“It’s like losing a friend,” one Reddit user wrote after the documentary “Capturing Bigfoot” argued that Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin’s footage of the creature is a hoax.

Bigfoot community reeling as new documentary casts doubt on iconic footage of mythic creature

"It's like losing a friend," one Reddit user wrote after the documentary "Capturing Bigfoot" argued that Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin's footage of the creature is a hoax.

By Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel

Wesley Stenzel is a news writer at **. He began writing for EW in 2022.

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April 1, 2026 3:23 p.m. ET

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Bigfoot and Marq Evans. Credit:

Errich Petersen/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty

The Bigfoot community is reeling from a new documentary.

*Capturing Bigfoot*, a new doc from filmmaker Marq Evans, premiered at SXSW on March 12. The film pulls back the curtain on the infamous 1967 footage of Bigfoot walking through the woods captured by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin, which is widely considered one of the key pieces of evidence of the legendary creature's existence among his believers. (If you've ever seen a "real" image of Bigfoot, it probably comes from the Patterson-Gimlin film.)

*Capturing Bigfoot*, however, argues that the Patterson-Gimlin film was intentionally faked by its creators, as Evans stumbled upon a previously unseen 16mm film featuring a man in a Bigfoot costume and Gimlin riding on a horse. The new footage was seemingly shot a year prior to the Patterson-Gimlin film, leading Evans to believe that the newly discovered footage was a "rehearsal" for the now-iconic later film.

"It took me maybe nine months to realize what we really had," Evans told PEOPLE of the second film, which he received from a colleague whose father was connected to Gimlin and Patterson. "What we eventually found out is that [this new footage] represented a trial run, a rehearsal that was never discarded."

Roger Patterson's footage of Bigfoot from 1967.

Roger Patterson

As he investigated the footage, Evans connected with Patterson's son Clint, who wanted to share his perspective on his father's film in an interview.

"He'd learned the film was a fake from his mother years earlier and had been wanting to come out and tell this story," Evans told PEOPLE. "The lie had been really hard on him, and he was ready and wanting to get out from under it."

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The filmmaker also said that Patterson's son told him what happened to the Bigfoot suit that was worn in the footage.

"Clint told me that he actually saw his dad burn the suit out behind the family house one night in a big barrel," the director explained. "He basically spent about 30 minutes tossing it into the fire, piece by piece."

*Capturing Bigfoot* has shaken the faith of many former Bigfoot believers. Joshua Kitakaze, an active member of the online Bigfoot community, told Business Insider that discrediting the original Patterson-Gimlin film has done profound damage to many people's faith in the creature's existence, as that footage was "the No. 1 thing" that believers cited as evidence.

"I never thought this would happen in our lifetime, what Marq Evans has come up with in the documentary," he told the outlet. "For many of us who were believers, whether or not you are now, it just can't be understated that the film was the pillar, that was the cross of this religion."

YouTuber Eric Palacios told Business Insider that he no longer believes in the authenticity of the Patterson-Gimlin film after watching *Capturing Bigfoot* at SXSW — and that some members of the community refuse to believe the veracity of Evans' documentary.

"I don't know if it's changed my feelings on the existence [of Bigfoot]. It's changed my feeling on the community 100%. I'll tell you that much," he said. "I was kind of disgusted the way some of these people were acting — people that you've seen on television, on documentaries, talking about the Patterson footage and other stuff."

"The empire this film conjured and it’s seemingly all going to go up in smoke," one Reddit user wrote on an r/Bigfoot thread about the new developments. "The thousands of hours of Bigfoot videos and stories I’ve watched/heard are all now pretty much not believable to me. I was on the fence about the patty film, but thought it was the best one out there. If that’s made to be a hoax, idk what I can stand on that’d make me want to believe anymore."

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"I'm pretty bummed out about high likelihood that the PGF is now debunked," another user wrote. "It's like losing a friend... but the truth is the truth. I have to accept that."

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