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HAS
THE PATTERSON FILM BEEN DEBUNKED?
An Answer to the Critics
It's
been a couple of years since I wrote Is the Patterson
Film Too Good a Hoax? for FATE magazine (March, 2002), and since then
a couple of new developments have arisen that I felt needed to be addressed
(I'm sorry it's taken me a couple of years to get around to it, but I've been
busy lately.) Most significant among them has been the appearance of a book
entitled The Making of Bigfoot by Greg Long (Prometheus Books, 2004)
and an article in Skeptical Inquirer by Kal Korff (1967 Bigfoot Film Hoax
Exposed; July/August, 2004. [Read
the full article here.]), both of which make the case that Roger Patterson's
controversial footage of an alleged Sasquatch (I hate the term Bigfoot; it sounds
like a cartoon character) shot near Bluff Creek, California in 1967, was a hoax.
Of course, this is nothing new. I remember when the story first broke in the
fall of 1967 (I was nine at the time. You do the math.) It was assumed that
Patterson's grainy photo of "something" splashed across the newspapers
was a "guy in an ape suit" even then, thus demonstrating just how
far the debate has come since (I'm thinking about a quarter of an inch.) What
has changed, however, is that now—at least according to Long and Korff—we
have the guy who was in the suit (or, at least, the latest guy to make the claim)!
His name is Bob Heironimus (how's that for a name?) and he has come forth after
all these years to confess that, yes, it was he who donned the clever disguise
and paraded around for Patterson and Bob Gimlin (the other witness to the event)
that beautiful autumn day back in 1967. I confess that I haven't read Long's
book, but I did have a chance to peruse Korff's SI article (actually, they're
one in the same as Korff clandestinely helped Long with his book; a point which
he admits in the beginning of the article) and what I read shocked me! I have
goosebumps still! Really, you can see them for yourself! They're huge!
To synopsis the article, it basically maintains that Patterson (who died of
cancer in 1972) was something of a scoundrel who cooked the entire scheme up—along
with his friend Bob Gimlin (who's still alive as of this writing and has never
admitted being in on any hoax)—in an effort to gain notoriety and maybe
make a few bucks in the process. Apparently they were associates of Heironimus
(hereby known as BH for the sake of brevity), who was to be paid to model the
suit while Patterson took his grainy footage. Korff even gives us a timeline
on how and when the skullduggery was done as well as names the person (a guy
named Philip Morris; yep, just like the big advertising firm) who fashioned
the suit for Patterson, and the rest is, as they say, monster lore history.
If true, of course, it's a damning indictment of the whole sordid affair (not
to mention that it makes my article on why the film couldn't be faked look like
so much nonsense) and calls the entire premise of whether there might be an
undiscovered species of great ape in North America into question, so what am
I to do? It seems another treasured belief from childhood stands on the edge
of oblivion, forcing me to confront this thing head on or forever hold my piece!
Yikes!
Now I don't claim to be a Bigfoot expert (nor any kind of expert for that matter)
so I'm not qualified to intelligently discuss the minutia of Korff/Long's "evidences".
I leave that job to others far more knowledgeable than I, especially when it
comes to things like primate anatomy and the nuances of outdoor photography
(however, there is an excellent-and rather lengthy—critique
on Long's book on Amazon.com you may want to check out. It's by some guy named
Roger Knights who does a good job dismantling Long's book point-by-point [to
the tune of some 5,500 words no less. I checked the word count by copying and
pasting the thing into Word. Amazon reviews are supposed to be limited to 1,000
words or less; apparently, Roger never got the message.] There's also a number
of letters
to the editor sent from various experts in the field to the SI staff you
may want to peruse. They also do a nice job of refute his main points.) As such,
I'm not going to do here what others have already done a far better job of doing.
My interest lies not in refuting the details of the story, but in the type of
evidences the story draws upon to make its case.
You see, I always assumed the way to debunk something like the paranormal (or,
in this case, the cryptozoological) is to present solid, empirical evidence
either that something didn't happen or, at very least, demonstrate how it could
have been hoaxed. However, that's not what we have here. Korff's article (and,
by extension, Long's book) is almost entirely anecdotal, without a shred of
physical evidence to support a single contention (i.e. the suit in question
or, at least one very similar to it.) Instead, he points out things like BH's
story being backed up by none other than his very own mother (who says she saw
a big hairy ape suit in the trunk of her son's car), an assortment of drinking
buddies at a nearby tavern, and his eight year old nephew. My favorite statement
Kal writes is "Moreover, several other people in the small town of Yakima
have all vouched for Heironimus's story and can prove that they first heard
it shortly after the hoax was created." (Really? Just how can they prove
something like that? Do they have time stamped photographs of the moment they
first learned of the nefarious plot?) Anecdotal stories and almost forty year
old memories, apparently, are what constitutes "proof" in Korff's
world.
