Bigfoot Cast Collection Appears On Website

Paul Freeman Cast Collection


I had no idea that Freeman was so prolific and diverse with his hoaxed evidence. These casts are charmingly crude and almost whimsical. They remind me of "outsider" or "folk" art. Freeman must have stereotyped the Bigfooter community and thought that they are so gullible that these will work just fine.

Is Meldrum supporting the idea that at least some of his castings are authentic? Or is he only good with those tracks that he witnessed in the presence of Freeman?

William Parcher said:

I had no idea that Freeman was so prolific and diverse with his hoaxed evidence. These casts are charmingly crude and almost whimsical. They remind me of "outsider" or "folk" art. Freeman must have stereotyped the Bigfooter community and thought that they are so gullible that these will work just fine.

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Myself also and I got a similar impression. I was just discussing these at SFB. Check this one out:

http://www.stancourtney.com/portfolio/archives/pix/freeman/975323-R1-03-3.JPG

How can anyone think they are looking at a real animal when the see that? When you look at literally all his casts you can quickly discern the simplistic method he was making those impressions. You can see that he was just making the prints with various objects at hand and not carved stompers like Wallace did. You can see he is using either his fingers or basically cylindrical objects to make the digits of the hands and feet. See here:

http://www.stancourtney.com/portfolio/archives/975323-R1-18-18.php

And this one Meldrum loved:

http://www.stancourtney.com/portfolio/archives/975323-R1-11-11.php

Was Freeman using Jimmy Dean sausages for his print creations or what?

Several of those look like duplicates. I think I saw at least three CRIPPLEFOOT casts on that screen.

There is an interesting article on Freeman by the recently deceased Michael Dennett. The article is posted on Bigfoot Encounters and Bobbie Short follows it up with this commentary...

Despite the reputation that precedes Freeman as a prankster and maker of faked footprints, the dermal ridges more or less vindicate Freeman. Chilcutt established that the casts have dermal ridges that would be impossible to fabricate by a human being.

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I've seen several different ways to replicate dermal ridges on hoaxed casts. I like that people are fighting for what they believe in but blanket statements like "impossible to fabricate by a human being" tend to muddy the waters more than they already are. It wouldn't have been hard to use the word difficult instead of impossible. Where there is a will there is a way, to use the old cliche.

Squatchopedia says this...

Fingerprint and forensics expert Jimmy Chilcutt, who has extensive knowledge regarding primate dermal ridge patterns, observed dermal ridge evidence on some of Freeman's casts that helped convince him of the existence of an undocumented primate. An analysis and discussion of some of these dermatoglyphics and why they were unlikely to have been faked is available here in a journal article written by Dr. Grover Krantz.

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None of the links on this site lead you to anything saying what these "dermal ridges" have been found to actually be. We should stop wondering why people keep popping up in forums thinking that these ridges are gold.

I've studied these pictures for hours, and can say based on the number of toes, that they are authentic. It is impossible to get the right number of toes without it being a real foot print.

by the way, most of the casts are so poc marked and rough, it is hard to see any definition. Are the dermal ridges they are talking about the areas where sticks and branches were pushed into the casting?

Then there are the hair samples that Freeman found. Interesting info comes from two articles on BF Encounters.

Dennett again...

During the 1970s a number of people had collected samples of what they thought might be hair from the Sasquatch creature. Various hair "experts" came out with opinions about the samples but ultimately these specimens proved to be inconclusive. Sometime after his Mill Creek encounter, Freeman began to come across Bigfoot hair samples; one of the first was presented to the ABC crew for the October 1987 broadcast. An analysis by the New York Police Department crime lab concluded that the sample could not be distinguished form human hair. Freeman then produced at least two more sets of "hair", which he gave to Professor Grover Krantz. From information within the Sasquatch research community, I learned that a Japanese laboratory had told the professor the samples were not organic material they were fakes. When I asked Krantz about the results he said that another lab, this one in the United States, had certified the same hair as coming from an unknown creature, but when asked for the names of either lab he declined to identify them. Then came the International Society of Cryptozoology (ISC) conference at Washington State University in the summer of 1989. Evidence against Freeman's "Sasquatch hair" came from a most unexpected quarter: one of Krantz's own graduate students, Lonnie Sumer. Sumer presented a paper on the last day of the conference examining alleged Bigfoot hair samples (he admitted to me privately they were from Freeman) and concluded the samples were synthetic fibers. A subsequent article in tile ISC journal of an analysis from a Swiss laboratory on hair from Krantz's collection confirmed Sumer's findings. The ISC meeting, coming shortly after the Skeptical Inquirer article and in front of those most committed to a belief in Bigfoot, caused permanent damage to Freeman's credibility.

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Bobbie Short again...

In the fall of 1996, Vance Orchard sent me a notice that the hair attributed to this article, had been tested at Ohio State University but found to have no matches - in other words they couldn't identify it other than to say it was an unknown primate hair; it matched none of their samples.

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Wait a second. Did OSU actually "certify" a sample to be unknown primate which was later found to be synthetic?

Looking at that collection, I see SEVERAL different kinds of feet. Some with toes all the way up, some on the side of the foot, some more human looking, etc. Seeing that, wouldn't a normal person conclude that these would have to come from SEVERAL different species, hence, we're not looking for one type of bigfoot, but many which would make the possibility of it even existing physically impossible that science has never seen one.

Similar to UFOs. Some are cigar shaped, saucere shaped, triangular, etc. That would mean that we're being visited by aliens from several different planets. All those things just don't add up. I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but I would think that's just common sense. Again, that's just me.

Based on the butt and "kneeling" imrpessions (photos 1 and 2), I'd say Freeman was the first one to present impressions made by elk as being made by BF.

