I get into many disagreements with bigfoot believes about one case in particular. And that is the Patterson footage. Most bigfootologist (is that even a word), believe that this is the Holy Grail of bigfoot videos. They believe that this is with out a doubt the mythical beast. I think differently.
I am sure you have seen the video before. Even if you could careless about bigfoot, the video has been around long enough that you must have seen it somewhere, but just in case here it is.
So in the video you have a female bigfoot casually strolling through the woods on a Sunday afternoon.
I will admit the video does look pretty good. People like to point out the muscle movement, the long arms, and facial expressions and that's all good. But I like to focus on the man you don't see in the video, the guy holding the camera. Roger Patterson. Yes, he had a accomplice named Roger Gimlin, but he was just a pawn.
Patterson became interested in bigfoot in 1962 after reading an article in a paper about the creature. A few years later he created a movie about the Yeti. This movie was a collection of press clippings and other little things. But it didn't stop after this movie. His interested only grew.
At this point bigfoot became an obsession. He started to take loans to make more bigfoot documentaries, loans that he would never pay back.
Wiki--Some decades after the Patterson-Gimlin film's publicity, Greg Long interviewed people who described Patterson as a liar, a conman, and sometimes worse. Pat Mason, Glen Koelling, Bob Swanson and Vilma Radford claimed Patterson never repaid loans they made to him for various Bigfoot-related ventures. Radford alone had corroborative evidence: A $700 promissory note "for expenses in connection with filming of 'Bigfoot: Americas Abominable Snowman. (sic)'" Patterson agreed to repay her $850, plus 5 percent of any profits from the film. Also, records show Bob Gimlin sued DeAtley and Patterson's widow Patricia, in 1975, claiming he wasn't receiving his share of the film's proceeds. In addition, Roger Patterson's own brother-in-law, Bruce Mondor, came forward and admitted that Roger showed him how he hoaxed bigfoot tracks. No one doubted the sincerity of Patterson's belief in Bigfoot; he was consumed by the search for it.
The worst part about his documentaries was that he was faking evidence. He was creating fake footprints of the creature and passing them off as real. But no cares to bring this up when discussing the video.
And how did the famous video come about? Well this originally started back in 1957 when loggers found large footprints somewhere in the vicinity of Bluff Creek which is in Northern California. Local papers picked up the story, and Patterson decided to run with it.
In May of 1967 Patterson rented a 16mm camera to work on his new documentary. Since Patterson was a scum bag, he never returned it on time. He set out in the woods around Bluff Creek on October 20th of that year with the sole purpose of video taping bigfoot. And what do you know he found bigfoot.
Patterson and Gimlin stumble upon a female bigfoot walking around a creek bed in the afternoon. However, when interviewed later Patterson and Gimlin gave different accounts on what happened. The time of the event varied from either 1:30 or 3:30. The men were both on horsebacks, and they gave different description on how the horses reacted, and they gave different accounts on the size of the creature.
The footage was the the center piece for Patterson documentary. A documentary that was shown in movie houses and made Patterson a instant celebrity. However, Patterson's greed got the better of him, and he over sold the rights of the movie which cost him in a lengthy legal battle.
Now I strictly believe that the footage is nothing more than a man in a costume. In 1967 Phillip Morris of Morris Costume said he received a call from some who identified himself as Roger Petterson and asked to buy one of this gorilla suits. Morris thought it was nothing more than a regular sale, so he sent Patterson a suit for him to inspect. Here is Morris and and one of his gorilla suits.
I do not believe that Patterson thought this suit would fly, it looked too much like a monkey suit. So enter John Chambers. The word around Hollywood for years was that John Chambers made Patterson suit. Who is John Chambers? He is a Academy Award winner makeup artist who made the costumes for the Planet of the Ape movies. Planet of the Apes came out in 1968, so it was conceivable that the costumes could have been around since 1965.
StrangeMag---I have heard that Chambers made the Patterson suit from at least two or three different people. Common sense-the footage looks like a suit. Looking at the stuff that Chambers did-the style and all that, and then having seen the stuff on Lost in Space and just knowing that in that era he was pretty much the only game in town, it makes sense. It falls into place. Jim McPherson had heard that Chambers had built that suit and that [Chambers] himself might not even have known what the suit was built for. I think that Patterson maybe had just called him up and wanted to rent some kind of suit. Because at the time he and Dick Smith were the best guys doing that kind of stuff. And he was more of an effects-type guy than Dick Smith. Dick Smith was more of a makeup guy while Chambers was building suits and creatures and was really pretty much the only game in town in the '60s.
Is this the same suit that Patterson used?
If it was a suit, who was the man inside the suit? His name is Bob Heironimus. He admitted to being in the suit to the Washington Post.
"It's time to let this thing go," he told the paper. "I've been burdened with this for 36 years, seeing the film clip on tv numerous times. Somebody's making lots of money off this, except for me. But that's not the issue – the issue is that it's time to finally let people know the truth."
Patterson told Bob he would get paid $1000 for wearing the suit. For which Patterson never paid him.
Bigfoot, must have some pretty big feet. What I find strange about the Patterson bigfoot feet is how pearly white the soles of the feet are.
It also shows that bigfoot has no toes either. Which is strange because a few days after Patterson shot his footage a Park Ranger found tracks in the mud where the video was shot. Here is the foot print.
It looks identical to a human foot print. When you compare this to other bigfoot prints, for example Josh Gates print of the Yeti found last year it looks nothing alike.
What also stands out in the Patterson foot print is the movement of earth upwards in the middle of the print. To me this looks like someone stepped in mud while wearing something on their foot that was over sized, creating a suction in the middle when the foot tried to dislodge from the mud. But to me the most incredible piece of evidence is Patterson luck. Thousands of people have gone in search of bigfoot and can not even come remotely close to what he caught on film. Even today with far superior technology, like trail cams, flir imaging, night vision, and even satellites. We can't even come close. And all Patterson did was say he was going to go look for bigfoot, and POOF! Bigfoot is suddenly taking stroll threw the woods.
So I do not believe that Patterson bigfoot is real at all. Patterson is the bigfoot version of Billy Meier. He was a con man that wanted to get rich off the gullibility of the public, which he did. People still worship his video, and for that I laugh.
