Analyzing the New York "Bigfoot" baby footage report

An analysis of the New York "Bigfoot" baby footage, by D.W. "Darkwing" Lee, MABRC Executive Director.

For years, many of the researchers in the Bigfoot Community have struggled with the past evidence of famous and infamous events, and some of the proclamations made about such evidence.  With newer technology and software, reviewing these pieces of evidence is now even more critical so that we may either be able to debunk the evidence or at least confirm it as "probable" or "possible".

To that end, a recent post on my YouTube channel where a copy of the New York "Bigfoot" baby footage was placed, it stated that the so-called "Bigfoot" baby in the tree was a flag on an antenna on the white car in the background.

So that caught my attention and I decided to run the footage through the software I use to analyze video with, which does what is called deshake, a term for removing the shakiness of the camera operator and stabilizes it as much as possible and allows for better viewing.  The second part is to run it through software that professional athletes and trainers use that allows you to slow the footage down and magnify parts of the footage so you can get a better look at it.

This software was not available until about a decade ago, nearly 10+ years after this footage came to light.

I studied the previous reports that was made when this footage was first brought forward, as it went through the BFRO and I looked at their map for New York to see if there were other sighting reports for that part of the state.

Ulster County is in the downward funnel that goes down towards New York City, and has 4 counties that have reports from.  Ulster County itself only has one Class "A" sighting report of an encounter in December 1985, while Columbia to the Northwest has a Class "A" sighting report of a May 1983 encounter.    To the Northwest, Delaware County has a Class "A" sighting report from March 2001-2004 of a multiple observation over a three year span.  The other two counties have Class "B" encounters, which I have discarded as data for this analysis as most Class "B" encounters are not relevant.

So this is what the encounters list looks like on BFRO's Ulster County, New York sighting reports.

Previous claims that the area has a history of encounters and activity have to be severely questioned with only 3 reported Class "A" encounters stretching from 1983 to 2004.  

I am placing the BFRO Report here with the investigator comments for everyone to read.

Report # 7514  (Class B)

Submitted by witness on Sunday, December 7, 2003.

Video footage shot at dusk shows a primate in a tree in the background

YEAR: 1997

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: May

DATE: 23

STATE: New York

COUNTY: Ulster County

LOCATION DETAILS: Lake near Modena, New York.

NEAREST TOWN: Modena

OBSERVED: Original submission from Doug Pridgen.

I have a tape you may want to see. It's that of a few friends drinking around a camp fire up state New York.

The tape was shot in 1997 and not looked at until a year or two ago.

My girlfriend was watching the TV while we were transferring the tape and said what is that in the tree? I had to rewind the tape ten or more times. I did not know what to make of it at first, but I knew it was not from the wilds of N.Y. state!

At first, you think "big monkey," but what the hell would a monkey be doing in the woods of N.Y.? The thing swings from one tree to the next and moves up and down it with ease! It hangs by one arm and pulls its self up and around in this tree at a speed you have to see. It looks to me to be about 5 to 5-1/2 feet in height, dark in color, very strong upper body and fast as hell in the trees.

ALSO NOTICED: Not a thing.

OTHER WITNESSES: None of us at the camp saw a thing that night. It was not till 5 or 6 years after the event that the thing was spotted on the tape. Everyone that was on the camping trip saw the tape and thinks it might be an ape or a baby bigfoot.

OTHER STORIES: I was at this camp site for 4 days. I never heard a thing about the spot before or after.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It was at dusk. Clear sky, a cool night.

ENVIRONMENT: The camp site was in a apple grove next to a small lake that sat in a valley. All around it is farm land.

Follow-up investigation report:

After reviewing the tape, doing a frame by frame analysis, and speaking with the film maker for some three months, I have come to the conclusion that the tape was not hoaxed. The film was taken at dusk, and appeared to capture two unknown bipedal creatures in the background. Because of the lighting conditions, details of the creatures are silhouetted.

Weather conditions, including sunrise, sunset, and temperature, were cross referenced for the date of the video. They matched the conditions shown on the video for the time given.

Subject one is a large bipedal figure . It appears to have a conical shaped head. A second smaller subject apparently springs from the back of the big one and climbs into a tree, hand over hand, with great speed and agility. Subject one moves to the left of the screen perhaps fifteen feet, returns to its original location, stands in a wooded area, and apparently enters it after several seconds. All of this is in silhouette.

The "baby" appears to have no tail. After climbing the tree it swings out on a large branch approximately 20 feet in the air.

The big one is on film for approximately 10-14 seconds; the "baby" for approximately 40 seconds.

The property is privately owned, but allows camping, fishing and hosts ATV races. No pets are allowed on the property.

