Bigfoot - serious, not follies
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Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
And you don't see how absurd this sounds? If they were ' perfect ', they wouldn't look ' fake ' ....
I suggest that most people would never question the authenticity of a ' perfect ' human or gorilla footprint, even though they would be easy to fake.. There would be no basis for questioning, if they looked ' perfect '...
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Such a long reply, but no answer to the question..
Out of the millions of Bigfoot foot-prints, why don't we see a preponderance of toes that are as long as Meldrum's fingers, if such prints are typical ?
LAL
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Thurkon said:
If nothing else, they've collected a huge amount of data. One of my cyber friends does volunteer work for them. Some of the posters on BFF do too. They seem to be very reasonable, intelligent people. They're certainly not the "Bigfoot woos" I keep hearing about. Alton Higgins was very helpful when I corresponded with him. My impression is that they're a good bunch.
Where did that rumor come from?
Beckjord said he got caught faking calls and we should all know by now how credible Beckjord is. A cyber friend who does volunteer work for them knows of no substantiation for that.
He says many people have left the BFRO because of MM's "overbearing" personality. I have no doubt he's made enemies who would spread slander about him. I've read his posts on BFF and he seemed pretty reasonable to me. He was getting some flack from some of the posters and handled it fairly well, if rather firmly.
The fees are variable; people with some expertise get preferrence and there's a price break for those who can provide their own transportation. I got a full report from one who's been on a trip (no, he didn't have a sighting), and he felt the experience was well worth the price. He particularly liked the instructional sessions. I find it ironic that with the lack of funding from government, academia and the National Geographic, private organizations get criticized for trying to raise their own.
Equipment costs.
Buy a T-shirt.
LAL
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Thurkon said:
Okay, I'm taking up a collection to buy you guys some glasses and a copy of LMS. The proportions are not even close. Check the IM index. Note the legs. This is supposed to be a frame by frame match and the suit was made by the guy who claimed he sold a suit to Patterson for $400 +, although he has no record of the sale.
Bob Heironimus is a man of normal proportions (6'2", as I recall). He was much thinner in 1967 (Heironimus claimed no padding was used). I was amazed that Greg Long included a picture of him from the time in his book. Long added the Morris claim in the last chapter, apparently unaware it contradicted Bob H.'s story (or stories - he's told about four). Heironimus claimed at one point Chambers ("the Planet of the Apes guy") made the suit and that Patterson did from the hide of a red horse. Two different suits are described in the book. Of course, no such suit has been produced and Morris' suits were of the Halloween costume variety. This one was made for a reenactment and it still isn't even close. Where's the muscle definition? The tendons? The rupture?
Heironimus in motion is hysterical. He managed to convince a formerly sceptical wife of a cyber friend (she has a degree in anthropology) when he appeared on the NG show recently the Patterson film is real, so perhaps he's good for something. He looks like a man in a suit. The Patterson creature does not.
If there was a hoax, Gimlin had to have been in on it, yet Gimlin has always stood by the film, despite being cut out almost from the beginning by Patterson and DeAtley. If anyone had reason to expose it, Gimlin did. Heironimus is a neighbor of Gimlin's, BTW. Gimlin takes his Christianity seriously and hasn't seen fit to put Heironimus' lights out despite 30 years of having to endure his nonsense.
"The author makes it clear that he began with two firm convictions, that the creature in Roger Patterson's film of Bigfoot had to be a man in a suit, and that if he could demonstrate that Roger Patterson was a bad person that would prove he had hoaxed the film.
Burdened with those limitations he did a very thorough investigation, but the limitations were fatal. In the valley west of Yakima where Patterson lived he found a lot of people to tell him what he wanted to hear, even a man who had been claiming for years that he wore the suit in the film, but he didn't consider it necessary to familiarize himself with that other valley in California where the film was shot. As a result he was blind to the fact that Bob Heironimus, the man who claimed to have driven there to act the part in the film, obviously had never been there either.
Confusion over which towns are where in that part of California might be explained by the passing of more than 30 years, but not "about four, maybe five miles" up the Bluff Creek Road from the highway. It would have been more than 20 miles of twisting dirt road, and not easy miles, well over an hour's drive, and not a forgettable one.
Much of the book is a transcript of what people had to say about Roger Patterson, mostly, but by no means entirely, unfavorable things, and Long makes clear that he thought that would have been enough to disprove the film even if he had never interviewed the man who claimed to have worn the suit or the man who claimed to have made it.
