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Excerpt from the Animal Planet Book Finding Bigfoot |
John-Michael Talboo:
To give the readers some background, Daniel Perez and myself became acquainted after I informed him of an Undebunking Bigfoot Blog post I made in support of his comments that scientific consultant and editor of DoubtfulNews.com, Sharon Hill, is "no researcher, just a writer" and a "pseudo-scientist."
First off, would you elaborate about that incident and/or similar run ins with so-called debunkers. Also, please address the difference between a real skeptic like yourself when it comes to evidence vs. the likes of Ms. Hill?
Perez:
Sharon Hill was the first to respond to my review of Abominable Science and I think she made a comment afterward, that I did not read the book, just panned it. At the time, I had read and digested just the Bigfoot and Abominable Snowman sections and skimmed the rest. Since that time I have read every page and now have two copies of the work. It's garbage published by an academic press, plain and simple. It is what is left out in the book that compels anyone who knows nothing about the subject matter to find the arguments presented in the book quite compelling.
I haven't had many run ins with skeptics and debunkers and can't really tell you the difference between the two. I do recall meeting Michael Shermer in 1994/1995 or thereabouts at NBC studios or one of those studios (Jay Leno was actually physically there and we got to meet him) and that was my first and only brush with Shermer. The way I recall it, he said something like that "grainy 8mm movie," in reference to the P-G film. I didn't correct him on "grainy" or "8mm" - I just thought to myself here is one more skeptic or debunker who is voicing an opinion who knows very little about the subject. You don't hear me talking about astrophysics --well, you know why. Because I don't know anything about it!
I have no use for Hill - I think she is a deeply troubled lady. She writes well but when it comes to having a deep understanding of the nuts and bolts of the Bigfoot topic, she is just another lost soul. When you read Abominable Science and read about Roe and Patterson and the similarities between the two cases, if you didn't know anything about the matter of course you would have swallowed what the authors wrote, and it was just a pile of garbage. They are using a Ph.D. , very nice artwork, an academic press and the exclusion process to drive their thesis home. If you can get away from that and just address the issues, you will see what a horrendous piece of work Abominable Science really is. And the guy who reviewed the Loch Ness Monster portion of the book really opened my eyes about how bad that section is.
JMT:
In the October 2013 issue of the Bigfoot Times (highly recommended reading) you expose a deceptive tactic employed by Joe Nickell of Skeptical Inquirer, where he tries to milk The 'Bigfoot are Really Just Misidentified Bears' Argument for all it's worth "trying to jam a square peg in a round hole," as you put it.
You state in that piece, "When it comes to the leading skeptics of the day, I am still not sure if they are trying to educate the reader or confuse you with their belief system about what is real or not."
Any thoughts on why someone would be so married to a belief about Bigfoot not existing that they would employ blatant deception to bring people to that same conclusion? Dare we ponder a career debunker?
Perez:
I am now beginning to suspect that a lot of this is hard wired into individuals and there is nothing you can do about it. For instance, some people are going to be tall, some short and that is that. Or, some people will never like the taste of tomatoes but others will love the taste. There might also be something deep inside our primordial brains about competition from another rival, upright walking primate, and our way of handling the matter would be to tell others that such thing can not exist. Being a skeptic or debunker doesn't stop the next report of someone claiming to have seen a Bigfoot tomorrow, or the next day or even next year.
I seldom hear of a debunker or skeptic going out of their way to interview a Bigfoot eyewitness.
For instance, why didn't the authors of Abominable Science interview Bob Gimlin? It is just plain stupid on their behalf for having failed to do this. Instead, they went after a dead man, Roger Patterson, who can't rebuttal anything they write about him. A real shame and a sham in my view.
JMT:
Your excellent and truly skeptical book Bigfoot At Bluff Creek (which I'm thankful to have an inscribed and signed copy of), makes a great case for a real animal by weighing the pros and cons and demonstrating that the pros far surpass the doubts that this is a primate of undiscovered origin.
