The Truth is Out There
It surprises people how much I know about gay culture. It often leads to questions of "he's not, is he?"
Andrew Libby once introduced me to his friends at one of Jackson's Gay Clubs as "This is Boyd. He's not gay. He's not even any fun." which, I figure, is pretty accurate. What happened is I responded to efforts to destroy these people by educating myself about them. Digging my way into the truth of something is often how I respond to controversy.
When I was a younger man, two magazines began publishing that interested me intently, so I subscribed to them both. Both magazines dealt with the statement that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.” The Skeptic magazine took the position that extraordinary proof was hard to come by. The Fortean Times took the position that it was easy. I subscribed to magazines that conflicted with each other on purpose.
Most people have no idea who Charles Fort was and thus didn’t recognize the word “Fortean.” I knew a woman who was aware of him, though, and she asked if my plan was to lay both magazines on my coffee table, let them battle things out, and then report back to me what they decided. That’s actually pretty close to my plan.
Around the same time, a television program called “The X Files” became popular. It had two main characters, Fox Mulder, who represented The Fortean perspective on issues, and Dana Skully who represented The Skeptic perspective, and together they looked at many of the issues written about in the magazines.
The X-Files had an official slogan that came with the T-shirts and Coffee Mugs you could order. “The Truth is Out There,” which was basically the premise of the show. The unofficial slogan of the show became “I Want To Believe,” which was actually more popular among the fans and did a pretty good job of explaining Fox Mulder’s position of how he wanted to believe that aliens abducted his little sister, but he could never prove it.
This business of “I Want to Believe” was a pretty huge deal in the nineties. It manifested in a radio program by a guy named Art Bell who, night after night, had guests that discussed extraordinary claims that people wanted to believe in, things like UFOs, ESP, Bigfoot, and Atlantis. Bell always remained neutral about what he believed, but he treated his guests with respect, no matter how crazy they sounded. In a roundabout way, Art Bell is responsible for Alex Jones, who first gained notoriety as a guest on “Coast to Coast” with Art Bell, a fact that Bell regretted as he got older.
I’ve been working on a project that takes stories like Camp Mondamen’s “Rudy” and the “Girl Into Gorilla” shows at the State Fair and merges them into a science fiction narrative that’s really a metaphor about an awful lot of things.
When I was twelve and thirteen, there was a show on television hosted by Leonard Nimoy called “In Search Of,” where they spent an hour investigating incredible claims on subjects similar to Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast,” aliens, ESP, and bigfoot.
“In Search of” is often credited for spreading the concept of Bigfoot into the American Culture. It was the first program to show what became known as the “Patterson-Gimlin” film on television. Patterson and Gimlin were California men who claimed to have a 16mm film showing footage of Bigfoot for nearly a full minute, although the footage is very shakey and out of focus.
For many years, the Patterson-Gimlin film was held as the best evidence for bigfoot. Even anthropologist Jane Goodall said that looking at the map of where Bigfoot is reported, it’s possible that a large primate exists there and should be studied. In the years since, Goodall has acknowledged that, considering how much research has been done into the phenomenon, still without any solid proof, it’s highly unlikely that Bigfoot exists.
You’d be surprised how many Bigfoot faithful there are out there. It seems like every season, there’s a “reality” show on basic cable about some group or another out looking for him.
The thing is, every bit of evidence of bigfoot has been debunked as either nonsense or outright fraud.
The footprints in the mud and snow that led the world to use the phrase “Bigfoot” turned out to be a hoax by a man who carved wooden “feet” that attached to his boots, and he wandered around the woods making footprints for people to find. He even kept the fake big feet and showed them to the world. In his old age, he said he felt guilty about misleading people like that.
The Patterson-Gimlin film is one of the most debunked bits of “evidence” there is. By now, we know the name of the man who wore the gorilla costume (he confessed.) The guy who owns Morris Costumes confessed that he rented them a gorilla costume (with an invoice to prove it) but that costume didn’t prove realistic enough, so Patterson and Gimlin rented a costume from a Hollywood effects man who went on to win an Oscar for “Planet of the Apes.” but at the time was working on “Star Trek” and “Lost in Space.”
The Patterson-Gimlin bigfoot (dubbed “Patty”), it seems, was a costume built for a Star Trek episode called “The Galileo Seven” and released in 1967. The Patterson-Gimlin film came out in October 1967, and “The Galileo Seven” aired in January 1967. If you take the hairy vest off the Galileo Seven alien and add more hair to the mask, it’s pretty apparent that’s what you see in the Patternson-Gimlin film. Breasts were added to make it look female.
Even now, you’ll find people who defend the Patterson-Gimlin film. They clearly “Want to believe.” It’s very hard to dissuade people who want to believe, even when you have a mountain of evidence on your side.
People believe what they want to believe, not what they have evidence for. That’s the main reason why I don’t typically join in conversations about a historical Jesus, or Moses or Noah. People who believe in the historicity of these subjects won’t be dissuaded, no matter how much evidence you bring. That’s fine by me. I’d rather discuss the things these men said rather than whether or not they actually existed, when, and where.
Whether or not the 2020 election was stolen and whether Donald Trump tried to foment an insurrection has become a matter of faith for some people. No amount of evidence will dissuade them. I was worried that might be the case when they started the Jan Six Committee, and now they want to imprison the leaders of that committee. I suppose that’s the typical punishment for blasphemy, and for some people, accusing Trump of insurrection is blasphemy despite the hours of video evidence.
I love bigfoot stories, even though I know there’s no bigfoot. I think bigfoot stories say something about how we see ourselves, which I hope to bring out in my book. Some people will turn their nose up to the fact that I’m mixing up my cryptids, but that’s kind of the point, they exist in our heads, not in the universe.
Sometimes, I kind of miss not living in a universe where Bigfoot exists. That’s part of growing up, I guess. Wanting to believe makes things real, even if they’re not actually real.
❤️