Mythusmage Opines

A Meditation on Ray Wallace and Bigfoot

Part Two: In Which Ray Wallace Has a Snit

In this post you learned how some Pharyngulites — otherwise sensible folks — had turned strident and shrill over the subject of the sasquatch. In this post you’ll learn part of the reason why they’re that way.

The story begins in 1958 when, as told in this account at Wikipedia, sasquatch footprints were found at Bluff Creek, a construction site in  Northern California. The finder, one Jerry Crew, took photographs and casts of the footprints and took them to a local paper in Eureka CA. The paper published the story and it was picked up by news outlets around the world.

At the time Mr. Crew worked for one Wilbur L. Wallace, brother of Raymond L. Wallace. The Wallace’s had a project to complete, and knew that a scientific investigation of this find would delay that project, if not shut it down completely. Ray Wallace also didn’t believe in sasquatch and thought it a waste of time to investigate. So Ray came up with a plan.

Reporter John Green has written a commentary on the Bluff Creek tracks, real and fake, and Ray Wallace’s part in the latter. Mr. Green gives a much better picture of Mr. Wallace’s duplicity than I ever could, so I won’t be repeating what he said. What I can say is that Ray Wallace and his fakes played to prejudices, for great apes in North America were known to be impossible because there was no known way for great apes to migrate into the continent from Eurasia.

Impossible because the last great ape we know of living anywhere near the Bering Straits, the genus Giganthropithecus, died out a long time before the Bering Straits were above water during the Ice Ages. In the eyes of many scientists the very idea was ludicrous, and Wallace’s fakes played to that thinking. By showing how some footprints were faked Ray Wallace convinced scientists around the world that all the Bluff Creek footprints were faked. Thus was science ill served, and the lie of the sasquatch hoax became common wisdom.

Ray continued with his hoaxes and others joined him in effect, but pulling stunts of their own. Sometimes with false sasquatch footprints of their own, other times with footage of friends in ape costumes, and one time by placing a sasquatch costume in a broken down freezer with a chunk of meat. Being primed to accept these lies as the truth about the sasquatch, scientists bought it lock, stock, and barrel, thus building up an emotional investment in the idea that the animal had to be fake, and any evidence pointing to its existence a lie.

The truly sad thing is, work has been done showing that the original prints, and subsequent prints found on site with no connection to Ray Wallace were not faked by the man. Indeed, there is work showing that Ray Wallace could not have created the original footprints. Read John Green’s commentary (linked above) again.

So things may have remained, with new forensic evidence discounted because it didn’t fit preconceptions, until a short film appeared on the evening news.

Next: How Prejudice Bamboozled Science or, Patty’s Big Screen Test