C2C Guest Blows It On Patterson-Gimlin
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 19th, 2009
One of the painful things about surveying the cryptozoological field is to watch people that should know better misrepresent facts, conjectures, and theories.
As usual, one of the worst minefields is the Roger Patterson-Bob Gimlin footage of an apparent Bigfoot taken on October 20, 1967, in Bluff Creek, California.
Sometimes people just say too much about the footage, without any firm foundation in what they are uttering. It is as if the sandbar at Bluff Creek has turned into a bit of verbal quicksand for some folks.
Case in point are some statements coming forth from a guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (C2C) last night.
On the C2C program for June 18, 2009, George had on Scott Marlowe (above), a cryptozoology adjunct instructor at Florida Keys Community College, to talk about various cryptid sightings from the Sunshine State. Marlowe did relatively fine, as long as he was introducing associates he apparently had arranged to appear with him and talking about Florida creatures.
Indeed, one of the high points of the program was when biologist and cryptozoologist Lisa Wojcik talked about her study of jaguarundis (also called “otter cats”), which have been spotted in Florida even though they are not native to the area. I recall talking to Wojcik back initially when she was just getting interested in this work, and introduced her to some people in the Florida cryptozoology community.
Anyway, it is a radio show and overnight appearances can be a long haul. I know that, since humans are diurnal, it can be tiring by the end of the third or fourth hour.
But I’m not going to left Marlowe off easy on this one. He said some things for which there are no excuses. In the last ten minutes of the program, C2C’s guest Scott Marlowe really blew it.
Here’s how it unfolded.
Almost at the end of the Noory-Marlowe interview, Noory is fielding calls from listeners. A caller, apparently from Canada, asked Marlowe if the Patterson/Gimlin footage was filmed in British Columbia.
Marlowe, needless to say, responded with the correct location in California. But the caller went on, replying that they knew someone who hoaxed a Sasquatch film in British Columbia, and that a woman dressed up in a Bigfoot costume.
Now, of course, we can only guess what this caller was talking about. Maybe the listener was mixing up the stories from the Ivan Marx films, where Marx had his wife Peggy get in the costume? Or maybe the alleged Ray Wallace films are involved in this scenario? Who knows?
But Marlowe moved then from bad to ugly, rather quickly.
What Scott Marlowe (shown above), in essence, said was that Patterson and Gimlin were known hoaxers and jokesters in their youth.
Furthermore, Marlowe said he gave up on the film last year when “there was talk of massacres.”
Marlowe has besmeared the legacies of Patterson and Gimlin with unfounded, unheard, unknown rumors about youthful hoaxes, without the slightest evidence of any such incidents ever having happened!
Then Marlowe compounded his remarks by transporting M. K. Davis’ unsupportable, wild theories or his own ones about Bluff Creek “massacres,” as if they are the truth, onto the persons of Patterson and Gimlin.
Show me the proof of any of these past behaviors of or a massacre by Patterson and Gimlin, Mr. Marlowe.
Sometimes people should not speak when they don’t have their facts straight, at all.
It will be recalled that statements were made last year regarding Marlowe’s role in all of this “massacre” business. His ability to create more problems in this arena appears to continue.
You may remember that filmmaker John L. Johnsen dealt with Marlowe’s role in this melodrama, and wrote the following, almost exactly a year ago:
Scott Marlowe had, unfortunately, been in the info loop from Davis, something M.K. regrets beyond description now, and (Marlowe) seemed very eager to take a command role in a “forensic style” investigation beginning with a trip to the film site. I was uncomfortable with Marlowe being in the loop because of certain other misgivings I was having about him at the time, but M.K. was, in my opinion, running the show and was entitled to his decision regarding who to trust. Marlowe became increasingly agitated with M.K. (as was I at some points), with the way he seemed to seed the wrong people with the info, resulting in leaks that eventually led to the firestorm on the web boards regarding the alleged “massacre”.