He did interview those men, however, and made a further fatal mistake by putting pictures in the book. Bob Heironimus is shown to be a typical human, with legs too long and arms too short to match the creature in the film, and the type of suit the owner of Morris Costumes claims he sold Patterson is a typical gorilla costume not in the least like what the movie shows."
http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/reviews/long.htm
LAL
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More:
"Significantly, Heironimus has no objective evidence that he was Roger Patterson's accomplice, despite a claim made to Long that he could prove he played the creature in the film. He does not have the "ape suit" or any other objective evidence. One of the two witnesses to Heironimus's brief possession of the "ape suit" was an eight-year-old boy at the time, and the other is Heironimus's mother. Some of the corroborating witness accounts are completely contradictory as well. Several people interviewed by Long claim that Heironimus showed them the "ape suit," a claim Heironimus strongly denies.
These conflicting testimonies show the weaknesses of such accounts and why as skeptics we must be cautious. If we are to believe the Heironimus account (and it is most plausible), how do we incorporate the other statements, made by honest-sounding individuals, who say they saw an ape suit in Heironimus's car when he clearly says they didn't?
Greg Long explains in his book that he made no payment to Heironimus, nor was any other financial gain a condition of the story being revealed. I am sure this is true. However, Long does not explain why almost a year elapsed from the time Heironimus's attorney broke the story (but did not reveal Heironimus's name) and the time he contacted Long. A possible reason, not known to either Long or Korff, is that another writer was shopping the story to mainstream book publishers. I know this (although I did not know Heironimus's name at the time), because the writer, a former Yakima-area newspaperman, met with me and a colleague of mine over lunch. During our meeting, we were told there would be no book if there was no profit. It was my impression the (as-then-unnamed) hoaxer was a financial partner. I was skeptical the writer would find a major publishing firm interested in the story but offered to help verify, if possible, certain aspects of the account. If I am correct (and admittedly this is conjecture), Heironimus did have a profit motive. All this does not mean that the Heironimus account is untrue, simply that Long did not ask all the hard questions he might have during his multiple interviews. (4)
Korff tells us that Philip Morris, "who made and sold the Bigfoot costume that Patterson used to fake his movie," has confessed. The impression Korff leaves is that the Heironimus and Morris accounts agree, but they don't, at least not to me. Heironimus says that Patterson made the costume from a red horsehide, while Morris says his suit was made of an artificial fiber. Heironimus, who owned his own horse and went to rodeos, would presumably know the difference between horsehide and nylon fibers. Heironimus said the suit consisted of three parts: a bottom, a midsection, and a head, while Morris says the suit consisted of six parts, one for each limb, a middle section, and a head. Morris says the feet bottoms in his costume were black, yet they are white in the film. Morris says the arms could be extended by using sticks for the gloves, whereas Heironimus says nothing about any arm extensions. In fact, if the Morris costume had "gloves" it would have consisted of eight parts, not the three described by Heironimus.
Korff then goes on to explain: "Morris distinctly told Patterson how to hide this zipper from view, advising him to comb down the fur on the suit with a brush. Sure enough, this Bigfoot, a wild creature presumably living in the wilderness, is remarkably clean and carefully groomed." I don't know how many wild animals Korff has seen, but of the hundreds I have had the chance to observe, including a big black bear last year, I cannot remember a single unkempt animal.
Perhaps a bigger problem with the Morris story is Patterson paying for a suit even though Long's book spends at least a hundred pages explaining how talented Patterson was at making things and how he seldom paid for anything, especially something he could construct for himself. As a skeptic, I am unable to accept Morris's story, for I find the account of Patterson's resourcefulness, artistic capabilities, and lack of capital much more believable. Long does establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Patterson was a man with the ability, aptitude, and motive to fake a Bigfoot film. He does this through multiple interviews with people who were both friends and victims of Patterson and then supplements testimony with objective court records, contracts, and photographs.
As skeptics, what would we do if someone with a more credible account of perpetrating a hoax stepped forward tomorrow? Certainly, one would think that Korff would have considered this possibility, for in the television documentary World's Greatest Hoaxes (a program he was featured in), a man named Jerry Romney, not Heironimus, is identified as the "man in the ape suit." Romney is even shown doing an impressive simulation of the "walk" in the Patterson film, sans the suit."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_29/ai_n8642082#continue
And that's from Michael Dennett.
"Significantly, Heironimus has no objective evidence that he was Roger Patterson's accomplice, despite a claim made to Long that he could prove he played the creature in the film. He does not have the "ape suit" or any other objective evidence. One of the two witnesses to Heironimus's brief possession of the "ape suit" was an eight-year-old boy at the time, and the other is Heironimus's mother. Some of the corroborating witness accounts are completely contradictory as well. Several people interviewed by Long claim that Heironimus showed them the "ape suit," a claim Heironimus strongly denies.
