Fakes and hoaxes, the Legend and the myths, by SunBôw

Fakes and hoaxes, the Legend and the myths by SunBôw:

Note: The following text addressing the very unpopular subject of fakes and hoaxes is a reedited extended version of a shorter post published seven years ago (2018). I added more details to complete the picture, since more hoaxes have showed up and I’m often questioned about them. Hoaxes are addressed in greater detail in Hairy Humanoids from the Wild – Encyclopedia of All Things Sasquatch published in 2019, but the data could be updated with recent cases.

I hesitated for long before making this post and naming people, but given the amount of fakes and hoaxes circulating widely, honest seekers could not address the subject of Sasquatch without mentioning the numerous hoaxes . The number of times I’m sent or tagged on such content is the most time consuming and tiring part of my work, as I have already researched more than most. Hoaxes and fakes only serve to discredit the real witnesses with authentic experiences, so we can ask: what is the intention and motivation behind perpetrating such lies?

The best authentic examples of photos or footage from true experiencers usually show some kind of interdimensional interference causing images to blur, waver or fade out, and these images are not accepted as evidence by the clueless skeptics with a materialist approach, so they are most often kept private within insiders circles. I was allowed to take a few photos and videos of our forest Elders, but soon realized that interdimensional manifestations are hard to capture and they only reach but a few open minded and often experienced souls; so I quit trying to share them as evidence, but might show one at times within the right audience for entertainment and educational purposes only. Some viewers see them in amazement, others don’t perceive anything at all.

So to set the records straight, here are my perspectives on a few famous examples of viral ”Bigfoot” content the public is familiar with. My views belong to me and I’m not trying to impose them, as everyone is free to believe whatever they want, your beliefs influence only your life. I would summarize on this whole topic by saying: don’t look for Sasquatch online, most of everything you will find on the web or in movies is bogus, misleading and erroneous, especially if viral.

We used to have to discern reality from photoshop, then CGI, and today with the artificial intelligence generating images, it has become easier to fool people and an increasingly complex puzzle to sort out between the genuine and the fakes. My advice would be to never trust what you see on the screen nowadays, unless you were present or witnessed something similar first hand with your own eyes.

To know Sasquatch, go out in the woods, that is where you will find them, or rather they will find you, if you come to them with the right respectful approach. The better you know them, the less you feel a need to try to prove anything or show the world what you are experiencing. We can lead a horse to water but cannot force it to drink. Regardless, we cannot unknow what we know when we know where to drink. May clarity and discernment be with you all…

Fakes and hoaxes, the Legend and the myths…

There is enough evidence gathered from tribal knowledge worldwide, ancestral stories, witnesses accounts, research and centuries of documentation on all continents to believe in the existence of Hairy Humanoids cohabiting with us on this home-planet. However, believing in all the fables, myths and falsified stories out there is unwise and a risky business.

In 1956, the television series ”Death Valley Days”, telling stories from the early settlers times in California, aired an episode entitled ”Mr. Bigfoot”. Set in the late 19th century, it was the story of giant footprints being found, scaring the local population, until it was discovered that an old hermit was making the tracks by fixing large wooden foot-shaped boards under his shoes.

Only two years later in 1958, Jerry Crew and his logging crew found a series of large footprints near Bluff Creek, California, that made the headlines. From there, the name ”Bigfoot” was coined or rather popularized, and became part of American modern folklore. It was claimed later that Ray Wallace had hoaxed the tracks with wooden boards like in the tv show. After he passed, his family displayed the foot-shaped boards he had used to hoax Bigfoot tracks.

The debate is still ongoing, as it is with many such things. But it was enough to attract the attention of CIA operative and monster hunter Tom Slick, who gathered a team by late 1959 to set a Bigfoot hunting camp at Bluff Creek.

He had just been hunting the Yeti in the Himalayas for a few years, while smuggling weapons with Peter Byrne, who infamously stole a Yeti hand from a Tibetan monastery and smuggled it into the US, to be later dubbed one of the ”Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery” by his editor.