As time went on there was increasing impatience from Marlowe. He became more and more paranoid at what he considered to be his perceived “complicity in a cover-up” of a possible encounter at Bluff Creek. The letter he wrote to the Humboldt County (wrong county…adding insult to injury) is the manifestation of Marlowe’s imagination and should not be considered serious by anyone, including the DA of Humboldt or any other county in California.
It was wrong and was done to cover his own butt, pure and simple.
This is the last time I will comment on this, period. Enough is enough. I will answer no questions from anyone but California authorities if they bother. Frankly I would like to see Marlowe taken seriously to task for making official accusations of this kind without substantial evidence of the facts. But, the damage is done.
John L. Johnsen, June 16th, 2008.
Click on the photograph above to show, from left to right: (1) M. K. Davis; (2) behind Davis, unknown male; (3) with closed eyes, Davis film backer Pat Holdbrook; (4) with baseball cap, Skeptical Inquirer editor Ben Radford; (5) behind Radford, sitting, in sunglasses, MonsterQuest’s Doug Hajicek, (6) next to Haijcek, unknown male, (7) standing, in yellow shirt, Bigfoot author Chris Murphy, and (8, 9, and so forth) people on the extreme right, plus in the foreground and background, all unidentified. Photo courtesy of Bigfoot song writer Tom Yamarone, who took the photo at a 2006 Bigfoot conference in Idaho.
Appreciation to Cryptomundo correspondent Rob Carignan for bringing to my attention the C2C comments.
- Similar Phenomena:
Nice piece of reporting Mr. Carignan. As Loren has pointed out to me, I have tended to stir the pot by “teasing” with info from time to time. I accept that criticism, but I assure you I never meant to stir, tease and run. But, I have changed my approach in responding to certain misrepresentations of facts in regard to Davis’s work, which is ongoing.
It was unfortunate that Scott Marlowe has, once again, decided to go on record with opinions stated as facts. In spite of our differences, I still like him and hold no grudges. But I also feel that opinions should be qualified as opinions and not presented to be the truth.
I have been a guest on C2C myself, and I know that the long hours are strenuous, so in my case I offered just an hour. Perhaps Scott should have opted for that.
That picture above is somewhat of a collector’s piece. Hajieck went on to produce Monster Quest…Holdbrook remains indebted to many for a film that was never made as it was presented, Radford brings an open mind to skepticism and Chris Murphy has, unknowingly perhaps, brought much new info to M.K. as he continues his work.
It is hard to believe that it has already been a year since the brown matter hit the fan over the “massacre”. Time flies whether you’re having fun or not.
John Johnsen
Grendel Films
Tampa, FL
And the fact that those kind of comments give more credence to the idea that the P-G footage was just a hoax–he may not have completely meant what he actually said, but it sure comes out that way.
Oh well, what are you going to do…wait til the scoftics come out of the woodwork. There I said the magic word of the week…felt good too.
in the meantime, life will go on, people will keep searching…
Mr. Marlowe has demonstrated once again his ‘casual contact’ with reality. Just going over his statements this past year about the ‘massacre’ and the fact that he actually contacted law enforcement about it (even though he got the wrong location) gives one the feeling that he is a little ‘off’. To present himself as a ’scientist’ and then to wildly conjecture such things without even a modicum of evidence ridicules all things ‘bigfoot’, and science in general. He has had his 15 minutes, now the best thing is to let him be forgotten.
Once again Loren has done an outstanding job in reporting a difficult subject. This must be hard on him but he has turned this site and his blog into an award winning web service. Thanks again Loren for your time effort here.
I’ve had email dealings with Mr. Marlowe and consider him more than eccentric and bordering on psychotic. He isn’t as bad as EB was but his email address is blocked on my computer and I won’t accept phone calls from him.
I will in the future be highly skeptical of anything involving Mr. Marlowe and I submit that all readers of this blog should use great care in any communication with him. My best,
Crypto will never be a science until
1) The scoftics either learn to read or shut up and go away to spend time on something they know about;
2) Proponents learn to shut up about anything they know nothing about; and
3) Everybody in the field learns to think like a scientist.
The third is really easy. You NEVER say anything you cannot back up.