These conflicting testimonies show the weaknesses of such accounts and why as skeptics we must be cautious. If we are to believe the Heironimus account (and it is most plausible), how do we incorporate the other statements, made by honest-sounding individuals, who say they saw an ape suit in Heironimus's car when he clearly says they didn't?
Greg Long explains in his book that he made no payment to Heironimus, nor was any other financial gain a condition of the story being revealed. I am sure this is true. However, Long does not explain why almost a year elapsed from the time Heironimus's attorney broke the story (but did not reveal Heironimus's name) and the time he contacted Long. A possible reason, not known to either Long or Korff, is that another writer was shopping the story to mainstream book publishers. I know this (although I did not know Heironimus's name at the time), because the writer, a former Yakima-area newspaperman, met with me and a colleague of mine over lunch. During our meeting, we were told there would be no book if there was no profit. It was my impression the (as-then-unnamed) hoaxer was a financial partner. I was skeptical the writer would find a major publishing firm interested in the story but offered to help verify, if possible, certain aspects of the account. If I am correct (and admittedly this is conjecture), Heironimus did have a profit motive. All this does not mean that the Heironimus account is untrue, simply that Long did not ask all the hard questions he might have during his multiple interviews. (4)
Korff tells us that Philip Morris, "who made and sold the Bigfoot costume that Patterson used to fake his movie," has confessed. The impression Korff leaves is that the Heironimus and Morris accounts agree, but they don't, at least not to me. Heironimus says that Patterson made the costume from a red horsehide, while Morris says his suit was made of an artificial fiber. Heironimus, who owned his own horse and went to rodeos, would presumably know the difference between horsehide and nylon fibers. Heironimus said the suit consisted of three parts: a bottom, a midsection, and a head, while Morris says the suit consisted of six parts, one for each limb, a middle section, and a head. Morris says the feet bottoms in his costume were black, yet they are white in the film. Morris says the arms could be extended by using sticks for the gloves, whereas Heironimus says nothing about any arm extensions. In fact, if the Morris costume had "gloves" it would have consisted of eight parts, not the three described by Heironimus.
Korff then goes on to explain: "Morris distinctly told Patterson how to hide this zipper from view, advising him to comb down the fur on the suit with a brush. Sure enough, this Bigfoot, a wild creature presumably living in the wilderness, is remarkably clean and carefully groomed." I don't know how many wild animals Korff has seen, but of the hundreds I have had the chance to observe, including a big black bear last year, I cannot remember a single unkempt animal.
Perhaps a bigger problem with the Morris story is Patterson paying for a suit even though Long's book spends at least a hundred pages explaining how talented Patterson was at making things and how he seldom paid for anything, especially something he could construct for himself. As a skeptic, I am unable to accept Morris's story, for I find the account of Patterson's resourcefulness, artistic capabilities, and lack of capital much more believable. Long does establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Patterson was a man with the ability, aptitude, and motive to fake a Bigfoot film. He does this through multiple interviews with people who were both friends and victims of Patterson and then supplements testimony with objective court records, contracts, and photographs.
As skeptics, what would we do if someone with a more credible account of perpetrating a hoax stepped forward tomorrow? Certainly, one would think that Korff would have considered this possibility, for in the television documentary World's Greatest Hoaxes (a program he was featured in), a man named Jerry Romney, not Heironimus, is identified as the "man in the ape suit." Romney is even shown doing an impressive simulation of the "walk" in the Patterson film, sans the suit."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_1_29/ai_n8642082#continue
And that's from Michael Dennett.
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
I believe there are enough questions about the Heironimus claims, to seriously doubt his story... Seems like a lot of people would like to cash in on this... Ain't it always so ?
There is a pretty good debunking of his debunking here..
http://www.sasquatchresearch.com/billmiller.html
Don't make Patty real though...
There is a pretty good debunking of his debunking here..
http://www.sasquatchresearch.com/billmiller.html
Don't make Patty real though...
Yes, where are they ?
LAL
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Diogenes said:
I said to the untrained eye; maybe I should have said to the preconceived notion. Tracks removed from context, as it were, might appear faked, but as part of a trackway that shows articulating toes, e.g., they wouldn't. Am I making myself clear yet?
Gorillas and Chimpanzees have been identified, last I heard, despite the fact that Gorillas were thought to be nothing but native myth, except by the natives, and neither have a fossil record. Gorilla tracks, when they weren't supposed to exist, might have been thought to be faked. There are very clear tracks of the Orang Pendek. There seems to be something about an opposed toe that makes them clearer than perfectly clear tracks of an unidentified hominid primate with a non-opposed toe and tracks that may be 22" long.
