kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Bigfoot: The Patterson Gimlin Film - Part 5
- Thread starter HarryHenderson
- Start date
LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
The "genuine" comment is about bigfoot, not the PGF, to be fair. Green is saying they knew bigfoot was real before they saw the movie.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Unfortunately, that Times Colonist article is on microfiche in Victoria and I live in Sapporo, but no, Green was not talking about Bigfoot in general. He took the PGF as genuine before he went to DeAtley's house to view it, just as he originally accepted Marx's hoax film as genuine.
LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
I've seen the article and I'll stay with my interpretation.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
LTC, I thought I could only see the article on microfiche in Victoria and then I looked into it and found the Daily Colonist has been archived online. You're right and I was mistaken. The context is indeed referring to Bigfoot in general.
I did something mistakenly years back in Victoria when I was examining the microfiche. I accidentally quote-mined John Green, something I hate.
Here's the proper context...
Green conceded that the seven people who saw the film - including himself - were already believers in sasquatches. He and others have been collecting evidence for a decade or more.
LEEDING SEEKER
"No movie would be convincing," he said. "We all know what can be done with movies. There has been convincing evidence for years, but no one looked at it. We all knew it was genuine before we saw it."
https://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist19671025/1967_10_25#page/n16/mode/1up
Thank you for the correction.
I did something mistakenly years back in Victoria when I was examining the microfiche. I accidentally quote-mined John Green, something I hate.
Here's the proper context...
Green conceded that the seven people who saw the film - including himself - were already believers in sasquatches. He and others have been collecting evidence for a decade or more.
LEEDING SEEKER
"No movie would be convincing," he said. "We all know what can be done with movies. There has been convincing evidence for years, but no one looked at it. We all knew it was genuine before we saw it."
https://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist19671025/1967_10_25#page/n16/mode/1up
Thank you for the correction.
LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
It's still not a good thing for Green to say, though.
All he would have seen are a few fake tracks, prior to the PGF.
All he would have seen are a few fake tracks, prior to the PGF.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Yes, true. He had been completely duped by Ray Wallace at Bluff Creek and Blue Creek Mountain Road only two months prior to the film.
HarryHenderson
Graduate Poster
In whose opinion? Surely not Green's. This was becoming a serious part of his life at that point. He was in on the entire Bigfoot game virtually from the beginning. He was definitely an essential part (maybe only below Patterson and Wallace) of the original group producing it in a 3d context. Ergo his regular presence as the "objective journalist" at many of the Bigfoot incidents early on wasn't to investigate anything, it was to look official and secretly promote the beast further. I don't think he ever saw a Bigfoot track he didn't like.
Maybe the proof of all that is his lack of any revealing deathbed confessions about it. Let's say he really was the honest, objective, sharp journalist sort he always let everyone believe he was, in his 60+ years of supposed "looking" and not finding an iota of Bigfoot (after the PGF)--and never having a sighting himself [claiming so might have finally crossed the few ethical lines he didn't want to cross?]--surely he would have realized and confessed long before now that there was no such thing as Bigfoot? No? Yet he never wavered. And for apparently no other reason than the perpetually duping of the public for what was probably only a modest financial gain. Though I won't ever say my youth was wasted in any way on lies John Green may have told.
William Parcher
Show me the monkey!
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Welcome back kitakaze, we have not seen you in a long time.
Ditto
AlaskaBushPilot
Illuminator
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Well of course.
This is a test I often refer to: do the proponents demonstrate measurable belief, as opposed to measuring the extent they say they believe.
If a guy spends his life building bigfoot traps in his mom's basement out of titanium and kryptonite, it counts as zero. Even if it was a million dollars.
If he visits the PGF site the day after he hears about it, that is demonstrating belief. The first guy there would have discovered the tracks are the length of the PGF, and no further. All tracks would show a film staging site, not an animal trackway. The horses, the man-prints, and Patty prints.
And they all know this. Because every one of them is BLAARGing, proven by this and so many other actions/inactions.
Greene was not duped. His career began as a chamber of commerce newsletter style booster at a Hot Springs resort. Bigfoot was a tourist hoax, with Green as top promoter. He was developing that into a book sales gambit.
None of them has come forward. Not even Ray Wallace. It was his son, after Ray died, who came forward. Did Ray believe, as he walked in his stompers? Of course not. Neither did Roger nor John, nor any of them. The whole point is putting people on. The more fantastical the thing you get people to believe you are serious about, the better job you did.
