book right shortly after that that that first documentary that he did. He found that even though he was skeptical of the film, he found it intriguing but not conclusive that you know it was a real Bigfoot or not. But he is he did find that uh there was enough evidence there to suggest that uh there is a Bigfoot. Uh he kind of believes that he's just not convinced that the film itself lends it to that being a proof or not. And then the narrator uh says Patterson had been searching for Bigfoot for eight years prior to the Patterson film. And I I believe that is about true. I know he had been studying for some time, he wrote a book. Is that your understanding?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Yeah, I mean I I know they've been tracking or going doing expeditions and things like that for a while. Uh I don't know exactly how long, but he had some other business uh that was to support his. It was uh I think he was raising horses and dogs or something to to help fund. But I also had heard that uh the ones who don't believe it's real that he had concocted it, the plan to to help bring business to the area, tourism and things like that. So yeah, I heard that rumor as well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

Yeah, he would give expeditions into the mountains and stuff. I think that was another way he would you know give tours and stuff into the mountains and stuff around that area. Back to Dr. Krantz, um he's the professor. Of Physical Anthropology from Washington State. He says he's really reasonably convinced after studying the Patterson film and taking scientific measurements that the creature in the film is real. He said he's watched the film, and this was back in 1975. He said he thinks he's watched the film more than 50 times. And he checked every possible measurement. And he's he's convinced that Patterson could not have faked all of these, all the details if this was a suit. As far as the gate, the walk. Jeffrey H. Bourne, director of Yerkes National Primate Research Center, was also interviewed. And he says that uh in his opinion, it walks too much like a bipedal man. The underfoot color is much too light and colored, in his opinion, to match the fur. He says it has characteristics of both male and female, crest-shaped skull found in male primates, but but it also has breasts, so that was confusing to him, and that the breasts were covered in fur. We talked about that earlier. But Dr. Kranz counters that if the creature is bipedal like a human, then it would stand to reason why it walks more like a human. That has kind of been my point as well. Then he explains the light-colored underfoot is perfectly normal, even stating examples like in dark-skinned humans and other dark-skinned animals will have lighter soles in their feet because the stratum uh corneum is thicker and carries less pigment, which totally makes sense. And then as far as the crown is concerned, he says it's not a characteristic of a male per se, that it's more of a size characteristic. And because these Yetis or Bigfoots are much bigger, taller than a primate, that it would stand a reason why the females would also have uh somewhat of a crest on their head because they would have to support larger muscle in the jaw. Now, Kranz mentioned he's not 100% convinced that the breasts are breasts, and I think that's larger due because of the low quality of the film that he was looking at, and he even says that it it was difficult to see the definition. And he speculated it could also be what they call laryngeal air sacs, and you'll see this a lot of apes and that have these sacs under their chin and their necks. But clearly the breasts that we're saying are breasts are way low on the chest and don't match uh which we can clearly see now with the clarity and and the controlling of the motion.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

You can clearly see that they're placed like female breasts on a human. Yeah, very simple. And they move move independently.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

So that wraps up that one. I looked at the Arthur C. Clark's Mysterious World, The Missing Ape Man, uh, released in 1980. Some unnamed expert commented that all we need to do is look at the opening sequence of the 2001 Space Odyssey, the Don of Man sequence to know that the costumes can be made well, and therefore the Patterson film is not proven. So I went back and watched that sequence, and the 2001 Space Odysse came out, I think the year after the Patterson film, similar around the same time as the Planet of the Apes movie came out. And I will admit that the costumes in that film, especially for that time, were pretty impressive. But you can clearly see that they are costumes. They have the the characteristic when the when they're jumping around and being excited where the headpiece doesn't fit or doesn't match up with the back. You can see the flap of the back of the headgear is flapping because it's not connected to the the body. Clearly see that it's and you don't need to make scientific measurements. You can clearly see the Intel these are costumes, not unlike the Patterson film uh Bigfoot, where we've been studying this for almost 60 years now. So you don't need to have that much scrutiny on the 2001 Space Odyssey to know that those are costumes. So I don't think that's a uh a fair argument. Do you know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah, I I do, and and overall the Bigfoot in the film does not look like a costume to me. The ones that that we've seen, it hugs the body. You can still see the muscular movement in the thigh, and when it the shape that goes down into the calf, it looks like a leg. It doesn't look like a costume over a leg that hangs down like a tube. It looks like a muscular calf. So especially that movement, and just the the way it moves, it looks like it's got weight. Yeah. You know, and and it just it just doesn't look the same. But it flexes it went. It flexes the ground. You don't have these flappy cloth-looking areas. It looks like the the fur is bonded to the body, it looks solid.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

