The image is of highway 96 in Willow Creek, California sometime before a serious flood wiped out this Bigfoot art, along with much of the town in 1964.
Before Roger Patterson’s 1967 film clip, Bigfoot was a legend in the area but people only had their imagination and pulp artwork as to what it might look like. The Patterson-Gimlin Film changed that perception.
Believers and skeptics argue about the validity of the Patterson film by clinging to ideas entrenched in their viewpoint. This tug of war mostly takes place online. The late Steven Streufert didn’t mind being on the front lines of those conversations.
In fact, it was a passion of his to dismantle what he determined to be bad theories, hoaxes, and anything that resembled a bad theory or a hoax. Steven made sure to let the attention seekers, frauds, grifters, and their collective supporters know that he knew, they were peddling bunk. To everyone else, he was humbly kind.
He had an in-depth Bigfoot blog for many years and a book store in Willow Creek that served as home base for many Bigfooters visiting the area over the years. Steven could always be counted on to be a tour guide, especially of the nearby Patterson-Gimlin Film site.
Steven Streufert was a studious Bigfoot skeptic
Nothing gets skeptics more riled up than Roger Patterson and his film clip from Bluff Creek California during October of 1967.
Some people cannot reconcile the idea of Patty the granny Bigfoot being genuine. For skeptics, Greg Long’s book, The Making of Bigfoot: The Inside Story, has been a standard reference to support their views. The book is squarely focused on the hypothesis of Roger faking the film clip and is filled with interviews that read like a quality editing job more than anything else.
I recently read Greg’s book and I am surprised there’s no actual investigative pathways explored. The author compiles interviews with people who knew Roger quite well. To me, it all comes off as yarn spinning by yokels with ulterior motives.
What would have been more interesting is exploring Roger’s motivations for being in Bluff Creek at all in 1967. Does it make sense that a broke man would drive a few hundred miles across states to spend 3 weeks in the cold woods with horses and a bedroll so he could hoax a film that he could have made anywhere in just a few hours?
Roger Patterson traveled from Yakima, Washington in Bob Gimlin’s pickup with a low suspension trailer with horses into mountain territory. And the weather was bad, as storms recently came through in an area known for flooding. Why was Bluff Creek selected for this expedition? Because Roger was invited to investigate Bigfoot tracks.
Nothing outweighs this fact: there was no other reason for Roger to have been in Bluff Creek at all other than pursuing what he considered to be legitimate Bigfoot investigation. That’s what motivated Roger Patterson above all else. He coaxed his friend, Bob Gimlin, to come with him because otherwise, he had no ride to Bluff Creek.
All they got out of it was barely a minute’s worth of clunky, unrehearsed footage of a suspected Bigfoot. That does not sound like a prepared hoax. If Roger was just making a hoax, it would have been a lot simpler and cheaper with an 8mm camera. It would have been much lighter to wield on horseback or anywhere without a tripod. Instead, he rented a larger, more expensive 16mm camera because he wanted to make a legitimate documentary, not stage a hoax.
I am usually entertained by hit pieces but in this case, Long’s book is too obvious in its claim of Bob Heironimus wearing a customized, form-fitting Bigfoot costume pretending to be a female Bigfoot.
It really ticked me off that Streufert seemed to believe Long’s book is factual. I am stunned that anyone would actually believe that.
The truth is Bob Heironimus was transparently disingenuous for the sake of being paid by anyone who would pay him to trash Roger. He’s been consistently inconsistent with details, not even bothering to research the Patterson film well enough to know what details he should be consistent about.
And of course there is no convincingly fake Bigfoot costume to back up his claims. Proposals for how such a costume could be made are well trodden paths that have all flunked as far as analysis. Nothing has ever come close to what is seen in the Patterson film clip.
It’s easy for skeptics to see there’s no reasonable costume explanation for the muscle movement in Patty’s back and the thigh area, the movement of her hips, the breasts, and her head as she turned without so much as a hint of any of it being fake.
Even if Bob Heironimus was a lean track athlete in 1967, what sort of materials would show muscle movement through a thick body hair on grainy 16mm film? All while Roger is stumbling, trying to get the camera focused and on target?
A smart guy like Streufert buying into a crappy Bob Heironimus-Patty theory is over the top ridiculous to me. In the end, I let the debate get to me. Steven and I clashed and we fell out as friends.
Not long before Steven’s death, he apologized for his part of the argument. I had no idea he was sick or I would have apologized too. Instead, he died without a word back from me and I feel awful for how I left things. The only saving grace is that I am certain he forgave me for that too.
Steven, I am so sorry for my hurtful words to you. In search of catharsis, I wrote this really dumb song about our friendship. I think you’d agree the sentiment applies to all Bigfooters of all viewpoints. We are all spacetime brothers from different mothers.
The vocals are AI but the guitar and lyrics are mine. I hope you get a laugh out of it.
– Marcus Daily, author of Hacking Bigfoot