““midtarsal break”- As you note, a mid-tarsal break is a feature of the feet of the Great Apes. Unfortunately fatal for your argument, the Patterson film subject does not have the feet of an ape! Look at page 236 of Dr. Meldrum’s book “Sasquatch” and you will find a sketch of foot impressions of some of the Great Apes and a sasquatch. The sasquatch foot is radically different from those of the apes: it is essentially human, in giant form! A little secret: there is really no reason to think a biped with human like feet would possess a mid-tarsal break! If such a biped does exist, the flex would be vestigial, not functional. (And why do we not find in bigfoot tracks creases in the padded bottom of the foot where the foot “breaks”?)”

Short answer: Meldrum and Krantz find abundant mid-tarsal break evidence both in the Patterson film and in trackways. This is not something that would appear routinely in tracks. (A skeletal feature, it won’t be seen in most impressions.) But in long trackways it occurs quite a bit. Meldrum has also found apparent tarsal-break pointers in fossil hominid footprints, the feet otherwise superficially similar to ours.

Evidence is telling those who have studied the matter that while they may print like ours, much of the time, the squatch’s feet operate distinctly differently. I’ve read at least two sighting reports that lend credence to this, one from AK and one from MT. Both reports are from witnesses who wouldn’t have given sas foot morphology a thought. They just happened to notice things they considered odd, something I wouldn’t think too many witnesses would do. (I’m probably not focusing on any feet but my own, getting me out of there, if I see one.) These two had help: one had an extended observation of a female on a shoreline, from a boat, while the other was in a truck, at night, with a good profile view of one crossing a road.

See what trouble that word “remote” can cause?

Loren: what you said, actually, is what I did. Here’s the deal with sightings: they occur almost invariably in, or on the fringes of, large areas of what appears from evidence compiled so far to be suitable habitat. How’s that? That profile works with sightings of wolves, mountain lions, and bighorn sheep, to name just a few other species.

And as to scientific confirmation, Jerry (which is what I presume you mean by “discovery”: when the vast majority of people believe it doesn’t exist – or pretend they do – it’s very hard to get from sightings to confirmation. Confirmation only happens when the mainstream of science gets involved. Which it hasn’t, because scientists have jobs and want to keep them.

(From my experience talking to John Bindernagel and John Mionczynski at the conference, I wouldn’t want to disagree too much with them, were I a scientist. But science – which is almost perfect – is practiced by scientists, who aren’t.)

One more thing, and I HAVE to get back to work.

The Short quote: My impression concerning her comments is that she has seen an “out-take” from the Patterson film that shows the subject flail and almost fall (presumably an out-take that has caused M.K. Davis to believe the film’s bigfoot has been shot).

Are her comments true? Or is this a hoax? I have no idea, but it is a potentially important development if her statements are true.

Hope you guys had fun. Early in the week, I thought I might have been able to attend. But by week’s end, making a living interfered again. It would have been a blast to meet you guys and Gimlin.

On the issue of sightings and locations, my underlying concern is not that such animals could be so distributed or sighted. My problem is that such animals could be so distributed and sighted and NOT be conclusively “discovered.”

After all, we are not dealing with ghosts, are we?

The idea that a skeptic should not post at Cryptomundo seems odd to me. We should all be looking for the truth concerning the bigfoot phenomena. And there are many points of view, many issues, and many facts to sort through on this issue.

I don’t think we should be, or really could be, polemical concerning the phenomena. Let us state what we think and why we think it. If it turns out that a real biological entity lies behind the phenomena, I’ll be as excited as anyone else here. And, if such animals do not exist, we still have a phenomena to try to make sense of.
That quest would be exciting too.

The posts above deal mainly with skepticism and the real looking subject of Patterson’s film. Overlooked was my emphasis on the Patterson Paradox. I still think that would be a fruitful starting point, or an organizing tool, in discussing the film.

A few replies (even though I may be talking in an empty room now):

Sasafrasquatch (post 3): In fact, I did not write “look at the film! It is obviously a hoax.”I wrote the opposite. The film subject looks real, or real enough, for us to be arguing about its authenticity over forty years later.

PhotoExpert (p.10): Your post is petulant and full of invectives. I’ll address two of your points:
Dr. Krantz argued that the film subject looks behind by turning its shoulders and not by peering over its shoulder, a move he notes is typical of apes (because of the position of their heads is relatively lower than that found in humans). Ape costume maker Phillip Morris says the same maneuver is necessary in a hooded and masked, shoulder padded gorilla suit.

