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Bigfoot - The Patterson-Gimlin Film

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The amusing thing is that if not for the dedicated efforts of a few near-rabid Bigfoot fans (and money-hungry losers), the Patterson film would be just about forgotten now as an artifact from a weird time when flower power, UFOs, psychics, and hallucinagenics were coming unto their own. No primatologist or paleoanthropologists I've spoken to consider it to be anything but a joke that's gone on far too long. Most recently, a friend of mine who works at "Primarily Primates" where Oliver the bipedal chimp resides laughed out loud when I asked about it. So I just went back to staring at the chimp's feet and marvelling at how real primates move.
 
Ayup...callouses and cracks and wrinkles, oh my!
I'll be taking 3-d alginate molds of his feet (and others') in order to produce Hysrostone lifecasts. Also I'll be casting his footprints in a variety of substrates in order to compare to more "normal" chimps. Should be enlightening and useful for the "Bigfoot Challenge" should any of the "experts" out there opt to take it upon themselves to demonstrate their tracking prowess.
With a lot of bad information out there on footprints and foot morphology, it's time to go back to basics and get dirty whilst collecting good old-fashioned data. Should be interesting.
 
I wonder what Mari's tracks would look like. A female orangutan without arms who often walks upright. Not that it's terribly germane to bigfoot but I'm just curious when she goes on her little jaunts what her feet would show in prints.
 
ALunker.jpg


A Mid-tarsal Break Runs Through It
 
LTC8K6 said:
I'm not sure I caught it on film.
I have a fresh roll in the film camera.
I have horses and guns and a still camera.
It just went that-a-way.
The tracks will still be here to be photographed later.

What should I do regarding this extremely rare beast that just went that-a-way?
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This just caught my attention..

I thought it was worth repeating...
 
For those who own a copy of John Green's Apes Among Us, take a look at the photo of Patterson on page 117. For those of you who don't, take a look at this rather crude and poorly cropped scan of that page:

PattersonPage117071.jpg


We can see that Patterson was one of those guys whose hair was dark enough, and whose beard was full enough, to be unambiguous about when he did or didn't shave for a few days.

I don't claim to be the first person to have noticed this, but the discrepancy between Patterson pouring Patty plaster (clean shaven) and his later display of cured casts (several days of stubble) clearly puts the lie to the "official verson" that both films were taken within a few hours of each other.
 
tube said:
We can see that Patterson was one of those guys whose hair was dark enough, and whose beard was full enough, to be unambiguous about when he did or didn't shave for a few days.
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Agreed. For myself, it is unambiguous when I have not shaved for a single day.

I don't claim to be the first person to have noticed this, but the discrepancy between Patterson pouring Patty plaster (clean shaven) and his later display of cured casts (several days of stubble) clearly puts the lie to the "official verson" that both films were taken within a few hours of each other.
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Right again. I noticed his "beard" and "clean" jeans immediately in the photo of him holding the casts. But I had no idea it was being claimed to be taken immediately after he cast them (coinciding with the still frame of him doing the casting). When you told me that that claim had been made, I knew it couldn't be a true claim. All I could think at that point was that the person making the claim didn't know what they were talking about. If they very much do know what they are talking about, then it is stark evidence of a hoax. But is there any way to pinpoint the true provenance of the cast display photo? My mind wanders to the behavior of true PGF believers, and I wonder if anything has been or will be withheld from skeptical inquiry. It could be a true believer that holds the key to the answer.

I have further curiousity about Patterson appearing to be "recently shaved" in the casting photo. Apparently he was shaving himself while camped near Bluff Creek with Gimlin. There is no good reason to think Roger wasn't shaving out there; but from my experiences of extended camping in remote cold places - shaving is a huge pain in the ass and I just don't do it at all until I get to a hot shower or sink. That's probably also why so many dedicated "outdoorsmen" wear full beards.

Do we have any film or photo evidence that demonstrates that P&G actually were camped near Bluff Creek for extended periods?
 
I acknowledge your precedence in first noticing this, Mr. Parcher.

Something that further intrigues me, but is certainly no "smoking gun", is what Green writes on Page 116 of Apes Among Us:

"It was in the fall of that year, about six weeks after Rene and I had see the tracks on Blue Creek Mountain and a Bluff Creek Sandbar, that Roger and his friend Bob Gimlin went to Bluff Creek in Bob's truck and three horses, to look for Bigfoot. Roger had already taken a GREAT DEAL of 16 mm movie footage of outdoor scenes and other material to use in a show he planned about his hunt for the hairy giants, and he had a reasonable chance of getting some footage of Bigfoot tracks if he could stay with the search for even a few weeks." Emphasis mine on GREAT DEAL.

I know there has been speculation about the contents of the "second roll", but this passage would seem to suggest that Patterson took much more Bigfoot related footage than just two magic rolls. Are they still around? Who might own them? What is on them?

I suspect that if the advocates ever concede the "official version" of the plaster pour and cast display is bunk, then they will fall back on the "plaster pour" scene as coming from part of the "other material" that Green refers to.

Frankly, I think that this is what is really going on here, that Patterson shot lots of what we would now call "B roll" material, and that this is what is now mistakenly being claimed as being shot on Friday afternoon, Oct 20 1967.
 
There is testimony from the camera shop owner that Patterson was making and perfecting fake Bigfoot tracks and casting them in Yakima. He could have made the casts he is shown displaying "at Bluff Creek" back in Yakima, and then hauled them up to Bluff Creek. As it is, the casts appear to be so precise that we may imagine that he had already trimmed any "overpour" from them. I do wonder what was in those wooden boxes that we see being carried by his horse near Bluff Creek.

