jarlrmai
Senior Member.
These days AI has replaced photoshop in this type of flawed argument.
Mendel
Senior Member.
So old science fiction and horror movies are actually documentaries?
Great post overall, and this is the term I should have used rather than "arch". I was going off memory and totally forgot this term. That's the one I have heard claimed as evidence that the casts, and hence Patty in the PG film, are real.
Yup, using the same logic, they must all be documentaries. We all know King Kong DID climb the Empire State Building. He must have, since I've seen it on film…
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Also, showing up in all the places they get reported would require a fairly large population"
Source: Saved from the Internet some time ago, if it becomes important I can go track it down.
But the point it, although I often think "Bigfoot, elusive man-ape of the Pacific Northwest," reports come in from pretty much everywhere in the US that there are people. That's a pretty darn big range there, even if ol' BF is pretty uncommon in any area across his range, you'd still need a lot of them just to cover the number of places they're supposedly seen.
And the more of them there are, the more chances for one to get shot by a hunter, or hit by a car, or caught in a trap, or otherwise be definitively shown to exist.
Of course, it could be argued that some of those areas don't have any Bigfeet, just people making erroneous and/or hoax reports. But the more that is true, the more firmly it establishes that there need not be ANY of them in the real world for them to be reported!
John J.
Senior Member.
At the national (US) level, there seems to be a correlation between where Bigfoot is seen and where UFOs are reported:
Surely this is significant evidence of some strange Bigfoot-UFO connection!
Waydaminnit:
(2nd, 3rd maps from https://nuforc.org/newmap/ and https://www.worldmap1.com/united-states-population-density-map#google_vignette)
Roughly similar maps can be found showing the distribution of other things across the US, including schools, bars, registered drone operators.
To a degree we might expect there to be more Bigfoot reports in areas with higher populations because there are more potential witnesses,
but a strong correlation only makes sense if Bigfoot is relatively evenly distributed across the continental US or is drawn towards human habitation (including major metropolitan areas) in most parts of the nation.
I would guess (haven't checked) that maps of the distribution of sightings of "established" (irrefutably existing) wild animals in the US, say bison (buffalo), wolves, alligators, would not show such a clear correlation with human population density.
Surely this is significant evidence of some strange Bigfoot-UFO connection!
Waydaminnit:
(2nd, 3rd maps from https://nuforc.org/newmap/ and https://www.worldmap1.com/united-states-population-density-map#google_vignette)
Roughly similar maps can be found showing the distribution of other things across the US, including schools, bars, registered drone operators.
To a degree we might expect there to be more Bigfoot reports in areas with higher populations because there are more potential witnesses,
but a strong correlation only makes sense if Bigfoot is relatively evenly distributed across the continental US or is drawn towards human habitation (including major metropolitan areas) in most parts of the nation.
I would guess (haven't checked) that maps of the distribution of sightings of "established" (irrefutably existing) wild animals in the US, say bison (buffalo), wolves, alligators, would not show such a clear correlation with human population density.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
I have not found any. There might be one based on Canadian sightings as reported to a Canadian clearing house?
Worth noting the the usual UFO sightings map one finds on the Internet shows a strong bias towards places where there are a lot if people per unit of area and English is spoken. This hints that such maps including multiple countries and based on reports of sightings may reveal more about the linguistic range of the map compiler than about how widespread reports are. Example: a UFO map compiled by an English speaker who did not know the terms used for UFO in Spanish and other languages (eg: OVNI) will miss a lot of reports from Central or South America, among other places...
Mendel
Senior Member.
There aren't enough yeti sightings to do statistics with.
https://maphub.net/TheHorrorCollection/yeti-abominable-snowman-sightings-map-updated-2026
https://maphub.net/TheHorrorCollection/yeti-abominable-snowman-sightings-map-updated-2026
Todd Feinman
Senior Member
I think so too. Remains would have been found in American caves, over time; even if bones from individuals who had succumbed to predators. Homo floresiensis remains were found in caves
Yeah, but I guess it comes down to two different perspectives on the whole Bigfoot thing. On one side, we have the people who believe Bigfoot is a real animal, some kind of primate or primitive human actually living in the forest. And on the other side, we have the people who believe it's some kind of interdimensional entity, perhaps a space alien or, why not, a demon of the forest.
It's easy to dismiss the first hypothesis based on the logic you've presented. Obviously, a breeding population would leave some sort of evidence behind. And I guess that's why the second type of claim has emerged among believers in the paranormal. All arguments about the lack of traces left behind by this large-footed primate in the forest can immediately be dismissed, since an interdimensional being "wouldn't leave such traces behind."
