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Birth of Bigfoot
- 20081107
John Driscoll/The Times-Standard
Maybe it was bad light or bad
mushrooms. Maybe it was someone in a stitched-up bear skin
creeping up on the bonfire to scare the wits out of his brother.
Or maybe it really was a rare primate that wandered near camp
in the dark several thousand years ago that caught someone's
eye.
However it happened, Sasquatch was hatched
into the human consciousness, long, long ago.
But Bigfoot strode into the picture just 50
years ago this month. Born in the pages of the Humboldt Times
by columnist Andrew Genzoli, the word Bigfoot was to become
the new operating title for the hairy beast of lore.
In Bluff Creek off the Klamath River this
month in 1958, Jerry Crew and his road construction crew found
tracks of a Sasquatch, the story goes. Crew made a plaster
cast of the impressions, and brought them into the Times on
Oct. 4.
Genzoli recorded that the men called the creature
Big Foot.
”There is a mystery in the mountains
of northeastern Humboldt County, waiting for a solution ...
Who is making the huge 16-inch tracks in the vicinity of Bluff
Creek?” Genzoli wrote in the front page story below a
classic photo of Crew with a plaster cast of the big foot.
“Are the tracks a human hoax? Or, are they actual marks
of a huge but harmless wild-man, traveling through the wilderness?
Can this be some legendary sized animal?”
It's difficult to know how seriously Genzoli
took the story, and he raises some questions about the claim
and introduces skeptics to balance the piece.
Then things started getting weird. A $1,000
reward was offered to anyone who could explain the mystery,
which was, proclaimed the Times' sister paper the Humboldt
Standard, either a hoax or “a mentally deficient, over-grown
boy gone wild.”
Only 10 days later, it was Times reporter
Bill Chambers on the case. Chambers reported that the Humboldt
County Sheriff's Office was convinced they had the man responsible
for the footprints in Bluff Creek, and that he would confess.
But when construction worker Ray Wallace --
the supposed hoaxer -- was contacted by the Times about the
allegations, he reacted angrily.
”I'm not going in. If they want to put
out a warrant I'm going to sue them for slander -- and I won't
fool around about it!” Wallace said. “If they think
they're going to make a laughing stock out of me, they've
got another thing coming.”
Wallace's brother W.R. “Shorty”
Wallace insisted that no one would work all day in the Bluff
Creek country and then run around planting footprints.
The Oct. 15 Times edition featured a huge
photo spread, with Chambers reporting that “Bigfoot has
been seen.” Two construction workers had seen a Sasquatch
and told him all about it. The Standard on Oct. 16 said the
witnesses were, “Two husky construction workers with
good eyesight,” in an effort to eliminate doubt.
Now look, anyone who's ever been the victim
of a good hoax knows just how seriously it can be taken by
its perpetrators. Things take on an overblown quality. Characters
involved in successful hoaxes play different roles to satisfy
the victim or victims who take different approaches to interpreting
a mystery.
Shorty Wallace's explanation that no one would
stomp around making footprints after work is obvious bunk
in hindsight. His role likely was to instill doubt. Ray Wallace's
vehement denial of the allegation -- even threatening to go
to the courts -- was likely meant to make him the untouchable
martyr.
The husky construction workers with good eyesight
were probably enlisted to play the role of true believers.
Jerry Crew provided the ever-important introduction of evidence,
to get the ball rolling and feel out initial reactions.
We now know the whole thing was a hoax --
or a brash attempt to claim credit for one. Late in 2002,
Ray Wallace died at the age of 84 in Washington. But he didn't
take Bigfoot to the grave with him; he had spilled his guts
to a few members of his family. The man who insisted he'd
“sue th
- for slander” had confessed to being the original Bigfoot
hoaxer, his son and nephew told the Seattle Times.
What was surprising was what the Times-Standard
-- that descendant of the original Bigfoot newspapers -- learned
upon news of Wallace's death. The Times-Standard called June
Beal, wife of deceased Times editor L.W. “Scoop”
Beal, to find out if she knew anything about it. June Beal
was a perpetually pleasant person who until shortly before
her death in July 2007 visited the newsroom regularly to chat.
June Beal told the Times-Standard that she'd
been mum on the topic for nearly five decades, even as she
watched it spiral out of control. Finally, with Wallace's
death, she was willing to share her secret.
”They were in on this hoax,” June
Beal said of her husband and Wallace. “It was just a
fun thing and the fun got out of hand.”
It certainly explains Chambers' almost complete
lack of skepticism in his reporting at the time. It also shows
how newspapers -- especially at the time -- had an incredible
influence on events, as Bigfoot became infused into the minds
of the adventurous, the scared and the gullible.
Bigfoot made a massive resurgence when Roger
Patterson supposedly filmed a Bigfoot near Bluff Creek in
1967. That footage is still some of the most relied on for
both skeptics and believers regarding the existence of Sasquatch.
To be sure, the Sasquatch and the wild man
have long been a part of myth and legend. And as Idaho State
University researcher Jeff Meldrum -- a primary advocate of
the existence of the man-beast -- said, not all the footprints
cast in plaster over the years could possibly have been hoaxes.
This goes back to the rule for misinformation
and general trickery: Just because you made it up, doesn't
mean it isn't true.
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