Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum - America's "Bigfoot Professor"

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William Parcher said:
With square toes and a cartoonish double-ball that looks like it was made up in a Disney studio. That is not the foot of a lost or AWOL human. Square toes.

The Wallace tracks are so obviously fake that they deserve laughter. Loud knee-slapping laughter.
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Yes. But my point was that there wasn't a history of what we now call Bigfoot (an ape) in the region. Was it the Wallace brothers intention to create an idea of an unknown ape in Northern California, or did it just shake out that way?


Once Green got involved, he linked the tracks to Canadian Sasquatch lore, and he had already converted the human Sasquatch of Indian lore to the British Commonwealth lore of the Yeti, a relict ape.


It may have been the Wallace brothers intention to create the idea of a mysterious ape, though, since what was certainly a bogus sighting of a bipedal ape by a Wallace employee got the ball rolling in that direction.


But what about Mullens? He started very early hoaxing tracks, long before the Yeti achieved the notoriety it would enjoy later after the Shipton track, becoming an impetus for the "discovery" of "America's Abominable Snowman." What kind of animal was Mullens trying to convey with his hoaxes. The Shrike offers this solution: "Ape Canyon was certainly a thing by then, yes? I assume all them 49ers had been spreading 100 years of wild men in the woods lore before Mullens got started." I thought of this too, especially given that Mullens was hoaxing within years of the Ape Canyon incident. Which brings me back to Sasquatch, of Indian lore. Perhaps the whole hoaxing tracks thing was a reflection of the lore of giant Indians living in the PNW.


None of this really matters now, I know. It's just that I'm interested in how Bigfoot lore evolved and why it evolved the way it did.
 
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The Heryford tracks were photographed and casted in eastern Grays Harbor County in 1982 “located” by Dennis Heryford, whom Meldrum refers to as both “Officer” and “Deputy Sheriff”. Meldrum gives a short account and some photos in Ch. 13 of LMS and in the color photo section after p. 96. The tracks look pretty boring and I imagine Meldrum’s attachment to them is a result of what he calls “half tracks” ...”found about a quarter mile along the spur. These had a nine foot step and showed only the imprint of the forefoot.” Etc...—-LMS p. 231.
 
From the BROs
Sheriff's deputy Dennis Heryford is hot on the tracks of Sasquatch - he's accumulated five molds of 15-inch footprints reportedly left by the creature in its Grays Harbor County stomping grounds.

The tracks of the controversial creature were reported to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Department two years ago, and the molds made are "some of the clearest ever produced," Heryford said.

The footprints, 2 inches deep and 6 inches wide, have five telltale characteristics Sasquatch trackers look for, including overhanging toenails, visible tendons and bunions, he said. In addition, some have ridges similar to those found on human prints.

"We discount some of the stuff we come across, but these are the ones that you just can't discount."

As part of his job, Heryford investigates reports of Sasquatch sightings and track findings. No footprints that could be verified have been found since the four that were reported in April and May 1982, although Heryford has investigated five reports this year.
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Tracks found in April 1982 were discovered south of Elma near Abbott Hill by two loggers. A week later, a trail was found near Oakville by a passerby, Heryford said.
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As a child growing up in Washington, Heryford said he wanted to believe in Sasquatch, but didn't have evidence to support its existence. "Now we have evidence to support it, but we still don't have a body, and until we do there will always be skeptics," the deputy said.
 
According to Loren Coleman, copies of the Heryford casts are for sale at Skulls Unlimited:
“These tracks were collected in 1982 by Deputy Dennis Heryford of the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Department in Washington State. These are regarded as some of the best Bigfoot casts every made due to the credibility of the officer involved, the specific mushrooming of the toes (difficult to hoax), and the texture/bulging features shown in the tracks, demonstrating that these were made with live feet (not wooden fakes).” $90 for the pair.
 
The professor is laying low because his time is almost up. Don "Bobo" Meldrum made a crucial mistake in the very beginning of his fake pursuit of the fake monster in that he always thought it was guaranteed Bigfoot would never be disproved. And while maybe that's still technically true, it's surely not true anymore in terms of intelligent/rational thought. He thought he was always going to be safe from "moral" persecution from the obvious fraud because there would never be a way for anyone to explicitly prove him wrong. I think he might be now seeing how stupid that thinking was.

Proving that anthropology really is the only thing he has "special" knowledge in, seems he never once thought about how the future is the real mystery and how it could potentially wreak havoc on his Bigfoot plans. Or how it could accumulate the literal mountains of contradictory Bigfoot evidence that it actually has. One of those mountains being 100 filmed episodes of Finding Bigfoot. They claim the beast's existence within the show's title, then in over 100 hours of their brand of "reality" television proceed to never once find Bigfoot. Or any other Bigfooty thing either. That's 100 hours of broadcast time, I bet they had 5,000 hours of total footage. Not one Bigfoot and that was their sole goal. Those are mind boggling facts if the beast actually exists. And even more so when you factor in that the people doing all that looking also claim to be one of the world's leading Bigfoot authorities (along with Meldrum). Curiously, they could more rightfully claim to be the world's leading Not Finding Bigfoot authority.