The campsite in the footage was set on the opposite side of the lake from the other campers.

There was a small outdoor music festival (100-200 people) happening on the property when the footage was shot. At the entrance of the property, vehicles were searched for glass bottles and pets. One man tried to bring in a parrot and was turned a way. A chimp or gibbon would have been difficult to miss ... even if someone dressed it up and put a Raiders hat on it ...

The property owner did not know about this footage, and has not heard of any anomalous events on the property.

See feature on the BFRO homepage for more information on this footage and follow up efforts.

The initial follow up was by investigator Steve Kulls. Further follow up was done by investigator Paul K (lawyer - NYC).

In terms of historical information, I also used Google Earth to look at the overall area from different times in the past, starting with March 1995 shown below:

Then an aerial view from 2006 as shown below:

Then the current view:

The forest around this area is fairly sparse, with large open tracts of farmland and orchards with quite a few houses and other buildings spread throughout the area.  Not an ideal place for a female Bigfoot to raise a young one with all the human activity and habitat in the area.  The land where this event occurred was also a working orchard, among other commercial ventures that the landowners were involved in.

In my previous blog post about this footage, I noted that I made three clips out of the footage that showed the "figure" in the tree, out of the 2+ minutes of the footage, this was the times that showed the "figure".  Those times are listed here for a refresher.

Times:
Minutes:Seconds:Milliseconds
00:01:23 to 00:07:64 
00:10:08 to 00:26:32
00:47:20 to 01:19:17

The footage was slowed down to 25% speed, and the magnification is set to 2.5x in the larger square viewer window.

The screen captures below are close ups and concentrate on a short section of the video in which the subject swings back and forth between a branch and the tree trunk.  Upon viewing the video in slow motion and one frame at a time, it becomes apparent that the figure is grasping the branch and the tree trunk with it's feet.  Take a few minutes to preview the pictures below:

As Steve Kulls has pointed out, New York state has laws constricting private ownership of most exotic animals, including chimpanzees.  However, as with most laws, there are lots of people out there who violate those laws and this can be confirmed to be the case in New York simply by searching Google for the news stories of people being caught with animals.  

I bring this up for a reason, the figure in the tree is clearly grasping the branch with it's feet, before swinging back to the tree trunk and clutching it with it's feet.  If this is a baby bigfoot, it's feet would more resemble this below:

Based on what we speculate about Bigfoot feet, they do not have the ability to grasp things the way monkeys and chimpanzees are able to with their feet as shown below:

The claims that this is a baby "bigfoot" is not supported by the evidence presented by the analysis of the footage, it does support that this is a monkey or small chimpanzee as it swings more in common with one of those types of animals than what is known about bigfoot.

Jim Whitehead, MABRC Oklahoma State Director, and biologist noted that it could also be an Eastern Hoolock Gibbon, or similar type animal as shown in the YouTube video below:

With all due respect to my colleague Steve Kulls, this is not a baby bigfoot and I do believe that all who were associated with the initial investigation went into the investigation with confirmation bias that this was indeed a Bigfoot.   I am the first to admit, that when I got into Bigfooting back in 1991, I suffered from having confirmation bias as a beginner, but once I seasoned up and was shown the right way to investigate by the old timers with a skeptical view of the evidence and allow the evidence to produce the results.  While some may shout that I am skeptical of Bigfoot evidence overall, I am searching for the answers and if I have to debunk some of the long-standing evidence that others have presented in order to bring forward the evidence that is truthfully presenting a Bigfoot.

The Cherokee Search for Bigfoot

The Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center was honored by a request from Osiyo TV, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma's video production company to put together a piece on Searching for Bigfoot in the Cherokee Nation Tribal areas, many of our Oklahoma members are members of many of the tribes here and this is the result.  We are proud of the way the producer and crew made the episode with a serious note to it, and not like many of the production companies make us look like these days.

The New York Baby "Bigfoot" Footage Analyzed

By D.W. "Darkwing" Lee, Executive Director, MABRC

Not in my official capacity as the Executive Director of the Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center, but on my own accord, I decided to check further into the "famous" or "infamous" New York Baby "Bigfoot" footage that has been around since about 2004/2005.  In this footage, what appears to be something swinging in the background behind some festival goers has been repeatedly claimed to be a juvenile Bigfoot swinging in the trees.  What is it really?  We will never really know for sure, but with the advances of technology, we can delve into the footage and see more than was previously viewable in the past.

What made me decide to look into this was a post made on the Bigfoot Field Guide episode that showed the New York Baby "Bigfoot" footage.  Which can be viewed here:

What did the post say?  Here is a screen capture of the post.

