The Patterson-Gimlin Film

Film and photograghic evidence is probably the best evedience we can obtain of bigfoot aside from actual phisical evidence. Unfortunately there is not a lot of good films and photos of bigfoot. The best photographic evidence that we have today is the Patterson film. At first glance, this film does not apear to be very convincing. The film is 58 seconds long, jumpy and shot from to far a distance to see any striking details. The majority of people seeing this film, see it on TV. They are actully seeing a very low resolution image that does not come close to the clearity and detail of the actual film. For these reason many non believers continue to denounce the Patterson film. When the actual film strip and individual frames are examined properly, The Patterson film becomes quit convincing. This film has been studied many times over the past 30 years. Scientist form Russia, UK, Canada and the US have studied this film and cannot find any signs of a hoax. Thier findings have only strenghend it's validity.

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Frame 352	Frame 72	Enhanced closeup of frame 350
On October 20, 1967 Roger Patterson and his friend Bob Gimlin were out searching for evidence of bigfoot at Bluff Creek in northern California. Patterson was shooting scenery for a ducumentary that he planned on making with a 16mm Kodak movie camera. At aproximately 1:30 PM, They were riding (on horseback) around a bend in the Creek. As soon as they cleared a pile of old logs they spotted what appeared to be a bigfoot standing by the shallow creek. It imediately turned and began to walk away. Patterson quickly grabbed his 16mm camera and began to film the creature. Bob Gimlin covered Patterson with his 30.06 rifle (for defence only). Patterson changed positions serveral times, running while shooting, (very unfortunate that there was no zoom on the camera) resulting in a very unstable and shakey piece of film. After 58 seconds the film ran out. they decided not to chase after it, and to retreive thier frightened horses instead. In the following days Patterson did everything he could to contact people who could veriyfy his film. The site and the film were examined and cast of the footprints were made. Unfortunately the sceintific community did very little. Most of them were unimpressed. During the last 3 decades, the film had been studied countless times and withstood every attempt to discredit it. Bob Titmus was one of the first to examine the site. Here is part of the report he made on his findings. I spent hours that day examining the tracks, which, for the most part, were still in very good condition considering that they were 9 or 10 days old. Roger and Bob had covered a few of them with slabs of bark etc. and these were in excellent condition. The tracks appeared perfectly natural and normal. The same as the many others that we have tracked and become so familiar with over the years, but of a slightly different size. Most of the tracks showed a great deal of foot movement, some showed a little and a few indicated almost no movement whatever. I took plaster casts of ten consecutive imprints and the casts show a vast difference in each imprint, such as toe placement, toe gripping force, pressure ridges and breaks, weight shifts, weight distribution, depth, etc. Nothing whatever here indicated that these tracks could have been faked in some manner. In fact all of the evidence pointed in the opposite direction. And no amount of thinking and imagining on my part could conceive of a method by which these tracks could have been made fictitiously. Dr. Dmitri D. Donskoy, Chief of the chair of biomechanics at the USSR central Institute of Physical culture in Moscow concludes in his second report on the film the following statement. All of these factors together allow us to evaluate the gate of the creature of the footage as a natural movement without any signs of the artfulness that one would see in an imitation. At the same time, with all of the diversity of locomotion illustrated by the creature of the footage, its gait as seen is absolutely non-typical of man Dr D.W. Grieve's concludes in his analise of the film in 1971 the following. The possibility of a very cleaver fake cannot be ruled out on the evidence of the film. A man could have sufficient height and suitable proportions to mimic the longitudinal dimensions of the Sasquatch. The shoulder breadth however would be difficult to achieve without giving an unnatural appearance to the arm swing and shoulder contours. The possibility of a fakery is ruled out if the speed of the film was 16 or 18 fps. In these conditions a normal human being could not duplicate the observed pattern, which would suggest that the Sasquatch must posses a very different locomotor system to that of a man. Roger Patterson had admitted to not knowing what speed the camera was set at. A Study was done by the Sasquatch Research Project(SRP) on the preceeding footage on the same roll of film that was shot before the encouter. It was detrmined from the smear patterns and the analasis of the horses movements