Furthermore, I think the film analysis of Bill Munns (who worked for 35 years making monsters for films, museums, and wildlife exhibits), coupled with his experimental work trying to build a Bigfoot costume to match the 1967 film. And his co-authorship of a peer-reviewed paper with Dr. Jeff Meldrum showing it couldn't have been a costume, should have silenced the anecdotal objections by now.
But sites like Science.HowStuffWorks.com with their authoritative URL still present arguments such as this one:
Several Hollywood insiders, including "An American Werewolf in London" director John Landis, have claimed that the film shows a man dressed in an ape suit. According to Landis, the suit was designed by John Chambers, the special-effects master who created the costumes for the original "Planet of the Apes" movies. Chambers denies any involvement, but the rumor persists.Your response?
Perez:
John Landis can say what he wants but my only question to him is that if he is so talented why can't Landis and Company duplicate the film, apples to apples. And why throw in the tired John Chambers argument, as that was settled long ago, even before the late Bobbie Short went to visit him. Robert and Frances Guenette talked with him for their book, The Mysterious Monsters, page 117 and they wrote about him, "He concluded that if the creature is a man in a suit, then it is no ordinary gorilla suit." Yet then and later he never claimed he designed any suit for Patterson and Gimlin. That was just a rumor someone attached to him and it stuck but has no merit.
As a note, the Robert and Frances have been dead for a long time.
But while we are on the subject, if the P-G film is fake, as skeptics and debunkers insist, why beat a dead horse. Why don't they argue the merits of another film shot just a few years later, around 1972 by the late Ivan Marx? There is no need to argue because one look and fake is written all over it. So why start with the P-G film?. Why not start with the Ivan Marx film from 1970 or 1972 and he claimed several films of Bigfoot. Yet NO ONE, to my knowledge, is debating back and forth on the merits of any Marx film.
JMT:
Of the anecdotal skeptic arguments, the one I find a bit intriguing is that it's too coincidental that Patterson drew a Bigfoot showing similarities to the one he later filmed, including breasts. Your thoughts?
Perez:
I brought this very issue up in 1995 at the Sasquatch Symposium in my Devil's Advocate speech on the matter. Yes, it is indeed interesting, but when you are talking about a hair covered primate with two legs and two arms I wold suppose there are just so many ways you can draw it, so in a way, it would have to resemble the subject in the P-G film. If you look at all the bicycles in the world and all the different makers, at the end of the day, they share that similarity in that they all have two wheels and generally spokes in between the rims.
On the Patterson sketch the breast are very, very droopy, unlike the subject in the film, which appear to be very, very firm, so that is a specific difference. But if jr. skeptic Loxton wrote about it, it is likely he would write something like "the breasts are exactly the same, and that proves the film was faked."
JMT:
On YouTube there is a short clip of yourself and Bobo from Finding Bigfoot. The description says you were "Using a Kodak camera like the one Roger Patterson used to film bigfoot. The bigfoot stand in actor is James 'Bobo' Fay." Would you please talk about the results your experiment achieved that day?
Perez:
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| Test subject Bobo with ruler for height and tape measure on the forest floor. This image came out a little grainy. July 2012, image courtesy Daniel Perez |
So that brings us to the piece of wood that Rene Dahinden collected from the P-G filmsite. That piece of wood was in the same film plane as Patty and later analysis showed that using that piece of wood as a scale, the subject, Patty, is in the immediate vicinity of being about 7 feet 3 inches tall.
So doing what I did with Bobo answered a question for me that can be transposed to the P-G film, Patty, and the piece of wood that Rene collected. My experiment proved that such a methodology, as simple as it is, is valid for measurement for an unknown subject.
JMT:
Any speculative opinion about what really happened to the film of the track line pictured below, that Gimlin alleges, was in the possession of Al DeAtey, who in turn denies it. What is the truth of this matter if you were to hazard a guess?
