Orgone Research

Use this page to navigate through all the Bigfoot Links:

1. Wallace’s Wooden Feet
2. Fake Feet and Monolithic Margins
3. Pressure Releases and Scalloped Margins
4. Ridges and Furrows
5. Arched Furrows
6. Fixatives
7. Flat Ridge Peaks
8. Ridge Flow Pattern
9. Testing Silica
10. The Holy Grail; The Original Cast
11. More CA-19 photos
12. CA-6
13. CA-20
14. Conclusion
15. Sex, Lies, and Pseudoscience
16. What’s All This About Volcanic Ash?
17. The Solid Science of Sam Rich
18. The Testimony of Perry Tuttle of US Gypsum
19. An Experimentally Produced Desiccation Ridge That Mimics an Arch

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

The following montage originally appeared on the JREF Forum:

The original image without the stacked feet between the front and side views of “Patty” appears in Chris Murphy’s book Meet the Sasquatch. The digital representation of “Patty” was created by Doug Hajicek and Reuben Steindorf. Unfortunately, analysis of the proportions of the digital model yields a strange outcome. This was the reason that the feet are included in the JREF montage. As measured by the claimed length of the film subject’s feet, the resulting height is anomalously short.

Being skeptical I decided to double check the math. I measured the actual image from page 94 of Chris Murphy’s Meet the Sasquatch. For the length of the foot I measure 41mm:

For the height I measure 188mm:

Dividing 188 by 41 I get 4.585. Multiplying 4.585 by 14.5 inches ( the length of what is asserted to be Patty’s foot) gives me 66.48 or 66.5 inches. 66.5 inches is 5 foot six and one half inches or 5′7″.

The proportions of Steindorf’s digital model of “Patty”, the subject of the Patterson-Gimlin film, suggest a height of about 5′7″!

Now you might think this is a victory for the dreaded “scoftics”, that what is claimed to be an element of “Bigfoot Science” is deeply flawed, almost bordering on “pseudoscience”. But no, I feel that this is an advocate opportunity, because it can be used to show how “inhuman” Patty really is. Earlier in Murphy’s book, we are introduced to Jeff Glickman who came to the scientific conclusion that “Patty” weighs 1,957 pounds (page 81). This is good news for Sasquatch advocates. If Patty is 5′7″ and weighs 1,957 pounds then her density surely approaches that of depleted uranium, a most “inhuman” characteristic if there ever was one.

I propose that this newly discovered characteristic, inhuman density, be added other claims about the film subject, such as the “inhuman gait”…

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

In the spring of 2005 I was helping out the Seattle Museum of the Mysteries by manning a table they had set up at the annual science fiction convention. The table had various books for sale, including some published by Hancock House. I had also set out several early plaster test casts that displayed desiccation ridges. I got into an interesting conversation with a man who did plaster casting of figurines. As I spoke to him, a woman came up and began to look through Chris Murphy’s re-issue of Roger Patterson’s book, now re-titled The Bigfoot Film Controversy.

When I ended my conversation with this man, this woman suddenly spoke up. Mind you, she initiated the conversation, and I had no idea who this woman was. She opened the book to page 88, and pointed out this photograph to me:

For those who have not read the book, the photo on page 88 is of Roger Patterson, allegedly taken in Ape Canyon, which is on the south side of Mt. St. Helens in Washington. This was the site of a classic Bigfoot encounter in 1924.

Out of nowhere she tells me that the picture is a fake, and that she was there when the picture was taken! I was so taken aback that I asked her to write down what she had told me. Note that she puts Ape Canyon in California, probably due to our subsequent conversation about Patterson’s Bluff Creek California film.

Her note reads (with personal information redacted)

“Bobbie H. 509-***-**** #########@aol.com

p. 88 Bigfoot Film Controversy

I was there when picture was taken — South Fork of Ahtanum 20 miles west of Yakima. My mom threw gas on fire to make it flare up. NOT taken in California.

Niece of Jerry Merritt”

The Niece of Jerry Merrit! If true, it suggests Patterson engaged in Bigfoot related fraud before his Bluff Creek film.

I had always assumed that Bob Gimlin took the photo. At the Bellingham conference in late May 2005 I asked Bob Gimlin about going to Ape Canyon with Patterson. Surprisingly, Gimlin told me that he was not in Ape Canyon with Patterson! He told me he went to Spirit Lake with Patterson, but Spirit Lake was on the NORTH side of the mountain, and quite a distance from Ape Canyon.

So who took the picture???

Personally, I’ve always been more interested in physical evidence than anecdotal evidence. It’s possible that this gal is mistaken or is being deceitful. But part of the reason that I bring this little tidbit forward is to counter the claim that Greg Long set out to find witnesses that had a negative opinion of Roger Patterson. This information was VOLUNTEERED to me, and I asked no “leading questions” at all. This gal’s testimony is totally consistent with what the other witnesses in Long’s book relate about Patterson, and further it goes beyond what Patterson apologists claim about Patterson’s deceit, that it was not Bigfoot related.