Yeah. And even in the back, the shoulders, the arms, and you can see as it's walking, when the foot hits the ground, the muscles uh contract, or you can see the muscle movement. So yeah, I I agree. And no shade on the people who made the uh 2001 Space Odyssey costumes. They were really well done. Even by today's standards, I think they hold up pretty well, except for the obvious flap in the back where the where the mask is connected to the rest of the body. But other than that, they looked pretty impressive, um, especially for that time. And then back to Dr. Krantz, he had a cast from the Patterson film, Footprint, and he noted that not only did it show an impression, but it also created a mound when he pushed off, indicating the foot had reasonable flexibility, and that a rigid fake couldn't have produced that very easily. Um and he demonstrates this effect. And then there's other, as we'll move on, there will be other excerpts that weigh in on this and will explain it even better than what I'm doing now, or what Dr. Kranz did at this time. I think I think I showed you that image, the one he's specific. It's the footprint from that image where you can see there's a mound dirt between the front of the foot and the heel of the foot.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Yeah, it's where the the front of the foot flexes. Yeah. And then it creates that mound in the middle. Yeah, a flexible foot.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, it pushes that dirt back up towards the middle of the foot. Because one thing we have to remember is a track isn't just putting your foot down and taking an impression, it's a movement, right? The footprint is the full, it captures the full motion of the foot coming down and coming back up. It's not like you just stand there and put your foot down, just like you know, at the Hollywood uh theater, uh hand prints and footprints, you know, you're not just standing there putting your foot down. It's emotional. It's it's so it changes as you go through the placing your foot down and picking it back up. He then went on to compare a modern male ape lower jaw with a fossil from an extinct gigantipithecus, demonstrating how wide the jaw was compared to the modern ape, because the modern ape, the head sits forward uh to allow room for the neck and the jaw extension, whereas on humans and in this creature, the Bigfoot in the film has it more centered on the spine. And he went on to say that the gigantopithecus was a similar size and weight of the Bigfoot in this film or bigger, and so that would explain why the placement of the head, why it's a little bit smaller, uh, it has a little bit of a crest. It's more human-like than ape-like. So then uh I looked at the X creatures shooting the Bigfoot, and this came out in 1998. This one was shot by Chris Packham from BBC. He was an English naturalist and television presenter. I could tell right away from the start of this that he was going in with a bias, and bias is not good when you're trying to get to the facts, whether it's on one side or the other. Um, he just came across as very snobbish and uh kind of a know-it-all to me. I didn't really like his approach. But anyway, we'll discuss what he thought about this. So he talked to John Green, and everyone in the Bigfoot world knows who John Green is. He's a friend of Patterson, one of his best friends, and he's um he's a kind of a Bigfoot expert. He's a Bigfoot hunter, he knows a lot of history about the Bigfoot. He's actually collected a bunch of Bigfoot footprints over the years, over the decades. So he showed Chris footage, the original footage, and so Chris asked him, he said, was Patterson a professional filmmaker? And he said, No, he was strictly amateur. And so Chris's camera crew examined the original footage and confirmed that no camera magic was done, so they felt confident there was no trickery done with the camera work at least, and that a creature had indeed walked across in the film. And then Chris says that the fur and hair moves naturally along the back, and you can see muscles under the skin. So up to this point, he's he's kind of on board with this. He does question why the large creature would just slowly stroll away. He thinks this behavior is odd. He thinks that either it would turn and run, you know, full out gate, or maybe a creature that large wouldn't. But as we know, yeah, we have the advantage of knowing a lot of these encounters, they're very shy creatures unless they feel threatened or their territory is threatened, and they typically always just kind of walk away. I've heard stories where they run and they run at a ridiculously fast pace. So yeah, and you've also seen them just casually either just hide, stand in place, and or they or they casually walk away. Um, they're not always confrontational and they're not always just fleeing. You know, there's just like I would I would say that lends credibility that they're more human-like is because uh humans would act differently too. We're all not gonna act the same way in the same scenario. So I don't really think that's a strong point to me at all why you would discredit it, just because uh to me it was just like it was trying to get just put distance between them uh in a natural way. So then he saw the original foot castings that John Green showed him, and he first was skeptical because the footprints were all look the same. You know, they're different shapes and different sizes. And John Green explains, well, that's because it's walking on this sandbar, and your foot is not, you know, if this is a fake footprint, you you would expect them all to be pretty much the same, but they're all different because it's dynamic. He's walking through a terrain, so it's you're gonna get partial footprints sometimes, full footprints, night, you know, nice full ones, and distorted ones. Um, so they're not gonna always be the same. So he seemed to be satisfied with that answer. But then he's he questioned the depth of the prints. He said that the size of these footprints or the depth of these footprints would suggest that the creature was even much larger and bigger than what it was. And I don't know what he's basing that off of. I think you can't really make that statement because you don't know the substrate that this creature is walking on. We don't know the exact weight of it. And that sandbar you know was near a creek, so it was soft, as Patterson and Gimlin have explained. It was soft dirt, mud mixture.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