But as always, it's (often) impossible to prove a negative. Making up a space-traveling primate à la Chewbacca and then asking people to debunk its existence is kinda ridiculous, just like asking someone to debunk unicorns or leprechauns.
Mauro
Senior Member.
Well, inventing ad-hoc excuses is the usual way to prop up untenable theories, and when the excuses border the unfalsifiable (inter-dimensional beings, demons...) they're even better! What the proponents of this approach forget is that for any added hypothesis one must factor in the probability of that hypothesis being true... which (to be very, very charitable) I'd put in one in one trillion for physical interdimensional beings and one in one trillion trillions for supernatural ones. Thus this kind of theories is even easier to dismiss than the good ol' Ape of the Wood.
owntheissue
Active Member
At some point between Kaluza Klein and M Theory- this seems to have become the prevailing explanation for..... pretty much anything people want to waive hands at.
Some of the Alt Propulsion theories invoke higher dimensions but at least have demonstrated scientific reasoning for doing so - ET and Bigfoot are just out there invoking none 3+1 realities because.
True. Or at least they're not even worth spending time debunking. It's not about evidence; it's all about faith. According to Hitchens's razor, we can simply dismiss such claims without spending time explaining why. No one has ever presented any evidence that holds up to scrutiny and gives us a reason to believe an interdimensional super-ape is lurking in the woods. Therefore, we have no reason to believe such a creature exists, let alone spend time debunking such silly claims. When it comes to the flesh-and-blood Bigfoot, on the other hand, I think it's more relevant to debunk the whole story using arguments like the ones presented by @Mendel.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Here's one showing the distribution of forest, or as the chart says, "woody biomass". I'm going to guess that the "distribution of tree stumps that look spooky at night" looks much the same.
I had never really taken a close look at the 1967 PG film before. Sure, I'd seen it numerous times, but I'd never bothered to properly analyze what I was looking at. (Frankly, I've never been that interested in Bigfoot.) As a result, my interpretation of the footage had largely been shaped by what others claimed to see in it. However, after watching Capturing Bigfoot, I decided to take a closer look at it myself. And one thing quickly became apparent: much of what has been said about the footage, by believers and skeptics alike, seems to be based on assumptions and good old-fashioned pareidolia. Even the new high-resolution scan of the original film reveals surprisingly little detail. All the talk about muscles moving beneath the thick fur, not to mention the endless speculation about moving toes and thumbs, can probably simply be dismissed without much further consideration. No real need of any high tech suite there.
But then there are certain claims frequently made by believers that skeptics often take seriously enough to try to disprove. One of the most common is that the creature's arms are "unusually long", with proportions that supposedly don't match those of a human. But when I watch the film, I simply don't see any unusually long arms. So where does this claim actually come from?! Skeptics have often suggested that the arms could have been artificially extended using sticks concealed inside the sleeves, or perhaps gloves with elongated fingers. Personally, though, I'm not convinced there's anything unusual about the arm length that needs explaining in the first place. What I see when looking at that blurry, furry silhouette are proportions that seem perfectly consistent with those of a human in a padded suit.
In the still image above, I've lightened the background to make the creature's proportions easier to distinguish. The arms appear to reach almost to the knees, with the legs slightly bent. That's pretty much exactly where my own hands end up when I stand in a similar pose. Of course, it's entirely possible that the costume had some sort of oversized ape hands, slightly larger than those of a human. Looking at photographs of gorilla suits from the mid-20th century, relatively large hands seem to have been a common feature. The image below, for example, is from the 1951 film Bride of the Gorilla.
And then there's the famous walk. It's sometimes claimed that the creature in the PG film walks in a way that would be impossible for a human to replicate. But once again, I find myself questioning whether there's anything here that actually needs debunking, because I simply don't see what others claim to see. In the clip below, we can watch the section of the film where the "creature" is closest to the camera, with both legs clearly visible and unobstructed.
And to me, it looks remarkably similar to an ordinary man strolling through the woods. The knees aren't even bent all that much. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that the posture suggests an actor deliberately trying to imitate some sort of crouching, ape-like walk. The slightly bent legs could just as easily be explained by the costume being rather heavy and cumbersome, making it difficult to navigate the uneven terrain, especially with limited visibility through a mask.
Which brings me to my main point. I don't think attempts to debunk the Patterson–Gimlin film should focus on explaining away pareidolia and unsupported claims. If someone insists that the creature's arms are too long to belong to a human, the appropriate response shouldn't necessarily be to explain how a costume could have been constructed with artificially elongated arms. Instead, the claim itself should be challenged. Where is the evidence that the arms are unusually long in the first place?
