The Daves would like to welcome fellow blogger AJ Dunbar from the bigfoot website BigfootBase.com! You can check out his site by going HERE!
I am fascinated by the mind of a Bigfoot hoaxer. I think I’m even a believer in nationwide, Bigfoot hoaxing secret societies (maybe this unfortunate Ghillie-suit hoaxer was in one). But why do they do it? Does hoaxing a Bigfoot video provide a natural thrill of being a ‘troll?’ Or are there financial motives that are this worthwhile?
Even if never definitively proven fake, there’s just so many dirty clods of ‘video evidence’ out there. Good videos of Sasquatch are extremely rare, so let’s try to cut a little bit of the fat with this list of three questionable clips.
- Todd Standing’s ‘Blinky’
Todd Standing is a Canadian Bigfoot researcher who, most famously, appeared as a consultant on Les Stroud’s Survivorman Bigfoot. For the inaugural episode, Todd provided the show an incredible clip of a Sasquatch face. At the end of the video, the subject blinks like lemon was squirted in its eye. The subject is amusingly known now as ‘Blinky.’
It has never been proven that Todd hoaxed this video, but it is still a bit fishy. I believe the evidence against him is strong. For example, this fantastic, comprehensive analysis helps crack the video’s authenticity second-by-second. In this report, the investigators identify several massive question marks and oddities found in the clip. Specifically, once overlaid, Todd’s face lines up unusually well with Blinky’s.
This camera expert even tirelessly compiled evidence helping to prove Todd filmed the subject in a very controlled environment with a stationary tripod and deliberate lighting. Per the blogger, minimal CGI was the final touch for the fabrication.
Again, Todd is a total Sasquatch wild card. His remarkable video has never been proven completely fake. And if you ask me, I think Todd may have collected actual Sasquatch evidence over the years. I believe he has seen strange things and creatures out in the remote Canadian wilderness. ‘Bigfooting’ was his passion, and he wanted to do it full time… with full funding. So, when Les was getting around to making Survivorman Bigfoot, he didn’t have the ‘home run’ evidence he needed, so perhaps he threw this video together and approached The Discovery Channel. Boom! Les got a compelling hook for his first episode, and Todd got exposure to help him acquire financial backers.
- The Ivan Marx Cone-headed, Cripple-footed Bigfoot
The early days of ‘Bigfooting’ were awash with con men and crooks trying to sell off evidence-ownership rights to enchanted believers. The Patterson/Gimlin film ignited a worldwide Bigfoot fire in 1967. Interest swelled and believers were willing to pay well to quench their Bigfoot appetite. Thankfully, for each Ivan Marx there is a Peter Byrne.
The Cripplefoot Bigfoot episode was a huge circus. In 1970, Ivan Marx reported oddly-shaped, large footprints in Bossburg WA. Many ‘Bigfooters’ swarmed the area, presumably still mesmerized by ‘Patty’. Within weeks, 1089 individual tracks were discovered next to a railroad track, up and down a hillside, and along the Columbia River. The right foot of the track way was ‘crippled,’ exhibiting signs of trauma or malformation. Completely swept up in the find, dozens of Bigfoot researchers travelled to Bossburg to hunt the ‘Cripplefoot.’
A few weeks after the track way discovery, Marx came forward with an actual video of the suspected Cripplefoot. He explained that he received an anonymous tip that a large, bipedal figure was hit on the highway. Knowing the general location, he gathered his hunting dogs and quickly found the injured creature. He then recorded truly unbelievable video of this large, hobbled Bigfoot.
Unfortunately for Marx, wildlife researcher Peter Byrne arrived on the scene and starting picking apart the authenticity of the footage. He deduced the location of the film and measured out the true size of the subject—which turned out to be no larger than the average size of a man. He even concluded that shadows present in the video prove it was filmed over the course of several hours instead of a few short minutes. As the inconsistencies mounted, Marx fled town. He cut off contact with the other Bigfooters and continued trying to make money off his Bigfoot: appearing on game shows, releasing more video clips, and producing a movie called The Legend of Bigfoot. All photos and videos Marx released feature the same cone-headed Bigfoot costume.
This is a very old topic and details fade over the years. Looking at the Bossburg Cripplefoot saga now, evaluating all the facts, I can arrive at a very simple answer: it was all a hoax by Ivan Marx. A hoax enhanced by Patty fever. A hoax rooted in financial ambition. If you ask me, I think Marx thought Patterson fabricated his still-undisputed footage and, feeling himself to be even more creative and resourceful, thought he could come up with a better, more interesting product: a product that would yield a fortune in ownership rights. All he needed was a few other Bigfooters to believe, and intrigue would swell until the final video earned him millions.
(And just for fun here is Ivan Marx saying Bigfoot 81 times in his 74-minute movie. That’s 1.1 times every minute!!)
- Shawn Bannon’s ‘Sequoia’s Giant’
This isn’t so much of a hoax as a massive misunderstanding. It’s kind of like when you find a container of green beans in the back corner of your fridge, discover that it has grown a colorful colony of spores, and have no idea who left the container. Sliced up and posted on YouTube with no context, this wild Sasquatch video took off on its own and grew a thick layer of colorful believers. Thanks to the depth of the internet, we did discover the roommate who left that fateful container of beans.
This clip was created by Shawn Bannon, an LA-based filmmaker, as part of a short called ‘Creature in The Giant Sequoias.’ The short film is overlaid with comments by Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a renowned professor and expert in foot morphology who believes in the possibility of Sasquatch. It is a pretty cool video, actually. An unknown YouTuber cut up Bannon’s footage and removed the audio so that it appeared to be actual camera footage of a large-shouldered, red, Bigfoot.
Every year the footage pops up in the Crypto-mainstream, and hysteria erupts until the name Shawn Bannon is eventually uttered. Perhaps Bannon is the troll who keeps the Billy goats returning to his bridge? No one knows, but ‘The Sequoia’s Giant’ goes to show that context means everything in the stained, moldy-ass world of Bigfoot evidence.
~AJ Dunbar
Terror from Beyond the Dave 
Standing uses similar tactics as a cult leader. He will lead the willing to conclusions. But interestingly, Meldrum continues to be a skeptic, and in my mind, very credible. Standing does a good job leading, manipulating, and editing to give the appearance that Meldrum is stating conclusions when he is not. If you listen very carefully to the (presumably highly edited) documentary, Standing gives up his own secrets. He leads too much. He suggests too much. He says “we” too much, leading one to believe that some of these “miracles” may have been staged by a team of savvy hoaxers. The sad part is that I believe Standing does believe and may have had some real experiences, even some audio and video evidence. What I believed has happened, however, is that he succumbed to the lust of fame and sacrificed his credibility by faking some evidence.