So I don't know that that is uh Well, I'll I'll I'll interject and say uh from the tracking community, which uh in case the listeners don't know, I I have had formal training on tracking. I'm not an expert by any stretch, but I've had the same training that a lot of experts have had. And to find a a really clear print is considered a a rare gift. So the fact that you know the stars aligned and this Bigfoot was on a substrate to get multiple clear tracks, it's either very lucky or it's questionable. But it it's generally you're not gonna get a clear, clear print. But the fact that the substrate may maybe the stars lined up and and they got lucky, you know, they got a bunch of prints. If you find a even a partial print, you're really lucky. Most of the most of tracking is done by sign, like broken limbs and things like that. But anyway, continue.

SPEAKER_03 34:46

Yeah. Well, because you're working you're they're walking in a dynamic area with different train, different characteristics. So unl unless they're walking in snow. Snow is pretty consistent or or mud or dirt or something like that. Um but base so what are your thoughts having a tracker mind from a tracker perspective and what you've seen and what you've studied, does that hold what he's saying that those prints are too deep for the size of the creature that made them?

SPEAKER_00 35:15

Not necessarily. I mean you'd have to be there and look at look at the substrate. You'd have to see it for yourself. You'd have to do tests, you know, walk through it, which I think didn't they do some of that? Uh actually Gimlin did. I believe I mean you have to be there to see to see the substrate, see the environment. And you know, stuff like that is like i i especially with something that's unknown, you don't really have information uh about that creature. So to make a statement like that, how how do you know that th those are too deep? Like if you're tracking a deer or some other animal that you're familiar with, there's a little small signs in the tracks that tell you there's a lot more information in tracks than people realize. But you could probably read those a lot better than than than something that you don't know. Now I will say some of the some of those photos that we saw, if you have a flexible foot in a costume, you could make that ridge in the center of the print. Now I know people, I I can't really I don't have this skill, but I know people who do who probably tell you if that's an actual foot or not. Because uh there's there's little signatures that are left in the toes, uh all of these little micro movements are are left in the print. There's a lot of information that's left in the print. And they have so many they have so many good ones that uh a really skilled tracker uh at the level of some of the ones I know could probably tell you if that was an actual foot or or not, if there's something suspicious about it at least.

