The Making of Bigfoot

Bigfoot. Huge, hairy, foul smelling, this legendary apelike animal continues to captivate the public's imagination. This fascination hinges on a single piece of motion-picture film shot in northern California in 1967. For thirty-five years, Bigfoot believers have been convinced that this sixty-second piece of film proves the physical reality of Bigfoot. But now comes a book that demolishes that belief, that produces final proof that the film footage is a hoax. The Making of Bigfoot tells the amazing story of Roger Patterson of Yakima, Washington. A part-time rodeo rider, chronically unemployed and dying of cancer, Patterson propelled himself into short-lived fame and fortune by exploiting his obsession with the Bigfoot subject and leveraging his expertise in manipulating and conning people to pull off one of the world's great hoaxes. Living within two hours of Patterson's hometown, for three years paranormal investigator and author Greg Long interviewed more than forty witnesses in Yakima who knew Patterson intimately. The voices of these witnesses, combined with facts unearthed from newspaper archives, books, and court documents, tell the real story of Roger Patterson. Both tragic and comical, a unique slice of Americana, The Making of Bigfoot captures the testimony of a colorful cast of characters who bring to life a man and a time in the 1960s when Bigfoot strode into the American imagination, and the world embraced a myth.