I would have to agree Desertyeti, that butt cast does look like that elk butt.

Profwag said:

Looking at that collection, I see SEVERAL different kinds of feet. Some with toes all the way up, some on the side of the foot, some more human looking, etc. Seeing that, wouldn't a normal person conclude that these would have to come from SEVERAL different species, hence, we're not looking for one type of bigfoot, but many which would make the possibility of it even existing physically impossible that science has never seen one.

Similar to UFOs. Some are cigar shaped, saucere shaped, triangular, etc. That would mean that we're being visited by aliens from several different planets. All those things just don't add up. I realize I'm preaching to the choir here, but I would think that's just common sense. Again, that's just me.

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If you were to take, say, 100 people and walk them through some muddy ground would you get casts that varied so much? I'm sure there'd be a little variation, but not on the scale we see here. In my opinion, what's obvious here is that hoaxers take different approaches to what a footprint should look like.

profwag said:

Looking at that collection, I see SEVERAL different kinds of feet. Some with toes all the way up, some on the side of the foot, some more human looking, etc. Seeing that, wouldn't a normal person conclude that these would have to come from SEVERAL different species, hence, we're not looking for one type of bigfoot, but many which would make the possibility of it even existing physically impossible that science has never seen one.

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I once saw a clip from a documentary on youtube (might've been called "YummyDVD") where Dr. John Bindernagel says that Bigfoot has an extremely flexible foot in order to explain the numerous differences in cast types.

Here are some of my old notes on Paul Freeman:

At some points in the video, Freeman's bigfoot has some similarities to the costume used in the Tenacious D movie. Here are some more costume comparisons and Freeman notes. I've also discussed how a costume could duplicate what's seen in the Freeman film here.

This post details more costume notes, how much money Freeman made off of Bigfoot (prior to filming that video), and how he admitted to doing other hoaxes (one involving a costume) in the past.

Also, it's been claimed that Paul Freeman did another film. Also at the BFF, post #61 here is pretty interesting and post #7 here notes that someone saw Freeman and his son in that area on the day the video was shot. Since Freeman claimed to be alone in the video, well...


These links note other Freeman hoaxes and confessions.

This old JREF post has some brief comments on Freeman and dermals.

As I recall, Jimmy Chillcutt determined that the so-called dermals in one of Freeman's tracks were merely human fingerprints, as noted in post #22 here. Similarly, desertyeti once commented on other ways to produce "dermals" (I think one involved mud suction) that were also mentioned on tube's website.

Page 92 of Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist Examines America's Enduring Legend by David J. Daegling notes that Freeman didn't "discover" his Bigfoot hand cast until after obtaining a copy of Marx's hand cast from Dr. Krantz. Scrolling up and down can provide more information on Freeman (pages 90-93).

Speaking of Marx, page 286 of Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide by Robert Michael Pyle has a man claiming to have seen Marx's wooden fake feet. Page 283 also has some interesting comments on Roger Patterson and the PGF.


Now that I think about it, wasn't it discovered that Freeman offered Krantz some "evidence" (chewed deer hide and Native American cave etchings) that Krantz never looked at (presumably because he suspected and didn't want to confirm that they were hoaxes). Also, didn't one of the trackways he "discovered" have two prints in a row left by the same foot? I think it was either "left left right" or "right right left."

desertyeti said:

Based on the butt and "kneeling" imrpessions (photos 1 and 2), I'd say Freeman was the first one to present impressions made by elk as being made by BF.[URL]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_105064a2043770be36.jpg[/URL]

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Wow - I didn't know bigfootii had antlers - and look at that bulbous nose! Where the heck are its eyes???

AtomicMysteryMonster said:

Now that I think about it, wasn't it discovered that Freeman offered Krantz some "evidence" (chewed deer hide and Native American cave etchings) that Krantz never looked at (presumably because he suspected and didn't want to confirm that they were hoaxes).

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Speaking of Krantz, can't remember where, but I read somewhere that Krantz told Freeman that footprints would be more accepted if they had dermal ridges. Not long after, Freeman's prints had dermal ridges.

I realize there are few out there with “Dr.” attached to their name studying bf, but man, talk about the usual suspects. And after seeing a few of them on tv now, any shred of credibility has gone the way of , well just gone completely away. I’ve had to put them all on ignore. I can repeatedly excuse, hope and give another chance for only so long. “Please bf community, give us someone new we can believe in!”

ap

You should check out the plaster cast made by Dr. John Bindernagel in 1988 on Vancouver Island. Wow, it sure does look fake.

This print from October of 1988 was found and cast by Dr. John Bindernagel and his wife, June in Strathcona Provincial Park near their home in British Columbia. It was left on a hiking trail, and indeed a hiker's boot print can be seen in the cast itself.

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The toes. You have got to be kidding. Somebody gave this man a doctorate degree?

Dr. Bindernagel is of the highest integrity, his scientific background is impeccable, and he has written extensively on the sasquatch topic. The cast itself is clean and crisp, despite the hiking boot impression. It must have been a fresh print, possibly only a few hours old, when found.

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There are some other interesting casts at this site with large high-resolution pictures.

I've never seen that monstrosity. I wonder if this is one of Meldrums 'authentic' casts.

I have some of Freeman's casts in my collection. I never understood how anyone supporting their authenticity could overlook the gross anatomical differences, not only between the Freeman's casts themselves but also all the other types of alleged casts. It wouldn't take a flexible foot to create those differences. It would take a magic foot.

To bad we'll never get a survey of all the "casts" to chart the variety of sizes and shapes. That would be embarrassing for believers.

(Of course, now that I've said that somebody will gen up a survey, cherry-picking the available casts and choosing the similar ones. They will then say, "See? I told you so.")