Which one did I miss? I thought I got them all.
Because not many have been posted on the Internet? Just a guess.........
Most of the photos you're seeing are of casts where the toes are bunched rather than splayed because that's what people usually cast.
The Gray's Harbor cast shows long toes:
http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/images/Shuker.htm
LAL
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Diogenes said:
Good article. I'd forgotten about that one. Thanks for posting it.
It rules out the best yet "man in a suit" claim.
They're clearly on the Patterson film, but you won't be able to see much on the dark and indistinct version that showed up on Ancient Mysteries. If that's typical of the TV fare, I can see why people think it's "blurry" and "fuzzy".
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
LAL said:
That's one.. But they barely look proportionally longer than human toes, if at all.. ( Meldrum's fingers looked longer than that to me.. Oh, well )
I guess the Bigfootologist definition of ' typical ' is different than mine..
I hardly think you have defended Meldrum's claim..
Let's move on..
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
The latest Class ' A ' report at BFRO
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=12204
I'm trying to understand why this report has been classified as ' A '...
There was no video, photos, tracks or other physical evidence reported...
http://www.bfro.net/GDB/show_report.asp?id=12204
I'm trying to understand why this report has been classified as ' A '...
There was no video, photos, tracks or other physical evidence reported...
Thurkon
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LAL said:
If you are now speaking of the Bobby Clarke incident...from the blurry tape it doesn't appear the "figure" is in the water at all. Furthermore, how you can asses from this nightmare of a video that the"figure" is nine feet tall boggles the mind...
LAL said:
How do you know it wasn't a hoax? How do you know it wasn't a guy in a monkey suit? How do you know these people saw anything at all? How do you know they didn't plant the fur, and concoct the story for attention, or to laugh at people like you?
An extraordinary claim demands extraordinary proof. This ain't it.
LAL said:
The burden of proof lies on the claimant...not vide versa.
The herd??? There was no herd, and they didn't see a bison. The fur was from an animal long dead. Bison usually roam plains and open spaces, and Bigfeet usually prowl forests, as well as our own imaginations. Not familiar with the terrain of this sighting, I would guess it was a forest...hence the destroyed trees. Why would a bison ever be in this area? Something's stinky, and it ain't Bigfoot...
Thurkon
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LAL, for a Bigfoot aficionado, this last post was riddled with inaccuracies. I’m a novice on Bigfoot, yet I spotted these:
How many businesses can produce a receipt of sale for an item sold 40 years ago? This was pre-computer, remember?
I never heard Bob H. retell that old Chambers story. Where did you get this? Furthermore, Bob H.’s story about the red horse was the one Patterson himself supposedly told him. How is Bob H. supposed to know how the suit was made, or how Patterson modified it?
No, Morris describes the original suit, and Bob H. describes the Patterson-modified suit. Patterson modified the suit quite a bit. Morris never claimed he sold Patterson a Bigfoot suit with breasts.
Now you’re either speaking from ignorance, or just making things up. Philip Morris was a gorilla suit specialist…not the owner of a costume shop. His suits were of considerable quality. The fact that the suit has never materialized makes no difference. Bob H. claims Gimlin and Patterson picked it up. I guarantee that if you do a search of the houses of Gimlin and Patterson’s relatives you’re going to find approximately one modified monkey suit.
It’s close enough to be sure it could have been done by those who claim it was.
You mean the fabric bunches, folds, and seams? They’re right where they should be.
Gimlin wavered in the 1990’s, and claims it might have been a hoax, but he wasn’t in on it. Now, however, he’s making too much money at Bigfoot conferences and BFRO round-ups to give up his good thing.
This is ridiculous nitpicking. How many times had Bob H. been there? How long had it been? Memories are not accurate things. If he was focused on conversation or such while driving, he might not have noticed how far he went.
Have you seen the side-by-side comparisons of Patty and Bob H.? They’re practically identical proportions! Are you being purposefully dishonest?
LAL said:
How many businesses can produce a receipt of sale for an item sold 40 years ago? This was pre-computer, remember?
LAL said:
I never heard Bob H. retell that old Chambers story. Where did you get this? Furthermore, Bob H.’s story about the red horse was the one Patterson himself supposedly told him. How is Bob H. supposed to know how the suit was made, or how Patterson modified it?
LAL said:
No, Morris describes the original suit, and Bob H. describes the Patterson-modified suit. Patterson modified the suit quite a bit. Morris never claimed he sold Patterson a Bigfoot suit with breasts.