It really is true that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. And any kind of authority should already know that. Even Meldrum. :wink:
 
Jerry, North America has always had newspaper stories about scary wildmen in the woods. They seem like yellow journalism but they appeared everywhere that white people were settled. These news stories existed way before Ape Canyon. There was a guy on BFF named Tirademan who would constantly post these ancient news clippings. Giant man-thing terrorized two innocent people who went out fishing. "We seen him. It was like a man and not like a man. It was horrible." It's a constant theme probably going all the way back to the pilgrims.

Could the Bigfoot phenomenon have instead started its wildfire popularity with a giant track find in Appalachia? Oh hell yes because the hillbillies already had their own wildman stories going all the way back.

The known history of giant fake tracks started in the Pacific Northwest and then after spread throughout the country. But I believe that it could have been different and we'd still end up with a popular Bigfoot phenomenon. I think it still would have worked if the track hoaxing began in West Virginia and then later spread to the PNW.
 
The Ape Canyon story is funny because it's so phoney. Fred Beck first told it as a story of paranormal mystical beings. Not wildmen or apes or Sasquatches. He would have rejected suggestions that these were just undocumented primates of some sort and maybe human or ape. He thought they were from another dimension. They pelted the cabin with boulders and the guys were trying too shoot them through gaps in the walls. The beings even reached into the cabin trying to grab at them.

Then when he tells the story to Patterson in 1966 the cabin is missing from the story. Instead the guys are in a campsite and the rocks are flying in. They tried to shield themselves but couldn't and had to run from the campsite.

Bigfooters hate the paranormal descriptions so modern tellings leave that out. But they put the cabin back into the story instead of the campsite version.

Some skeptics speculate that Boy Scouts were throwing rocks at the cabin, but in my opinion the story is a complete fabrication.
 
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William Parcher said:
The Ape Canyon story is funny because it's so phoney. Fred Beck first told it as a story of paranormal mystical beings. Not wildmen or apes or Sasquatches. He would have rejected suggestions that these were just undocumented primates of some sort and maybe human or ape. He thought they were from another dimension. They pelted the cabin with boulders and the guys were trying too shoot them through gaps in the walls. The beings even reached into the cabin trying to grab at them.

Then when he tells the story to Patterson in 1966 the cabin is missing from the story. Instead the guys are in a campsite and the rocks are flying in. They tried to shield themselves but couldn't and had to run from the campsite.

Bigfooters hate the paranormal descriptions so modern tellings leave that out. But they put the cabin back into the story instead of the campsite version.

Some skeptics speculate that Boy Scouts were throwing rocks at the cabin, but in my opinion the story is a complete fabrication.
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Parcher you just summed up BF and the bible beautifully.
 
DennyT said:
The same guy seems to invite him back repeatedly.
He seems to get away with his lame whining and excuses. Instead of asking him hard questions related to wildlife science, the class shares their Bigfoot ? experiences!!
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I don’t know the superstitions oops I mean religion of the Schmidt guy who keeps inviting him back to Utah State but recall that there is a Bigfoot encounter sort of thing in Mormon orthodoxy. Just sayin’...
 
It seems that Meldrum utilizes Bigfoot as a revenue stream, to soak the rubes and grab media attention and gigs, kind of whoring, but in his real job has actually managed to achieve some respectability for his efforts on fossil hominid tracks and their purported mid-tarsal breaks. Like a gym teacher who markets his own line of useless and possibly dangerous protein supplements made covertly from roadkills.
 
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It seems that Meldrum is oversimplifying the 1982 Grays Harbor track finds for the rubes. There were at least four distinct locations in April and May 1982 but Meldrum refers in the text only to the Abbott Hill find; and the image legends only mention the county. Further, at least two sizes of tracks were found. Meldrum is very “careless” about labeling the photos in LMS so we really don’t know what is what. Dennis Heryford is apparently a Bigfoot believer but there were others involved: Officer Pat Sweeney and other law officers of the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Department, with Cliff Crook, Rene Dahinden and Robert Walls. Further Meldrum is also known not to be terribly careful with scaling so the photos are not terribly convincing. Again, it’s just for the rubes. He would never get away with this with academics or smart people who aren’t already believers. Several of the tracks look pitifully fake.
 
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William Parcher said:
Jerry, North America has always had newspaper stories about scary wildmen in the woods.
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Mmm, yes that was my thought. That you can go as far back as the written word of man, Old Testament Genesis Giants if you want.

So the question to me is when did this distinctively modern period begin: when it became an income-producing industry, a part of that being international media pulp.