There is a lot of debate about whether it's a small flag tied to the antenna, but I decided it was worth looking at the footage to see if there was any credibility to that statement.

Just some quick background information from Steve "Squatchdetective" Kulls website about the investigation he conducted into the footage.  I highly recommend checking out Steve's site for not only this footage, but a lot of other investigations he has conducted.  Squatchdetective Website

I will give just a quick rundown of the information here.

The Event
On May 23rd, 1997, Doug Pridgen and his wife were camping at Lembo Lake Campground, located in Modena, New York, in the heart of New York's apple country.

A music festival was occurring at the campground and pets were not permitted at the campground, due to insurance reasons, which property owner Mike Lembo confirmed.

A couple, in which tent was visible in the film, was working the festival and had asked Pridgen and company to keep an eye on their tent while they were across the lake working the festival that evening.

What followed was a video clip of about a minute and a half, carrying a 45 second glimpse into a strange occurrence in the background. It should be noted the subjects intended to be shot in the film were not the strange bi-ped and climber shot in the background. Nothing was observed by Doug and his crew.

 The Investigation

The film was shot with an Video 8 Sony Handycam, model number TR64, shot in NTSC format, on May 23rd, 1997 at approximately 7:30 - 7:45 PM EST, in Modena, NY, specifically at the Lembo Lake Campground.

Weather information was compared to both the videographer's account and as indicated on the video and was accurate. The property owner Mike Lembo was contacted and confirmed the information per not allowing pets was accurate, and it was. Nearest game farms and zoo's were contacted and none reported loosing any primates in that time period, and newspaper articles were searched for any plausible explanations and none were found.

The campground, unfortunately had since been turned into an ATV park, now called "ATV Park New York," and the original campground terrain is nothing as it had been in 1997, many trees being removed and original trails bulldozed.

Immediately behind the area is a large apple orchard and the area is ripe with farms and orchards, and is immediately adjacent Plattekill, NY, an extremely rural community.

Upon initial examination of the VHS tape, videographer had supplied me with, which was eventually sent off to the parent organization I belonged to at the time,  it was discovered that there were actually two unsubs in the film. One larger and on the ground, and one which appeared to start, either being carried by the larger one, or on its back.

The larger unsub walks from right to left in the video, and appears to stop and move back to right to the point of where the small unsub had begun to climb the tree. The larger unsub then walks away from the focal point of the camera and out of sight. The smaller unsub, climbs the tree in under ten seconds, appears to swing twice between the two trees and the begins to hang off a tree. The height estimate from the ground, of the creature in the tree ranges from about 25 feet to about 20 feet depending on which part of the film is being explored.

I had the VHS tape converted to a DVD and the VHS was sent off to my parent organization at that time. (BFRO), but retained the DVD, which made video capture and analysis easier.

Throughout the years the videographer's story has remained consistent and concise and no deception has been indicated.

The videographer even sent Steve a drawn out layout of how the camp and trees were situated.

So what did I do to analyze the footage?

First I obtained a 1st Generation copy of the footage from it's conversion from videotape to DVD from Steve Kulls.  I converted this into HD avi format and ran a deshaking program on it, as shown below:

I then used software that is used by world class athletes to examine their motions by being able to slow down the video and by magnifying certain parts of the video so that a trainer is able to view anything that may be unhealthy or that needs to be worked on.  

Doing this, we discovered that out of the entire 2 minute and 12 second video, that there were only three short periods of time that the tree and figure were viewable, so we selected only those time frames for the analysis.

Times:

Minutes:Seconds:Milliseconds

00:01:23 to 00:07:64 

00:10:08 to 00:26:32

00:47:20 to 01:19:17
The footage was slowed down to 25% speed, and the magnification is set to 2.5x in the larger square viewer window.

The first video (00:01:23 to 00:07:64 ) is posted here:

The second video (00:10:08 to 00:26:32) is posted here:

The third and final video (00:47:20 to 01:19:17) is posted here:

So what did the analysis reveal to me?  I will reveal that in the next post here on the Bigfoot Field Guide Blog, so stay tuned.   (Also because it's 2 a.m. in the morning and I'm exhausted, so another blog post will be made.)

Using EXIF Reader

While doing research, in particular, photo analysis, the importance of using an EXIF viewer on the photos is very critical, in that it reveals a lot of information that the researcher can use in that analysis.  The following slides are from the MABRC Training Facility and is used to train MABRC Researchers in this very important aspect of research.  ALWAYS!! use an EXIF viewer to look at the details on a photo, don't never take anything at face value, no matter who it is that provides you with a photo.

Download EXIF Reader here