1996 Memorial Day Bigfoot Footage

Excerpt from http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/memday-bf-15/:

Some have declared that the second-best piece of Bigfoot film/video footage, after the Patterson-Gimlin film, is this series of moving pictures...



The Memorial Day video shows a figure, matching the description of a Bigfoot, running across a hill. It disappears behind a less-inclined, sloped area, then reappears briefly, walking this time, before going into the trees at the extreme right of the frame.

This is the third clip analyzed in the program Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (the so-called Exhibit 8). The History documentary produced and directed by Doug Haijcek (today most recalled for “MonsterQuest”), was released January 9, 2003. In the hour-long program, the location where the Memorial Day footage was taken is used to make forensic measurements to determine the film subject’s height, path, speed, and stride by measuring the subject against fixed objects in the background.

Derek Prior, a three-time All-American sprinter from the University of Washington, runs the same route as the filmed figure to determine if the alleged Bigfoot’s running speed was too fast for a human to duplicate, to compare his speed and stride to the subject’s, and to give a visual comparison to the figure in the footage.

In the concluding segment of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, the results of the forensic measurements are revealed. The film subject – supposedly a Bigfoot – has the following alleged measurements:

A height of 5.3 ft (1.61 m)
A leg length of 2½ ft (0.76 m)
A running speed of 8.56 mph (13.77 km/h)
A stride of 4.25 ft (1.29 m)

Derek Prior, a Homo sapiens, on the other hand, was able to run the same path at 17.1 mph (27.51 km/h) and had a stride of 6.8 ft (2.07 m).

One aspect of the film continues to remain a mystery. At the end of the Memorial Day footage, before the subject disappears into the tree line, it seems to grow taller by 8 inches (20.32 cm). One possible explanation was suggested that if it was indeed a real animal, it could be carrying a younger animal that had climbed higher on its back.

 

As the years have passed, more and more skeptics within the Bigfoot field have surfaced, regarding the footage. It has been pointed out that Dr. Grover Krantz decided to avoid any discussions of the Memorial Day footage when he revised his book on Sasquatch, commenting that “he wouldn’t waste ink on that footage.”

It appears Daniel Perez has become one of the most outspoken critics from within Bigfootery to question the footage. He wrote, for example, in part:

When the Memorial Day footage is displayed, the audio is silent without any narrative explaining why. If the producers of the program felt the remarks made on camera were racist, they could have bleeped the questionable dialog. The real reason, I believe, is that the audio is both illuminating and revealing.

Here are excerpts of the audio:

“He was right behind that small pine tree, right?”

“I’m freak.”

“Yeah, I’m scared.”

“I could make a million bucks.”

“That’s a guy with a big hair cut. . . .”

“Sure is ambitious, running a lot. . . .”

“It’s a Bigfoot.”

“That’s not a Bigfoot. . . .”

“It’s a Dickfoot.”

“It’s all on video!”

“I’ve only had two drinks.”

“Me, too, two too many.”

And somewhere in the audio, as the subject comes into view is this: “looks like a white boy to me,” a statement made without a doubt by the late Fred Bradshaw, an avid Bigfooter from Elma, Washington. Having known Fred Bradshaw since 1995, his voice is easily recognizable. Isn’t it convenient, or too convenient, that a Bigfooter would be present when a camping couple just happens to film a Bigfoot? What was Fred Bradshaw’s connection to Owen and Lori Pate? And why has the couple never acknowledged Bradshaw was there? Their reluctance to be interviewed or questioned on the matter speaks volumes. ~ Daniel Perez, 2007 - Source: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/memday-bf-15/

Dr. Jeff Meldrum is a Full Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology, who in his book Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science (which is an expansion of the aforementioned program by the same name) wrote the following concerning the experiment with the sprinter:

