"I felt so embarrassed," said Katherine Markofer of Sacramento, who had a Bigfoot sighting on Ironside Mountain, which is between Willow Creek and Weaverville in Northern California, in August 2004. Markofer was featured in the National Geographic (NG) Channel's documentary "Behind the Mysteries: Bigfoot," which premiered January 31, 2005.
Markofer was one of several people who came to speak to filmmaker Noel Dockstader in September 2004 at Trinity River Farm in Willow Creek. Bigfoot enthusiast Al Hodgson organized the meeting, encouraging those who had sightings to speak on camera for Dockstader and the reputable organization. Hodgson was reassured the documentary would not portray those people in a negative way and is protective of "sighters" who come to him with their experiences.
Even though at first glance it appears NG tried to show both sides of the story, most believers on record came away from it feeling betrayed.
"I haven't seen the NG documentary, and don't much want to," wrote Bigfoot researcher John Green in an email. "I knew from considerable exchange with Noel Dockstader that there was no hope of it being fair and balanced, and from what I have read about it and seen quoted from it, that has been more than confirmed. To provide 'balance' by providing equal time to people with little knowledge of the subject solely to have someone contradict those who have done exhaustive research--that's not balance."
The documentary starts out with scenes from Willow Creek's own Bigfoot Days Parade, featuring locals commenting on whether they believe in the elusive creature. Only one person said she didn't believe. Considering that the town is probably split in half on who believes and who doesn't, that portrayal doesn't seem balanced.
After the parade shots, the film shows a short clip of retired California Highway Patrol Officer Richard Kehl, who had a split-second sighting on Waterman Ridge. Kehl hadn't returned calls by press time.
Markofer was next. Her experience had been the most recent and she was still visibly shaken. While describing what she saw, her eyes seemed to be popping out of her head as she held her arms out to demonstrate the size of the creature's shoulders.
"I saw Bigfoot, and they made it seem like everybody lied," she said in a telephone interview. "They used our stories to get their point across that there wasn't one. I know there are hoaxes, but even now (five months later), it's so real to me. No one is going to change my mind. I know what I saw."
The re-enactment of her experience in the documentary portrays she and her sister being chased while trying to drive away.
"I never said he chased me," Markofer said
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Furthermore, Markofer wondered why the producers didn't use the footage of the Native Americans at the filming who told of their experiences.
"Why weren't the Indians in it? Were they afraid they wouldn't want to share with them anymore?" she said.
Dermal ridges
One part of the film included the issue of dermal ridges found on the footprints of more than one cast.
Investigator Jimmy Chilcutt of the Conroe Police Department in Texas, who specializes in finger and footprints, has analyzed more than 150 casts of Bigfoot prints that Jeff Meldrum, an Idaho State professor who has done extensive study on the phenomenon, keeps in a laboratory. Chilcutt says one footprint found in 1987 in Walla Walla, Wash., has convinced him that Bigfoot is real.
Chilcutt said the ridge flow pattern and the texture was completely different from anything he had ever seen.
"It certainly wasn't human, and of no known primate that I've examined," he said.
Furthermore, the print ridges flow lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints, which flow across. The texture of the ridges was about twice the thickness of a human, which indicate the animal has rather thick skin.
Estebian Sarmiento is a primatologist from the American Museum of Natural History and was featured on the NG film, making molds of the dermal ridges. John Green said Sarmiento is actually quite sympathetic and helpful to enthusiasts, which is obvious in the documentary aired on the Discovery Channel entitled "Legend Meets Science."
"But he doesn't have much knowledge of what has gone on over the years," Green wrote in the email. "On the segment they showed I guess he thought he was introducing something new, when actually that technique has been known and kept in mind in this investigation for a very long time. Too bad Chilcutt or Meldrum were not asked to comment on that, but I guess the show was structured the other way around."
At the Bigfoot Symposium held in Willow Creek in 2002, Chilcutt said he didn't think many people would even know to fake the ridges, much less how.
The Patterson film
Another bone of contention is the notorious Patterson Film and a man named Bob Heironimus, who claims to have worn a monkey suit given to him by Roger Patterson.
After the incident filmed at Bluff Creek in '67, investigators went to the scene and measured the tracks left behind. The track measurements were later compared to the figure's feet visible in the footage. This allowed for various other measurements and calculations of body mass and weight of the figure. Those calculations consistently add up to over 1,000 pounds.
The Patterson footage has been studied for 35 years and has always held up to scrutiny. There's the bulge in the thigh, the leg movements and speed of the being, the exact way in which it moves its neck, and its unusual method of distributing its weight as it strides, which have all led many to conclude this could not be a man in a suit. Furthermore, its feet undergo flexion like a real foot, which eliminates the possibility of a man-made solid foot piece.
Patterson's friend, Bob Gimlin, who didn't make a nickel on the film and whose family has gone through years of ridicule, maintains it is genuine.
"To devote a substantial portion of the program, or any of it for that matter, to the latest people with transparently false claims of fakery is more than unbalanced, it is deliberate deception," Green said. "I blame Dockstader only partially, since it is clear that he did not have the final editing authority. He told me that he had been surprised by the depth of the subject, and that he would not be able to deal with it as he now realized it deserved. Obviously, the main thrust for NG was to exploit the public interest in the subject while still making sure that no one thought they took it seriously."
Loren Coleman is a retired professor who taught a course on documentary film analysis from 1989-2004 at the University of Southern Maine. Coleman reviewed the film.
"What an uneven disaster," Coleman wrote on an online forum. "Within the first ten minutes, such words and phrases as 'imagination' and 'imaginative people' are sprinkled throughout the narrator's running reminder that there may be nothing to Bigfoot. Every time a piece of evidence is presented, it is, within the design of the program, countered with a skeptical point of view.
"If you are a skeptic, you would be happy about this special. If you are someone in it, and pro-Bigfoot, I would think you might feel you were tricked."
2/13/05 -end-
Rita Swanson (formerly Molhoek) writes for the Hoopa People Newspaper. Hoopa is just north of Willow Creek and just south of Bluff Creek (the site of the 1967 Patterson/Gimlin film). She holds a journalism degree from Humboldt State University. The preceding article was originally published in the Hoopa People Newspaper, February 13, 2005 and is reprinted here with the author's express written consent.
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