SPEAKER_03 36:46

I think most maybe some most or some of these prints could be faked, but you'd have to go in with the knowledge uh ahead of time. You know, why would you go th uh through the effort of making all these things, but when they when you line them up with the way the creature walks, the way the foot flexes, it all matches up from the experts, the anthropologist experts and the movement experts. So either Patterson had a very uh and I'm not aware of this, either he had a strong background, and anthropology was not a big, you know, this was not a a well-studied thing, uh, as far as I know, uh, not like it is today. I don't know that he would have that knowledge to have the foresight to to make these. So I agree. I think i if somebody knew had all this knowledge that they could probably fake it, but I don't know that he would have the foresight to do that, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

It's it's hard to imagine that, and that's one reason why I want to see the capturing Bigfoot video really bad. Yeah, but but I'm just trying to I'm just trying to think about it from all angles. L little things that pop out to me, but I'm I'm not convinced that it's a fake, even with what with the things that I'm saying. It's like there's parts of it that looks legit and and I have a lot of questions as to how are you gonna you know, what you're saying doesn't really hold up. Plus I know also and and uh nothing against academia, but there are are books written by scholars on wild edibles that will kill you because the information is not coming from people who actually eat wild edibles, but from someone who's a scholar who's studied about that and not necessarily participated in it themselves. So scholars are are humans too, and they can get things wrong also. So to me, i if you like some of the people I know who who are trackers, they are in the field. They are one of them in particular I'm thinking of is obsessed with it. So those are some experts that that I would listen to, not necessarily take their word for it, hook line, sinker, but it's just basically question everything, you know, question the unknown.

SPEAKER_03 38:59

Yeah. So going back to the depth of the footprint, uh, I agree. I think unless you've studied the substrate, you can't really and I don't know what background or knowledge he has to determine that that depth of the foot is too deep based on the size of the creature in the film. I think that's speculation at best. Well, not based on the Gimlin film, it wasn't stumbling or anything.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

But at least not in that segment. But we don't know where those prints exactly which print it was that they're talking about. Sure. So we don't know. There's too many unknowns.

SPEAKER_03 39:44

But yeah, I think the big thing is is the substrate. You you just can't make a blanket statement that it's too it's too deep because you don't you don't have all the information. So um all right, so can you continue on in on his assessment? So he claims that the second reel that uh was shot so after uh Patterson sh shot the first film, they went back the next day to film the Prince and to take castings of the Prince. And he says that the second film that shows the footprints disappeared immediately after the Patterson film was shot. Well, I did some digging, and this is not true, um, at least not according to Chris Murphy, who's a Canadian author and a longtime Patterson Gimblin film historian. And he says that in October 26, 1967, so this would have been less than a week after the original film was shot, that at the University of British Columbia there was a public viewing, the screening of these films, this first one and the second one. The first one being the original film of the Bigfoot and the second one showing the tracks. Now, it did go missing sometime after that. Some have speculated that Al the Atlee, who was uh Patterson's brother-in-law and the financer behind the Patterson Gimlin film, suspected maybe he had it in his possession and it got lost or never was found after that. So that's not true. It it did go missing, but it was viewed, at least according to Chris Murphy, five or six days later after the original was shot. So then Chris visits Dr. Krantz. Uh he's back in the pincher again, and Chris asks if one of the more intriguing prints in his collection, a which was a deformed left foot that was accompanied by a normal right foot, could have been faked. And Dr. Krantz responded in so many words that no, it's not possible. The knowledge needed would have been to exceed his own, and they would have had to have worked from a zero point, and the odds of that are nil in his opinion, meaning they would have had to go in knowing more than he does about the foot anthropology uh gate and uh beforehand and make all these prints with that type of knowledge to fake them. And then John Green on his own, like nine months later, had reconstructed the event. Uh he went out to the site, so nine months after the original film was shot. On his own, he went down to reenact it. And he had his friend Jim McCowan stand in for the Bigfoot. He he was six foot five inches tall. When the original footage was overlaid digitally, it confirmed that the Bigfoot in the film was at least seven foot tall, six and a half to seven feet tall, in his opinion, but bulkier, obviously. But in his mind, this strengthened his position that the prints were too deep. Because here's a guy who's six foot five. He's obviously not near as bulky or heavy as the Bigfoot in the film, but he claims that the prints were four times deeper than expected.