The movie ”Abominable Snowman” released in 1958 is clearly inspired from their expeditions in Tibet. It depicts a party of American Yeti hunters who kill one, but face the fury of the rest of the clan. This prompted the drafting of the Yeti Memo in 1959, an official US government document forbidding the killing of a Yeti and strictly prohibiting the public disclosure of any evidence found. Slick then moved his search to Bluff Creek and the Pacific Northwest.

The word spread and in 1962, the Bigfoot Daze festival started in nearby Willow Creek, the oldest of its kind, still happening after over sixty years. In its early years, there were at least a couple of cases of hoaxers who got caught in the area disguised as Bigfoot, likely publicity stunts to bring crowds to the festival. Since then, Bigfoot suits have become quite common and appear in just about every Bigfoot event, which have multiplied as well.

The crew of Bigfoot hunters camped at Bluff Creek since 1960 included some of the most famous bigfooters’ names who became best-selling ”experts” of bigfootery, like John Green, René Dahinden, Bob Titmus, and yes, Roger Patterson, who introduced to the world the most famous Bigfoot of all: Pattie, that some consider as the best evidence ever. Or is it really?…

Without getting into the debate about its authenticity, on which I wrote two chapters in my Encyclopedia, I encourage the enthusiasts to have a deeper look not just at the footage that has been remastered and doctored several times, but at the surrounding circumstantial evidence surrounding the story of Bluff Creek, with its ominous name that might carry a hidden message.

For seven years, the Bigfoot hunters at Bluff Creek had been trying to find evidence in a fierce competition that soon turned bitter, eventually making them rivals calling each other hoaxers. They set up traps and cameras, but all their efforts proved vain in producing any evidence deemed irrefutable. Titmus was soon accused of hoaxing footprints and hair samples that proved to be from bears or beavers, as he was a taxidermist, followed by the others.

After Slick allegedly died in a plane crash in 1963, returning from a secret trip to the Sasquatch hunting camp at Sasquatch Lake in British Columbia, the funding of the Bluff Creek operations became obscure, but the camp and party continued their activities, without much progress should we add.

In 1966, Patterson published a book about Bigfoot, with a drawing strangely similar to the Pattie footage, filmed one year later. In the spring of 1967, Patterson rented a camera and started filming a docu-fiction about a Bigfoot hunting expedition in which Bob Gimlin played an Indian and wore a wig.

That summer, Patterson went to Hollywood and found sponsors for his film, who had the name ”Bigfoot” copyrighted. In late summer, just before the Bigfoot Daze festival, footprints were found again in Bluff Creek that had the entire crew of Bigfoot hunters mobilize. Some later claimed it was another of Ray Wallace’s hoaxes, but it sure got much attention and publicity.

In October that year, Patterson provided the famous footage meant to settle for good the search for Bigfoot. The copyrights for the Pattie footage soon brought a fortune and were later disputed in court between Dahinden and Gimlin after Patterson’s death. There are many proponents of its authenticity, but more who discard it as a fake, and each side has plenty of arguments. The advocates focus on the apparent leg muscles moving, while the detractors point at the missing cleft, or at the likeness of a back zipper and a belt.

There were many discrepancies between the accounts, impossibilities in the timing and other red flags. For instance, both Patterson and Gimlin first declared that they were chasing Pattie, Gimlin said later there were three Bigfoot, but in recent years admitted publicly: ”it could have been a hoax”. Bob Hieronimus later claimed he was wearing the Bigfoot suit in the footage.

No other image of ”Bigfoot” has received nearly as much attention nor has been widely acclaimed as the Pattie film since 1967. Pattie’s image has become iconic, a generic symbol of Bigfoot recognized by all, and there are many enthusiasts emotionally attached to it whom I don’t wish to disappoint.

In the end, it doesn’t matter so much if Pattie was real or not. It doesn’t prove nor disprove the existence of Sasquatch either way. It is an issue that will never be definitively clarified other than in personal convictions and beliefs.