The wonderful Jane Goodall on a NPR talk show, when asked about yeti/bigfoot, did say, “Well now you’ll be amazed when I tell you that I am sure they exist…” Later, however, she qualifies and tempers her enthusiasm: “Of course, the big, the big criticism of all this is, ‘Where is the body?’ You know, why isn’t there a body? I can’t answer that, and maybe they don’t exist, but I want them to.”

praetorian (p. 4): I’m not so sure your “convincing evidence” is totally objective.

“physiology”- It is disputable as to whether the film subject exhibits proportions that are not human. If the subject IS human (costumed), his proportions would necessarily be distorted. Since we do not know fundamental facts about the distance and angle of the camera relative to the subject, it would be hazardous to make statements of certainty concerning proportions.

“gait”- Your statement is subjective and I would dare to guess influenced by arguments made by Drs. Krantz and Meldrum. Their arguments on this issue, to a large degree, are no longer considered valid. I’ve seen the film countless times and never thought the gait looked too far removed from human (my subjective view).

“size”- Over the years advocates themselves have studied the film and placed the subject in a size range that could imaginatively be stated between the size of the Fantastic Four’s The Thing (6 foot, 500 lbs.) and the Incredible Hulk (7 foot, 1040 lbs.)! The “recent analysis” you mention alleges a POSSIBLE camera lens type to support a Hulk sized bigfoot on the film. This is not the lens, I believe, Patterson said he used.
And remember, the early statements by Gimlin suggest the subject was just over 6 foot tall.

“musculature”- If you peruse the special effects and costume guys who post about Patterson’s film at JREF and The Bigfoot Forums, you’ll find counter arguments about the “technology available when the film was made.” I believe Munns himself has made a few concessions (to a point) concerning this issue.

“track castings”- Patterson and Gimlin estimated their film subject at well under a thousand pounds. However, those who have studied the casts, photos, and testimony relating to the tracks, have estimated the weight of the subject at anywhere from 1400 pounds to 2250 pounds! This is a glaring inconsistency, not the supportive consistency you maintain.

“midtarsal break”- As you note, a mid-tarsal break is a feature of the feet of the Great Apes. Unfortunately fatal for your argument, the Patterson film subject does not have the feet of an ape! Look at page 236 of Dr. Meldrum’s book “Sasquatch” and you will find a sketch of foot impressions of some of the Great Apes and a sasquatch. The sasquatch foot is radically different from those of the apes: it is essentially human, in giant form! A little secret: there is really no reason to think a biped with human like feet would possess a mid-tarsal break! If such a biped does exist, the flex would be vestigial, not functional. (And why do we not find in bigfoot tracks creases in the padded bottom of the foot where the foot “breaks”?)

praetorian (p.9): “intermembral index”- Since one finds the IM by measuring bone itself, or by feeling for bone in a live subject, it is not possible to extract such measurement accurately from a film, and especially from a film subject moving away at angles. Dr. Meldrum himself admits that IM applied to Patterson’s bigfoot is approximate or an estimating.

Thus, the statement, “many animals who stick generally to remote areas are seen, frequently, on their fringes” may not be the whole truth. It may not be as true as the fact that this is the zone where non-human animals, unknown and known, would be seen perhaps most frequently by humans that overlap into these normal non-human habitats. Humans are creatures of urban areas and of residences placed in a few rural areas. They are the fringe dwellers, not the non-human animals, including Bigfoot, lions, tigers and bears.

Hey amigo. I’m at the closeout of the TX Bigfoot Conference (y’all missed a great time!) and have some downtime to comment before all of us truck off to the Tyler Zoo.

You say

“I think it is reasonable to assume the exponential increase in bigfoot sightings
after the spread of cable TV and the advent of the internet (replacing men’s
entertainment magazines as the primary cultural propagator of the bigfoot story)
was due to the mass culture advancement of The Idea that our land is populated
with Monster Apes or Ape-men, The ensuing mass suggestion, a parasitic trickster
sub-culture, and encouragement from earnest advocacy, all contributed to belief
in, and resulted “sightings” of, an animal in locations where only decades
earlier it was apparently absent in.”