This is what HarryHenderson is saying too, I guess. To think otherwise is to believe in a level of stupidity or delusion too great. Their behavior is too calculating, matching people putting us on.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Thank you both, WP and Denny. It's always good coming back to my roots.
Now, here is a kind of a new twist.
It is interesting that Jim McClarin and John Green seem to have first seen the film at different times at DeAtleys house.
On Friday October 20, 1967, McClarin was in Willow Creek carving the redwood statue (staying free at the Bigfoot Motel) when Patterson and Gimlin arrived at Hodgson’s variety store, across the street around 615pm. But through that evening no one reached out to Jim, and he was not informed of the shocking news of the film until the next morning, Saturday, October 21. This after Patterson called Hodgson from Orleans to say that he and Gimlin were going home to Yakima to see the film, and that others could see it there as well.
When Jim walked across the road to the store he found that Dahinden had arrived from San Francisco (by bus presumably) in response to a call from Green the night before.
Jim and Rene took a bus to the McKinleyville Airport and flew, then bused, to Yakima, that day, arriving in the evening. Someone picked them up at the bus station and took them to DeAtley’s house. Again, this was Saturday night, October 21. At DeAtleys they went to the basement where there were several other people (including two women) none of whom Jim knew. Jim had visited Roger in the the spring, stayed at the Patterson home and thus certainly knew Roger very well. He consistently and with certainty says he did not see Patterson at DeAtleys (he did not see Roger until the UBC showings). Of course, Roger could NOT have been there the evening of the 21st, as he and Gimlin were still on the road, having set off from Orleans late that morning. Jim did not know Green at that time though he had corresponded with him, and he does not recall meeting Green at that time. Jim and Rene later hooked up with Green to get a ride up to BC.
Green’s account indicates that he arrived Sunday, October 22, and waited on the main floor of DeAtleys house until Roger arrived. Only after Roger went down and saw the film was he (Green) allowed to go to the basement. Gimlin of course did not show up. This has been accepted as the time and date when the PGF first went “public.” But I think it really happened the night before. I do not at the moment know where Jim and Rene spent the night (possibly with one of the other guests) but Rene (who may have stayed at DeAtleys) seems to have returned the next morning while Jim, like Gimlin, slept in. This would account for both Green and Dahinden recalling Roger’s presence.
Gentlemen, start your timelines!
It is interesting that Jim McClarin and John Green seem to have first seen the film at different times at DeAtleys house.
On Friday October 20, 1967, McClarin was in Willow Creek carving the redwood statue (staying free at the Bigfoot Motel) when Patterson and Gimlin arrived at Hodgson’s variety store, across the street around 615pm. But through that evening no one reached out to Jim, and he was not informed of the shocking news of the film until the next morning, Saturday, October 21. This after Patterson called Hodgson from Orleans to say that he and Gimlin were going home to Yakima to see the film, and that others could see it there as well.
When Jim walked across the road to the store he found that Dahinden had arrived from San Francisco (by bus presumably) in response to a call from Green the night before.
Jim and Rene took a bus to the McKinleyville Airport and flew, then bused, to Yakima, that day, arriving in the evening. Someone picked them up at the bus station and took them to DeAtley’s house. Again, this was Saturday night, October 21. At DeAtleys they went to the basement where there were several other people (including two women) none of whom Jim knew. Jim had visited Roger in the the spring, stayed at the Patterson home and thus certainly knew Roger very well. He consistently and with certainty says he did not see Patterson at DeAtleys (he did not see Roger until the UBC showings). Of course, Roger could NOT have been there the evening of the 21st, as he and Gimlin were still on the road, having set off from Orleans late that morning. Jim did not know Green at that time though he had corresponded with him, and he does not recall meeting Green at that time. Jim and Rene later hooked up with Green to get a ride up to BC.
Green’s account indicates that he arrived Sunday, October 22, and waited on the main floor of DeAtleys house until Roger arrived. Only after Roger went down and saw the film was he (Green) allowed to go to the basement. Gimlin of course did not show up. This has been accepted as the time and date when the PGF first went “public.” But I think it really happened the night before. I do not at the moment know where Jim and Rene spent the night (possibly with one of the other guests) but Rene (who may have stayed at DeAtleys) seems to have returned the next morning while Jim, like Gimlin, slept in. This would account for both Green and Dahinden recalling Roger’s presence.