Perez:
No need to guess. The second spool of film was in the possession of Patricia Patterson at the time of Roger's death and that showed the footprints on the sand bar. The BBC came knocking and borrowed that original film and never returned it. It is likely still somewhere in the BBC film library and I was told by Pat Patterson, in person, 2009, that she was foolish to have loaned it out like that, but she didn't know anything about business dealings and loaning original source material.
JMT:
In the book Sasquatch True-Life Encounters With Legendary Ape-Men it's written:
Most fakes are made by people using wooden plates carved to the size and shape of a Sasquatch footprint...
A more sophisticated method of faking Bigfoot tracks emerged in the later 1980s. A number of tracks and footprints began to be found... They had been made by a soft foot-like object, but while they showed dynamic interaction between the foot and ground they did not show the foot or the toes moving or flexing in any way...
Are you familiar with this?
Perez:
The Elbe tracks from what I recalled, based on Barackman, Noll and Derek Randles, did show movement but they were fake.
JMT:
When you say they may have showed movement do mean toe position? Are you confident the book is referring to these tracks and how were they exposed as fakes?
Perez:
I don't think I have a copy of that book but if you look at some of the Bigfoot Forums posts, I think it was Noll who mentioned toe movement and the foot impressions consistent with a living foot.
JMT:
Do you believe all aspects of tracks can be faked?
Perez:
Probably, except for weight. You might be able to fake weight or mass with a single impression but to do it on a continued basis, a trackway, like the P-G film track way, that would be very difficult in my view. I have yet to see it be done convincingly, or, for that matter, have yet to see anyone tackle the weight issue in a YouTube video.
JMT:
Now for instance, I know dermal ridges can be faked (although not easily), as can a mid-tarsal break.
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But below is info regarding the mushrooming of toes, thoughts?
The original footprints were borrowed from The International Society of Cryptozoology.
"These tracks were collected in 1982 by Deputy Dennis Heryford of the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Department in Washington State. These tracks are regarded as some of the best Bigfoot casts every made due to the credibility of the officer involved, the specific 'mushrooming' of the toes (difficult to hoax), and the texture/bulging features shown in the tracks, demonstrating that these were made with live feet (not wooden fakes).”
http://www.skullsunlimited.com/record_species.php?id=2149
Perez:
I think that is a point well made, too, the mushrooming effect of the toes.
I think that is a point well made, too, the mushrooming effect of the toes.
JMT:
Regarding the picture below, Cliff Barackman notes, some "digits impressing more deeply in a grasping action." We know most evidence can be faked, but I don´t think we have ever seen this kind of toe evidence faked.
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Skeptics believe that the famous "bigfoot prints," as well as the well-known sasquatch photos and home movies, are only evidence of pranksters who have a lot of time on their hands.
Science.HowStuffWorks.com states without supporting data on the "How Bigfoot Works" page that, "The size and shape of supposed sasquatch footprints do vary considerably, which may indicate a number of unrelated pranksters."
But the scientific data actually shows that the dimensions of purported Bigfoot tracks and other measurable characteristics like stride length are consistent across the board. Speaking of just one measurement conducted for this study, Dr. Fahrenbach notes that heel width is rarely measured but "even this limited sample yields a normal distribution in congruence with foot length and ball width." The person who brought this info to my attention stated that, "the bell curve on footprints... shows a living and reproducing population based on distribution of footprints documented."
Do you find this argument compelling as it transcends discussion of minutia regarding track finds/casts and attempts to prove the validity of the matter in one fell swoop? The argument certainly lends credence to footprint casts thought to be real, even if a facsimile could be created.
Perez:
Perhaps we are at a critical juncture in Bigfooting in that if you didn't see the Bigfoot making the trackway, any trackway of footprint has little to no meaning, in light of the Aaron Sweptson and the Ivan Marx's of the world.