I think that it is reasonable to assume that the increase in reporting outlets brought the opportunity to report sightings to large numbers of people who didn’t previously know that they could do this anonymously. Many reports come in years – frequently decades – after the sighting, when someone who didn’t have the option of the Internet at the time of the sighting either now has it, and has just found out how they can use it in this case, or is brought to it by a Net-savvy person who has wanted them to report it. I think mine is a much more plausible explanation. We tend to presume people to be level-headed and cautious, and not willy-nilly prone to suggestion, and our daily experience verifies this over and over and over. I know what I would do with a sighting; and I think it reasonable to make an educated guess that most people are at most wihin a standard deviation or so of me on this. The kooks and cranks don’t make the websites; they get dropped before you read them. The serious ones are the ones that are left.

“You write that bigfoot sightings “occur, virtually without exception, in remote
areas, or right on the fringes of them.” Would you agree “on the fringes” of
“remote areas” may be considered, as I wrote, “non-remote areas?”

Yes, but it’s irrelevant. Why? Because many animals who stick generally to remote areas are seen, frequently, on their fringes. It’s more a red herring than a serious issue. Reports – when you read them – show that the sasquatch behaves similarly to other elusive species, which do occasionally get seen on the fringes of the large areas of undeveloped habitat that they generally frequent.

“And we must have different ideas as to what a “remote area” is. You have a “sas
that crossed Interstate 64- in broad daylight- with many cars on the road.” You
suggest “50 or more people…saw the animal clearly” (although, based on your
comments, 50 or more people DID NOT report such a sighting!). Do you see the
incongruous nature of your comments?”

Well, as I tend never to make an assertion without evidence, I can tell you, having been on that stretch, that the overall impression of the areas on either side of it is, well, quite, quite remote. The road is basically a minor intrusion on a substantial area of undeveloped habitat. As many, if not most, of the roads in North America tend to be. Spend a lot of time on the road – as much, say, as I do – and you will be impressed how little civilization you see along them, in this supposedly people-saturated continent of ours, most of the time. Mountain lions and wolves are frequently seen crossing roads (and sometimes picking dogs and cats off porches). But the roads and the houses are right on the brink of huge areas of suitable habitat. That sasquatch are sometimes seen under such circumstances should be expected, given what we know about animals that tend generally to assume the same cryptic profile. The difference: when you say a mountain lion took Fifi, everyone believes you. That simple.

As to Bobbie Short’s quote: I never use the proponents’ stumbles as evidence against the animal. I have no idea what film she was looking at, as almost no one else describing it has Patty doing what she describes. The reason for the absence of fanfare and comment, I couldn’t tell you. I certainly don’t take it seriously, as there is no evidence presented by her backing her assertions. Which again, are echoed by almost no one else. Sore thumbs like this (and MK Davis) among the proponents are a serious problem with crypto. But they reflect nothing on the reality of the animal. John Napier – a sasquatch proponent – pronounced P/G a fake. I found his assertion unconvincing; it was a subjective impression, unbacked by evidence. (As is Short’s assertion that the sas is human because its foot resembles ours.)

“For one, if you believe the film subject is a man in a suit, it takes away the “too surefooted and fluid in walk
to be a man in a suit” argument used by some advocates.”

Well, if you read that again, another way to read it is: if you have a preconceived notion, you may just grab anything that backs that notion, because you badly want to believe it. Once again, I’d love to see the film Short saw. But it’s not the P/G film. My eyes tell me that.

“This is another illustration of the Patterson Paradox (the paradox is ignored by
all posters above). To wit: The film looks authentic, but everything surrounding
it looks shady.”

As I have said, more than once: I don’t care if Patterson gut-shot his grandma to get the money to rent the camera. i want to know what is on the film.

Take care, amigo.

You are correct: “sightings were rare because the Internet didn’t exist yet, nor did cable TV.”
We agree here. Our interpretations diverge, however, on the issue of why this is so.

I think it is reasonable to assume the exponential increase in bigfoot sightings after the spread of cable TV and the advent of the internet (replacing men’s entertainment magazines as the primary cultural propagator of the bigfoot story) was due to the mass culture advancement of The Idea that our land is populated with Monster Apes or Ape-men, The ensuing mass suggestion, a parasitic trickster sub-culture, and encouragement from earnest advocacy, all contributed to belief in, and resulted “sightings” of, an animal in locations where only decades earlier it was apparently absent in.

You write that bigfoot sightings “occur, virtually without exception, in remote areas, or right on the fringes of them.” Would you agree “on the fringes” of “remote areas” may be considered, as I wrote, “non-remote areas?”