SPEAKER_00 42:50

One thing that's interesting that popped out, uh if it's a costume, those prints may not be as deep because it it may act like a snowshoe, you know, where it spreads out, your your your load is spread over more of a wide area because you're squishing the bottom of the costume. So you may not have such a deep print. So the fact that they are deep may lend to the argument that it's not a costume.

SPEAKER_03 43:12

No, that's actually a great point. I haven't thought about that. So then he asks Dr. Kranz about the gait of the creature, and Dr. Krantz thinks the gait of the creature is definitely inhuman. The creature walks leaning forward somewhat and bends its knees most of the time, so that when it takes a step, it supports the leg with a bent knee, keeps the two feet on the ground for an unusual length of time. It also lifts the foot very high behind each step. So, in addition to all those things, it also swings the arms, which is very difficult to imitate at the same time where you're doing all those motions. And he states that it would, you know, he did it for 30 seconds, and he said, in his opinion, it would be very difficult for somebody to imitate that for over three seconds. Hundred foot that the creature spans and during the film. Chris argues that Dr. Kranz is elderly at that point, and thanks to the younger, more fit person to be trained to walk that way for a longer period of time. So I don't think you could support or argue against either one of those positions. I think you know both could be true. And then Chris visits the site, and this is in 1998, so it changed drastically because before the Patterson film was shot in 1964, there's a massive flood in that area. And that's why you see in the footage all these trees were knocked down. You see the sandbar, because three years earlier there's a massive flood that kind of cleared that area where the creek is, where the film was shot. So then he goes on to speculate that the suit was too good, that it was too professional to have been made by Patterson, and suggests that maybe a third party was involved in making the suit, which we know there was a third party came forward claiming that they had made the suit for Patterson, and we'll talk more about that later. Or that someone hired Patterson to fake it, but didn't include Bob Gimlin in on the act so that he could have an eyewitness, uh real eyewitness to this event. I think that's a compelling argument.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Um I think I believe Bob, you know, I've Yeah, there's a recent uh like very recent video out showing Bob Gimlin under a ultra, it's called ultra deep or ultra depth hypnosis.

SPEAKER_03 45:31

Ultra deep, yep.

SPEAKER_00 45:32

Yeah. So they brought him under that and the video they explained the whole process, you know, what ultra deep hypnosis is. And they bring him under, and one of the things that popped out to me was he had said that after spotting the Bigfoot and it walking away, he wanted to pursue it. So he he was uh like getting on his horse or something and he was about to pursue it, and then then Patterson yelled out to him, Don't leave me here, because Patterson was down by that time with his camera. But he said, Don't don't leave me. And I thought that was a little odd. I was like, I mean, i to me it's like you're on a horse now, you have a big foot within you could probably reach it if you're on a horse. Why would you not want him? I mean, Bob Gimmelin is a a an experienced outdoorsman. He's a you know cowboy, he's been out in the wilderness forever. Why not let him scout ahead? He's gonna come back, you know? So that was a little something that made me is like, mm, if this is a hoax then he probably will may not be in on it. 'Cause it if if you could say that that the the hypnosis was not faked in some way, you know, because and they explain that in the video, the process of it and why it's very difficult to so the the idea that that he was a witness and they needed that witness and the possibility of of he not being in on it, at least up to this point, as far as the knowledge that I have lends to the fact that that that may be the case. You know, he may not have known about it.