As the team was preoccupied with the scale and speed of the figure, less commentary was offered about the specifics of the anatomy and behavior that could be observed from the video image itself. The subject reportedly hesitated at the tree line for a considerable time and was seen occasionally peering from behind some cover. When it finally broke from cover and was captured on videotape, it made its descent down the hillside, apparently with something of a slightly lighter hue on its back. That something then appeared to slip lower on the figure's back and an appendage of sorts, flailed behind. At that point the running figure, with arms pumping, reached back with its right arm to clasp the object itself, without breaking stride. Also discernible were unmistakable breasts that gyrated with each running step. There are no indications of clothing, no bulging, bunching, or borders. There is nothing to contradict Line's testimony that he saw a hair-covered figure through the binoculars. The figure passed behind an intervening rise in topography and when it emerged beyond, its right arm was poised upward, toward or above its head, as if steadying something. The arm dropped and the figure noticeably increased in height before entering the timber.

Could this be a female sasquatch, perhaps a young female, with a youngster on board? The smaller size and apparent breasts suggest this might be the case. Was the infant nearly dislodged from its piggyback position as its mother made a dash for cover behind the intervening high ground? Did it receive a boost into a position behind the female's neck and peer over the top of her head? This is a posture for infant transport that is typically practiced by apes, and humans for that matter. Infants ride atop the adult's back or shoulders and peer over the adult's head. This is sometimes until the infant is quite large, if the adult is indulgent.

The oregonbigfoot.com site argues strongly for the films authenticity, stating:

In the Sasquatch Legend Meets Science DVD, a track star ran the same course and it was discovered that he was both larger and faster than the subject in the the film. Some feel that those details automatically discount the Memorial Day footage as a hoax. (I  guess Bigfoots are never supposed to be shorter than humans no matter what their age or gender, or run slower than a track star when their reportedly carrying  a baby on their back...) The funny thing is Mr. Track Star biffed it [slipped and was almost injured] on his first attempt. In running shoes.

AND HE WASN'T RUNNING IN A GORILLA SUIT!

If they wanted to make a valid comparison, why didn't they dress Mr. Track Star in a monkey suit.

In my opinion, it's unlikely that anyone in a gorilla suit could run like that across a steep uneven hillside without falling.

The TV program Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files had one of their investigators do just that in an episode entitled Sasquatch Sprint / Alien Attacker. When dressed in a Bigfoot costume the investigator, who is in good shape, indeed fell on his first attempt and thought he might have sprained his ankle. It also took him  12.06 seconds to cover the same ground in the suit, that the the figure in the original video covered in only  10.6 seconds. The investigator took off the Bigfoot mask at the end of clip to see if that could account for what is a believed by some to be a the baby on the back of the figure and it did appear similar. The show interviewed the witnesses and found them credible, but concluded they believed they were victims of a hoax.

The Oregon Bigfoot site also estimates that a jump the 5'3"  figure does, which is featured in the video below, to be approximately 7 feet in length. Presumably also hard to do for a person of such stature in a monkey suit.

Here is a video making a case for the baby on the back idea from an individual that has made many similar analysis videos, including one where he was apparently fooled by a hoax. That said, each of his analyses should be judged on their own merits. Remember, in this one he is making a case for an idea raised by a scientist first.  

Conclusion: From the info we have there is nothing to suggest a high-probability this is a Sasquatch, but there is enough to say that it's a possibility, which is almost as rare.

Images:

http://bfro.net/REF/bfmedia.asp
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/hoaxes/mdf.htm

Answering the Bigfoot Skeptics

Posted by: Craig Woolheater on January 18th, 2006

Published on LiveScience.com today is an article written by a Cryptomundo commenter, Benjamin Radford, editor of the Skeptical Inquirer, entitled, "Rare Woodpecker Search Sheds Light on Bigfoot." Going to the site, I found it humorous that the ad for the page is the Canadian Sasquatch for the Discovery Channel’s show "Mythbusters."

Some of what is included in Mr. Radford’s article has been discussed here on Cryptomundo in the past.
Read the article on the LiveScience.com website, then read our rebuttal below and offer your thoughts and comments. Hopefully Mr. Radford will join us here for this discussion.

