There are rumblings in the Bigfoot community as an upcoming documentary claims to present evidence that the most famous piece of evidence for this creature may be a hoax. I am of course referring to the Patterson–Gimlin of 1967 shot in Northern California. The documentary entitled "Capturing Bigfoot" purports to show a newly discovered "dress rehearsal" film prior to the final filming.
Only a few have seen this documentary but already claim and counter-claim has been made regarding its own authenticity and whether the expose is a hoax itself. Like most I will wait until the documentary is syndicated on Amazon Prime or some similar media outlet before forming an opinion - whenever that may be. But Nessie fans may remember a similar scenario when the "Surgeon's Photograph" was exposed as a fake in 1994, sixty years after the photograph appeared in the Daily Mail.
The story is familiar enough when big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell was hired in 1933 by the British Daily Mail, to hunt down this new phenomenon called "The Loch Ness Monster" and bring back evidence of it. He failed and the paper was embarrassed by tracks Wetherell found being identified as that of a hippopotamus. The paper dropped him as people supposed the tracks were laid by a local wag. It turned out decades later that Wetherell was the wag and out of some undefined malice he completed the deception with the Surgeon's Photograph being plotted by his own family and some associates, including the surgeon himself, Kenneth Wilson.
If this upcoming documentary has a convincing story to tell, this may be their "Surgeon's Photograph" moment. But then again, maybe not. Either way, the potential loss of something iconic to ones cryptid genre has ramifications. Most may accept it and move on, a sizeable minority will not and find inconsistencies and unanswered questions, as is the case with the "Surgeon's Photograph", even thirty odd years since its expose. There will be such questions and it all depends on the individual as to whether more questions have been answered than not answered.
Before the Surgeon's Photo expose, Loch Ness researchers saw things in the Surgeon's Photograph that they thought further vindicated its genuineness. Tim Dinsdale was sure nearby ripples indicated another creature was just below the surface, another researcher looked at the size of the waves and calculated the neck to be above three foot high, another though he saw a seagull in the photo thus scaling the neck to seven feet and yet another said computer enhancements had revealed "whiskers" on the creature. Yet none of them had any substance in the end because it is a fake.
Overriding all this amid the current controversy brewing in Bigfoot land is the confession of guilt. It is one thing to cite so-called scientific and logical reasons why a film or photograph must be genuine, but what happens when the very authors say it was a fake? Two people stated their involvement with the creation of the Surgeon's Photograph. The first was Ian Wetherell, son of Marmaduke who was quoted in a 1975 article from the Sunday Telegraph saying it was a fake.
We know this because follow up research by Alastair Boyd found another confessor in the form of his sibling, Christian Spurling. Wetherell's confession had been lost in the noise of the upcoming Rines underwater photographs and it seems Wetherell thought final proof was coming and so now was a good time to own up. That didn't quite work out but this "other" Patterson film may provoke a similar response.
When a lead participant confesses (and the Bigfoot community awaits a response from Bob Gimlin), it gets a bit difficult to continue pointing to those scientific experiments and observations as overriding proof. In fact, the only recourse is to find a reason why the person who once said "true" is now saying "false" despite you being convinced it is still "true". That normally distills down to a reason to do with financial gain which itself places the burden of proof upon the accusers.
Having said all that, the number of people confessing that a photograph or film of the Loch Ness Monster was hoaxed by them is next to zero. Only the Surgeon's Photograph seems to have found people willing to own up. Beyond that, everyone knows Frank Searle was a serial hoaxer, but he never owned up and none of the other so called hoaxers such as Lachlan Stuart, Peter MacNab or Peter O'Connor ever confessed. I have spoken to relatives of people connected with various photographs and no one is indicating any such issue.
So, no first hand or second hand confessions from family and friends - except the product of Marmaduke Wetherell and his gang. I am not sure what that tells me. Sceptics continually tell me these things were all a jolly jape with a nudge and wink to those who can transform a knowing smirk into irrefutable proof. If it was all considered that lightweight, then why not more confessions? Coincidentally, it is about sixty years since the Patterson-Gimlin film, as it was for the Surgeon's Photograph expose. That revelation in 1994 did not particularly phase me because there was another reason I suspected why it was always a hoax, but it was time to move onto other Nessie matters and that may be what Bigfoot researchers will have to do, but again I say this having not seen the documentary.
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