JMT:
A man states in another YouTube video that you and a group of others searched for the Patterson-Gimlin film site without success in 2003. He also says it wasn't until many years later, in 2011, that the site was found by two other individuals that you made the Bigfoot Times´ Bigfooters of the year in 2011.
Would you please tell the readers a bit more of the details about this struggle to find the site?
Perez:
I don't think there was any struggle for me to find the filmsite. My only trouble was I was always on the portion closest to the creek and always assumed the rest of the filmsite just washed away, when in fact it was just the opposite. The majority of the filmsite is intact, it is the area closest to the creek that has changed dramatically and likely fell in elevation by five or six feet, maybe more, by soil erosion from the waterway, Bluff Creek, and rain.
JMT:
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One of the Silver Star Photos |
Regarding the Silver Star Mountain photos, in your children's book Bigfoot: Encounters Past & Present (appropriate for kids up to 33 years of age at least since I enjoyed it) you state the following:
In my view, after spending an entire day with Randee Chase and going to the sighting location, there is no hint this was a hoax. Mr. Chase is a very credible eyewitness and not the type of person to be playing a practical joke in my view. It was obvious by having Randee Chase stand where he photographed Bigfoot, there could be no mistaking this for a man in a heavy black jacket... As a Bigfoot researcher for the past quarter century, I think Randee may have snapped pictures of Bigfoot.Did you take any comparison photographs to demonstrate that there was "no mistaking this for a man in a heavy black jacket?" How did Chase compare to it in size and height? Could you clearly make out clothes when you had him stand in the exact location of the original photos? On Finding Bigfoot they noted evident clothing in the Bobo experiment. Also observed in the original photos was a lack of a pronounced neck as revealed by Bobo and what seemed to be a sagittal crest. Your observations?
Perez:
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| Randee Chase standing in the approximate position of the subject. Camera
is in the approximate position of where Randee was when he took his
picture of unknown subject. Image courtesy of Daniel Perez. Pretty
obvious what clothing looks likes compared to the unknown subject. This was in 2009 but when Randee and I were there the snowpack was gone, so it wasn't apples to apples and trying to get him in the right place was difficult if not impossible. Randee did not look anything like the subject. He was plain as day, where you could see all the clothing, no mistaking it, even if we were off five or ten feet. It was even difficult to find the location of where Randee stood, and again, we were within feet but did not have an exact spot. It is a lot harder than it appears, to find an EXACT spot both for the camera man and the subject. Whatever Randee took pictures of certainly looked apelike in the face, but too far away to get any detail. Even his digital camera, which he still owned in 2009, was ancient by the standards of the day and he, like me, has very limited knowledge of things like the internet, digital cameras, etc., so I find it very hard to imagine that he was able to fabricate anything. What is interesting about this case is when he went for this hike, it was freezing cold and he was by himself, but that is perfectly in character with Randee, to go no matter what the condition. So whatever was up there on Silver Star Mountain with him was wearing one solid color from head to toe or at least to where you can see no more of the legs because of the snow. I think the Silver Star Mountain case is one of the best ever. Solid witness and his pictures and there appears to be no manipulation of any of the camera data and some of that was covered in the pages of the Bigfoot Times. See Bigfoot Times: Chase, Randee Edward, Dec. 2005, p. 3; Jan. 2006, p. 2; Sept. 2006, p. 4; June 2009, (photo) p. 1-4; July 2009, p. 3, (photo) 4; June 2010, p. 4; Mar. 2011, p. 2 |
You also investigated the site of the 1995 Redwoods Bigfoot film AKA Smith River, California: Miller Video.
You state in your aforementioned book that you estimated the height at "just under 8 feet tall." Can you take the readers through that process? It seems to me that with such a shaky video it must have been harder than usual to ascertain a height.
Perez:
This height measurement was an approximate and was initially determined by Jeff Meldrum and Richard Greenwell, when they were there on behalf of Hard Copy. It was based on when the subject walks right next to the redwood tree on the right hand side of the road and there is a redwood burl on the tree and the head passes right there. And there is only one massive redwood tree in question, so there is no mistaking the tree. And I was there in December 1999, perhaps several months after Meldrum and Greenwell but it would be impossible to believe that burl and tree grew a foot or more in height over that time span.
