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 [...]]]> 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.

UPDATE: July 14, 2010. It has been pointed out to me that the testimony of Bobbie H.’s mother, Florence Showman (née Merritt) is also recorded in Long’s book on pages 131 and 132.

Also, it’s been five years, and still no pro-Patterson book from Dave Murphy, as far as I know.

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 [...]]]> 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.

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 [...]]]> 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.

Because the Patterson film is a cornerstone of Bigfootery, there is very little to be said about this film that has not already been said or noticed by someone else. Independently, another individual named William Parcher and I both discovered an interesting anomaly of the film’s timeline, regarding what is [...]]]> Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

Because the Patterson film is a cornerstone of Bigfootery, there is very little to be said about this film that has not already been said or noticed by someone else. Independently, another individual named William Parcher and I both discovered an interesting anomaly of the film’s timeline, regarding what is claimed as being a film of Patterson displaying the cured casts he made at the Bluff Creek film site.

In Meet the Sasquatch Chris Murphy claims that this scene of Patterson pouring plaster into a track was shot in Bluff Creek, and is of the trackway made by “Patty”, the subject of Patterson’s film.

The motion picture that this still comes from can be found here.

From page 43 of Chris Murphy’s Meet the Sasquatch:

The men then returned to the film site and examined the path the creature had taken along the sandbar. They observed and filmed the creature’s footprints in the soil and later made plaster casts of the left and right foot. In that part of Bluff Creek, there is a sandy clay soil with a blue-gray tinge. This type of soil holds footprints remarkably well for a long period of time. The footprints measured about 14.5 inches/36.8m (sic) long by 6-inches/15.2cm wide. Gimlin jumped off a log to see how far his footprints would sink into the soil in comparison with the creature’s prints. The results were that the creature’s footprints were deeper. Patterson also took movie footage of this experiment together with footage of horse prints alongside the creature’s prints. Gimlin filmed Patterson making casts and also displaying the finished casts as seen here.

So Murphy, at least, is claiming that these films were made, at maximum, within a few hours of each other.

Here are two stills that show Patterson’s cast display:

It appears that these two “display” images are from another motion picture, though I am by no means sure of that. A few seconds of that motion picture is found at about 5:36 into this YouTube segment.

The great and glaring discrepancy in this timeline is Patterson’s obvious heavy beard stubble seen in the “cast display” photos, while he is clean shaven during the “pour” sequence. He also has either changed his trousers or laundered them, as the plaster stain seen in the “pour” sequence is missing in the “display” photos.

Jeff Meldrum in his book Sasquatch gives a different timeline. On page 143 Meldrum includes a “pour” photo and a “display” photo. The caption to the photos reads “Roger Patterson pouring a cast at the film site and displaying the cast UPON THEIR RETURN TO YAKIMA, WASHINGTON” (Emphasis mine)

Meldrum’s account of the events contradicts Chris Murphy’s.

Beyond the obvious timeline discrepancy that Murphy’s account suggests, one has to wonder what historical sources that both Meldrum and Murphy are using, as neither allude to original historical evidence in either of their books.

As well as the film development timeline, the “pour” and “cast display” film sequences continue to baffle and confuse the issue of exactly what went on and when with regard to the famous Bluff Creek film of an alleged Sasquatch.

One potential resolution of this dilemma may be what Grover Krantz alluded to on page 32 of his book Big Footprints:

‘The shape of a footprint can be dug into the ground with the fingers and/or a hand tool, the interior pressed flat, and it can then be photographed or cast in plaster. My first footprint cast was made by a student in just this manner (Fig.10). Roger Patterson told me he did this once in order to get a movie of himself pouring a plaster cast for the documentary he was making. (A few days later, he filmed the actual Sasquatch; See Chapter 4).’

It’s possible that the “pour” film sequence that Murphy claims was shot at Bluff Creek AFTER the film subject walked by was what Patterson shot for “the documentary he was making” BEFORE the alleged Sasquatch was filmed.

Further discussion of the Byzantine minutea of the film can be found in this rather Brobdingnagian skeptical thread.

via Roger Patterson.

This essay was originally published in the journal Northwest Science, Vol. 62, No. 3, 1988 pages 129 and 130. A PDF version of the article is found here:

I’ve taken the liberty to re-post it here, to put into HTML. The original illustration is not included [...]]]> Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

This essay was originally published in the journal Northwest Science, Vol. 62, No. 3, 1988 pages 129 and 130. A PDF version of the article is found here:

I’ve taken the liberty to re-post it here, to put into HTML. The original illustration is not included here. A short discussion of mine follows Bodley’s essay.

Sasquatch Footprints: Can Dermal Ridges be Faked?

John H. Bodley, Department of Anthropology

Washington State University Pullman Washington 99164-4910

Introduction

In May 1987 six very fresh giant human-like footprints (approximately 45 x 15 cm) were discovered in the

Blue Mountains of southeastern

Washington State by myself and a student. These

tracks resembled those that have been reported

throughout the Pacific Northwest and which

some attribute to the Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, a

legendary, bipedal, human-like creature (Green

1978). With the exception of a single scuff mark,

and one print over a bent shrub, each footprint

was a complete, very clear impression, approximately one centimeter deep in the firm damp

soil of the trail, or somewhat deeper in the softer

soil beside the trail. These particular tracks were

of special interest because they were extremely

fresh and because upon close inspection they

were found to contain distinct impressions of dermal ridges. Dermal ridges are the tiny swirls or

concentric ridges on palms and digits of hands and feet that leave “finger prints” or “toe prints.”

Such friction skin is found only in primates.

Given the presence of the ridges, the general

crispness of the footprints, and the fact that it

had been raining lightly during the afternoon the

prints were found, it seemed likely that the prints

were perhaps only a half-hour old when first

found. Unfortunately, the ridges did not transfer

to plaster of Paris castings that were made the

following day. These casts were made by Paul

Freeman who, unlike us, had the necessary

materials with him.

However, several years earlier, in June of

1982, plaster casts made by Paul Freeman, then

a U.S. Forest Service patrolman, from similar

tracks in the same general region did yield

distinct dermal ridge impressions.

Casts of these

earlier tracks were analyzed by several dermatoglyphic experts (including Douglas M. Monsoor, a Colorado

criminologist; Robert D. Olsen,

with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and Edward Palma and Benny Kling, with Wyoming law

enforcement offices) who all concluded that

it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible,

for someone wishing to make fraudulent

“Sasquatch” tracks to also produce such fine detail

as these ridges (Krantz l983). They all found the

pattern consistent with foot arrangements, and not

patched together from several hand impressions.

Even though Krantz’s analysis of the 1982 casts

led him to discount the possibility of deliberate

faking in that case, the circumstances of the 1987

tracks led me to test the feasibility of artificially

producing prints of dermal ridges. I was especially puzzled by the remarkable perfection of the

tracks and their distribution along the trail.

Although the tracks were randomly distributed

along a quarter-mile stretch of trail over basically

uniform ground, only a single pair of sequential

left-right prints were found. The other associated

print was a single scuff mark found 10 meters

up the trail from a print very deeply pressed in-

to the center of the trail. It was difficult to ex-

plain why so few tracks were found on so much

available soft soil. The possibility that they had

been artificially planted could not be ruled out,

but it was necessary

to account for the presence

of the detailed dermal ridge impressions.

Krantz (1983:72) reported that some critics

had speculated that dermal ridges could be produced using rubber castings. He also observed

that the wind-blown loess topsoil of southeastern

Washington was fine enough to hold the imprint

of dermal ridges and demonstrated

with his own

thumbprint that ridges could be transferred from

skin-to-soil and then to a plaster cast. I was interested to see if entire footprints could be produced, complete

with such ridges. The purpose

of this experiment was to determine if dermal ridges could in fact be produced in a deliberately faked footprint.

Methods

In order to produce dermal ridges, a mold of a

44 cm Sasquatch-like footprint was shaped from

modeling clay. I then carefully rolled my bare

big toe in the soft clay to leave clear dermal ridge

impressions.

I rolled my heel across the heel of

the mold, and imprinted my forehead on the

center of the clay footprint. Additionally, impressions of hand and feet skin were made with

Elmer’s glue and dried pieces of glue pressed

into the clay. Plaster of Paris was then poured

into the mold and allowed to harden. Upon removal, impressions of dermal ridges were clearly

visible in the resulting cast. An outline of the

track was then traced on the damp ground, the

soil beneath was loosened with a screw-driver,

and the plaster cast was pressed firmly into this

prepared soil, In order to make a good impression, it was necessary to stamp on the cast. (The

cast was broken in the process, but this seemed

not to affect the impression). Fresh plaster was

then poured into the impression in the soil, and

the second cast was examined. It also faithfully

reproduced the dermal ridges that were imprinted into the original clay mold.

Discussion

Under the right soil conditions, impressions of dermal ridges can easily be transferred from skin-

to-clay, from clay-to-plaster, from plaster-to-soil

and finally from soil back into plaster. Even more

remarkable was the transfer from first skin-to-

glue and then into the same transfer sequence:

clay to plaster to soil and into plaster again,

although the resulting cast in this case was a

“negative” print.

Krantz (personal communication) readily

recognized that the resulting cast I produced was

a clumsy fake because of the crudely-shaped toes,

and seven dermatoglyphic experts (certified latent

print examiners in Washington, Oregon, and

California, and another visitor from Scotland

Yard) readily determined that the ridges were not

correctly situated.

Dermal ridges can be faked in footprints with

relative ease, at least under certain soil conditions. This experiment certainly does not prove

that the specific tracks examined in May 1987

were fakes, but it does suggest that any purported

sasquatch prints containing impressions of dermal ridges need to be carefully evaluated for the

possible presence of patching or other irregularities throughout the entire footprint.

Acknowledgments

The author was accompanied in the field by

Lonnie Somer, a graduate student anthropology at Washington State University.

Grover S. Krantz provided the contacts that made

this field investigation possible, and showed my

creation to the fingerprinters. My son, Brett

Bodley. prepared the glue skin impression.

Literature Cited

Green,John. 1978. Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us. Seattle:

Hancock House.

Krantz, Grover S. 1983. Anatomy and Dermatoglyphics of

Three Sasquatch Footprints. Cryptozoology 2:53-81.

Received 2 January 1988

Accepted. 15 February 1988

I discovered this essay only recently, after having done my own tests to see if textures as fine as dermal ridges could really be captured in natural substrates, and then in cement casts. Indeed, one test I did with my own foot impressed into ordinary potters clay led to a spectacular capture of my own dermal ridges:

A close up photo clearly shows my own dermal ridges. I never did follow through and impress this cast into natural soil as Bodley did. Casting cements such as Ultracal and Hydrocal are significantly stronger than ordinary plaster of Paris. It might be interesting to see if casts made with these higher strength casting compounds would resist breakage better than plaster of Paris.

Screeds and Essays

The claim has been made that purported Sasquatch foot casts contain textures that represent healed scars. One of the most notable is that of “Wrinkle Foot”, a set of right and left foot casts brought forth by Paul Freeman.

Unfortunately, A formal paper detailing the analysis [...]]]> Go back to the Bigfoot Compendium.

The claim has been made that purported Sasquatch foot casts contain textures that represent healed scars. One of the most notable is that of “Wrinkle Foot”, a set of right and left foot casts brought forth by Paul Freeman.

Unfortunately, A formal paper detailing the analysis of the surface detail of “Wrinkle Foot” has not been forthcoming at this point. A short account did appear in the November 2000 issue of Fate magazine:

The “scar” texture of “Wrinkle Foot” is not detailed at length in Jeff Meldrum’s Sasquatch book. From page 255:

What most impressed Officer Chilcutt were multiple examples of healed scars that appeared on a particular pair of casts from the Blue Mountains in southeastern Washington, where the soil has a high content of loess. Dr. Krantz had previously referred to these casts as “Wrinkle Foot” due to the extensive indications of coarse dermatoglyphics. The deep, clear footprints were found in wet mud and preserve much detail of the skin surface. Chilcutt reasoned, “If this animal is walking through the wilderness, he’s bound to come across rock and rough terrain that will cut the bottom of his foot. As the wound heals, the ridges curl inward toward the scar.”

A photograph at the top of page 257 is captioned “Close-up of ridge detail showing healed scar”. Unfortunately we are not told explicitly if this is “Wrinkle Foot”, but it appears to be. No metric is included in the image in Meldrum’s book.

Here is a photograph of the texture in question. Remember, this is a multiple generation cast copy, and so is not as sharp as the original. Nevertheless, even with this copy we can see the main line of the “scar” with small lines branching off the sides. I have intentionally included my own fingers in the photograph to illustrate how much larger this texture is than human dermal ridges. The size of the feature alone is grounds for reasonable skepticism that this represents real primate dermal ridges.

Recently, a surprising image was forwarded to me from a friend of mine in Arizona, Brenden Bannon. Brenden cast a track he made using a fake rubber foot to impress mud in his back yard. The result is striking, as a surface texture similar to the “scar” of “Wrinkle Foot” spontainously appeared running across the “ball” of the foot:

Here is a close-up of the texture in question:

Upon close examination, small lines can be seen that connect to, but radiate away from, the main fissure.

While Bannon’s cast is a preliminary finding, it would seem to cast doubt on the notion that the texture seen on “Wrinkle Foot” is strong evidence of Bigfoot’s dermal ridges. It may be the texture is related to a suction effect, or to a cement-substrate interaction, or both.

Readers versed in cryptozoological lore will recall [...]]]> The following essay is from the ISC (International Society of Cryptozoology) Newsletter Volume 7, No. 4 Winter 1988, pages 1 to 3. It’s unclear who the author is, but I suspect it may be the editor, the late Richard Greenwell.

Readers versed in cryptozoological lore will recall the case of the “giant penguin” footprints found on a Clearwater, Florida, beach in 1948.

The well-publicized incident attracted the attention of naturalist Ivan T. Sanderson, who conducted a 2-week, on-site investigation, resulting in a 50 page technical report. He summarized the case in his 1969 book More Things, expressing his conviction that the case was authentic.

Sanderson noted, for example, that “the tracks invariably followed the gentlest gradients even at the cost of considerable meandering and, secondly, that they meticulously avoided all possible snags and obstacles even down to the smallest bushes… these are, one and all, typical animal traits.” After discussing a series of anatomical features brought to light by the footprints, Sanderson went on to evaluate the possibility of hoaxing.

After reviewing and dismissing the possibility of machine-made prints, he discussed the man-made possibility: “If made physically by a man, either with devices strapped to his feet or on stilts, how did he carry a ton on each leg – the absolute minimum that the road engineers said could have made the imprints even in soft ground? He manifestly could not…” Sanderson also described how some engineer friends were asked to design a machine which could duplicate the tracks, but they were unable to do so.

A giant, 15-foot tall penguin, Sanderson concluded, must be the explanation, one which “would obviously have to be a wanderer in Florida, out of its natural element and perhaps lost.”

Now, 40 years later, the truth about the enigmatic tracks has surfaced. In the June 11, 1988, issue of the St. Petersburg Times, writer Jan Kirby has revealed the nature of the hoax. The Newsletter does not normally reprint articles. However, Kirby’s exposure is so well written and summarized the new information so succinctly, that an exception has been made – with the author’s permission. A slightly abridged version follows.

Clearwater Can Relax Monster Is Unmasked

The year was 1948. In Clearwater, Fla., a town of about 15,000, crazy things were happening. On a morning in February, a resident out for w walk on Clearwater Beach discovered what looked like the footprints of a monster and ran home to call the police.

The tracks were large – 14 inches long, 11 inches wide. They had three long toes with claws. Whatever had made them apparently had come out of the Gulf of Mexico at the south end of the beach and, taking 4-foot to 6 foot strides, had walked for more than 2 miles in the soft sand before returning to the water.

Over the next 10 years, the footprints of the “Clearwater Monster” appeared frequently: on Clearwater Beach, on Indian Rocks Beach, on the Courtney Campbell Parkway, on St. Petersburg Beach, on the beach at Sarasota. The “monster” also left prints on Honeymoon Island off the coast at Dunedin, along the banks of the Anclote River north of Tarpon Springs, and on the banks of the Suwannee River.

In July, 1948, four fliers from the Dunedin Flying School said they had seen the creature off Clearwater Bridge, and that it looked like a furry log with a head shaped like a hog’s. Because of the “monster” sightings, the “little town of Florida’s West Coast” made headlines and news broadcasts nationwide.

Ivan T. Sanderson, noted zoologist and science commentator for WNBC in New York as well as the science writer for the New York Herald Tribune, visited Florida in November 1948, to study the tracks along the Suwannee. Sanderson, who died in 1973, determined after months of study that the tracks had been made by some form of giant penguin. He called the creature “Florida Three-toes”.

A number of local people, including the police, believed the whole thing was a hoax. But they had no way to prove it, and no one ever came forward to admit it.

Until now.

Tony Signorini still chuckles when he thinks about the stories that sprung up to explain the footprints that he and the late Al Williams stamped into the sand.

Williams was a notorious prankster in Clearwater in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Just for fun, he once sneaked a horse into the holding area of the Clearwater police station. Another time, because he loved to play tricks on the fire department, he set off flares in his business, Auto Electric. The fire department showed up all right, and the flares provided quiet a show, but as a result the building was badly damaged.

Signorini, who was Williams’ partner at Auto Electric, and, with his son and daughter, still runs the business on Greenwood Avenue in Clearwater, said Williams came up with the idea for the “monster” tracks. It seemed an appropriate prank: The Loch Ness Monster was still making news. Dinosaur remains had been dug up near Albuquerque, New Mexico, the year before, and during the war years Gulf residents had been constantly on the lookout for German submarines.

When Williams died in 1969, he left the secret of the “Clearwater Monster” with Signorini for safekeeping. Encouraged by his friends Bud and Joanne Lobaugh of Largo, SIgnorini agreed to bring the “monster” out of hiding. All these years, the “monster” was tucked away in its cardboard box under a workbench at Auto Electric. The real “monster” is a pair of cast iron feet with high-top black sneakers.

Signorini lifted the feet, each weighing 30 pounds, out of the box and put them on. “You see, I would just swing my leg back and forth like this and then give a big hop, and the weight of the feet would carry me that far,” Signorini said, explaining the 6 foot stride of the creature. “The shoes were heavy enough to sink down in the sand.”

Signorini said the idea for the big three-toed footprints came from a picture of dinosaur tracks. After several tries at making the feet, Williams and Signorini decided concrete was not heavy enough, so the molds for the tracks were taken to a foundry in St. Petersburg. The resulting cast iron feet were ideal.

Holes were drilled into the tops of the feet and the sneakers wet in place with screws. When the inner soles of the shoes were glued in place, the “monster” was ready.

