By now you’ve probably heard that the new documentary Capturing Bigfoot which premiered last week at SXSW has revealed that the famous Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film of 1967 was hoaxed. “Revealed” is perhaps too strong a word; it’s been known beyond any reasonable doubt basically since the very beginning. My Skeptoid episode laying out the reasons why was from 13 years ago!
Greg Long’s 2004 book The Making of Bigfoot left no meaningful doubt; his reconstruction of the chain of custody of the film reel itself, as well as numerous interviews, showed that it was essentially impossible for the film to have been shot and developed the way its creator Roger Patterson always claimed — and what amazing luck that Patterson was literally being paid by a nature film company to go out and get film of Bigfoot.
Capturing Bigfoot is not yet publicly available, but a lot of people saw the premiere in Austin (including my friend Angie Mattke), and many of them wrote up its findings (including Ben Radford for Skeptical Inquirer1). I’ve collected them all for you here, so you don’t have to. Here’s the general timeline.
The film was largely driven by the public discovery of “the rest of the film” — the other footage Patterson took besides just the short clip that he released and became so well known. Skeptics have always wanted to see this.
The film shows the rehearsal footage that everyone suspected must exist. It had been in the possession of Norm Johnson, a film technician, who had kept it locked away at the insistence of his wife. When Johnson died in 2024, the reel was given to Marq Evans, who then made this new documentary.
Upon seeing it, Clint Patterson (66) — son of Roger Patterson — decided he’d had enough and revealed all to Evans on camera.
And here’s what Clint revealed.
Around “10 years ago”, Patricia Patterson (Roger’s widow and Clint’s father), confirmed to Clint that Roger had hoaxed the film in order to make money for the family, which it did.
Clint proposed writing a book. But the family (basically Patricia) had earned “millions” in licensing fees2 and she had no wish to jeopardize that. Clint reports she disowned him at that point, and he kept quiet out of respect — until the discovery of the rehearsal film spilled all the beans anyway. (Patricia did not give an interview in the film.)
Clint reveals he watched his father burn the Bigfoot suit sometime after the film was made. Clint also states that his father always maintained to him the lie that the film was genuine — though Roger died only a few years after the film.
The film makes it very clear that Greg Long and his book were spot-on in essentially everything. (That book was my primary source for my episode.3)
Bob Heironimus was indeed the guy in the suit in the final film, as Long and other skeptics have known for years — yet somebody else wore the suit for the rehearsals. When you see him walk (as he did in a PAX TV news segment) it’s incredible how much his natural gait matches that of the Bigfoot in the film. He doesn’t even need the suit.
At a 2024 Bigfoot event filmed by Evans, Clint and Heironimus waited in line to see Bob Gimlin. They told him they’ve come to finally tell the truth, and Gimlin agreed to join them, and agreed to reveal the hoax on camera. But Gimlin’s wife stopped it from happening. (This was all captured on camera.) So much for Gimlin’s lifelong insistence that he didn’t know whether it was a hoax or not.
Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal reported4 that Evans paid $30,000 (!!!!) in licensing fees to use Roger’s footage in his documentary. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say to whom; we presume to Patricia. I guess she really wanted her pound of flesh.
In closing, I should point out that epistemologically, the Patterson-Gimlin film being a hoax says nothing about the existence of Bigfoot, any more than did Ray Wallace’s family’s admission that the footprints he laid all over the PNW since 1958 were fake. 😉
Updates: Following the publication of this, Marq Evans advised me that Patricia is indeed still alive; and that he still disputes some of what’s in Greg Long’s book, notably that the suit was made by the shop of Philip and Amy Morris (also discussed in my Skeptoid episode).
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/documentarys-devastating-bigfoot-debunking/
https://people.com/famous-1967-bigfoot-film-was-staged-says-director-of-new-doc-11926085
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/375
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/a-new-bigfoot-documentary-helps-explain-our-conspiracy-minded-era-f9ef6237
I am absolutely gutted!!
But at least I know for sure now.
Oh,well,back to the loch Ness monster then!!
Where testimonial disproof lags behind the mathematical disproof by, like, 30 years