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Yeah, he he's and that's something he's said before. He's said uh in other interviews and stuff that he wanted to go forward. So yeah, i if you were a skeptic, you could say, oh yeah, that's part of the plan. He doesn't want him to go forward and catch, you know, the fake Bigfoot. Yeah, the guy hiding in the costume. But you can also imagine from Patterson's point of view, he, you know, they're probably a little bit they're both excited, but probably a little spooked by the this large creature. And he's on the ground, he's not on his horse at this point. His horse, he uh I believe he got knocked off his horse, because when they approached the creature, it rear his horse reared up. And I can't can't remember if they were both knocked down, if the horse also fell, or just Patterson fell. But he he fell and then he had to retrieve, fumble through his saddlebag to get the camera. So he's off his horse. So and he doesn't and his film runs out, so he doesn't have any film. So I I I guess I could also see it from that point of view that if you're wanting to capture this thing on film and you're on foot, you know, you want to be on your horse. So I can see both sides of that. I could see that a skeptic would be a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Well Pat Patterson's also an experienced outdoorsman. So so the these people are probably used to being out in the wilderness by themselves hunting. So and I'm not saying they couldn't be spooked. To me, it's like, oh well, don't leave me. It's like, well, you know, you know he's gonna navigate his way back right back to you. I would say let him let him go after the Bigfoot and see see what happened. He had a rifle. Right. Like Gimlin had a rifle. So he had a way to protect himself. But for sure. You know, I mean who knows?

SPEAKER_03 48:42

Yeah. Well, um I at this point too, the distance between them and the Bigfoot was quite a bit. It already gone it already started, uh according to Gimlin's own words, was starting to go up into up the bank on the other side and go up into the the woods. Uh in fact, he describes that they eventually did follow the tracks and it went up the steep embankment and to the point where you couldn't take horses anymore. Um yeah, I I could see I could see that. But I also see C Patterson wanting to be there too, and wanting to be on his horse in a safe, you know, and be able to keep up with Gimlin on his horse. But yeah, I think if I was in Gimlin's position, I would want to take off and try to catch this thing. But you know, all this has happened in microseconds, and uh it's always easy to hindsight to say what you would do. And we always think we would do something differently, but who knows if we would or not given the same circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

Well, I'll I'll interject this. Uh my UFO sighting. As soon as things got weird, I I hyper focused on what I was seeing. I didn't look at the guys that were with me, I just focused on what I was doing. I did what I felt was 'cause I'm like, wow, this is an opportunity kind of a thing. So that doesn't change anything with what Bob Gimlin would have done, but yeah, I I could I would say I'd probably go after it. Regardless.

SPEAKER_03 50:17

And I think that's why he why he wanted to. That's what I would want to do, but you know, we weren't there. So then he mentions that um I guess Patterson was offered fifty thousand dollars for this footage from a LA TV company, and uh I guess according to his calculations in 1998 that would be close to a quarter of a million dollars in equivalent. So it was you know a pretty significant amount of money. So that to him lended him to think more that it it could have been faked because of monetary reasons. And then he goes on to show footage shot by John Green of Bob talking about the day um back in 1992. So uh John Green filmed Bob Gimlin talking about it uh in 1992. Uh and this is the first time Bob had actively talked about it for a very long time. And in this film, Bob explains that he got up early before Patterson and took off but had to return because his horse threw a shoe. But when he got back to camp, Patterson was already gone. Sometime later they met back up and Patterson led them right back to the spot of the sighting. This made Chris, the documentarian, uh suspicious. I don't recall hearing about this before that Bob had left before Patterson. I don't know if I've heard that before, diving into this more. And maybe I did at one point and forgot. So that I thought that was interesting. So he speculates that oh, this was a perfect timing for Patterson to go set up the scene. But from what Bob says, they traveled for a good hour or so before the encounter. So and that was after they had met up. So I think the the creek was a few hours' ride from the base camp. So I don't know what all you could set up in that time.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

But well, also if there's someone out there in a Bigfoot costume, they're out there. Right. So they could have a stash with all the tools they need to do whatever the staging they need.

SPEAKER_03 52:17

Sure. You know yeah, I guess they don't really need him to go set anything up if that was the case. So then Chris gets Bob on the phone and and talks to Bob and convinced him to uh talk to him. And Bob tells him in this film that what he saw he believed was a living creature, not a man in a suit. And then so Chris presses him that he could have been fooled, and Bob says, as he's gotten older and wiser, that that had crept in his mind. But he said that Roger would have had a made a meticulous plan to pull that off because they were out there for a week before. I don't think this is well known, but they were out there for a good week before that event even happened, and they're out in the middle, he said like 40 miles from the closest settlement out in the middle of this forest area. So if you're gonna set up a fake film, why would you wait a week to uh pull this off?

