Two Bigfoot Believers Step Out of Party Line

by

John M. Hubbell

The Associated Press

January 11, 1999

Critics Claim Famous image really is that of guy in monkey suit

BOTHELL - For true believers, the existence of Bigfoot was long ago confirmed by a single minute of jerky, grainy film footage that shows a startled Sasquatch retreating into the northern California woods.

But two longtime Bigfoot buffs are parting company with the others over the so-called "Patterson-Gimlin Film," alleging that four magnified frames show tracings of a bell-shaped fastener at the creature's waist.

After decades of debate, they say the famous image can finally be dismissed as a man in a monkey suit.

"It was a hoax," said Cliff Crook, a longtime Bigfoot tracker who devotes rooms to Sasquatch memorabilia at his home in this north Seattle suburb.

"How can an artificial, manmade object end up on a Bigfoot?"

It's heresy for many, leaving Crook even more alone as he combs the Pacific Northwest woods to follow up on Sasquatch sightings, cast away from the campfires of his colleagues.

"There's a few broken friend-ships because of this," he said, "I just figured, "This is a search for the truth. When it becomes something different, that's when it should stop."

The 16mm film, purportedly showing a female Sasquatch running out of a streambed, was taken by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin on Oct. 20, 1967, during a horseback search for the creature.

It has largely withstood independent scrutiny, and Bigfoot buffs consider it proof of the species' existence.

Patterson is dead, and Gimlin refuses interview requests. Patterson's widow, Pat, a Yakima resident, stands behind the veracity of the film.

"There's no way of really detracting from it," said Ray Crowe, president of the Western Bigfoot Society in Portland. The image captured in the film "has a fluid motion. It's a wild creature of nature."

The film has a significant place in Bigfoot lore, enthusiasts agree. Many believers compare all plaster-cast footprints made at Bigfoot sites with those made by Patterson the day he purportedly filmed the creature slinking across a sandbar in the Six Rivers National Forest. Discredit the film and the veritable gold standard for Bigfoot tracks is washed away.

Crooks' hoax assertion is based on computer enhancements performed by Bigfoot buff Chris Murphy of Vancouver, British Columbia, who says he discovered an aberration in the footage while helping his son with a class project in 1995.

Murphy declined to be interviewed, instead supplying a written narrative about this discovery. According to that, the Murphys used a color photocopier to duplicate a frame of the Patterson film.

Zooming in tighter and tighter, Chris Murphy's suspicions were raised. Something out of place- the shape of a wine opener or an ornate latch-kept showing up on Bigfoot's torso.

According to Murphy, four sequential computer-scanned frames of the film show the object in motion. He theorizes the item is cinching the Sasquatch costume in place.

In October, Murphy gave his enlargements and a clay model of the fastener to Crook, a charter-bus driver transfixed by Sasquatch stories since 1957. It was then, 42 years ago, that his camping trip with other teens on Washington's Olympic Peninsula ended with telltale signs of a brush with Sasquatch: a rustling of bushes, a throaty growl and an ever-worsening musk.

Decades later, extra rooms in Crook's home are dubbed "Bigfoot Central." They're crammed with photos and footprint casts. Pushpins charting Sasquatch sightings dot his maps like distant constellations.

Now his hoax assertion is giving rise to a howling that would make a Bigfoot proud. Other buffs smell a deserter and are nudging Crook down the plank.

"I'm not impressed with either one of those guys," Pat Patterson said. "I don't think they're qualified to do any enhancements."

The allegation is striking nerves closer to the film, though.

"We've never had anything like it previously, and anything like it since," said Rene Dahinden, 68, a Richmond British Columbia, buff who shares the film's copyright.

Dahinden knew Patterson, and considered him trustworthy. Besides the film, he notes, "there are footprints."

Dahinden and Murphy have had a falling over the controversy. Dahinden dismisses him as a novice and his come to believe Murphy and Crook are out to get him.

"He wasn't involved in this until 1993," Dahinden said. "He couldn't spell the name 'Sasquatch' before that. The motive of these two clowns: revenge."

Grover Krantz, a Washington State University anthropology professor and Bigfoot expert, remains a fan of the footage.

"I fully accept the Patterson film," Krantz said. "If there was a fastener, it could not be seen in an enlargement. The film grain is such that it cannot hold an image of something that small."

The filmed creature's loping, primordial gait is "consistent with a 500-pound biped." he said. "I've attempted to imitate it, and I really can't do it worth a damn."

Still, the truth about the Patterson-Gimlin film, with its pseudo-scientific, basement-museum feel, remains as elusive as Bigfoot itself.

Krantz, Crowe and other believers consider the film a building block of their faith. The faith of Crook and Murphy survives in spite of it.

Crook knows he and Murphy are outnumbered by film supports, but is undeterred. On the day a Bigfoot ambles into a small Oregon town, vindication will come, he said. Maybe a Bigfoot will actually view the Patterson-Gimlin film and offer its own disapproving grunt.

"Even though the Patterson film is a hoax, it doesn't mean Bigfoot doesn't exist," Crook said.