Sheesh. Yep, and now we’ll hear scoftics jump all over the latest “proof” that P/G is a fake.
Um, while you’re putting on this circus, guys and gals, evidence keeps coming in that there’s an animal out there.
I would like to preface this, my first comment under a new name (and new e-mail), first and foremost with the fact that I am very, very glad to be back after a long absence.
That being said, I think DWA pretty much nailed what needs to be said on this - Marlowe said some things that, while I doubt they were blatantly and maliciously false, were nonetheless poorly thought out and greivously misinformed. I’m glad some others in the field have enough sense to check their facts before uttering them to everyone with a radio and an interest in cryptozoology.
Once again, DWAs elegance completely sums up my personal opinion on this matter. I would simply add that we must be critical of ourselves first, therefore decreasing the foundation of any scoftics’ claims.
(Note/Question: Is that the proper plural possessive form of scoftic?)
Great post but with regards to the jaguarundis, I think I might have had a sighting in my state (Oklahoma).
I was walking around a turn in the trail one evening and off the trail ahead is what I thought was the weirdest looking cat I have ever seen. The only thing I can think of was that it was a fox, but since I have never seen a fox before in the wild, I couldn’t be sure.
What made me question if it was a jaguarundis was that my impression at the time was that it was a cat, but a weird looking cat. (I can promise it wasn’t a housecat.) At the time of the sighting I have never heard of jaguarundis. Perhaps I mistook a jaguarundi for a fox?
Here’s a picture that closely matches my sighting.
The stance of the creature is almost exactly the same, except the animal I saw held it’s tail in a straighter fashion. The sighting only lasted a few seconds and the animal quickly shot off into the bushes. Again, I don’t know if it was a fox or a jaguarundi, but I can assure you it wasn’t a housecat. All I know is that at the time I though it was the weirdest looking cat I have ever seen.
BoyintheMachine:
No reason you couldn’t have seen a jaguarundi. They are reported from Arizona and Texas and they are one cryptic cat.
I think,forgotten amongst all this,is the fact that Davis,while many may disagree with his opinion,is a decent man that has never uttered one bad word about anyone in all his appearances on various radio shows. He has been held over the fire,banished to EB world and treated as a scourge all because he spoke an OPINION. Whether you think his theories hold water or sink to the bottom,the man has worked tirelessly on this film to try and get to the bottom of the lingering mystery. Now,depending on what Paulides and company come up with later this year,Davis could be vindicated or have his theory squashed,still,it is no reason to bash this man who is now putting as much effort into his field work as he did on the P/G film(or P/G/T as he calls it). Who knows what Mrs.Patterson has told MK,who knows what is on the second film? Funny how we can give certain people a public forum to talk about sasquatch being invisible,disabling starters on vehicles with mind power,moving between dimensions etc. and applaud them for their lies and skullduggery,yet we can take a good man who simply states his opinion and publicly skewer him at every opportunity. Well,guess the bigfoot community is no different than most of humanity and the hypocrisy is sickening. I’m not saying that Davis is a saint,he is human with faults like all of us,however,I think he been unfairly portrayed by the majority of this community and for some strange reason(maybe because he seems the decent sort)this really bothers me. While I may not agree with all of his theories on the film,the man deserves some credit for putting more effort into this field than 99 percent of the community. Peace.
A few points regarding hudgeliberal’s comment need to be registered:
The blog posting was about Marlowe’s C2C remarks, not about any of M. K. Davis’s radio appearances, please note.
This kind of comment extends the type of teasing of “potential great discoveries” that we have heard from the Davis camp for years and years now. “What Paulides and company come up with later this year” is merely more of the same.
Also, here too is the further tease of “special knowledge” and “more evidence” only known and held by a few when hudgeliberal says, “Who knows what Mrs.Patterson has told MK,who knows what is on the second film?”
Come on.
Finally, hudgeliberal gives us the ultimate argumentum ad hominem that just because M. K. Davis is a good guy ~ which was not under dispute in this blog posting ~ his “massacre theory,” in some way, carries more weight.
Sorry, no, it is all about the merit of the theory, not the man or woman, folks.