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Because it's because it's a better, more convincing plan. Yeah, but I guess but it's i if if you're a fanatic about something though, and apparently I think Patterson may have been because they did expeditions on it, I think it's reasonable to say that it's possible that he would plan ahead. And because all he'd have to do is estimate like a two or three hour window for someone to be out there and ready, you know. So it it doesn't it doesn't seem super unlikely to me that that could be planned.

SPEAKER_03 53:42

So the person that costumes gonna be out there for a week?

SPEAKER_00 53:45

No.

SPEAKER_03 53:45

Waiting for them?

SPEAKER_00 53:46

No, they but they would hike out with their stuff independently and be out in that area at say noon on this day. That's that's reasonable.

SPEAKER_03 53:54

I I mean I guess that's possible, but I'm just thinking logically. It's gonna fake this.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

It's unlikely, but it's possible.

SPEAKER_03 54:01

Very unlikely that yeah, it's possible. All of this is possible, but I'm just trying to think logically. Why would you spend all that time and energy and then wait a week?

SPEAKER_00 54:12

That's really kind of the big question. It's like what is the big payoff here? You know, what I mean, I I get the film, you know, they offered him money for it and all that. Did he take it? Also, what benefit would this be to bringing in tourism and how would that benefit the business that he already had? Which is my understanding was what what raising horses and dogs? Is that it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:33

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 54:33

Yeah. So it's like is it fame? Maybe that's it. You know, I mean that could be it. I think there was a guy who who had the the Bigfoot suit in the frozen in the ice or something. And he was he came out and was talking about how you know he had has a Bigfoot body and it turned out just to be a rubber suit. And he he I think he was doing it probably to pull a fast one. But I thought I heard something about, you know, he was like 'cause he says something like, I want to be I'm I'm like the greatest game hunters, I'm the best game hunter ever, you know, or something to that effect. But I'm piecing together memories here on it. But you know, maybe it could be an ego thing, you know, where he wants to be the the great, you know, anyway.

SPEAKER_03 55:18

Yeah, and some people just make fake stuff just because they just want to make a statement that whatever you talk about, UFOs, Bigfoot, that it's fake.

SPEAKER_00 55:26

Yeah, they want to point out how gullible people can be, and and that's true. Yeah. It is true. For sure.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

But so it's you gotta think you gotta think critically, you gotta you know, look things from be I think going in with a skeptical mind is good as long as you're open to uh with seeing what you're seeing and well I know I've I've certainly been gullible on things in my life, you know, and I we all have but I I I learn from it.

SPEAKER_00 55:53

Try to learn from it. I become a lot more critical over time. So, you know, th little things will jump out at me and I don't ignore it. But at the same time, you know, I don't assume that uh that I'm gonna be like on the right track and know all the answers, you know. We just gotta weigh everything and learn as we go, and this is definitely the case with this, especially with that video we haven't seen yet. Yeah. Really eager to see.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

So in this conversation with Bob, Bob says that you know, as I mentioned, he would have had a very meticulous uh plan to pull this off, and he was carrying a loaded 30 odd six rifle with 180 grain bullets that you know could probably stop an elephant. I don't know. Uh I'm not a big game hunter, so I don't know the takedown power, but I know a 30-odd six is pretty powerful rifle. And so if that was faked and it wasn't a costume, they were taking a big risk.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 56:49

And now Chris goes on to say that they had already decided beforehand that if they came across a Bigfoot, they wouldn't shoot unless they were in danger or was going to attack them. But if Bob's not in on it, that's still a huge risk.

SPEAKER_00 57:03

I mean, you could say no That could be another reason why I stopped him, said, Hey, don't leave me. You know, for fear of running up there and shooting the guy.