JMT:
You have been critical of the Skookum cast, alleged to be a body cast of a Bigfoot laying down, however, on the BFRO site it states:
Primate Anatomist Dr. Jeff Meldrum of Idaho State University (shown below) directed the final cleaning of the cast. The remaining mud was removed in a careful, painstaking manner. Hairs of various animals, including one unidentified primate, were extracted from this final layer of mud.
Perez:
We covered the Skookum casting in a double issue of the Bigfoot Times, as well, and interviewed one of the persons there, Derek Randles, and it was certainly an interesting interview. We also interviewed Dr. Henner Fahrenbach and he stated that he found NO hair that was identified as primate from that site.
JMT:
Being that you still distribute an old school newsletter, how has the Bigfoot investigation landscape changed for better or worse with the advent of the internet?
Perez:
I like an old school newsletter, something that you can put in your hands and read like a letter. I think with the Internet their is a lot more one upmanship in the Bigfoot community, everyone wanting to be somebody and I think with one aspect of the Internet, YouTube, I suspect there is a lot more faking of Bigfoot videos and a lot more "analysis" of videos by people like FB/FB trying to get attention for themselves as opposed to the subject matter.
But it has also been a blessing. Never before can the whole Bigfoot community find out about a case in lighting speed. Like a sighting, for example, you can find out the details with hours or a day when in the past, with snail mail, it took quite a bit longer.
JMT:
Concerning the search for Bigfoot DNA, I found the results on Monster Quest a few years back to be very promising. If you skip ahead to 41:25 in this clip...
http://www..youtube.com/watch?
Microbiologist Dr. Kurt Nelson of the University of Minnesota, doing the testing states,"The scientific evidence at this point is suggesting that there really is an animal there." He further states, "I got DNA that was primate DNA and I knew that I might be looking at the DNA of a Sasquatch." The show states that there is only a one in 5000 chance that what he studied was human DNA. This being because, "It was determined that the DNA was 99.4% to 99.6% identical to human DNA. Chimpanzee DNA is 98.3% the same as human."
Any updates on Dr. Kurt Nelson's research to your knowledge?
Perez:
This is television. In order to have a real informed opinion you would have to go to where Kurt Nelso does his work and see what all he did with the sample, step by step, what was documented, and whether there is another sample that can be retested to produce the same result. If you get the same result and it is extremely well documented, that would be really something.
JMT:
Now with Melba Kethum DNA saga, I think she had some good samples such as this one mentioned on the Josh Gates Wikipedia page:
The following year his team returned to the Himilayas and recovered a hair sample that was DNA tested as being from a primate, but was excluded as being human."
On April 21, 2008, Josh Gates traveled to Walt Disney World in Florida to meet with Joe Rohde, Executive Designer of Walt Disney Imagineering. Gates presented Rohde with a cast of the "Yeti" footprint. The cast will soon be placed on display at Expedition Everest, a Himalayan-themed, high-speed, coaster-like attraction where guests come face-to-face with a Yeti.[5]
Now where things went wrong were Ketchum's attempts at publishing a peer-reviewed paper encompassing many other samples, not necessarily of the same quality or put under the same scrutiny. The peer-review process itself could have separated the wheat from the chaff, but I've found it's a politically afflicted process regarding controversial subjects, so she did likely face unfair challenges as she claims, however, I think her solution of creating a journal in which to self-publish was a bad idea. I wonder if someone like Dr. Brian Skykes could review her material?
Perez:
I was told second hand that Sykes did initially try to collaborate with Ketchum but was given the cold shoulder.