Pseudo-logic ( sū ‘ dō-lŏ’ jək) n. A system of deduction that initially appears to be based in solid inferential reasoning, but upon closer examination is determined to actually be without logical foundation.
Initially, the position staked out here by Benjamin Radford appears to have a logical foundation. He asserts that when a well-equipped team of professional and amateur scientists conducts a field study in the woods of rural Arkansas, and reports no sightings of the undocumented creature referred to as “bigfoot,” that it somehow validates or strengthens the position of those who claim that the animal does not exist.

Come again?

Actually, hundreds of excursions across North America take place every year by groups and individuals who fail to mention sightings of large, bipedal, hair-covered primates. However, Mr. Radford also seems to be ignorant of incursions into the American outback by groups and individuals who do report sightings of large, bipedal, hair-covered primates. In fact, one month-long expedition in 1967 even yielded film footage of what is possibly the animal Mr. Radford says doesn’t exist.

Mr. Radford seems to imply that simply because the well-equipped team who rediscovered the Ivory-billed Woodpecker wasn’t actually looking for large, unknown, bipedal apes, that if they reported a sighting, the sighting would somehow have some special merit that sighting reports by others in the past do not have. After all, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker researchers included biologists from Cornell University, as well as quite a few volunteer part-time field assistants. So, what if the team had reported a sighting of a sasquatch or recorded some primate-like vocalizations while out in the field? Would it have given Mr. Radford and others like him cause for consideration regarding the matter of bigfoot?

There are teams of professional and amateur scientists who have reported such encounters (including the Texas Bigfoot Research Center, a network of amateur and professional scientists dedicated to investigating the sasquatch mystery in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana), and there are individuals who happen to be anthropologists, wildlife biologists, psychologists, law enforcement and forest service professionals who have reported sightings, but apparently Mr. Radford and others like him simply choose to sweep such reports aside, citing wishful-thinking, misidentification and hallucination as the cause of such reports.

Interesting.

Apparently, what scientists don’t see is more important to Mr. Radford and others like him, than what scientists do see.

We also have many reports from hunters, who happen to be the most prolific witnesses in terms of bigfoot encounters, resulting from their sustained incursions into the remote and densely wooded areas said to be the habitat of sasquatches. While their business in the American wilderness is not of an investigatory nature, hunters are nevertheless out there for prolonged periods. However, Mr. Radford refuses to acknowledge the significance of their eyewitness reports.

Why is it that Mr. Radford seems to be more enamored with the fact that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker researchers did not report having sasquatch encounters than he is that large numbers of American and Canadian hunters, in addition to groups of researchers, comprised of amateur and professional scientists, have reported such encounters?

Mr. Radford apparently dismisses many such sighting reports because they, in his opinion, are from “believers” (which somehow invalidates their findings). Apparently, Mr. Radford is very adept at overlooking or ignoring important little facts. For example, many of the amateur and professional scientists who have reported encounters were not “believers” until they actually had the encounters; the vast majority of the hunters and motorists who reported such encounters were not “believers” at all until they actually saw something for which they had no conventional explanation. So, just because they reported a sighting (making them “believers”), are witnesses suddenly lacking credibility as individuals and scientists?

There’s more to ponder:

It is likely that, given the probable rarity of the species, there were no unknown North American apes in the area of southeastern Arkansas where the Ivory-billed Woodpecker researchers were searching.

This brings up another question: Has Mr. Radford actually talked to all the biologists and field assistants who were searching for the “grail bird” regarding what they saw or heard?

Sixteen square miles is not a very large area. Although it would certainly seem big to a person wandering around within it, it’s a drop in the bucket in terms of available habitat. To assume that an animal not observed within a prescribed area during a specific time frame must not exist anywhere is silly. How many mink did the biologists and volunteers see in that area? River otters? Did they observe black bears? Many woodpecker holes are constantly being monitored. Did the observers see flying squirrels, common animals that live in tree cavities? How many of these folks saw bobcats or gray foxes? All of these species should be expected in the ivory-billed study area. By Mr. Radford’s logic, if any of these species were not observed, they must be extinct.