SPEAKER_03 57:11

I'm talking about the initial encounter. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean they were really close. I mean he they walked right up on this thing while it was I think it was kneeling down the water or something when they first spotted it, and it popped up and started walking away. So you're you're assuming Bob's going to uh uh in the moment, in the heat of the moment, not pull his rifle out and shoot, you know, uh out of fear or out of being surprised. So that's a big risk. I don't know if I I buy that. I can see what you're saying though, that in the later part where he says, Don't leave me, because he doesn't want uh Bob to go shoot the guy if it is a fake.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Bob Bob Genlin did say in that hypnosis session that he was excited when he first thought he was excited, not necessarily fear, but he was like, Wow, this thing is real, you know. Here he is, he's seen one, and wow, this thing really does exist after all. And he he had talked about that you know he'd been out in the wilderness his whole life. He's seen it, he's heard every call, you know, seen pretty much all the animals, you know, the tracks. He says he'd seen nothing like this. I mean, he was super excited.

SPEAKER_03 58:16

Yeah, I mean, again, that and that's a hindsight, right? We know that he was excited, but Roger would have no idea that he would be excited and not be fearful at all.

SPEAKER_00 58:26

You never know how people are gonna react.

SPEAKER_03 58:28

Yeah, in the in the heat of the moment. Yeah. So then Chris visits Optic Nerve Studios in Burbank, California, run by a guy named John Vullich, who specializes in building fantastical animals and around actors and such. And when he was shown the film, he said, and I quote, in my mind, it's undoubtedly a suit. It has all the earmarks of being a guy in a suit. Now, I would argue that the footage that he saw, he was looking at a small T television with the original footage that wasn't the hands and stuff. So later experts in special effects and costumes counter that and say no, that there's no way that could have been made. So I would I would say that given the what the format he was given the film to watch, he probably and that was probably my first when I first saw it. I was like, oh, that looks not knowing any technical information how costumes are made or something. I think I thought, oh yeah, that seems like a costume. So I think we have to take that into consideration when we consider his testimony. He was watching this on a little colored television from the original film. So Chris asked him if the suit of that quality could have been made at that time, and John says there's been rumors in the industry for years that John Chambers, the guy who built the suits for Planet Apes, was in fact the person who built the suit. And actually, the filming of Planet Apes was going on the same time the Gimlin film was shot, but nothing has ever been confirmed of that rumor.

SPEAKER_00 59:59

And then he goes on they how would they know each other? I mean, how reasonable is it that they would know each other? I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:06

I mean, I guess you could speculate that Patterson was looking for a good costume designer and put the word out and maybe.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:12

Well, I guess they do live in California, so I guess they could actually pull that off.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:16

Right. So then Chris goes and reenacts his own footage using a vintage camera like the one that Patterson used, had an amateur cameraman operate it. Uh he measured out all the distances based on the original film, and states that the encounter was virtually implausible in his eyes, given how close they would have been to the creature, and then for it to casually walk away. Again, he seems to be stuck on how casual this creature walks away given the proximity they are to him. So he basically concludes his conclusion in this documentary is that it was uh a fake. So again, I I think we have to consider that I don't know that he had the an earnest, in my opinion, didn't have an earnest from the get-go, wasn't earnestly trying to get to a truth. He was a skeptical. He was already kind of debunking in his mind, in his head. So he kind of just pigeonholed, he ignored all the stuff that he he thought was real, the muscle movement, the footprints, all the the tangible evidence he just totally dismissed and totally focused his conclusion on speculation instead of the actual evidence. So I don't think he gave a fair assessment, in my opinion. I think his his own views got in the way of the evidence because he totally ignores them in his final conclusion, even though he saw them firsthand himself. In part two, we'll go even deeper. We'll examine the scientists, the anthropologists, the filmmakers, and the special effects artists and see what they have to say about Patty and the Patterson Gimlin film and take a closer look at some of the strongest claims that the entire thing was a hoax. Does the evidence hold up? Or does the story finally start to fall apart? Part two airs October 13th, wherever you get your podcast or watch us on YouTube. Until next time, stay curious and question.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

The silence held a secret there. The wind forgot to breathe. Then just as quickly as you disappear from my life.