Whatever Happened to the Erickson Project?

[Guest SquatchinNY]

Hey all,

 

i've been out of the BF scientific study loop for a while now, and I have to ask, whatever happened to the Erickson Project? Did it just fade away into ambiguity like so many other formerly promising studies?

 

Thanks, 

SNY

Oops, an accidental double post. Sorry about that! Mods, if you could fix...?

[Bodhi]

If that was the blimp thing, it crashed and burned.....badly.  The ground crew volunteered to travel to the study area at their own expense and the project promised to support them buuuuuuut they didn't. The project leaders went to ground. The ground crew was abandoned and just sort of straggled out of the woods a few days after they'd gone in. 

 

One of the younger members here traveled there from Michigan on his own dime to be a part of the ground crew and ended up basically stranded there. 

[Martin]

The Erickson Project was exposed when the photo of Matilda, that claimed to show a clear picture of bigfoot, was shown to be nothing more that a Chewbacca mask.

 

Claims are that Erickson was duped by footers for some $600,000.

 

I believe Moneymaker is on record as holding up Matilda as genuine and the picture that lead to his claims of bigfoot having a dog type nose.

 

I believe that the project Bodhi referenced was the ill fated Falcon Project which was championed by Dr. Meldrum.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Martin

[BobbyO]

The blimp thing was the Falcon Project.

 

The Erickson Project released a couple of pictures and it looked like a Chewbacca costume, it then went incredibly silent.

 

There was a fair few people involved in that that to my knowledge haven't ever really talked about what the deal with it was/is yet still continue to be around in teh community to this very day.

 

Dennis Pfohl (sp?) being one, Bindernagel allegedly saw action but i can't recall him being overly open about it, PHD Leila Hadj-Chikh seemed to disappear too.

 

She did write this foreword for one of Bindernagel's book though.

 

"The Discovery of the Sasquatch offers important insights, not only about a potentially uncataloged species but also about the humans who have thus far declined to investigate it. Bindernagel’s scholarship unlocks a door to discovery that was carelessly shut long ago, but now stands wide open, waiting for us to walk through." 
— from the foreword by Leila Hadj-Chikh, PhD.

[Redbone]

Erickson shows up in the 2014 Documentary "On the Yeti Trail" available with Amazon Prime, where he mentions that some think it's a Chewbacca mask. This documentary shows a few more clips from the project that are extremely unconvincing.

 

I don't know if "On the Yeti Trail" is discussed anywhere in this forum, but It also mentions Sykes and Ketchum, as well as an Orang Pendek search.

Amazon - On the Yeti Trail

 

 

 

[aether-drift]

The Erickson project died from the crushing weight of unsubstantiated claims, the mass of which, stopped it's corroded heart from beating.

[Patterson-Gimlin]

↑

That is not surprising at all.

[Rockape]

On 7/21/2016 at 3:55 PM, BobbyO said:

The Erickson Project released a couple of pictures and it looked like a Chewbacca costume, it then went incredibly silent.

 

 

 

There were a couple of films too, the "sleeping squatch" and a supposed nightvision shot of a bigfoot that looked like a walking carpet.

[Guest SquatchinNY]

So in other words, a whole not of nothing. That figures. All these projects who hype these game-changing photos, videos, and evidence collections without an immediate release of at something relevantly important are immediately suspect IMO in terms of genuinity. 

[Xion Comrade]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-azUazmLAoM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpjiWs2dNDU

 

It's my understand that all of it was quite real, every clip they showed and the project itself, and that there were significantly better and longer clips in that one project even at that time. Over time there have been many more clips accumulated by some people involved but those aren't necessarily a part of the "Erickson Project" at all, it is still very much so alive and there is talk of just pushing it all out to the public out of frustration. They are running into the hard fact that video is worthless, the better it is the better the supposed hoax is the conclusion people jump to. Add onto that the problems that alot of the Bigfoot just look like a overgrown chewbacca in the first place and that people suck at analyzing things in general and you realize the whole thing isn't really going to amount to much at all even if it does get dumped out.

 

I have realized a odd point in the Bigfoot phenomena, there are tons of video of the Bigfoot floating around or being held in private, tons of evidence that just doesn't "go viral". God only knows how much of it is just floating around within the billions of videos on the net already. Skeptics ask why the Sasquatch are so rarely seen, why they aren't shot more often, why there aren't videos or pictures, and why there aren't hardly ever any other sorts of evidence popping up and the real answer is that it is all there actually, tons of it even. They get shot, evidence gets collected very regularly, they pop up on videos, and they get seen and heard all the time, people just aren't looking in the right places/recognizing what they see or even looking hard enough for the info.

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by Xion Comrade

[SWWASAS]

I agree with much of Xion C's second paragraph.    I would bet there are more pictures of BF in drawers and boxes being held back by people that do not want the publicity that have been released.      Probably less video since that format has been around a much shorter time.    The P/G film has been both a blessing and a curse in showing what could be with modern HD video and a curse in that it shows what can happen to the photographers of any new photography.      Some people want no part of what Patterson and Gimlin went through after releasing the film.   Can you really blame them?     What we see now are mostly products of young people looking for fame or successful hoax on Youtube with blurry cell phone video, much of which is outright hoax.   The stuff that could be authentic is such poor quality that most seeing it, throw up their hands with "I cannot see enough to tell".     Even good quality stuff like the Canadian IMax footage is a difficult read because it shows so little.    One pet peeve of mine is BF researchers running around poorly equipped or not equipped with good quality cameras.   I have even heard arguments from Forum members that cell phone pictures should be good enough.   They are not if the opportunity of your lifetime walks across the trail in front of you.   And we have a large group that have shunned cameras altogether because of what I consider an unsupported myth:   that BF will never show itself if you even have a camera.     I wonder how many opportunities for good photographs and video have been lost because of that?.     OK I understand that people have different goals out in the woods.    But don't expect much belief even from proponents or any from skeptics if you have a 5 minute encounter with an unaware BF and don't at least get a photo.   A BF that blunders into you or that is completely unaware that you are watching,   is a prime opportunity for someone equipped with a suitable camera.    Getting off my soapbox now.    

[norseman]

I agree, there is tons and tons of video out there that is showing something.... Which is why video is not the medium we proponents should hang our hats on.

[Guest DWA]

The only photo/video evidence I can see for which there isn't another plausible explanation:  P/G and the NAWAC OK prairie photos.  A man in a suit seems the only possibility other than an unlisted animal for both - and there isn't a person who fits in either suit.

 

And we see where we are.  NO ONE is hanging their hat on photo or video, barring something that hasn't been shot - or revealed to the public - yet.

[Guest SquatchinNY]

^The NAWAC OK photos? I don't think I have seen those. Do you happen to have a link?

[hiflier]

I saw them toward the bottom of this article:

 

http://deskhdwall.com/the-best-bigfoot-photographic-and-video/