JMT:
For those unaware of Sykes, you named him Bigfooter of the year and I would have too. He
received approximately 30 samples of purported Bigfoot hairs, inadvertently bringing about the discovery of a new hybrid bear. Sykes also discovered characteristics relating to one sample, likely indicating its origin that of a person part of a previously unknown relict human population. Both were good news for Bigfooters, even if not quite the news they were looking for. There is also other recent DNA evidence, as a blog commentator of mine explained:
Initial DNA analysis of Paracas elongated skull released – with incredible results
A blog reader named Simone comments:
Thought you might be interested because they are saying that if the result stands, it means these humans were a new unidentified breed that would not have been able to breed with our kind...if this makes it to published journals there is an opening for people to think, well if there is.. this unknown hybrid... then maybe others also..
Your thoughts on all this?
Perez:
I don't know enough about it to make any useful comments, although I ran by that news topic, the elongated skull, and found it very, very interesting. The more we probe, in general, the more we find out about primates past and present that have lived on this planet.
JMT:
Does Sasquatch Hibernate or Migrate for the Winter? I have only found conflicting info and so I am on the fence.
http://undebunkingbigfoot.
Perez:
I don't know and to be fair to everyone who might read this, no one knows, as we are studying, at the present time, Bigfoot reports, not Bigfoot, and there is a huge difference. Other animals migrate and hibernate so it would be of little surprise to me if Bigfoot did the same.
I remember talking to Charlie McCoy many years ago, a mountain man from northern California and he told me that the tracks he saw seemed to always head south during the winter time and the opposite direction in the summer. Charlie McCoy is the younger brother of Syl McCoy, who spoke with Roger Patterson, in person, the day he got his historic film.
JMT:
I've created a page at Undebunking Bigfoot where I'm trying to openly disseminate and collect in one place the most compelling evidence. Best Evidence for the Existence of Sasquatch - Forensic, Audio, Video, Photo, Statistical Data:
http://undebunkingbigfoot.
Points of disagreement aside, are there perhaps a few good cases you can think of I should be looking into that have escaped me thus far?
Perez:
The Paul Shabaga case from about 1941 and the killing of a sasquatch in one of the Canadian provinces. He's dead now [Paul Shabaga] but it appears he has many living relatives. It would be interesting how they came to know the story, if the story line ever changed in nature, and if they thought their relative was a bs artist or someone telling the truth.
The story of the young man in Florida from the 1970s returning home after his wife gave birth. Was driving a sports car and one walked into the moving vehicle. He shot at the subject at close range with a pistol in the glove compartment and the subject simply walked off into the night forest. JMT:
Any advice or suggestions for Bigfoot bait for folks like me that set up trail cameras?
Perez:
Yes, if you set your camera up in the woods, set it up in a spot where you are confident people will not steal it. As for bait, I highly recommend APPLES, which will bring in deer (sometimes) and as we have often speculated, where there are deer, there are Bigfoot. Duct tape is going to work best, wrapped around a tree with the sticky side out. And then, take a Hershey bar (about a dollar) and stick it to the duct tape. If the weather is cold, there should be no reason it would melt. That might get a hair sample. I have never had any success, but I have never won the lotto as well, but I KNOW FOR A FACT that others have, so keep that in mind.
JMT:
To wrap up, please pose and answer a question yourself that's something you wish I'd asked about. Thanks for the interview!
Perez:
What will prove that an unknown primate lives in North America?
A body, plain and simple. DNA will always be questioned, as the general public can't grasp the esoteric meaning of it, but a body, anyone can grasp the meaning of that.
http://bigfoottimes.net
Some comments on the interview:
"fantastic interview" - http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2014/06/daniel-perez-is-one-of-most-important.html
"Well done." - Cliff Barackman, star of the TV hit Finding Bigfoot on Animal Planet
"Good interview - thanks for posting." - size of light http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=275496
The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy reposted the interview. Click link for interview: http://is.gd/NUol5C
As did the Bigfoot Community:
https://www.facebook.com/BigfootCommunity/posts/526493334147387?notif_t=story_reshare
Care2.com:
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