And we must have different ideas as to what a “remote area” is. You have a “sas that crossed Interstate 64- in broad daylight- with many cars on the road.” You suggest “50 or more people…saw the animal clearly” (although, based on your comments, 50 or more people DID NOT report such a sighting!). Do you see the incongruous nature of your comments?

I tracked down the Patterson subject “stumble” quote. It comes from Bobbie Short as she posted at the JREF Forum, Bigfoot: The Patterson Gimlin Film, Part 3 – Page 52. Here is her quote (and she is a bigfoot advocate):

“Patty does not go down in the first part of the film, she flails and bends forward and almost goes down but we don’t see it for the splicing and this is towards the last of the ‘less than 50 seconds’ she is filmed out of a 8 minute roll of film. That roll has been so hacked up, it’s ridiculous. I would give any thing to see what was edited. Wouldn’t we all?”

Ms. Short on her post said she would upload the frames at her website Bigfoot Encounters, but she apparently has not done so to date, or I haven’t found it. (Her post was made in May of this year.) Oddly, her comments were made without fanfare or further interest?!

Her comments, if true, have ramifications. For one, if you believe the film subject is a man in a suit, it takes away the “too surefooted and fluid in walk to be a man in a suit” argument used by some advocates. For another, it implies the film was edited at some point to remove frames embarrassing to its authenticity or the Patterson storyline. And, to be fair, it would also call into question Bob Heironimus’ story, since he does not mention he almost fell down while pretending to be bigfoot.

This is another illustration of the Patterson Paradox (the paradox is ignored by all posters above). To wit: The film looks authentic, but everything surrounding it looks shady.

As to Munns, I agree with you. *I* don’t profess to have the expertise to analyze him in detail. But what he says makes sense, shows how hard something like this would have been, and awaits refutation.

As to the “stumble sequence”: Until I see it, it doesn’t exist, and it doesn’t do us much good to speculate about it. It looks like a seamless sequence, no splices, to my admittedly untrained eye. I have no idea where such a sequence could have been cut.

This deserves comment:

“Sightings were very, very, rare and hence plausible (since we have no hard evidence, the creatures MUST be very rare and reclusive.)

That state of affairs has been replaced with THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of sightings from all over the United States, many in non-remote areas. What happened?”

Sightings were rare because the Internet didn’t exist yet, nor did cable TV, which have helped by providing many new channels for eyewitnesses to report. (I’ve lost count of the number of people who found out on cable that they could report their encounter on the Web.) Also, over time, the volume of reports is bound to generate more reports, simply because people start seeing, when they go on the Web to think about filing their sighting, that maybe they aren’t crazy. (The vast majority of reports are filed years – usually a decade or more – after the encounter.)

The creature doesn’t have to be all that rare or all that reclusive. The sole prerequisite: no one believes you when you report one.

Example. Bill Draginis’s site has a report of a sas that crossed Interstate 64 – in broad daylight – with many cars on the road. (I’ve read at least a couple of similar ones from other states.) There must have been, conservative estimate here, 50 or more people who saw the animal clearly. So. What do you think of only one filing a report? IMPOSSIBLE!

So it doesn’t get believed. That simple. Would YOU have reported it? Neither did all those other folks who simply didn’t want to endure the ridicule.

Speculative? Sure. But makes perfect sense.

(Oh. Not sure what reports you are reading. But sasquatch sightings occur, virtually without exception, in remote areas, or right on the fringes of them. I used to think that wasn’t true. But then I read reports.)

I disagree with advocates who argue that it was virtually impossible for Patterson to have created what we see in his film.

Two sidelines:

While roaming around blog bigfoot country, I remember two blogs that were interesting.

One blogger noted that Ostman was still alive when the Patterson film was made and Ostman said that the film subject was not the type of animal he (in)famously encountered.

Another blogger noted that the Patterson film had been edited and spliced. A missing piece, apparently viewed by some advocates, show the Patterson film subject apparently stumble and almost fall.

It is this missing piece that has given rise to the idea that Patterson’s bigfoot was shot while being filmed. On the other hand, this might reasonably show that a man-in-ape-suit is not as sure footed as he seems—his not so surefootedness was edited out.

These two blogs may simply be expressions of rumors. Does anyone know more?

DWA,

I think Munns is certainly well qualified to look into this matter (Patterson’s film). More so, perhaps, than anthropologists. However, I need to wait for the critically analysis of his work to be published. I’m not qualified to critique Munns’ work.