I understand Dave Murphy (no relation to Chris Murphy) has been working on a pro-Patterson book. I advised Murphy of this woman’s story. We will have to wait and see if Murphy follows up on it.

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

Noted Sasquatch advocate Jeff Meldrum has previously argued that valid inferences regarding the Patterson – Gimlin film site track maker’s foot morphology can be drawn from the tracks themselves:

The subject left a long series of deeply impressed footprints. Patterson cast single examples of a right and a left footprint. The next day the site was visited by Robert Laverty, a timber management assistant and his sales crew. He took several photographs including one of a footprint exhibiting a pronounced pressure ridge in the midtarsal region. This same footprint, along with nine others in a series, was cast two weeks later by Bob Titmus, a Canadian taxidermist. A model of inferred skeletal anatomy is proposed here to account for the distinctive midtarsal pressure ridge and “half-tracks” in which the heel impression is absent. In this model the Sasquatch foot lacks a fixed longitudinal arch, but instead exhibits a high degree of midfoot flexibility at the transverse tarsal joint. Following the midtarsal break, a plastic substrate may be pushed up in a pressure ridge as propulsive force is exerted through the midfoot. An increased power arm in the foot lever system is achieved by heel elongation as opposed to arch fixation.

http://www.isu.edu/~meldd/fxnlmorph.html

The “pronounced pressure ridge” that Meldrum is referring to is clearly seen in this photograph by Laverty:

The pressure ridge is indeed striking, and on the face of it, would suggest a non-human track maker, and thus tend to rule out or even eliminate the possibility of hoax.

Unfortunately Meldrum ignores a serious examination of alternate possibilities, especially that of considering what kind of tracks a man wearing an ape costume would make. In an attempt to find out for myself what kind of tracks would be left by a man wearing a fake, flexible, oversized foot, I decided to make my own. My assumption is that an ape-suit costume would have a flexible foot, in order to allow the wearer to walk naturally. Ideally, I should have obtained a genuine theatrical ape suit, but the results of this preliminary examination on my part are still intriguing.

Some time ago, I obtained via dumpster diving a large piece of semi-rigid plastic foam. It was about 2cm thick, with a 1 or 2mm sheet of yellow plastic adhered on one side. I suspect, but do not know, that both the white foam and yellow sheet are polyethylene. I don’t know the original application of the plastic. I cut out and formed two 15″ long matching foot shaped prosthetics. At this point I used Nylon cord to bind them to my feet, but they proved too unstable, and I eventually switched to flexible Urethane adhered “Aqua-socks”.

I took my fake feet down to Alki Beach here in Seattle and made some tracks. While many were distorted, some exhibited intriguing pressure ridges that were positioned unusually far back in the fake track. As far as I can tell, this is a result of the ball of my own foot being positioned closer to the mid-foot of the prosthetic, and thus providing the illusion of “mid-foot flexibility” in an oversized track.

One track in particular had a well defined and smooth pressure ridge morphology:

Even with crude and quickly fabricated prosthetics, I was able to create tracks that exhibited mid-foot pressure ridges.

It’s entirely possible that the mid-foot pressure ridges seen in one or more of the Patterson-Gimlin film site tracks have an explanation that does not involve Bigfoot’s mid-tarsal break.

Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

One of the longstanding claims by advocates of the reality of the Sasquatch is that the subject of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film exhibits an “inhuman” gait. If this is true, it would surely weaken or outright falsify the skeptic’s suggestion that the film subject could be a man in a suit. One of the difficulties of examining this claim is that “gait” is a rather complex affair. One way to make the examination of this claim easier is to break down the gait into specific features.

It had been noted many years ago that the film subject exhibits an unusually high lift of the lower leg, particularly in early frames of the film. Author Barbara Wasson went so far at to suggest that such a feature was beyond what a human being could reproduce:

“Obviously the creature is different. If you examine the walk, the following leg rises off the ground far in excess of what a human leg rises. It almost parallels the ground. A human being cannot walk in this fashion. When attempted it produces an extremely awkward movement and cannot be reproduced.”

Barbara Wasson Sasquatch Apparitions page 73

A good example of what Wasson is talking about is seen in this early frame:

Note how the film subject’s head is pitched forward, the right arm is straight by the side, and the sole of the left foot is more or less vertical.

Surprisingly Wasson’s strong claim went untested for many years. Advocates on various Internet forums as late as 2005 suggested that even if a human could reproduce this feature the individual would be “one in a million”.

