Posthuman Blues

Bigfoot Hoax Goes in Halls of Hooey

"The tall cowboy walked the lumbering Bigfoot walk for filmmakers and anti-Bigfoot authors Tuesday on private property near Rimrock Lake. The group's goal is to make the film behind the film, that 60-second grainy image made in 1967 by a 'chronically unemployed ex-rodeo cowboy' from Yakima named Roger Patterson."

This story really took me for a loop. Fantastically, 21st Century Radio host Bob Hieronimus shares his name with the "tall cowboy" who claims to have posed for the Patterson footage (although with a minor change in spelling). I sent an incredulous email to Anomalist editor Patrick Huyghe, who dispelled my immediate concern that the two men were one and the same.





But how do we know the Patterson footage is really a hoax? Can the guy in the article prove it, or are we supposed to take his word for it? Of his own admission, the Sasquatch suit he shows off to the curious isn't the actual suit he supposedly wore for the famous Patterson footage, but some other suit. (Does he have a goddamned closet of these things?) And as The Anomalist notes, the suit featured in the "Hooey" article "looks nothing like [the creature in the film], actually."

Debunkers are quick to ignore the fact that there are two fundamental kinds of hoaxes: actual frauds like the Darbishire flying saucer photograph and publicity-seekers who falsely take credit for enduring enigmas. (It's a wonder no one has taken credit for the "alien autopsy" yet; the "skeptical" media would probably swallow a seemingly devastating counter-claim sans supporting evidence.)

And maybe I'm nitpicking, but I'm suspicious of any debunking involving Kal K. Korff, whose books on the Billy Meier "contacts" and the Roswell crash reveal a porous thinker with a decided ax to grind.

I have no emotional stake in the Patterson footage. If it's a hoax, I want to know. But the mainstream media's evidential standards are so flimsy that I can't help but fear the debunking community's persistent desire to twist facts in an effort to keep reality manageable.