Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
'IT WALKED UPRIGHT. IT DIDN'T LOOK IKE A BEAR. THERE’S NO DOUBT IN MY MIND WHAT IT WAS.’
evidence were, in fact, skins of the goat-like serow. Straus stressed that the burden of proof shouldn’t rest on sceptics, but on those who ‘affirm [Bigfoot’s] existence’. Nonetheless, he admitted it would be unscientific to say the creatures Sanderson described absolutely couldn’t exist.
The Patterson-Gimlin film followed Sanderson’s book six years later. When Gimlin watched his footage for the first time a few days after the incident, he doubted it would be enough evidence to convince anyone. ‘I didn’t think the film was that good. I saw it [with my two eyes] better than that,’ he says. Yet the footage became a phenomenon.
Sceptics of the film, such as John Napier, former director of the primate biology programme at the Smithsonian Institution, saw it as an elaborate hoax. Despite admitting he ‘could not see the zipper’, Napier thought there were too many discrepancies in the film, such as the length of the creature’s strides relative to the size of its prints, for it to be of a real Sasquatch. Napier also thought the Bigfoot’s centre of gravity and muscular buttocks were more human than Sasquatch.
But not everyone agreed, including Grover Krantz. The professor of physical anthropology at Washington State University and ‘leading authority in hominoid evolution’ believed in the Sasquatch. His conviction came from eyewitnesses, the creature’s gait in the Patterson-Gimlin film, and the anatomical structure of the ‘Cripplefoot’ footprints found in Washington state in 1969.
These prints’ unique dermal ridges, where sweat pores open on palms and soles, left Krantz convinced that at least some were authentic.
Krantz’s working theory was that the Sasquatch was part of the hominid family, like humans and most apes, and a descendant of a thought-to-be-extinct primate species from Asia, which was called Gigantopithecus. At some point, millions of years ago, Gigantopithecus had crossed the Bering Strait and settled in North America.
‘Grover was eclectic,’ says Krantz’s former colleague Jeff Meldrum, author of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science and a professor of anatomy at Idaho State University. ‘He had many ideas that were a decade or two ahead of his time. When he pursued these ideas, he would be ridiculed.’
When asked about the possibility of the Sasquatch existing, Krantz was unequivocal, saying he ‘guaranteed’ it.
Krantz’s belief in Bigfoot didn’t help his academic career. Passed over for promotions and denied tenure at Washington State, he knew that the only way he’d be able to convince his
colleagues of the primate’s existence was by producing a body. He became known for spending his nights with a shotgun in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, quite literally hunting Bigfoot. He said his extreme efforts were the only way to get the scientific community to believe him.
Krantz died in 2002 as a complex figure among his peers, respected for his work in primate evolution but mocked for his belief in Bigfoot.
THE SEARCH TODAY
IN JUNE 2019, THE FBI’S INFORMATION Management Division tweeted a link with a single word: ‘Bigfoot’. The link led to a declassified 1976 file that detailed the FBI’s decision to analyse hair and tissue samples from Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne. The file captured the internet’s imagination and lit a fire under Bigfoot enthusiasts. Was the government admitting knowledge of Bigfoot’s existence?
According to the file: No. The FBI examined the root structure, medullary structure, and cuticle thickness of the supposed Bigfoot samples, however their findings were fairly anticlimactic. ‘It was concluded as a result of these examinations that the hairs are of deer family origin,’ the FBI wrote to Byrne. ‘The hair sample you submitted is being returned.’
The modern Bigfoot hunt still builds its case on just a few scraps of evidence. In an era with cameras in every pocket, the Patterson-Gimlin film remains the defining visual clue that Bigfoot might be roaming American forests. There are millions of cat videos, so why isn’t there more footage of a bipedal, two-metre-tall primate than Gimlin’s few grainy seconds from 52 years ago?
Believers will explain Bigfoot is skilled at hiding. They’ll say sceptics aren’t taking valid scientific research seriously enough.
Today, groups such as the Bigfoot Field Research Organization are formalising the search. The BFRO began in the mid-1990s as a public database for Bigfoot reports, but now the organisation deploys a network of volunteers to investigate eyewitness accounts and search for Bigfoot in the wild. For the group, credibility is paramount.
‘We’ll never get mainstream science to accept Bigfoot is real by doing improper interviews that contaminate witnesses and testimony,’ says Dusty Ruth, a retired family services investigator turned Bigfoot detective for the BFRO. Ruth’s interview protocols emphasise speaking to witnesses in person (to read body language) and speaking to joint eyewitnesses separately (because memories can be subject to confirmation bias).
The BFRO follows up on credible
Bigfoot claims with expeditions to look for more tangible evidence. These hunts gather dozens of searchers equipped with thermal cameras, professional-grade audio recorders, and a sophisticated ‘report classification system’ that sorts evidence based on confidence. Class A reports ‘involve clear sightings in circumstances where misinterpretation can be ruled out’, while Class B and Class C reports have ‘higher potential for inaccuracy’, according to the BFRO website.
Footprints can be considered Class A reports in some cases, and when a BFRO expedition encounters anything unusual, they’ll take track casts or look for hair samples. The organisation claims to have many samples waiting for DNA identification, but they’re waiting for a respected lab to agree to a test.
Despite these more considered measures from Bigfoot believers, Grover Krantz’s hunch about the search for the Sasquatch is likely right. The only way Bigfoot will turn from myth to reality in the eyes of the public – 84 per cent of whom deny the existence of the animal – is if an actual dead body is brought forward.
Even then, there might still be those who look for the zipper.