Patterson–Gimlin Film

Patterson–Gimlin Film

DIRECTORN/A (unstaged documentary footage, per its creators)

STUDION/A

RELEASE DATE20 October 1967 (filmed); publicly screened 1967–1968

GENREPurported evidence footage

STATUSDisputed authenticity

The Patterson–Gimlin film is a 59-second, 16mm colour motion picture filmed on 20 October 1967 at Bluff Creek, California, by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, purporting to show a large, hair-covered, bipedal creature — nicknamed "Patty," a feminised version of Patterson's own surname — walking along a creek bank before briefly turning to look toward the camera. It remains the single most widely recognised and cited piece of purported Bigfoot evidence, and one of the most analysed and disputed pieces of film in the history of cryptozoology.

The filming

Patterson, a Bigfoot enthusiast, and Gimlin, a horse trainer, set out on horseback into the Bluff Creek area of Northern California to investigate reported tracks, carrying a rented 16mm camera and around 100 feet of film. According to their account, they encountered the creature at close range along the creek, with Patterson dismounting to film freehand while his startled horse reared. A single frame from the footage, numbered 352, subsequently became the most widely reproduced still image associated with the film and with Bigfoot more broadly.

Scientific and forensic analysis

The film has been subjected to repeated formal analysis. Forensic examiner Jeff Glickman published a detailed study, "Toward a Resolution of the Bigfoot Phenomenon," in 1998. In 2013, primate anatomy specialist Jeffrey Meldrum and visual effects specialist Bill Munns published a technical paper specifically addressing the film's image integrity, examining questions including the subject's apparent gait, shoulder breadth, and soft-tissue movement against what would have been achievable with 1967-era costuming techniques.

The Heironimus hoax claims

In the early 2000s, Bob Heironimus — a Patterson acquaintance from Yakima, Washington, who had supplied some of the horses used on the Bluff Creek trip — came forward publicly claiming he was the person who wore a costume in the film, some 32 years after the footage was shot. Heironimus said he was offered (though, he says, never actually paid) $1,000 to wear the suit, and described adding bulk beneath it using a football helmet, football pads and hip waders. His account has some documented inconsistencies — Heironimus has given differing descriptions of what the suit itself was made from across different tellings — and researchers attempting to recreate the costume from his description have produced results that do not closely resemble the creature seen in the film. Journalist Greg Long's 2004 book The Making of Bigfoot compiles Heironimus's account alongside interviews with Philip Morris, a costume maker who stated he sold Patterson a gorilla suit shortly before the filming and gave him advice on customising it for a longer-armed, broader-shouldered appearance, along with several Yakima residents who said they saw the suit in Heironimus's possession afterward.

Accounts differ on exactly who approached Heironimus about wearing the suit. Heironimus himself has stated it was Gimlin who first raised it with him, quoting Gimlin as saying Patterson "needs someone pretty good size to get in the suit." Gimlin himself has consistently and publicly denied any involvement in a hoax, maintaining — as the only surviving participant in the 1967 filming — that he and Patterson genuinely encountered an unknown creature.

2026 documentary claims

A 2026 documentary features new claims from Roger Patterson's son, Clint Patterson, who states the encounter was staged and that he personally witnessed his father destroying the costume used in the film by burning it. This account identifies a different individual — Al DeAtley, described as Patterson's brother-in-law and a financier of his film work — as the person who wore the suit, rather than Heironimus. These claims are recent, come from a single documentary, and had not been independently corroborated by other sources at the time of this article's drafting; they are noted here as a documented recent claim rather than an established fact.

WORK ASSESSMENT

TYPEPurported evidence footage

IMPORTANCEFoundational

SUBJECTBigfoot

SIGNIFICANCE

The Patterson–Gimlin film is the single most iconic and widely cited piece of purported physical evidence in the entire history of cryptozoology, and remains a foundational reference point in virtually all subsequent discussion of Bigfoot's claimed existence.

ASSESSMENT

Despite extensive, repeated forensic and technical analysis over more than five decades, the film's authenticity has never been conclusively settled to the satisfaction of both its supporters and its critics. Multiple, partially conflicting hoax accounts have emerged over the decades — implicating different individuals as the person inside a costume — while Bob Gimlin has consistently maintained the encounter was genuine. In the absence of the original camera negative or conclusive physical evidence either way, the film functions less as settled proof of anything than as a genuine, still-unresolved historical case study in cryptozoological evidence.

See also

• Bigfoot
• Cryptid
• Joe Nickell

External links

• Wikipedia — Patterson–Gimlin film
• Skeptical Inquirer — Documentary's Devastating Bigfoot Debunking