that the film was shot at 16 fps. Note: Some researchers do not acknowledge the work of the SRP. I mention it here because I agree 100% with their findings on this matter. When I first seen the Patterson film I had very little knowledge on the subject of Bigfoot. And I had not read any sceintific reports on the film. But I did notice how the speed of the film resembled the early silent movies form the 20s where everything and everyone is moving very fast. In those days film was shot at 16 fps, then years later when the standard changed to 24 fps, these films apeared to be playing to fast (50% faster). After first reading this report I could not understand why this issue was in question. Dr John Napier, physical anthropologist, former head of the primate program at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington seems to think the film is a fake, but can't find any evidence of it in the film. "There is little doubt that the scientific evidence taken collectively points to a hoax of some kind. The creature shown in the film does not stand up well to functional analysis. I could not see the zipper; and I still can't. There I think we must leave the matter. Perhaps it was a man dressed up in a monkey-skin, if so it was a brilliantly executed hoax and the unknown perpetrator will take his place with the great hoaxers of the world. Perhaps it was the first film of a new type of hominid, quite unknown to science, in which case Roger Patterson deserves to rank with Dubois, the discoverer of Pithecanthropus erectus or Java man... Some of the most convincing studies that have been done are those that examine the muscle and limb movements in the creature. As you can see in frame 72 above there are many muscles that are visable. these muscles flex and move from frame to frame just as they should. There is no way to get this effect with a costume, even if it were glued to your skin. In humans, our legs straighten out completely just before the heal strikes the ground. In the Patterson film, the creatures legs never straighten out and are always bent, obsorbing the impact of it's body weight during heal strike. This would be a logical adaptation for a very heavy animal. A study done by the North American Science Institute(NASI) in 1998 came up with some very startling conclusions on the Patterson film. It established a height for the creature at 7 feet 3 and a half inches tall and a weight of 1,957 pounds. This weight does seem to be excessive, and it might be. However I strongly believe that the weight estimations given by eye witnesses are greatly underestimated. Evidence in alot of the footprints indicate a weight of 1000-1500 pounds. The appearance and sophistication of musculature as seen in the Patterson-Gimlin film has not yet been repro-duced in costumes in the entertainment industry. Jeff Glickman-NASI An interesting point to consider is Bob Gimlins role in the history of this film. Roger Patterson had finacial backing by his brother in law, where as Bob Gimlin paid his own expenses. On this 3 week expedition wich resulted in the filming, Gimlin not only paid his own expenses, but also provided the transportion and fuel. It was agreed that Gimlin was to be a 1/3 partner, but was soon cut out of the deal completely and to this day, never received a dime. Roger Patterson went on tour with the film, sold articles, and sold rights to use the footage. Although Gimlin was angry and bitter about the whole thing, he has always insisted that he was never part of a hoax and that what he saw was not a person in a suit.

Debunking Attempts

In January 1999, a man by the name of Cliff Crook held a press confrence to anounce that he and his associate Chris Murphy had found an artifact on Patty's(the subject in the film) waistline that resembled a bell like fastner. This discovery, Mr Crook explained, was positive proof that the creature in the film is a man in a suit. This anouncement made headlines all over North America and parts of the world. This aleged artifact was produced by Chris Murphy with a home scanner from a book, Manlike Monsters on Trial, from the famous frame 352. Cliff Crook stated that this object is not visable in all reporduction of the footage, but it is in this book. Examination done on the color plate frame by imaging specialists at a color technology laboratory in Ventura, California, revealed that no discernable object can be seen at any level of resolution. The image analysts stated that Murphy seems to be relying on some "highly imaginative, Rorschach-like interpretations of fuzzy details in enlargements of the color plates." After 30 years of scientific study, no such artifact had ever been seen on the original film by qualified scientist, yet two amature bigfoot buffs managed to find it in a repordution from a book. If there was a fastener, it could not be seen in an enlargement. The film grain is such that it could not hold an image of something that small. Prof. Grover Krantz. W. H. Fahrenbach, Ph. D. came to the same conclusion as Krantz's did. To read his report, click here.

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