Patterson Film
Deathbed Confession?
The most commonly heard false fact about the Patterson footage:
"The guy who got the footage admitted on his deathbed that he faked it."
This is not true. This is a mixup. Here's how the mixup started.
The man who obtained the most well known photo of the Loch Ness monster (not bigfoot) admitted on his deathbed that he faked that photo.
The story of his confession popped up in newspaper headlines around the world. The story didn't last long as a news item, but every new agency, in every country, on every continent, ran the story.
The story mutated in the press, from a crypto story about one photo from Loch Ness being debunked, to "Mystery of Loch Ness Finally Solved."
Around the country and around the world people were interested to hear that the famous monster mystery was solved, because the most famous monster photo had been debunked.
Frame 352 from the Patterson footage is the most famous, purportedly authentic, "monster" photo known to most Americans. They are more familiar with that than with the 1930's photo from Loch Ness.
This was the foundation for some of the confusion. It got worse later.
The Patterson footage was mistakenly associated with a "deathbed confession" related to a famous "monster" mystery.
The Loch Ness deathbed confession story grabbed such big headlines, it was inevitable that someone would try the same formula down the line. It only took a few more years.
The heirs of a man named Ray Wallace initially reported his "deathbed confession" about faking the first famous bigfoot tracks in Northern California.
Ray Wallace left behind a few pairs of wooden feet for making fake tracks. He would sell plaster casts of fake tracks at his roadside tourist shop.
His heirs later recanted the "deathbed confession" part of the story, and instead said they "just know he started the whole thing."
The initial "deathbed confession" element helpd get the story onto the AP Wire. It became "The Father of Bigfoot Dies".
The story was circulated word-of-mouth and similarly transformed into a story about the Patterson footage.
The Patterson still images are the most famous images associated with bigfoots.
The Wallace story had to do with the most famous track casts.
The track casts were obtained 10 years before the Patterson footage.
The Wallace story didn't have anything to do with the Patterson footage.
Wallace's heirs were well aware that the Loch Ness "deathbed confession" made world headlines years earlier. They were just taking advantage of an opportunity.
Ray Wallace did not start the bigfoot mystery. He was not involved in the first track finds either. Graphic evidence disproves the claims of Ray's opportunistic heirs.
For more info on the Wallace family, click here.
The man who obtained the Patterson footage, Roger Patterson, died of cancer in the early 1970's. He was emphatic to the end that he filmed a real animal in October 1967.
The man who was with Patterson at the time, Bob Gimlin, is still alive. He is also adamant that it was a real animal.
If you chat about the bigfoot subject with a group of people, someone will jump in and claim they heard "the guy who got that famous footage admitted before he died that he faked it."
Try it sometime.
There are no written sources whatsoever suggesting Patterson admitted to a hoax on his deathbed. No one in his family has ever claimed that Roger admitted to a hoax before his death. All of the assertions in that regard began circulating after the Loch Ness story came out.
This mixup story has become an urban legend.
posted by The Boots | 8:25 AM
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