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

BIGFOOT TRAPPED BY NORCAL FANATIC!

The reason no one has ever found a Sasquatch carcass out in the woods? Finding the carcass of any large mammal that has expired due to natural causes, as a rule, just doesn’t happen. Ask any forest ranger or deer hunter when was the last time they tripped over a bear skeleton.

And if you doubt that NorCal forests could produce sufficient caloric forage to support the appetites of such massive creatures as Bigfoot, don’t tell that to the Roosevelt Elk: Physically largest of all elk subspecies, the hundreds-strong herd of Roosevelts that call Orick’s Redwood National and State Parks home weigh up to 1,300 pounds.

Skeptics off-handedly dismiss the Patterson-Gimlin Film as “a guy in a suit.” But would-be debunkers have trouble explaining why technology on display in the “suit” has yet to be even approximately duplicated in the 40 years since its “invention.” Costume experts — then and now — uniformly decline attempts to duplicate its “stagecraft.” And no wonder: Visible muscle tone ripples beneath the creature’s black fur. Its hands open and close —yet, astonishingly, no human’s arms are even nearly long enough to span its massive wingspan. The creature’s motor coordination, moreover, is considered by most scientists who’ve studied the film to be vastly outside the realm of human locomotion.

Bigfoot heretics scoff that Patterson was a fast-talking confidence man who borrowed money from anyone foolish enough to fund his various Bigfoot ventures. In their deconstruction of Patterson, debunkers cite as Exhibit “A” Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?, a book he self-published in 1966, one year before he filmed Patty. A copy of the rare book is in the Eureka library’s Redwood Room, and includes a drawing of a female Bigfoot, complete with — wait for it — hair-covered Bigfoot boobs, just like Patty. Drawn by Patterson himself, the sketch is a roughly accurate portrait of Patty, right down to the gangly arms and prominent sagital crest.

And a muckraking “expose” published in 2002 purports to blow Patty right off the creek bed, claiming that Patterson mail-ordered Patty’s costume in 1967. Written by the North Carolina costume shop proprietor who supposedly sold the suit (one Philip Morris), the book “reveals” that Patty was nothing more than a young Washingtonian named Bob Heironimus, suited in the dark-brown Dynel suit that Morris sold to Roger Patterson.

But neither the costume nor anything but hearsay has ever been brought forth to substantiate that Patty was a suited human. Never mind, say the skeptics: Patterson hid his costume design “in plain sight”, unwittingly exposing it in his own book.

The number of scientists who’ve devoted serious attention to the film could fit in a phone booth, yet even they are divided on Patty’s authenticity: A 1998 analysis of the film, conducted by forensic scientist Jeff Glickman of the North American Science Institute (available online), determined that the film subject was 7’ 3.5” tall, with a chest circumference of 83.” The NASI report pegged Patty’s weight at nearly 2,000 pounds. (Other estimates range appreciably downward, in the 800-1,200 pound range.)

The late Bernard Heuvelmans (1916-2001) was well regarded as a mainstream zoologist, and keenly interested in the study of scientifically uncatalogued species. The progenitor of the field of cryptozoology, Heuvelmanns concluded that Patty was a suited human.

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