Bigfoot Sasquatch: Evidence (An Excerpt) by Dr. Grover S. Krantz

 

The following excerpt if from the late Dr. Grover S. Krantz who wrote one of the best books out there on the subject of Bigfoot. It was first published in 1992 and covers print anatomy, the fossil record, and details the Patterson film remarkably well. Are you on the fence about Sasquatch being real? More after the jump.

The following is an excerpt from the book, "Bigfoot Sasquatch: Evidence" by Dr. Grover S Krantz which can be purchased here.

On October 20, 1967 two young men from Yakima, Washington, were in northern California looking for bigfoot evidence. Roger Patterson was making a documentary film of the area, some footprints, and himself in the role of the hunter. He had a history of intense interest in this creature and had recently (1966) published a book on the subject. Robert Gimlin went along for the ride, being fairly sure that no such animal existed, but he was willing to help his friend in this endeavor. They had discussed what to do if they actually saw a bigfoot, as Patterson preferred to call it, and decided to film it and not to shoot. Years later, Gimlin said that this was a big mistake, and Patterson seemed to grudgingly agree.

The pair were riding horseback along the bed of Bluff Creek in the general area where sasquatches had disturbed the road-building operation just nine years previously. At one point they rode around a large obstacle in the creek bed and saw a sasquatch crouching beside the creek to their left. It reacted abruptly to the men's presence by standing up and walking away, from left to right, and at a consider-able angle away from the men. Bob litmus, who studied the tracks nine days later, told me that the initial confrontation was at a distance of less than 25 feet (perhaps 7 m).

Immediately upon the mutual sighting, Patterson's horse reared and fell over backward on top of him. He quickly extricated himself and retrieved his 16mm movie camera. The sasquatch no doubt had a good look at him during those first twenty seconds before the filming began and apparently saw no great cause for alarm, but decided to depart from the area anyway. The film begins when Patterson is at a distance of 112 feet (34 m) behind the creature, somewhat to the right of it's path, and running toward it about half-again faster than it is walking. At first the film jumps badly, the small image usually being unrecognizably blurred or completely off the frame. Whenever it can be seen clearly, it is simply walking away. (See Fig. 44 for two versions of a complete ground plan of the filming positions and the movements of Patterson and the sasquatch.)

After Patterson had closed the distance between it and himself to just 81 feet, he stumbled to his knees but kept the camera going. About then the sasquatch turned its head (and upper body) to face him briefly while continuing to walk with long strides. As Patterson told me: "It looked at me with such an expression of contempt and disgust, that I just stayed right there." The way he put it to John Green was "You know how it is when the umpire tells you 'one more word and you're out of the game'; that's the way it felt."

From where he stopped, Patterson was able to hold the camera fairly steadily for most of the remaining filming. The creature's legs were obscured by stream debris in many of the best frames, such as Figure 45, and it was getting progressively smaller on the frames as the distance increased.

Near the end of the footage, Patterson quickly moved his position about 10 feet to the left (3 m) for a better view. The subject continued to walk almost directly away (Fig. 46) until the camera ran out of film when it was at a distance of 265 feet (80.8 m). The entire incident was over in less than two minutes, and Patterson had 952 frames of color film of the first and only sasquatch he ever saw.

Throughout the event, Gimlin was on his horse nearby, holding his 30.06 rifle, and being rather amazed by what he saw. This was evidently a female sasquatch that I have since determined to stand 6 feet 6 inches tall (2 m) and weighing about 500 pounds (230 kg). They had been seeing occasional tracks of three sasquatches in the area, of different sizes, and they assumed that they were looking at the medium-sized one. Years later, Gimlin told me that at the time he was wondering what they would do if the big one showed up.

After the creature was gone, Patterson and Gimlin measured the stride length and made casts of the clearest right and left footprints they could find. They covered many more tracks as best they could, and then left the area.

Bob Titmus located the place nine days later and plotted the paths of all the participants from their footprints; his snap is remarkably similar to what I reconstructed from the film twenty-four years later. He was able to document the event from the beginning, while my study necessarily starts only with the existing film record. He tracked the animal from it left the movie site, walked up a hill, and back to an overlooking position only 125 yards from the point where the encounter began. There it apparently sat down for some time watching through an opening in the vegetation while the two men were looking at and casting tracks, quite unaware of their observer. Titmus then made casts of another ten consecutive footprints in a row. (I have copies of eight of these; one had been given away many years ago, and I still plan to get a copy of the last one.) Titmus noted that four tracks showed clear evidence of having been cast when he arrived, but Patterson claimed to have cast only two. I can find no one who knows anything about the others.

Throughout the filming incident, and judging from its behavior immediately afterwards, the sasquatch did not seem to be much bothered by the men's presence; one could infer that it just preferred not to be near them. It showed no panic or great haste, and looked at the men only once for a few steps during the filming time. This is about average behavior from what I have heard about other sasquatch encounters. Sometimes they beat a more hasty retreat, while at other times they seem almost to ignore the hum. presence.

Patterson had the film developed as soon as possible. At first lie thought he had brought in proof of bigfoot's existence and really expected the scientists to accept it. Actually only a few scientists were willing even to look at the film, and most of them pompt1y declared it to be a fake. It was then incorporated as the centerpiece of the documentary film that Patterson had set out to make in the first place. This was taken around and shown in local movie houses all over the Pacific Northwest, and it brought in a fair amount of money that way. Patterson also sold various rights to the film to a number of people. As it turned out later, some of these rights were overlapping and even duplicating in a legal tangle. Patterson himself died in 1972 while public interest was still fairly high, but scientific interest remained negligible.

To read more of this fascinating examination, you can purchase the book, "Bigfoot Sasquatch: Evidence" by Dr. Grover S Krantz here.