Gentlemen, start your timelines!
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Bigfootery can also be viewed as a sort of pyramid scheme. A person gets recruited by a con man, then has to build his own pyramid of adherents. Unfortunately the “significant other” often finds looking for Bigfoot to be less tolerable than, say, selling household cleaners, (though both usually lead to financial distress); thus accounting for the failed marriages that often result.
I feel sorry for the kids, even if the parents stay together. Getting out in the woods is great, but the brainwashing... “something’s not right with the Meldrum boy...”
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Remember the old puzzlers about the 3 missionaries and 3 cannibals trying to get across the river...
In KK’s link to the Daily Colonist of 10/25/67 (kudos for that) Green was at home presumably on 10/24. Apparently Jim and Rene were also there. John indicated to the reporter that 7 people had seen the film (at DeAtleys) besides Patterson.
I don’t recall Green ever identifying these 7 other than the obvious : himself, Al, René and Jim...I think probably he didn’t know who the other 3 were because he never was in the same room with them. Of the people he saw the film with, 2 of those three (plus Roger and himself) were certainly believers and Al would certainly have pretended to be one for the sake of the developing hoax. So “all”...
I imagine Al’s wife was there with Jim Saturday night along with another couple and these three were probably not believers (and they thus didn’t come back for more on Sunday when Green saw it.) Jim would have told John on the way to the Green home in BC that 3 others saw it with him, though he didn’t know who they were and thus couldn’t have told John who they were.
That makes 7, as Green said, with two women, as Jim recalls. All the people who saw it with Jim on Saturday night were strangers to him except Rene. All the people who saw it with Green on Sunday were believers (or in Al’s case, pretended to be one).
That’s how the Believers and the Non-Believers all got across the river safely.
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AlaskaBushPilot
Illuminator
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- 4,341
An interesting idea. I don't have a good grasp on how BLAARGers play with fellow adherents because I just can't stomach following their fora.
It seems like there are a number of character roles people can self-select into. You guys are way better than me on seeing what kinds of roles people are playing. Some are leaders doing expeditions, but the vast majority are not.
My objection to BLAARGing is the development and perfection of anti-social skills.
When I found the James Randi forum I had been through a long period of studying personality disorders, most especially covert aggressives. I was not only serious about the subject, but I published something in the area.
So when I came here looking for an article my Dad had shown me as a child, regarding bigfoot, I was struck by how BLAARGers went right down the list of mental/emotionally abusive tactics used by the personality disordered.
Front to back, bigfoot is all about deception and bad character. Good people can make bad choices. Nobody's perfect. But look at Roger Patterson, the epicenter of Bigfoot in the Americas, my God what an unconscionable con man. We cannot overlook how many people he defrauded, stole from, lied to and etc. It was an extensive fraud, this PGF. They rehearsed with a gorilla suit and learned to both modify the suit and shake the hell out of the camera at distance to pull off the con. A million dollar road trip with DeAtley, this was no small operation.
That's bad character, right? And all people who BLAARG eventually are faced with the repeated choice, again and again - am I going to deceive people, to play dumb, have selective attention, lie by omission or outright lie, select which questions I want to answer, bait people then play the victim, use projection, etc.
Everyone lies and the understandable lies involve self-defense. The would-be rapist is at the door. The wife says her husband the policeman is on his way home at this very moment. But we lie to be diplomatic, the white lie, and to protect ourselves from embarrassment, etc.
We call these defense mechanisms. BLAARGers use defense mechanisms with skeptics. They know they are lying just like the wife knows she is lying to the would-be rapist. They know there are no unexplored areas. They know dozens of families are at the campground playing frisbee, toasting weiners, picking mushrooms & etc. while they are pretending a half-ton monster is running amok.
So they have to choose. Do I embark upon this long-term deception, adopting this pretend character and toying with people? Once I do, how do I go back? All the people I have conned, what does that make me look like? We see people reach a point of no return, no matter how idiotic it makes them look.
Roger certainly couldn't go back. Nor Gimlin. Bob Heironimus did, and admitted he was a "sucker". DeAtley, the brains of the bunch, will probably not in his lifetime go back. But the family, as with Wallace, may come through for us.