Mr. Radford insinuates that the place where the woodpecker was observed is a prime sasquatch area, but is it? When was the last time a credible report emerged from that specific vicinity? The BFRO has posted on their website only one report, in Cleveland County, of a regional bigfoot sighting. This is over 60 miles southwest of the Big Woods of Arkansas. The Texas Bigfoot Research Center has not received any reports, credible or not, from the area. Characterizing an entire state as “prime Bigfoot territory” illustrates ignorance regarding animal distribution patterns in general. When biologists say that any mammal may be expected within a certain approximate area or range, it does not mean that the species will be found everywhere within that area; it may possibly be found wherever suitable conditions are found within that area. The same holds true for the sasquatch.

The current well-publicized attempt to further document the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is only the late
st of such efforts over the years. This active species is very large, diurnal, and quite noisy. Yet, the documentation effort, to this point, has been a disappointment. How logical is it to conclude that a rare nocturnal animal like the sasquatch, an animal the birders are likely not even thinking about, does not exist if it’s not seen?

The extensive search for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was conducted almost entirely during daylight hours; no night vision or infrared devices were employed. Most sasquatch researchers believe that their quarry is primarily nocturnal because there are as many or more sightings of sasquatches during the night than during the day; far fewer humans are active at night than daytime, therefore, nocturnalism of the animal is probable. Furthermore, there are very, very few reports of diurnal bigfoot vocalizations. The vast majority of reports regarding purported sasquatch vocalizations result from nighttime encounters.

The Ivory-billed Woodpecker researchers were not, in even the most remote way, looking or listening for an unknown bipedal primate. If they had recorded sasquatch vocalizations, it’s unlikely they would have expended much effort pondering what they were hearing; their search was for a large diurnal bird with a “kent” call. They were fixated on that, during the day. However, even had they made such recordings, Mr. Radford and others like him would most likely remain dismissive and cynical, continually citing “no hard evidence.”

There also exists the extremely remote possibility that one or more of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker researchers did have some type of encounter, but like others before them, they hesitated to report it. Few researchers would be brazen enough to risk the loss of project funding, or risk their personal and professional reputations, by coming back with anecdotal reports of sasquatch encounters, exposing themselves to ridicule and insinuations from Benjamin Radford and others like him that such sightings were caused by wishful thinking and/or misidentifications.

Following the line of reasoning presented by Mr. Radford, the fact that the TBRC and investigators such as Chester Moore and others have not reported any Ivory-billed Woodpecker sightings in Ivory-billed Woodpecker habitat areas, despite spending an exorbitant amount of time in such places (like the Big Thicket in Southeast Texas), must in some way invalidate the findings of the birders who obtained four seconds of woodpecker footage and a couple of purported ivory-billed vocalizations. Obviously, this is a conclusion that reasonable people would never seek to assert, but it is tantamount to what Mr. Radford has written.

The Texas Bigfoot Research Center is not a group made up of individuals who, on a whim or dream, choose to waste a huge amount of time and finances, risking personal and professional reputations, to validate an animal that can’t possibly exist. The Texas Bigfoot Research Center continues to maintain that the body of contemporary sighting reports, ecological patterns and relationships arising from the study of those reports, the physical evidence that has accumulated during the last fifty years, and our own personal observations while in the field, all serve to indicate the existence of a living species that has yet to be documented.

This response was written by Daryl Colyer, Alton Higgins and Craig Woolheater of the Texas Bigfoot Research Center.

This post was written by

Craig Woolheater – who has written 1833 posts on Cryptomundo.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad

Email  • Facebook  • Twitter

Source:

http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/answering-the-bigfoot-skeptics/