Further speculation: Roger may have brought perfected casts from Yakima to Bluff Creek as well as the devices he used to create them. He makes the fake trackway in the sandbar using those same tools, pours plaster into some of them, but then presents the public with casts he made back in Yakima (possibly in addition to those he actually made at Bluff Creek). Laverty and Titmus did see plaster residue in some of the tracks at Bluff Creek (indicating the ones RP had cast). But they could not really determine that the casts RP showed to the world were actually the ones pulled out of those impressions in the sandbar. As it is, we are being told that the number of tracks with residue does not coincide with the number of casts on hand.

It wouldn't really even matter if Titmus made his own casts of the Patty tracks nine days later (which he did). He would be pouring plaster into tracks that were already made by Roger's fake Bigfoot feet. They would bear resemblance to any other impressions RP had made with those tools...whether it be in Yakima or at Bluff Creek.

Of course this is all my speculation at this point.
 
This just in ..

Here is Chris Murphy's Latest newsletter..

http://forum.hancockhouse.com/media/nl26.pdf

If you skim down a bit, you will find an excerpt from Patterson's newsletter
from Feb 1968, where he writes about the Bluff Creek encounter and filming.

He states that they were in the area " .. a little more than a week . " , contradicting Gimlin's version ..

He also repeats that they tracked ' Patty ' for " ..about three miles . "; which would seem to make the Titmus tracking account, in conflict with what Roger is saying.

Is there any record of Titmus and Patterson ever getting together and discussing the differences between what Patterson said happened, and what Titmus found at the site, where tracks were concerned ?

Or do we just blow this off to Patterson spicing up is Newsletter a bit ?
 
Diogenes said:
He (Patterson) states that they were in the area " .. a little more than a week . " , contradicting Gimlin's version ..
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Add it to the list of their contradictions. That one is a biggie.

He also repeats that they tracked ' Patty ' for " ..about three miles . "; which would seem to make the Titmus tracking account, in conflict with what Roger is saying.
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Not exactly. Titmus said that her tracks continued up the mountain (from the fern sitting spot), but he did not follow them. He also didn't draw her path away from that spot on the map he created. He could have indicated her path moving away from that spot on the map (such as with a line ending in an arrow showing where he stopped tracking her).

Is there any record of Titmus and Patterson ever getting together and discussing the differences between what Patterson said happened, and what Titmus found at the site, where tracks were concerned ?
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No found record of that hypothetical conversation. But we do know that Titmus was at the first "public" showing of the PGF in Vancouver on October 26th and was then at Bluff Creek on October 29th(?). At the public viewing, Titmus would no doubt have heard Roger's story of the encounter and probably would have spoken to him personally. At the minimum, we should expect that Titmus asked Patterson how to find the filming site.

You can read the letter that Bob Titmus sent to John Green regarding his visit to Bluff Creek here. Scroll down to question/answer Number 7e. Murphy's essay on the history of the PGF gives details of the Vancouver showing, but does not mention that Titmus was there. Titmus told Green about this viewing in the letter. So Titmus had heard the story of the encounter from P&G in Vancouver and those viewing sessions included Q&A addressed by P&G. This would be approximately three days before Titmus arrived at the film site.

Titmus to Green: This is heavily timbered with some underbrush and a deep carpet of ferns. About 80 or 90 feet above the creek and logging road there was very plain evidence where Bigfoot had sat down for some time among the ferns. He was apparently watching the two men below and across the creek from him. The distance would have been approximately 125-150 yards. His position was shadowed and well screened from observation from below. His tracks continued on up the mountain but I did not follow them far. I also spent little time in trying to backtrack Bigfoot from where his tracks appeared on the sandbar since it was soon obvious that he did not come up the creek but most probably came down the mountain, up the hard road a ways and then crossed the creek onto the sandbar. It was not difficult to find the exact spot where Roger was standing when he was taking his pictures and he was in an excellent position.
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William Parcher said:
Not exactly. Titmus said that her tracks continued up the mountain (from the fern sitting spot), but he did not follow them. He also didn't draw her path away from that spot on the map he created. He could have indicated her path moving away from that spot on the map (such as with a line ending in an arrow showing where he stopped tracking her).
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How could Patty be sitting on the side of the hill with a view of the film sight if P&G were tracking her for three miles ( immediately following the encounter ) ?

Wouldn't Titmus have indicated if the approach to the observation point was such that Patty apparently back-tracked after being pursued for 3 miles ?
 
Diogenes said:
How could Patty be sitting on the side of the hill with a view of the film sight if P&G were tracking her for three miles (immediately following the encounter )?
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If we combine the stories of P&G and Titmus, she presumably sat and watched them, and then left that spot and continued away from the site before P&G began tracking her for 3-3.5 miles.

Wouldn't Titmus have indicated if the approach to the observation point was such that Patty apparently back-tracked after being pursued for 3 miles ?
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If we assume that both stories are actually true (P&G and Titmus), we can piece together a somewhat coherent picture of what may have happened. But it cannot be taken directly from their own stories and requires "connecting dots" that they never seemed to connect themselves. We are lacking a map that could combine all of their tracking movements and potentially reconcile them towards coherency. P&G could have taken Titmus' map and then drawn in their own tracking paths (for about 3.5 miles away from the site) upon it. We can't pinpoint exactly where the cowboys began tracking her for those miles. We do know they never mentioned or saw the sitting spot. Only Titmus speaks of that.
 
The major time-eater for P&G is the 3-3.5 mile tracking expedition by horseback. Note that that must be a round trip. I simply cannot reconcile the complete given timeline and events - with that shot of Patterson casting the Patty tracks in bright sunlight.

If the PGF isn't a hoax, it still seems to me that P&G did some serious lying and fabrication of the event sequences.
 
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