But it is important to distinguish between the facts recorded since generations surrounding the legend of the mythical Sasquatch, and the fakes and hoaxes from invented stories, some turning into long lasting myths. Because since Pattie, the list of Bigfoot hoaxers and fakes has kept growing longer, starting with the Bluff Creek crew mentioned above, often fooled by hoaxers or accused of hoaxing themselves, even among themselves. This is not mere speculation, their own documented history attests of these facts.

Folks have been sending me for years tons of links, pictures, articles, videos and such, yet I appreciate mostly what can be useful and relevant for my networking. Among things I’m sent, there’s a lot of stuffs on ‘Bigfoot’, but sadly over 95% of what’s online is either total fake or rather insignificant.

From the guy displaying a gruesome alleged corpse cut in pieces, to the famous hoaxers trying their luck once again in fooling the world with a better mask, makeup, suit, camera crew or video effects, down to the 90 episodes of ‘Finding Bigfoot’ who never ended up finding Bigfoot, most is not worth any attention. For the guy exhibiting a dead Bigfoot in severed parts, whether it is a huge dummy he made and froze or a real corpse, which is possible, either way it is a disgusting approach and bad karma. Other bad taste attempts of attention grabbers include the film ‘Bigfoot captured’ (2015) and the tv series that soon followed ‘Killing Bigfoot’, using costumes for their fake reenactments of purely fictitious events from monster hunters’ imagination.

Guys tracking footprints of a great ape are arguably laughable from an experiencer’s point of view. Ape hunters keep chasing the shadow of Bigfoot without ever finding it, while seers and communicators speak with their forest Elders at times regularly. Different approaches for different results.

Yet, when you report to those ‘researchers’ intensively involved into trying to prove the existence of a great ape, that Sasquatch is a psychic being with magical powers, that can walk by invisible, appear and disappear at will and communicates in telepathy, they put you into the category of disturbed nut case or woo woo.

Strangely, Native shamans and medicine Elders who have interacted with Sasquatch for countless generations understand very well these phenomena and their ancestral knowledge and stories confirm the direct experience of first hand communicators. That spiritual, mystical aspect of Sasquatch is what brings true understanding of who they are; it is what is missing in conventional research, or more precisely from a Darwinian approach trying to classify Sasquatch into erroneous theoritical categories and charts, leaving most efforts without substantial or significant results, due to endless debates.

World famous veteran researcher John Bindernagel from Vancouver Island who passed in 2018 (RIP), spent decades gathering ‘evidences’ which resulted in a collection of footprint casts, some vocal recordings and witnesses accounts. When I shared on his site the account of my sighting of 2003 in his region, he didn’t publish it or reply, simply because I mentioned feeling a powerful psychic energy. He passed without really knowing what the Sasquatch are, nor gathering enough evidences to prove their existence to mainstream science. Still we can praise his sustained efforts and scientific integrity within the perimeters of his formation and experience.

Another Canadian researcher that has made headlines and much noise recently is Todd Standing. For 25 years he has been trying to prove the existence of a giant standing ape and was reportedly caught hoaxing before; but his new footage made the news, as he is petitioning for the legal protection of this unknown species. His footage showing two close ups of completely different looking beings have fooled a whole lot of people, while still discarded as a hoax by the majority. For most observers and especially first hand experiencers, they look like well fabricated Chewbacca-type hairy leather masks. There is a lot of inconsistency and dubious details in Standing’s stories and footage, denounced by many, like his claim that he fought off a Sasquatch and a grizzly on the same day he took the footage, after having hidden from the search and rescue team looking for him, to get attention from the media. It has been pointed out that his sister is a professional makeup artist for movies and that one ”Sasquatch” looks a lot like him.

Now, why am I bringing this up? Because I commented on a group with a simple meme showing Standing’s face gradually superimposed over his supposed Bigfoot, and he responded himself to my comment with a video, in which he confronts his detractors trying to convince he’s the real deal with bogus argument. It has my BS sensors go off with red flags, and I’m not alone.

Another case of viral hoax is the series produced by Sonny Vator, which had me fooled at first, but not for long. When you find out that his channel has an entire series of videos of the same Sasquatch conveniently posing for the camera, regardless of how realistic it looks, you have to conclude it is a fake with a costume, well done maybe, with some knowledge on Sasquatch.

