We’ve all seen the video: a shaky hand recording somewhere in the woods, when suddenly a strange, gorilla-like creature comes into view, walking upright like a human somewhere in the wilds of Northern California. That footage was release almost exactly 59 years ago today on October 20, 1967, and fueled the long-running myth of Bigfoot. While plenty of skepticism surrounding the footage has remained, there has never been any definitive proof to debunk the Bigfoot footage from Robert Patterson. Until now.
A new documentary, Capturing Bigfoot, focuses on the origins of the Bigfoot myth, how it spread, and how the footage that made Bigfoot a household name was fabricated. Tales of ape-like humanoids have been around for centuries, going back to the Himalayan myth of the Yeti, but Patterson had been obsessively describing an American version—known as Sasquatch in British Columbia—for years before his famous film emerged on the scene. His footage, which had aired on TV and as part of a “tour” around theaters, was dubbed to be too detailed—like the fact that Bigfoot is actually female—and too realistic for the time, but Capturing Bigfoot discovered how it was faked.
Lost Footage of a Rehearsal Was Uncovered
Patterson was certainly eccentric, a cowboy character from Yakima, Washington to rode in rodeos and put live horses in a van for camping trips. While he made the modern-day equivalent of millions with his Bigfoot footage, a previously-unseen film airs in the documentary. Shot the year before “Bigfoot” was introduced to the world, the film is a sort of rehearsal, complete with a friend of Patterson’s that walks a lot like Bigfoot.
While the footage of Bigfoot is now confirmed to be fake, the idea of Sasquatch has grown into something much, much larger. Bigfoot sightings continue to this day, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, and “he” has become the most well-known cryptid in modern history. Capturing Bigfoot will be available for rent on Amazon Prime Video on the anniversary of the footage, October 20.
