Leaderboard

Both days were well attended with a full house on Saturday and mostly full on Friday. Dr. Jeff's talk was as good as ever. Nice to see so much interest in this subject locally.

I mean that for some reason many skeptics view Patterson's keeping the rental camera too long as some kind of indication of a hoax. I don't follow the logic here. I view it entirely the opposite, as a nod toward authenticity. You can't be a stupid, careless or risk-taking hoaxer and also have your hoax fool at least some of the global scientific community for nearly 60 years and counting. Those two don't mesh well. A careless hoax probably lasts about a day tops. Hypothetically, to pull off the PGF as a hoax you would have to be some kind of a time-travelling certified creative genius (sarcasm), and any self-respecting certified genius wouldn't forget or just not bother to take the rental camera back on time leading to an arrest warrant being issued - purely for the reason written in my first sentence. It casts suspicion and gives you unwanted attention. Plus - If you're hoaxing, you have complete control of when, where and what you shoot. So Patterson's sitting on the camera for 6 months and then only actually filming in October when the camera was past due makes no sense from a hypothetical control point of view. Of course, what likely happened is he had the camera since around May 16th. I don't see why he wouldn't have taken it with him and Gimlin to Mt St Hellens, as they went there specifically to look for evidence. Then as soon as they got back to Yakima, Patricia passed on the urgent message from Al Hodgson about the Blue Creek Mountain trackways and they would have immediately switched focus to packing everything up for California given the urgency. Patterson may have had to make the choice at this point to extend the rental at Sheppard's Camera Store or just keep it and take the consequences later - which intentionally or not, he obviously did. To go south without it would be pointless (although M K Davis is adamant he also took a Bolex to Bluff Creek) This kind of illustrates the logical tussle that Long has throughout his book - one which he does particularly poorly at. He has to make Patterson seem super-clever for readers to buy that the PGF is hoaxed. He repeats that phrase multiple times in summarizing every interview in almost every chapter. But Patterson's actions are frequently anything but clever and Long never manages to bridge that gap imo.