Noted Sasquatch skeptic David Daegling went to some lengths in his book Bigfoot Exposed to demonstrate that the film subject exhibits a compliant gait, which is similar to the way Groucho Marx used to walk in his movies. A further, more technical explanation of the film subject’s gait is found here.

Indeed, walking with a compliant gait is quite easy for any reasonably healthy individual to do, though it does become fatiguing after extended periods. One of the interesting features of a compliant gait is that the lower leg tends to rise up, and thus, as Wasson says, “almost parallels the ground”.

This is a photograph of me walking with a compliant gait on a sandy beach:

Note how my head is pitched forward, my right arm is straight at the side, and the sole of my left foot is basically vertical, very much like that seen in the early frame of the Patterson film. Clearly the calf “almost parallels the ground” as Wasson says, and thus refutes Wasson’s strong claim that “it cannot be reproduced”.

It seems to me a rather damning indictment of the Bigfoot subculture that such an easily tested claim as Wasson’s would be uncritically accepted for so long, and yet prove so easy to debunk.

*Update: January 7, 2009*

In the time between the creation of this webpage and today, I saw a most remarkable Bigfoot related TV episode that featured Jeff Meldrum. The show was entitled Best Evidence: Bigfoot, and the relevant scene is found here in this YouTube clip. Basically, Meldrum visited a kinematics lab where gait and motion studies were done. An actor was shown the Patterson film, donned a Bigfoot costume, and attempted to emulate the gait seen on the film as best as he could.

In a surprising turn of events, Jeff Meldrum himself conceded that the human actor did a good job of emulating the gait of the Patterson film subject:

“Frankly I was somewhat surprised that our subject was so easily capable of replicating some aspects of the walk”

As seen in the YouTube clip, all the other kinematic professionals present agreed with Meldrum; It’s possible for a human to replicate the gait seen on the Patterson film.

At this point, I suspected that this very webpage had become something of a moot point, as the most respected Bigfoot advocate had just conceded what various skeptics and other individuals had claimed for some time, namely that the film subject walks with a gait that is within the range of human capabilities.

Yesterday I was rather surprised to learn that a photograph taken of me some years back was still being tossed around the Internet, with the inevitable red lines and amateur photogrammetry included. Indeed, that was my intention in the first place; since I know how tall I am, and how long my shoe is, if a calibrated standard is included in the photograph, could accurate photographic measurements of me be made? In retrospect, it was a test that had some degree of built-in error, as it was performed on an un-even surface ( a sandy beach), I didn’t have a bubble-level to make sure the standard was vertical, and the beach itself was not perfectly level. But in retrospect, I don’t regret having done these tests, as I was curious, and as far as I know, this sort of thing had not been done before, at least by amateurs on the Internet. Here is the photo in question:

The discussion all starts here.

Much to my surprise, I found that none other than “Bigfoot expert” Rick Noll had made this surprising comment:

Is that the picture showing Tube trying to recreate the Patterson creature walk but couldn’t without the pole to hold on to?

At first I thought that this might be a poor attempt at humor, because to take it as a literal claim that I was holding on to the pole was an asinine falsehood. His comment becomes all the more strange in light of his self-proclaimed status as “Resident Photography Guru”.

But then he clarifies himself, and leaves no doubt that he’s claiming that I’m holding onto the pole:

The picture shows what looks like a PVC pipe being held by Tube in his left hand as he is walking.

No, I had actually buried the standard in the sand:

The photo in question is of me walking by the standard. If you will notice, in the first photograph on this webpage I’m wearing a white shirt, and have no “walking sticks”, or anything else in hand. That was from a photo shoot some days earlier. You don’t need a “walking stick” or any other sort of aid to walk with a compliant gait.

So why go to all the trouble of creating this addendum? Because the claim by Noll makes it seem like I’m trying to pull off some sort of fraud. While I’m willing to engage in civil debates about actual science, what Noll is doing is a subtle, backhanded attack on my character. It’s the same bullshit Noll and Melissa Hovey pulled when then tried to imply I had somehow stolen volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens. It’s a direct attack on my moral character, and one which I’m unwilling to let go by.

With Noll you have to “consider the source”. A growing number of individuals inside and out of the Bigfoot subculture don’t think of Noll as a “photography guru” or even a “Bigfoot expert” but as “Elk Cast Guy”.

His reputation as “Bigfoot expert” seems mostly derived from his ability to get on national TV. Unfortunately this is no intrinsic guarantee that any of his claims are true. His claim that I’m utilizing a “walking stick” is complete and utter bullshit.

Of course I know I’m an honest and moral person, but what’s most embarrassing about this little incident is having to look at old photographs of myself, where I’m, you know, kind of chunky… But since that time I decided to eat less and exercise more, specifically by playing table tennis, and now I’m down to around 175-180 pounds: