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Tuesday, October 20, 2009, marks the 42nd year since the now famous so-called Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film footage was taken at Bluff Creek, California. Needless to say, it was on this very day, in 1967, that Roger Patterson and his field partner, Bob Gimlin, filmed what still to me appears to be a female Bigfoot walking alongside Bluff Creek, located in the Six Rivers National Forest of northern California. One cannot seriously study the subject of Sasquatch without being familiar with this footage.
But, of course, behind the camera were men. And men are only human, with human failings.Roger Patterson (above), as you will recall, was born in Wall, South Dakota on February 14, 1926, and died of cancer on January 15, 1972.
Bob Gimlin is still with us. The genuine gentleman, Gimlin, has been pushed to the forefront, as far as becoming a reluctant spokesperson, who only first began coming to conferences on hominology and Sasquatch studies in 2003.
I happily got to appear at another Bigfoot conference recently with Bob Gimlin, during the gathering in Texas in September 2009. Since I am an early bird, and actually, because most people were sleeping in late, I would find myself down in the lobby eating early light breakfasts almost always alone. It happened twice that only one other person was there, and that was Bob Gimlin.
Naturally, Bob and I shared a table and conversations. We had a great time swapping stories about Ivan Sanderson, Roger Patterson and the good old early days of Bigfoot hunting and the other personalities involved. Sometimes I talked, but more often than not, I enjoyed intensively listening to what Bob wished to say and asked a few pointed questions.
One thing that has always interested me is how the whole situation was handled after the October 20th filming. The fact there were people involved resulted in the addition of the “human element.” This caused the usual tendency of people to muck things up. Of course, this is the human factor that enters into just about any field of strong egos and groundbreaking discoveries, often characterized, for example, in anthropology with phrases like “bones of contention.”
During my early morning talks with Bob Gimlin, he shared with me, for the record, a story that I do not recall having ever heard before. It involved a little schism that developed between Patterson and Gimlin, and the hard feelings that resulted thereafter for the two men.
Bob and I were discussing the confusion that sometimes occurs with people mixing up who is who in the field. Bob then stopped me short by sharing a startling turn of events he once found out about, regarding his buddy Roger.
It was a couple years or so after the film had been taken, and Bob got a call from a friend of his with a strange tale. It seems the friend heard about a talk on Bigfoot, which was to take place in a little hall in a Southwestern town near where the guy lived. It happened to be a road appearance by Roger Patterson, who was taking around the raw footage and showing it for a little admission price on a haphazard lecture circuit.
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