A rowboat supplied by a friend brought the “creature” to shore. “We would go out nights with not too many waves or beach walkers around.” He said. The “monster” came out only at night. “I put the shoes on in the water, and then walked a long way, maybe 2 miles, up the beach and then got back in the boat,” Signorini said, grinning. “I had to be careful the water was not too deep when I had them on.”

“Other times,” he continued, “we would take them in the care and carry them to where we wanted to make the tracks. Then we’d take a palm frond and brush away all the footprints we’d made while we were doing it.” At the Suwannee River site, “we stayed on property belonging to a friend named Al Spears. After we found some good places along the river, we waded in the water and carried the feet. Then I’d put them on where we wanted to make tracks.”

Clearwater police were skeptical about the existence of the monster from the beginning, and suspected that Al Williams might be the culprit, said Frank Daniels, who retired in 1981 after 32 years on the force, the last 13 years as chief.

“I don’t think any of the Clearwater cops took it seriously,” Daniels said. “We suspected Williams because he usually called in the reports of the monster and was such a local prankster, but we cold never prove it. When a pilot flying over the beaches reported seeing something furry with a head shaped like a hog’s in the Gulf, we suspected Williams because he flew his own plane.”

“You know, that’s a funny thing,” Signorini recalled with a smile, “because we never knew who was flying that plane and made the report. It wasn’t us.”

Tony Signorini is to be commended for bringing these details out into the open after keeping them secret for 40 years. Not only does it finally close the file on a problematical cryptozoological case, it also provides a new piece of Americana for folklorists and sociologists to study – and enjoy.

The lesson to be learned within cryptozoology is, of course, fundamental. Despite careful detailed analyses by zoologists and engineers, which provided detailed and sophisticated mechanical and anatomical conclusions supporting the hypothesis of a real animal, we now see that, not only was the entire episode a hoax, but that it was perpetrated by relatively amateur, good natured pranksters, not knowledgeable experts attempting, though (sic) their expertise, to fool zoological authorities.

Although Sanderson was known as a colorful and sometimes eccentric individual, he was also extremely knowledgeable on many subjects, and had done more fieldwork than most zoologists do today. Even so, it seems that, in this case at least, he failed to identify the true nature of the phenomenon.

In his 1969 book, Sanderson stated: “That any man or body of men could know so much about wild animal life as to make the tracks in just the manner that they appear, but that they also should be able to carry this out time and time again at night without anybody seeing them or giving them away… is frankly incredible.”

And yet, that is exactly what happened. The Clearwater Monster or giant Penguin may now be inducted into the Cryptozoology Hall of Fame as one of the best and most colorful hoaxes of all time.

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Sanderson also opined on the nature of cinematic illusion, as in this passage from one of his last books More Things chapter 5:

Even in the late 1920s the “dinosaurs” in the film of Conan Doyle’s The Lost World were utterly realistic–close-ups of their heads showed drooling saliva, nictitating membranes, and flashing eyes. (Incidentally, these “dinosaurs” were wearing skillfully constructed “suits” made by a man who had a degree in paleontology, and were fitted over live chickens!)

In fact the special effects seen in The Lost World were done by Willis O’Brien and were of the “stop motion” variety, which uses small models that are moved slightly and photographed frame by frame:

O’Brien later went on to do the special effects for King Kong, using the same technique. Thankfully, no live chickens were inconvenienced in the making of either King Kong or The Lost World…

Another interesting insight into Sanderson is given by, of all people, James Randi! Randi evidently knew Sanderson personally, and recounts how Sanderson seemed to ignore critical thinking when promoting his books:

I knew Sanderson well. Ivan was a “character” in every way, a man who kept an odiferous cheetah named “Baby” in his New York apartment for weeks on end when he felt like it, and even slept with the beast. He had the claw marks to show for it. He was in the business of writing books about strange subjects, and he would never allow ugly facts to interfere with an otherwise attractive story. In person, he left no question about his doubts; in print he successfully resisted expressing any really serious reservations he had.