What did the Patterson Bigfoot film actually show?

1Bluff Creek

October 20th, 1967, Bluff Creek, California. Two men on horseback, a rolling camera, and sixty-one seconds of film that still splits the world in half.

2the plate

We're on section three of a six-part course on Bigfoot lore, and this is where legend meets a camera. Want the short version instead? Switch course off and ask again.

3the two men

Roger Patterson, a rodeo rider, and Bob Gimlin, his partner, were hunting for the creature. They said their horses bolted when a hairy figure stepped from behind a log.

4the glance

The footage shows a dark figure striding across a creek bed, then glancing back at the camera. That glance became the most reproduced image in cryptozoology.

5two camps

Then the argument began. Believers pointed to the muscle ripple and the gait. Skeptics said: a costume. In 1998 a man named Bob Heironimus claimed he wore it.

6the stalemate

The twist: no one has ever proved it either way. A 1967 film is too blurry to settle it, so the same sixty-one seconds feeds both sides forever.

7the keepsake

Here's the era on one board: Bluff Creek, 1967, one short reel, and a mystery that spawned thousands of sightings across America.