Finally, a last case I have often been questioned about since years is that of Mike Paterson of Sasquatch Ontario. Again, the intention here is not to point finger or judge what is right or wrong, and certainly not to hurt feelings, as many friends are his followers; but my reason for addressing this is simply to express personal views that I own and answer questions I’m frequently asked.

I first got in touch with Mike around nine years ago, at a time when he was publicly accused of hoaxing by people who claimed they had caught him in the act. That was a sketchy start, but I prefer to make my own opinion. The first times I listened to his audio recordings, they felt fake to me, nothing close to the vocals I’ve heard first hand even at close range or from other recordings, while being rather easy to reproduce. I then had a few long conversations with Mike and he seems sincere, it feels like he had genuine encounters, while the photos of footprints and hand prints he posted look authentic. So with time, I put my doubts aside and started trusting him.

Last year however, he ended up posting photos that he had kept secret for years, taken by his partner and allegedly showing Nefatia, his Sasquatch pal. Sorry to say but, this was like a bullet in the foot, as it was an obvious mask, although thousands of fans fell for it, at least those who have never seen a Sasquatch in real life, while he also lost credibility and the trust of many.

Below: Gorilla masks commonly available online

Anyhow, judge by yourself, but people who have met Sasquatch will tell you they are not stupid apes you can trick or tame, nor big teddies that look like the muppet show. They are very wise and powerful beings with impressive interdimensional abilities, so it is unwise to fake, hoax or usurp their identity.

Thus, to know Sasquatch, look for your own experience and learn from the ancestral wisdom of ancient cultures that have known those beings and interacted for ages, rather than searching online for footage or films, least of all viral content or speculative theories from the most popular ”experts”. Because if your search is about images, you will end up finding thousands of hoaxes and fakes that are totally misrepresentative and misleading, though if you’re lucky there might be one or two in the bunch that are the real deal.

To contact and communicate with highly evolved psychic beings such as Sasquatch, only a spiritual approach and a respectful perspective can bring tangible results. You soon find out that the never ending quest for evidence is not the point nor the purpose of the experience, but the learning and healing process, which provide the real progress without a need for exterior approval.

This spiritual aspect that most conventional researchers omit is the very key that makes experiencers understand Sasquatch. For some, like the skeptic majority, there has to be ‘solid proof’, a dead corpse or clear footage, pushing some to hoax and fabricate fake ‘evidence’ that discredit the real data and honest accounts, which are too often discarded. Sadly there has always been hoaxers and unfortunately, they often get the most attention, using dishonest lies and deception, out of desire for fame, fortune or admiration. Sadly as well, many people are misled and fall into the traps set for them, often innocently believing notorious liars who receive much visibility.

For others and especially experiencers like me, when it comes to Sasquatch, the more unusual, mystical, magical, spiritual or extraordinary it sounds or looks, the more plausible it is to me. Sasquatch is not just any other banal beast, but a highly evolved star being, an Elder relative and Nature protector. Everything around them, sounds, images, feelings, is completely paranormal.

Here are basic clues to know if anything about Sasquatch is true:

1) If the ‘expert’ claims to be after a big ape, he’s way off track.

2) If the claim is that Sasquatch is tracked, spied on or tricked, it’s fiction, or more clearly said: it’s either fake or hoax.

3) Trying to convince others or bringing attention on oneself is another red flag.

4) Any true experiencers will describe psychic effects or an emotional shock, so an account lacking those aspects is likely untrue.

5) People with repeated encounters develop respect and friendship for Sasquatch, and eventually can understand their psychic abilities.

In short, if it’s not woo woo enough it’s boohoo. The Sasquatch decide when they show themselves and to whom. Seeing is believing, but blessed are those who believe without seeing. Once you know them, seeing them or signs of their presences is less important than knowing they know you as well. Learning with them, you will eventually feel no need to display or exhibit the gifts they offer you nor the desire to report your every personal experiences.

Thanks and blessings to and from our interdimensional Elders…