Bigfoot Clip Everyone's Seen Is Shown to Be Total Fraud After Film Cannister Stored in Safe for Decades Found
The film clip that made Bigfoot a household name was a staged walk, a new documentary says, and the practice footage sat in a safe for decades.
“Capturing Bigfoot” opens in theaters and on Prime Video on Oct. 20, the anniversary of the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. Its centerpiece is a canister of 16mm film that Teresa Brooks said had been locked away for about 50 years.
Brooks is the daughter of Norm Johnson, who was a Boeing film department worker in the 1960s. She told the filmmakers she received the reel after her mother died in 2017 and later handed it to Marq Evans, a colleague at Olympic College in Washington.
The untold story behind the world’s greatest mystery. CAPTURING BIGFOOT opens theatrically in select cities on 10/20. For a limited time, it will be available to rent or buy exclusively on Prime Video in the US and Canada starting that same day.
Updates: https://t.co/Jj3tam3YJI https://t.co/tQ2RsDWNVQ
— Capturing Bigfoot (@CapturingBF) September 10, 2026
The reel runs about 40 seconds. It shows a hairy figure walking through woods and glancing back over its right shoulder — the same look that defined the famous 1967 clip.
Patterson and Bob Gimlin said they filmed that video near Bluff Creek, California, on Oct. 20, 1967. Edge codes on the newer discovery date it to 1966, and both reels were shot on the same Kodak K-100, the New York Post reported.
The figure on the older reel is slimmer — and the surrounding woods are greener — than the bare stretch in the 1967 film.
Original famed Bigfoot footage exposed as hoax after ‘rehearsal’ clip unearthed in new film
https://t.co/nIY8bMdGqX— Chuck Nellis The Phoenix (@ChuckThePhoenix) October 10, 2026
Brooks said her father was drawn into Patterson’s plan and kept quiet because his wife did not want the secret told.
“This film has been sitting in a safe for 50 years,” she says in the documentary. “Part of me wanted to keep the family secret.”
Evans has said the film markings confirm a 1966 shoot and that the 1967 film was an “incredible hoax,” according to a trailer write-up.
Researchers who have argued over the original for decades watched the reel in the film.
Larry Lund, known as the Sasquatch Sleuth, said, “That’s the answer we’ve been looking for, for years. That’s definitely faked and that’s definitely rehearsed.”
Greg Long, author of “The Making of Bigfoot,” called it a practice run and a smoking gun. Lund also described a deep sense of loss. His friend Rene Dahinden spent his life on the search, lost his marriage, and died alone, the New York Post reported.
BIGFOOT EXPOSED? The most famous footage in history may finally have been revealed as a hoax — 59 years later.
The most famous Bigfoot sighting in history may finally have been undone by its own dress rehearsal! For nearly sixty years, the grainy 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film has fascinated millions. Now a remarkable documentary claims to have uncovered an earlier rehearsal film, alongside testimony from Patterson’s own family suggesting the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. The new footage still deserves independent scrutiny, particularly over its dating, but the story raises a fascinating question about human psychology and our willingness to believe. For decades, enthusiasts insisted that nobody could convincingly reproduce the creature’s movements or anatomy. Yet our inability to explain something is not, in itself, evidence for an extraordinary explanation. That is how mysteries become myths and myths acquire an almost religious immunity to criticism. Perhaps the greatest irony is that, in a world where billions of people carry high-definition cameras, the most compelling supposed evidence for Bigfoot remains a few seconds of shaky footage shot in 1967.I’ve always thought it looked suspiciously like a man in a costume.
What fascinates me now is not so much whether Bigfoot existed, but how one piece of film could sustain a belief for almost sixty years.
— Mark Lambert (@sitsio) October 12, 2026
Roger Patterson’s son, Clint, appears in the documentary. He said his mother, Patty, told him that Bob Heironimus — who has long claimed he wore the suit in 1967 — was part of the hoax.
“That means my dad lied to me,” Clint said. “He was my hero.”
He said Patty cut off contact after he wanted to go public, and that he stayed silent for eight years because the rights to the footage were her only income.
“I don’t like being a liar. And I’m ready to come clean,” he said.
Skepticism writer Brian Dunning wrote that Clint told Evans his mother had confirmed the film was a money-making hoax and that someone else wore the suit in the rehearsals.
The 1967 clip runs 59 seconds. Believers have long pointed to its walk and proportions as evidence that the footage could not have been faked.
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