Today's Article - The Patterson–Gimlin film

This article is for quizzes on Thursday February 23rd...


The Patterson–Gimlin film (also known as the Patterson film or the PGF) is a famous short motion picture of an unidentified subject the filmmakers have said was a Bigfoot. The footage was shot in 1967, and has since been subjected to many attempts to authenticate or debunk it.

The footage was filmed alongside Bluff Creek, a tributary of the Klamath River, about 25 logging-road miles northwest of Orleans, California, in Humboldt County. The film site is roughly 38 miles south of Oregon and 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean. For decades, the exact location of the site was lost, primarily because of re-growth of foliage in the streambed after the flood of 1964. It was rediscovered in 2011. It is just south of a north-running segment of the creek informally known as "the bowling alley."

Filmmakers were Roger Patterson (February 14, 1933 – January 15, 1972) and Robert "Bob" Gimlin (born October 18, 1931). Patterson died of cancer in 1972 and "maintained right to the end that the creature on the film was real." Patterson's friend, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a hoax with Patterson. Gimlin mostly avoided publicly discussing the subject from at least the early 1970s until about 2005 (except for three appearances), when he began giving interviews and appearing at Bigfoot conferences.

The film is 23.85 feet long (preceded by 76.15 feet of "horseback" footage), has 954 frames, and runs for 59.5 seconds at 16 frames per second. If the film was shot at 18 fps, as Grover Krantz believes, the event lasted 53 seconds. The date was October 20, 1967, according to the filmmakers, although some critics believe it was shot earlier.