The same goes for the supposedly impossible walk. Before trying to demonstrate how a human could reproduce it, shouldn't we first establish that there's actually something unusual about it? The burden of proof should rest with those claiming that the creature has non-human proportions or moves in a way no human possibly could. Such extraordinary claims require actual evidence, not simply interpretations of a blurry silhouette.
Patterson was certainly a clever man, and I suspect he understood just how poor the image quality needed to be to prevent viewers from identifying details that might give away the costume. Consequently, it's virtually impossible to conclusively debunk the film through an analysis of the footage alone. But the reverse is equally important: I have yet to see a single detail in the film that is genuinely inconsistent with a man wearing an ape suit. And if there's nothing in the footage that actually requires an extraordinary explanation, perhaps there's not much worth debunking in the first place. Trying to explain away supposedly elongated limbs and an allegedly impossible walk only plays into the hands of believers.
I have one question, though: what do you make of the newly discovered clip presented in Capturing Bigfoot? I'm thinking mainly of when it might have been shot. The film itself was produced in 1966, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was shot that year. At first glance, the vegetation seems to indicate that it was filmed in the fall, with lots of yellow and red leaves:
However, the problem is that the entire film seems to have a reddish color cast. Just look at the rider's face, or the blurry mess at the beginning of the film, when the camera is shaking:
If the film was shot in the fall, I would say the fall of 1966 is the best guess, with the fall of 1967 also being a possibility. The former is a bit problematic, since we have no indication that Patterson had access to a camera back then, let alone that he was filming staged Bigfoot footage. The latter, on the other hand, is also somewhat questionable, since it would suggest that the newly discovered footage was shot almost simultaneously with the famous Bluff Creek clip.
Which leaves us with a third option: that the footage was part of the mockumentary-style movie Patterson was trying to shoot in the Ahtanum Creek area in the summer of 1967. Personally, this seems like the most plausible explanation to me, if it weren't for the autumn-looking landscape. But what do you think? Could the red and yellow colors in the surrounding vegetation possibly be explained by dried-out vegetation combined with a reddish color cast in the film?
This was a long post, but it's basically all of my thoughts on the whole PG debacle.
But then there are certain claims frequently made by believers that skeptics often take seriously enough to try to disprove. One of the most common is that the creature's arms are "unusually long", with proportions that supposedly don't match those of a human. But when I watch the film, I simply don't see any unusually long arms. So where does this claim actually come from?! Skeptics have often suggested that the arms could have been artificially extended using sticks concealed inside the sleeves, or perhaps gloves with elongated fingers. Personally, though, I'm not convinced there's anything unusual about the arm length that needs explaining in the first place. What I see when looking at that blurry, furry silhouette are proportions that seem perfectly consistent with those of a human in a padded suit.
In the still image above, I've lightened the background to make the creature's proportions easier to distinguish. The arms appear to reach almost to the knees, with the legs slightly bent. That's pretty much exactly where my own hands end up when I stand in a similar pose. Of course, it's entirely possible that the costume had some sort of oversized ape hands, slightly larger than those of a human. Looking at photographs of gorilla suits from the mid-20th century, relatively large hands seem to have been a common feature. The image below, for example, is from the 1951 film Bride of the Gorilla.
And then there's the famous walk. It's sometimes claimed that the creature in the PG film walks in a way that would be impossible for a human to replicate. But once again, I find myself questioning whether there's anything here that actually needs debunking, because I simply don't see what others claim to see. In the clip below, we can watch the section of the film where the "creature" is closest to the camera, with both legs clearly visible and unobstructed.
And to me, it looks remarkably similar to an ordinary man strolling through the woods. The knees aren't even bent all that much. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced that the posture suggests an actor deliberately trying to imitate some sort of crouching, ape-like walk. The slightly bent legs could just as easily be explained by the costume being rather heavy and cumbersome, making it difficult to navigate the uneven terrain, especially with limited visibility through a mask.
Which brings me to my main point. I don't think attempts to debunk the Patterson–Gimlin film should focus on explaining away pareidolia and unsupported claims. If someone insists that the creature's arms are too long to belong to a human, the appropriate response shouldn't necessarily be to explain how a costume could have been constructed with artificially elongated arms. Instead, the claim itself should be challenged. Where is the evidence that the arms are unusually long in the first place?
The same goes for the supposedly impossible walk. Before trying to demonstrate how a human could reproduce it, shouldn't we first establish that there's actually something unusual about it? The burden of proof should rest with those claiming that the creature has non-human proportions or moves in a way no human possibly could. Such extraordinary claims require actual evidence, not simply interpretations of a blurry silhouette.