It seems to me the Yeti, or more propertly the Abominable Snowman hoax marked the modern era.

This journalism hoax was perpetrated by Henry Newman in the wake of the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition in 1921. To sell copy. And it did.

That evolved into more internationally publicized Yeti hoaxing like Shipton in 1951. Economically you had climbing and big game hunting as important sources of taxes and local jobs for porters in places like Nepal.

So an industry of Yeti expeditions arose in the 1950's there. Everyone was cashing in: government officials got taxes and permit fees. Local porters got jobs working for con men like Peter Byrne who switched from tiger hunting to fake Yeti expeditions. Book sales, newspaper ad sales - bigfoot started generating serious cash in the 1950's.

I won't cover developments that followed in Canada and the U.S. because the point here is to see that by the 1950's you have an industry supporting authors, climbers, porters, bureaucrats, fake guides, local tourist chambers of commerce, etc.

Long before of course you have scattered stories, legends, myths, whatever you want to call them. But it became an industry in the modern era. In my humble opinion.

Harry -

He thought he was always going to be safe from "moral" persecution from the obvious fraud because there would never be a way for anyone to explicitly prove him wrong
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Yes, I am in hearty agreement there. He thought he could always maintain plausible deniability.

Because who knew a couple 13 year-olds would be able to fly a drone over an area 24/7 filming everything down to the mice?

Trail cams with sensors. Infared. Cell phones with HD capability in every pocket...

the industry has moved to secret sites to shield themselves from that. Area X, lol.

Denny T

Yeah, it's a revenue stream. Notoriety. And you have to give that little boy of the 1960's credit: he did go get his PhD legitimately and earn his position with tenure, all the while waiting...

Before he revealed himself.
 
The logic of trackway interpretation is important. A while back, Meldrum’s Robin(Cliffie) made the deductive pronouncement that if a trackway has been declared authentic [how?], then all tracks in it (regardless of the particular features) must also be authentic.
Meldrum (like Krantz) has a few features of a particular track that make him believe it is authentic. It seems that if he sees such a feature e.g. “half-track”in one or more of the tracks in a trackway he decides the whole thing is authentic. Then all the tracks in it are authentic; and by extension the fake-looking tracks in that trackway can then be used to claim validity for fake looking tracks in other trackways. See how that works?
 
The Shrike said:
He still exists; just took some off I'd say.

I'm not going anywhere - I've just been uber-busy getting a new semester underway. I'm not pleased that those creeps outed me, but it's also not the end of the world. (Yes, I really am a professor, I really do bird research, and I have indeed been to the Ouachitas. ;>)

My message for Don Jeffrey is the same: 1) What is your plan for finding the beast once and for all? 2) What would it take for you conclude that you're wrong?
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If Don J were here I imagine he might blather something about environmental DNA and nests being very promising, and “you can’t prove a negative”.
But looking over his claims both in SLMS and in his more recent statements it seems that the cornerstones of his supposed beliefs are:
Meldrum’s first trackway from/by/with Paul Freeman, the PGF, the midtarsal break, and the Heryford tracks. He doesn’t seem to talk about the Skookum cast these days so I don’t put that on the list. Likewise the “cripple foot” tracks of Bossburg/Marx.
 
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Meldrum has ignored all the evidence that Freeman was a hoaxer. At this late date it seems unlikely that Freeman’s pals are still alive to rat him out. It would seem that even if someone were to find Freeman’s son and get a confession out of him regarding the Freeman video, Don J would still claim the 1996 trackway was real. So that foundational element per se is not going away.
 
Meldrum (like Bill Munns), generally tries to avoid or trivialize “background” information on the people and events. He is most secure when he pontificates on individual casts. Of course with the PGF he extends his analysis to Patty’s feet.
 
The 1982 “Heryford” casts might be worth looking into, for someone who lives in the vicinity of Olympia. It does take some effort to make credible stompers and at least two pairs were used. In the usual hoax, some bigfooter involved in the finding or early investigation is the hoaxer. So I would just guess that Cliff Crook fits the bill; he lived about two hours away in Bothell WA. Heryford himself or one of the other deputies might be considered but seem unlikely.
Short of some deathbed confession I doubt this foundational piece will ever be directly debunked. Of course, that is what Don J. banks on, and that is why he doesn’t make judgments on present day trackways.
 
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Long story short the only way Meldrum would have to eat serious crow would be if the PGF is debunked (still possible). That might involve a serious Gimlin or Pat Patterson confession (it won’t); or if DeAtley gives up the suit (he won’t) or some other serious proof is found.
I should add that there are literally many thousands of people who have taken Bigfoot as their personal monster, through some imagined encounter. And millions more will still vaguely believe. Many years ago John Napier seems to have believed that the PGF was a fake but at the same time believed Bigfoot was probably real. I don’t think that Don J. will ever admit that he is wrong about Bigfoot.
 
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