LAL said:
Now you’re either speaking from ignorance, or just making things up. Philip Morris was a gorilla suit specialist…not the owner of a costume shop. His suits were of considerable quality. The fact that the suit has never materialized makes no difference. Bob H. claims Gimlin and Patterson picked it up. I guarantee that if you do a search of the houses of Gimlin and Patterson’s relatives you’re going to find approximately one modified monkey suit.
LAL said:
It’s close enough to be sure it could have been done by those who claim it was.
LAL said:
You mean the fabric bunches, folds, and seams? They’re right where they should be.
LAL said:
Gimlin wavered in the 1990’s, and claims it might have been a hoax, but he wasn’t in on it. Now, however, he’s making too much money at Bigfoot conferences and BFRO round-ups to give up his good thing.
LAL said:
This is ridiculous nitpicking. How many times had Bob H. been there? How long had it been? Memories are not accurate things. If he was focused on conversation or such while driving, he might not have noticed how far he went.
LAL said:
Have you seen the side-by-side comparisons of Patty and Bob H.? They’re practically identical proportions! Are you being purposefully dishonest?
Thurkon
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LAL said:
So…a few people may have lied about seeing the monkey suit? Does that discount the ones who Bob H. says did see it? No, those witnesses back up his story.
LAL said:
Again, if a few people lied about seeing the monkey suit that only means they lied…not that Bob H. lied. Making some kind of connection between those two is dishonest.
LAL said:
Again, Patterson modified the suit. He definitely had the skills to do so. Who knows how he modified the suit from the original? The fact that this is a sticking point for you emphasizes the desperation some Footers resort to in their need for Patty to be real.
.LAL said:
This is getting hilarious. This is the best you can do?? They look white in the film? The film’s colors are blown out…the feet simply look a lighter shade than the fur. You can’t tell if they’re white, gray, light black or covered with white sand.
.LAL said:
So…Patterson displays the aptitude to modify a gorilla suit into a Bigfoot suit, and he spends money to rent a camera to film Bigfoot for a Bigfoot documentary, and he seems like a shady character who owes people money and is less than honest…yet you think it more rational to believe this is a real Bigfoot because, what…you think Patterson would never have shelled out 400 bucks for a monkey suit? Are you kidding me? This is reasoning?
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
It's hard to tell from the snips I've seen of the PG film whether there is snow on the ground, but it appears there is. If so, the white paddle-looking feet are easily explained by being clogged with snow. The only problem there is that if they feet are that clogged with snow, it makes well defined footprint castings less likely.
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
No snow.. Date = 10/20/67bruto said:
I believe the subject is walking in a dry creek bed that seems to be primarily a grayish sand / silt ..
From: http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/bf_pgfilm.html
" In that part of Bluff Creek, there is a sandy clay soil with a blue-gray tinge. This type of soil holds footprints remarkably well for a long period of time. "
The feet still look odd to me.. Virtually no shadows or features are evident. They do not seem to meet the level of detail discernable in the other aspects of the film.
It's one of those things that seems so obviously fake, that it makes one say ' it must not be '...
It's only fair to say, a lot of real things can appear contrived..
bruto
Penultimate Amazing
Diogenes said:
Maybe Ms. Bigfoot had cold feet that morning, and went out with her bunny slippers on.
Thinking about it, perhaps that's a way to reconcile the apparent suits with the reality of sasquatches. We've been assuming all along that they're hairy, when actually they're naked just like us, so when they go out they go dressed in their native garb, which happens to be bison-fur suits, expertly tailored (after all, they're said to be very intelligent, and said is as good as gold for squatch-watchers), perhaps with dog sinew thread.
RayG
Master Poster
LAL said:
Are you kidding? You think he sounds reasonable? By reasonable, do you mean -fair- or -rational-?
http://www.bigfootforums.com/index.php?showtopic=10520&st=100&#entry216965
Sounds like he has no love for the BFF.
From that same thread:
Recently the BFRO has been imploding with an exodus of curators, and though the rumor of a monkey suit has not been proven, the discovery of a suit wouldn't surprise me in the least.
RayG
Skeptical Greg
Agave Wine Connoisseur
Thanks for the insight RayG,
When you compare such comments to some of the absurd ' Class A ' reports over at BFRO, my irony meter explodes..
When you compare such comments to some of the absurd ' Class A ' reports over at BFRO, my irony meter explodes..
LAL
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Diogenes said:
Not yet. There are a number of photos of casts with long toes in Chris Murphy's book......the Hympton casts, the Crew cast (especially the cleaned up version), some of the Bluff Creek tracks where the toes aren't as bunched up, the Strathcona cast......there's a footprint cast gallery. Meldrum has over a hundred casts in his collection. Presumably he's studied them.