Patterson was certainly a clever man, and I suspect he understood just how poor the image quality needed to be to prevent viewers from identifying details that might give away the costume. Consequently, it's virtually impossible to conclusively debunk the film through an analysis of the footage alone. But the reverse is equally important: I have yet to see a single detail in the film that is genuinely inconsistent with a man wearing an ape suit. And if there's nothing in the footage that actually requires an extraordinary explanation, perhaps there's not much worth debunking in the first place. Trying to explain away supposedly elongated limbs and an allegedly impossible walk only plays into the hands of believers.
I have one question, though: what do you make of the newly discovered clip presented in Capturing Bigfoot? I'm thinking mainly of when it might have been shot. The film itself was produced in 1966, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was shot that year. At first glance, the vegetation seems to indicate that it was filmed in the fall, with lots of yellow and red leaves:
However, the problem is that the entire film seems to have a reddish color cast. Just look at the rider's face, or the blurry mess at the beginning of the film, when the camera is shaking:
If the film was shot in the fall, I would say the fall of 1966 is the best guess, with the fall of 1967 also being a possibility. The former is a bit problematic, since we have no indication that Patterson had access to a camera back then, let alone that he was filming staged Bigfoot footage. The latter, on the other hand, is also somewhat questionable, since it would suggest that the newly discovered footage was shot almost simultaneously with the famous Bluff Creek clip.
Which leaves us with a third option: that the footage was part of the mockumentary-style movie Patterson was trying to shoot in the Ahtanum Creek area in the summer of 1967. Personally, this seems like the most plausible explanation to me, if it weren't for the autumn-looking landscape. But what do you think? Could the red and yellow colors in the surrounding vegetation possibly be explained by dried-out vegetation combined with a reddish color cast in the film?
This was a long post, but it's basically all of my thoughts on the whole PG debacle.
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JMartJr
Senior Member.
Indeed, When discussing the film online with BFBs (Big Foot Believers) I've often tried to "soften" my presentation by admitting that things that I see when looking at the film (most notably the saggy-britches effect in the sitting down area!) may not really be there, but may just be my brain interpreting the very poor quality video that we all have to look at in a fashion consistent with what I think I am seeing, a man in a suit.
I say this because, first of all, it is true, that may be why I see a saggy britches costume and they don't, and it is fair for me to admit that. But I also hope that, if they can grasp that I might be seeing things that are as much in my mind as in the video, they might be more open to the idea that THEY may also be doing this when they see rippling muscles and impossibly long arms.
It is also worth pointing out what the video shows of the face:
It drives home just how poor the imagery is. Mask or actual 'squatch, either way, how many nostrils does it have? Probably two, but you can't see that in the imagery. Does it have ears? Can't see if it does or not. And too bad about that terrible injury that put out an eye... oh, you can't see it? OK, neither can I, we can't see the eyes at all, in fact.
Similarly looking at the hands, it probably has fingers, but you can't see them.
All of which is moot now, the evidence that it was hoaxed has become pretty conclusive. But a lot of claims were made about subtle details in footage that was, after all, providing very poor resolution.
Ann K
Senior Member.
It also has a washed-out appearance as if it was poorly exposed. To the photography experts among us, does this just look like an old film, fading? Do the colors fade so that the disappearance of green leaves everything looking red, whereas with more green they'd just appear brown instead?
This is extremely unscientific, but I decided to play around a bit in Photoshop. I tried adjusting the color settings to give the horseman a more realistic skin tone. Then I applied the same settings to a screenshot of the foliage. Here's the result. I would say that the most obvious autumnal feel had suddenly disappeared.
Obviously, this proves nothing, since I might have messed up the settings rather than bringing the colors closer to reality. But the interesting part is that I only had to adjust the red tones, and I didn't have to make any dramatic changes to achieve a significant difference in the overall appearance.
Could this, after all, be a scene shot in the summer of 1967, when Patterson was trying in vain to finish his mockumentary? Possibly. One clue might be the forest backdrop seen at the beginning of the film. There, the trees look rather green and thriving.
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Mauro
Senior Member.
I checked you assertion that the arms in the above picture are not unnaturally long. In the picture the fists of the creature look to reach a little below the hip. Checking with a normotypical H. sapiens sapiens (myself), the fists extend possibly even lower than in the Bigfoot picture. My conclusion is the picture shows arms with normal H. sapiens sapiens proportions. Alternatively, I might have had Bigfoot ancestors.
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Yeah, the whole "long arms" claim is kinda weird. And it's obviously rather difficult to determine the exact positions of different joints in a blurry image of a man in a padded suit covered in thick fur. But I see no reason to believe the proportions rule out a man in a suit. Instead, they seem to fit human proportions perfectly. But perhaps Bigfoot is nothing more than a man with excessive hair growth. Who knows…
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