It is a real easy thing for BLAARGers to come clean. Start LARPing instead. This is where you acknowledge you are Live Action Role Playing. It is no longer an alternate reality, you don't need to be a nasty troll with it. You don't have to lie about the PGF because it's so obviously a hoax. Now bigfoot is fun and games instead of a training ground for the personality disordered.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Did Roger actually believe in Bigfoot? Yes, I think he did. How and why he did is irrelevant, because that genuine belief was an amorphous whatever kind of thing that was secondary to his use of Bigfoot as an escape from paying the bills the way regular people do. Patterson was not regular. He was a chickenhawk peppy scrapper that was dead intent on living life off the grid and by his own rules. Sounds like I have some respect for him, right? In some amorphous measure, yes. He pulled off something we are talking about 51 years later, so wow, nice one. But we all know just how much of a self-serving swindler he was. Scamming and hoaxing was something he did with what in his mind was a noble intention. Spread the awesome wonder of Bigfoot and not have to punch a clock like those he thought of as sheeple. Life is not black and white. Roger was what the world is - shades of grey. Even the most righteous person has darkness in them. It's called being human.
Look at Roger's life actions. I can say frankly few people, particularly non-believers, have gone farther than I down the rabbit hole with what Roger Patterson was doing from December 1959 until his death. That's not the kind of thing you break out for conversation at dinner parties, unless you have some very cool and open-minded guests around you. Regardless, Greg Long got very deep into who Patterson was as a person but he had a deep-rooted malice and disgust towards him from his fundamentalist Christian world view. He thought of Patterson as a dirty, rotten scheister and his fixation on that distracted him from getting to the most important facts. He failed at his job as an investigator because of his personal objections to what kind of person Roger was. He wanted to nail him as an immoral swindler, dismiss the film, and move on to the next project. He dropped the ball on the most critical points.
What exactly was Roger doing between May 1967 and October 1967? You can expand the rabbit hole and start digging back into the early 60's, but only that stretch of time in '67 really matters, because those events resulted in the thing we are talking about here and now still in 2018.
Green absolutely believed. His early books cataloguing alleged sightings and experiences was what lit the fire under me about Bigfoot when I was a child. It started as a joke for him, and then developed into a lifelong interest for a man that lived longer than dirt.
Did Wallace believe? Who cares? He was my Uncle Dave. A man whose irresistible joy was to mess with people. I think he was a hilarious prankster to his bones. Look what he started. There's a guy that made life interesting long after his passing in 2002.
Back in the late 2000's I took my love of Japanese roleplaying video games and my 80's upbringing cultural experience of Dungeon's & Dragon in North America and thought I started to refer to Bigfootery in general as Woods & Wildmen. A hilarious adult roleplaying game in which people indoctrinate themselves like Scientologists with a set of absurd beliefs. BLAARGing is the way you refer to it now. That's witty and fun, but you're using it as a way to handily pidgeon-hole and dismiss something that has greater depth in the spectrum of human experience. Not every Bigfoot is wink-wink in on it.
What you need to understand if you want to have a real grasp on the phenomenon is that tons of these people do indeed genuinely belief. If Patterson did or didn't is irrelevant. What exactly was he doing between May 1967 and October 1967 is irrelevant.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Fair enough, but I had for many years plenty of stomach for it due to the fact that I used to be one of them and had plenty of interest in still interacting with them on their fora after abandoning their beliefs. I did it for I can't be bothered to remember how many years and I can say with matter of factness, I'm from years of both observation and interaction eligible for the ridiculous award of most familiar non-believer with Bigfooters. Saskeptic/Shrike and Drewbot could share that as well, I'm sure.
I'm no longer interested in that rabbit hole and even if I was, I was banned from the BFF years ago.
But what I see is that you are thinking of all Bigfooters as deluded, immoral, anti-social asshats worthy of derision and scorn.
William Parcher once asked me if I don't want to play the making fun of Bigfooters game anymore after I had gotten too long and too deep involved at the BFF. Good question.
Woods & Wildmen, BLAARGing, what ever you want to call it, is a hilarious and fascinating form of human behaviour. More interesting to me than alleged Bigfoot evidence, because I've been down the rabbit hole as far as it goes, and I can say with 100% certainty there is no actual evidence of Bigfoot.
But if you dismiss the in some cases impressively long lives of people like John Green as colluders and deluders, I think you're missing the reality with just another kind of intransigence. Green was easily duped, and he would get behind things as absurd as Wallace's BCM/Bluff Creek hoaxing, but absolutely he did believe. I knew the man. I interacted with him on numerous occasions when he was still alive.
