The Famous Bigfoot Video Has Finally Been Debunked

In 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin trekked into the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California and made a shocking discovery. They had captured footage of Bigfoot, or so they claimed, and the shaky-cam video of a giant, hairy, female Sasquatch walking in the woods became a pop culture phenomenon.

Since then, fellow “Bigfoot hunters” have spent their entire lives trying to prove the validity of the tape or find the monster again themselves. Like one, sixty-year-long X-Files episode, many Bigfoot enthusiasts refused to believe that Bigfoot was just a man in a suit. They studied the Patterson-Gimlin video like the Zapruder film of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, or the first time man walked on the Moon. But thanks to filmmaker Marq Evans, whose documentary Capturing Bigfoot just became available to rent on Prime Video, we finally have proof that one of the most controversial videos of all time is a big fat hoax.

The crux of the film relies on interview testimony from Roger Patterson’s son, Clint, and the surviving members of his father’s expedition to find Bigfoot. While the long, sad story revolves around the fact that most of them have kept the hoax a secret so that they can keep collecting checks from licensing deals, broadcast usages, and convention appearances, newfound footage from a relative of one of the party members breaks the case wide open.

In the long-lost clip, filmed around the exact same time as the Patterson-Gimlin video, a figure in the same Bigfoot suit appears to wait for the cameraman to begin filming before rehearsing the famous walk in the woods. It’s not as good as the man taking off the suit and waving his hands in the air, but it’s incredibly damning proof. I don’t think Bigfoot would have waited for the camera to start rolling.

Clint Patterson and the director also talk to Bob Heironimus, one of the explorers on the Patterson expedition, who claims that he was the man in the suit. New footage of Heironimus walking around and swinging arms appears identical to how Bigfoot walks in the video. He also explains how he was asked to turn and look at the camera before continuing on his path. Evans also shows the new video to an anthropologist, famous Bigfoot skeptics, former Hollywood special effects and makeup artists who worked on Planet of the Apes, and longtime believers. But at the end of the film, it’s hard to dispute the facts when Heironimus tells Evans that revealing the truth after all these years is “one of the best things that’s ever happened since I wore that suit.”

Maybe this doesn’t come as a shock to you. You might think that our state-of-the-art surveillance state would be able to capture a nearly eight-foot-tall ape woman living in the wilderness of California if such a creature existed. Of course it’s a hoax. The alternative is insane.

But when you see in Capturing Bigfoot just how much time and energy some folks have given to believing in Bigfoot, watching them view the new footage is crushing. For some, finding Bigfoot again would have been just the cherry on top. Aside from the revealing footage, Evans’s documentary explores how the legend of Bigfoot is more of a religion for those who believed. It gave them purpose, and it was proof enough that there were still unexplainable mysteries in the world just waiting to be found.

There are still countless unknowns out there for people to latch on to next. But for now, after nearly sixty years of searching and analyzing, we can close the page on Bigfoot.