on the cover / By Ryan “Capt. Buhne” Hurley

BIGFOOT TRAPPED BY NORCAL FANATIC!

Enter the Man-Ape

On a clear, sunny afternoon in northeastern Humboldt County 40 years ago this week, a horseback-riding Bigfooter named Roger Patterson captured on a home movie film-spool a grainy, jumpy flick that depicts a massive, hirsute, bipedal creature ambling along a creek bed.

An instantly recognizable pop culture icon, the so-called Patterson-Gimlin Film rescued Bigfoot from the Shocking!Amazing! pages of the tabloid glossies, finally confirming the source of those huge footprints Humboldt County logging crews had been seeing for 10 years. Patterson’s Bigfoot — later nicknamed “Patty” — even left six-by-14-inch footprints in the bluish-gray clay soil.

Patterson’s footage, known as “PGF” in Bigfoot circles, is regarded as the Zapruder Film of cryptozoology. ( Cryptozoology : The study of animals whose existence has not been substantiated by mainstream science.) The comparison, however, unfairly neglects PGF’s runaway popularity: While Wikipedia devotes 2,567 words to the 1963 celluloid assassination of John F. Kennedy, PGF is treated to a nearly 7,000-word analysis on the online encyclopedia.

Bob Gimlin, Patty’s only other witness, sat nearby on horseback as Patterson filmed. He reportedly had his rifle trained on Patty throughout the entire minute-long encounter, in anticipation of a hostile charge that wasn’t to happen. Instead, Patty walked calmly away from the stunned pair. (The duo had agreed ahead of time, it later came out, that should they encounter a Bigfoot, they would only open fire if either of their lives were in danger.)

Roger Patterson died of cancer in 1972. If PGF was a hoax — one that Patterson was in on — it was a secret he took to his grave. He never reaped a significant financial reward from a film that has now been viewed by countless millions around the world. His partner, Bob Gimlin, who is still alive, maintains that he was not in on any hoax, if there was one.

As PGF’s 40th anniversary approached this summer, interest on Internet message boards surged. Beer coolers and sleeping bags were exhumed from storage bins as Bigfoot geeks planned road trips to the fabled film site, now a thoroughly mapped-out Sasquatch mecca, near the town of Orleans. A symposium commemorating the legendary film was organized for Arcata, with most of today’s Bigfoot intelligentsia billed to lecture on the landmark film. (The symposium was later canceled, unfortunately.)

The hoopla, though, was justified: Since Roger Patterson unleashed his grainy clip on the crypto-world, not a single picture or video has garnered as much attention from Bigfoot skeptics or believers.

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