If you want to see absolutely soaring Woods & Wildmen, look at organizations like the MABRC. Green, Dahinden, Byrne, Krantz - all of them genuinely believed. Byrne and Dahinden had that same touch of screw the system and wanting to live unconventional lives pursuing the mystery. Green did it more conventionally, Krantz had an actual job as a professor at a university that tolerated it the same as now with Meldrum.
Don't start me on Meldrum, however. He knows exactly the scammers and nonsense he gets in bed with.
kitakaze
Resident DJ/NSA Supermole
Apologies for the slight derail into the nature of Woods & Wildmen. Here in the PGF thread, I have one central subject I personally want to bring up and explore as much as possible. I am not particularly interested in expressing opinions. What does interest me is ascertaining facts and bringing content that helps establish them because words are wind, IMO.
So what exactly was Roger Patterson doing between May 1967 when he was filming his Southfork Ahtanum Valley finding Bigfoot on mystic mountain film and when in October 1967 he popped out of Bluff Creek with Bob Gimlin sans wig and gave Bigfooters the next best thing to Bigfoot on a slab?
I have a lot of those answers, but not the ones that matter most. Where did he get the suit? How and when was it made? Who made it? Many here are familiar with my personal certainty of it being a suit and how I came to that. It's not something I can prove, so I'd rather not derail with it, but I'm not reluctant to answer any questions about it.
Bigfoothunter Bill Miller hopefully doesn't check into this forum these days, as if he does and see me posting from his Photobucket, he'll likely remove the images, but to help start establishing exactly what Roger was doing in 1967, this is the place to start, with his Southfork film...
In this frame from left to right is Roger, Jerry Merritt, Gimlin in his wig, John Ballard, and the two men running the dogs I don't recall their names now. The man farthest right is supposed to be the wizened prospector that is leading them on the trail of Bigfoot towards the mystical mountain where they finally encounter the creature. Not shown but also present were Bob Heironimus and his brother Howard Heironimus. Many here are well aware that that unfinished film was later adapted into the film Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasquatch,_the_Legend_of_Bigfoot
The real question of ascertaining where the suit came from and how it was made is establishing when Al DeAtley became involved in 1967 with what Roger was doing. This is him at the time...
I have to stress that this is not a subject I've touched for years and I'm introducing the topic for productive discussion, not that I have definitive answers.
Most important question - what were Roger Patterson and Al DeAtley doing between May and October 1967?
So what exactly was Roger Patterson doing between May 1967 when he was filming his Southfork Ahtanum Valley finding Bigfoot on mystic mountain film and when in October 1967 he popped out of Bluff Creek with Bob Gimlin sans wig and gave Bigfooters the next best thing to Bigfoot on a slab?
I have a lot of those answers, but not the ones that matter most. Where did he get the suit? How and when was it made? Who made it? Many here are familiar with my personal certainty of it being a suit and how I came to that. It's not something I can prove, so I'd rather not derail with it, but I'm not reluctant to answer any questions about it.
Bigfoothunter Bill Miller hopefully doesn't check into this forum these days, as if he does and see me posting from his Photobucket, he'll likely remove the images, but to help start establishing exactly what Roger was doing in 1967, this is the place to start, with his Southfork film...
In this frame from left to right is Roger, Jerry Merritt, Gimlin in his wig, John Ballard, and the two men running the dogs I don't recall their names now. The man farthest right is supposed to be the wizened prospector that is leading them on the trail of Bigfoot towards the mystical mountain where they finally encounter the creature. Not shown but also present were Bob Heironimus and his brother Howard Heironimus. Many here are well aware that that unfinished film was later adapted into the film Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasquatch,_the_Legend_of_Bigfoot
The real question of ascertaining where the suit came from and how it was made is establishing when Al DeAtley became involved in 1967 with what Roger was doing. This is him at the time...
I have to stress that this is not a subject I've touched for years and I'm introducing the topic for productive discussion, not that I have definitive answers.
Most important question - what were Roger Patterson and Al DeAtley doing between May and October 1967?
Drewbot
Philosopher
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- Sep 13, 2007
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- 7,719
You are underestimating the power of cognitive dissonance.
Their worldview is so intertwined with Bigfoot, that they literally hallucinate things that support the existence of Bigfoot.
They are so far down the rabbit hole, of pretending it exists, that it actually begins to exist to them. A parent has no problem lying with a straight face to their kid that Santa is real, or that Jesus will protect them.
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