Saturday, November 19, 2011

Finding the sasquatch film site

Where was the famous film made? There is no moment more famous in the history of sasquatch-hunting, probably none in cryptozoology, than the day in 1967 when Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin claimed to have encountered a large female sasquatch and displayed as proof a 16mm film. The film has become the most analyzed amateur movie in history, except possibly for the Zapruder film. If there has ever been a genuine film of a North American primate, this is it. If it's a hoax, it was expertly done. So exactly where did the filming take place? I had always assumed it had been gone over a thousand times, but apparently some doubt crept in. The Bluff Creek Film Site Project took four years, trying to narrow it down beyond doubt. Now they think they've got it. So now what? Well, having the spot narrowed down, even after 44 years, should allow for more accurate evaluation of the film. There are already whole books on this incident: I'm sure we can now expect more.

2 comments:

Laurence Clark Crossen said...

Daniel Perez has long known the exact spot. It was not lost.

Matt Bille said...

This whole business is odd because I hadn't known the site was "lost," either, and now there seems to be some dispute. Maybe some doubted whether Mr. Perez had it accurately?
With no dipsaragement meant to Perez or to the film site research group, the sasquatch business in general is a strange field, one in which even elementary facts can be in heated dispute, and it sometimes seems that rival researchers need a United Nations peacekeeping force at meetings. While I class the creature's existence as "highly unlikely, but not impossible," the chances of calm dialogue among all factions can be classified as "nonexistant and not even remotely possible."