A Video Is Not Worth a Thousand Words

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Damian Bravo, a Sasquatch believer. You can join Damian's group Sasquatch Lives? on Facebook.

Video recordings of Sasquatch have also laid claim to the existence of the creature, but have also gained the same ambiguity that photography has brought to the creature’s existence. So many videos exist today showing a furry creature walking on two feet, which many are saying is just a man in a gorilla suit. So I asked myself what would make anyone think that because they have something on video, it will prove its existence?

Not even the Patterson/Gimlin film is and was enough to prove Sasquatch existence. In the World Wide Web videos in all kinds of format, from cell phones, high definition video cameras and security cameras have in one way or another captured some kind of creature on video. Some have amazing footage and others seemed staged, or just show a few seconds of what the recorder says is a Sasquatch. Yet the same questions are ask, why did the person not chase down the thing in the video, follow it closer, focused properly or moved to a better angle and get a clear recording of the creature. Others say, “if I was close to such a creature and had I hunting rifle, l would have captured it, especially if was looking for Sasquatch”.

So naturally this is just a bunch of hoaxers trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame. In many stories of closed encounters related by those who filmed the creature, not one of them seemed to have had the common sense to follow the creature and keep filming, or even try to capture it. Now, how can we prove he exists? When the majority us believe that at that moment, we would have the common sense to do the right actions to prove Sasquatch exist. So why in videos it never happens that way? Yet people go hunting all the time and take video cameras with them and hunt the most dangerous animals and bring back not only the animal but also the video proof of what they hunted.

Now to be fair, in some videos, the recorder was in a place that did not give the opportunity to get closer and had a low quality device that was not optimal for that kind of filming. Even the local news channels can sometimes surprise us by reporting on events of sightings, but often, it is more as a filler story of interest and usually the reporters kind of make fun and laugh about the story, ninety-nine percent of the time is not done as a serious story.

Will the way we find Sasquatch be a dead body and the video of the shooting of the creature? I often wonder if maybe science is already studying Sasquatch, and all the hoaxed videos and misinformation is just a way to throw people of the track, specifically those that would want to make a spectacle of the Sasquatch, so he will not end up like in the movie King Kong, as the last of his species. Will the videos report his sad ending and we will hear on video someone say, “It was greed and the ego of men that killed Sasquatch”.

Everyday more videos appear and some make fun of the creature by dressing up in a gorilla suits and staging a scene that are supposed to be funny. When I first began my research to write this paper, it was amazing how many times I believed, with in the hundreds of videos I was reviewing, I would find the proof I needed to justify my belief that Sasquatch exist. There were times when I wanted to kick my screen in and yell, stop putting stupid videos of supposed Sasquatch sightings on YouTube. Many times I almost thought of giving up and just live my normal life, even if I believed in Sasquatch, I would just wait quietly for that video report were they prove Sasquatch is just a myth and I would forget about the creatures existence.

But then I take a look at the Patty film, watching the behemoth female Sasquatch move gracefully with every step. Then she turns to look back at the man filming and I imagine it was me behind the camera, not Patterson. So today I wonder if I am one video away from seeing Sasquatch legend come to life.

For so many who believe and have spent decades in this pursuit, the satisfaction I believe will not be the proof he has always existed, but a hope that so many others can see the true wonder of nature the reflection of our own primal beginnings, staring back at us. Man has always been reckless in his first encounters with a new species, this has cost the loss of many species and even today more animals are close to extinction, like the big cats, possibly one day never to be seen again.