To further buttress his assault, he goes on to describe in some detail how the
suit was made (elements of which are unfortunately at odds with Mr. Morris'
account of how it was constructed) that are almost laughable in their lack of
sophistication. The head, for example, is supposedly horsehide glued onto an
old football helmet with eye holes cut into it. (I know, it looks far more detailed
than that in the film but maybe it just photographs really well.) And then there
is the description of how Patterson created the feet for the footprints he was
to later make (prints which, incidentally, appeared to be sufficiently anatomically
correct to fool the experts and heavy enough to imply a six-hundred pound animal
had made them.) Finally, he reports a whole litany of amazing coincidences regarding
BH and the critter in the picture. For example, the image is of a creature about
six feet tall and BH just happens to be six feet tall! (Actually, most literature
I've seen on the footage suggests a creature closer to six and a half to seven
feet in height, but I'm not one to quibble.) And if that isn't evidence enough,
the Sasquatch appears to be very stout and muscular, and BH was very stout and
muscular back then! And the creature had breasts, just like…well, never
mind-you get the idea. Remarkable series of coincidences, wouldn't you agree?
(But my favorite of all is Korff's contention that the flash of light in frame
352—the most famous one where the creature turns to face the camera—is
actually sunlight reflecting off BH's prosthetic glass eye! Actually, considering
the quality of the film and the great distance involved, I'd be surprised if
you could pick out a prosthetic glass head in that mess; it's that grassy knoll
thing, I think, where you can see just about anything in a picture if you want
to—especially if it supports your bias.)
But doesn't Kal have anything to be said in his defense? After all, eyewitness
evidence still counts for something nowadays, and doesn't circumstantial evidence
still hold up in court? Hell, people have been sent to the electric chair on
less!
True, anecdotal evidence can be important, but it's not empirical science (a
point that Skeptical Inquirer and its hordes of debunkers continually emphasize).
Everything Korff says is purely hearsay and clearly lies outside the realm of
either scientific refutation or within the high standards normally demanded
by a publication like Skeptical Inquirer (as if aware of this fact, SI did do
a little back peddling a few months later with a follow-up article by Michael
Dennett entitled Some
Reasons for Caution about the Bigfoot Film Expose, Jan/Feb 2005. Even
SI occasionally smells a rat—especially when it's one who helped write
a book that happened to be hitting the bookshelves just then.)
The point I'm trying to make is that if the skeptical community wants to be
fair, they need to hold themselves to the same standards that they expect of
their opponents. A skeptic would never accept an anecdotal story about a UFO-even
if attested to by a number of reliable witness-as valid evidence (much less
"proof") of extraterrestrial visitation, so why are they so quick
to accept accounts like Korff's as evidence that the Patterson film is a fake?
In the end, it may indeed be demonstrated to have been a hoax (though one should
wonder why no one to date has been able to replicate the Patterson costume,
especially with the technology and makeup sophistication available to us today;
to date, every effort to do so has proven to be laughably feeble. The fact that
Patterson's footage remains controversial almost four decades after it was produced
demonstrates the fact that it is either one of the most superb-and unrepeatable-hoaxes
ever perpetrated or the real McCoy.) If it is to accomplish that lofty goal,
however, it will take more than Kal Korff's and others of his kind's tacky and
easily dismissed efforts to do it.
As such, I think I'll continue to blindly believe the Patterson film (despite
the media's assumption that it has been successfully debunked—again, at
least according to Kal—to be the best photographic evidence to date that
the hills of the Pacific Northwest are alive with the sound of Sasquatch. Of
course, that's just an opinion (or a bias, if you prefer) but then so is the
assumption that the footage is a hoax. Both positions are purely subjective
preferences, based in small part on perceived logic and a great deal on faith.
For some, it is a faith that human beings remain hopelessly gullible, that anything
can be easily faked, and that there are no more mysteries in the world; to others,
it the kind of faith which believes in basic human honesty and intelligence,
the logistical difficulties involved in hoaxing anything well, and that the
world remains a mysterious and not entirely known place yet, with just enough
space left to squeeze in one more as yet unclassified and uncatalogued 600-pound
primate. I leave it for the reader to decide in which world they'd rather live
in.