The mysterious Kentucky project
New bigfoot evidence from America's heartland?
by Sasquat.ch aka Chris Kummer

Video footage of sasquatch was supposedly obtained in northern Kentucky. Scientists were involved, as maybe hoaxers too.

When will they release it? This is the question asked the most when it comes to the mysterious Kentucky footage. And there isn't just one film, but many. Up to 20 clips, John Bindernagel told me. The wildlife biologist from Vancouver island saw the clips and watched a sasquatch on the location in Kentucky himself in 2007. It's still unknown when the videos will be shown to the public. Chris Noel, a bigfoot researcher with the BFRO from Vermont, said in August in a radio interview that a documentary will be released before the end of the year. John Bindernagel had announced that it would be out in fall 2008 or spring 2009. Nothing came out. Adrian Erickson, who owns the clips, has not give any information about his plans and the project at all.

It is also not known how these clips will be released. Will they be put on a DVD for sale? Or aired on TV? Maybe as a launch of the forthcoming BFRO documentary series? Will the clips be shown in a Monster Quest episode? Or will they be presented at a press conference? If they do have such clear footage as some have claimed, I would assume that they will present their effort at a press conference. It's the way the "Missing link" fossil of an early primate was presented last year. They did a conference first to draw attention and then showed the evidence for everybody in a documentary on popular TV channels worldwide.

There's a lot known about the Kentucky project although the owner of the clips and the BFRO try to keep it secret. Questions and posts about it get deleted at the BFRO discussion forums. Probably most of the involved people were told to keep their mouths shut. Stan Courtney, a researcher from Illinois, who was involved in an early stage of the project, told me that he's not aloud to say anything. "I signed a non-disclosure agreement." So did probably other involved parties. But this is known: Adrian Erickson, company owner and bigfoot research financier from British Columbia, is reportedly in possession of several videos of sasquatch. They were taken during the last couple of years on a rural property in northern Kentucky. Allegedly there was a so called habituation scenario: A family had regular visits of these creatures. A friend of the family eventually submitted a message to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) in 2005. Several researchers came to investigate. They obtained footage: the controversial "pancake video". Erickson purchased the footage from the BFRO and took over the case. He bought the property because he wanted to collect further evidence. He hired Colorado bigfoot researcher Dennis Pfohl and ecologist/biologist Leila Hadj-Chikh. In 2007 scientists Jeff Meldrum and John Bindernagel visited the research site.

Hoaxed or not?

But it seems that not everything went the way Erickson wished to. D.B. Donlon, who maintains the "Blogsquatcher" website, speculated that they didn't get new footage after Erickson took over the case. "After the original witnesses sold the house to the Canadian the activity stopped,” he told me. “From what I heard, but this was early on, Leila Hadj-Chikh had not seen anything herself at the location." Donlon, who investigated the Kentucky case firsthand in 2005 when he was still with the BFRO, said that he had heard of five videos and had seen two. "All of those had been filmed either by or with the help of the original witnesses." They had other problems too: The notorious bigfoot hoaxer Tom Biscardi found out about the project. He went to the site but was eventually chased away by the former property owner.

Did the creatures move on? Is this the reason why Adrian Erickson bought another research area in Tennessee? As bigfoot researcher and author Mary Green told me, the Canadian paid a new house for the notorious bigfoot "contactee" Janice Carter in Tennessee in 2006. Green wrote about Carter's case in the much-debated book "50 Years with Bigfoot". But the Tennessee project was a failure for Erickson according to Green: "Janice couldn't furnish any footage or evidence to Erickson." Green guessed that Erickson established a second project because he wanted to back up his findings in Kentucky.

And there's the question of authenticity. Donlon thinks that at least one clip was faked. "The first video, the one I describe in my blog posts, was destroyed by the witness, and I believe it was destroyed because it was too obviously a hoax when shown on a larger TV in good resolution," he told me. "It's important to keep in mind that these witnesses were paid for their home, either 100,000 or 200,000 dollars, as a result of their videos. They had a very clear motive to hoax." Donlon found other evidence much more convincing. "A footprint had visible dermal ridges and was large." But the most persuasive sign for Donlon was the behavior of the dogs of the property owners. "I've never seen dogs act like that. They were truly deathly afraid of whatever was in those woods."

Another controversial piece of film coming from the Kentucky project is the "pancake video". It's a night-time video, showing a creature with a striking large head that reaches for a bait. It appeared on cryptomundo.com for a short time in 2007. "One researcher I know said that it might show a creature with dwarfism - the overlarge head and the short arms being a trait for that," said Donlon. "By my measurements, the creature could not be the lady witness, and she was the only one unaccounted for at that time." Alton Higgins, bigfoot researcher and biologist from Oklahoma, analyzed the footage also. He believes that it shows a person.

At least one video may be very conclusive according to Mary Green, whom Dennis Pfohl showed some clips. "You could see the creature from above her forehead somewhat and then down to about her waist. It was slowly walking through the woods and coming closer", she described to me. Green rules out that the creature was someone in a suit or a misidentified animal. "In my honest opinion it clearly shows a sasquatch."

Chris Noel spoke about another clear clip on the radio. "The woman was able to obtain daylight color high-definition video of this animal. It's a five and a half foot tall female juvenile sasquatch. This footage is going to blow the roof off the whole field." He said that it would be as least as convincing as the Patterson footage, if not a lot more. It's probably the same video Green told about.

The best video since '67?

It seems fishy that this footage – as good as it is supposed to be – hasn't seen the light of day and that its owner hasn't spoken a word about it. Up to now, film footage was released shortly after it was taken. For example the Patterson film in 1967: Without getting it analyzed Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin showed their video only days after filming all over the country. But the result was disappointing for them: Hardly did scientists take note of it.

According to Mary Green, Janice Carter was told that Erickson won't publish anything until he has many hours of footage and DNA results, and until everyhing is properly analyzed by scientists. It is uncertain if the project is completed. If not, they surely don't want to attract other bigfoot researchers or the media. The Georgia hoax last year demonstrated how newspapers react to claims of sensational bigfoot evidence: they go crazy. Another reason to keep it on the low could be that Erickson and Co. were hoaxed and are now trying to gloss over. So there are reasons to keep the Kentucky project in the dark. Fact is that infos are leaking out. Maybe this is unintentional, but maybe not, as D.B. Donlon points out: “I don't think they are trying to keep a real tight lid on things. My assumption is that Adrian wants to maximize his profit from his video, so leaks here and there are good things.”

The over 40 years old Patterson film from northern California is still considered the best (video) evidence to date. Several alleged videos were shot though in the meantime. The Freeman footage is the most spectacular. In the last year, several night-time videos were obtained. The most interesting is the Mike Greene thermal video. But none of these could convince science of bigfoot's existence. Nor will the Kentucky videos. It doesn't matter how good they are, because films can be manipulated in perfection today. But backed up with testimonies of scientists who have actually seen the creatures on the location, a multi-year study and maybe DNA evidence, the Kentucky project could be a groundbreaking event in sasquatch research.
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Interview with Mary Green

“The Video clearly shows a sasquatch”

Mary Green is a bigfoot researcher and author of the controversial book “50 Years with Bigfoot.” She says she has seen some of the Kentucky clips. She describes two in detail and doesn't think that they are hoaxed.

Mary Green, you have seen some of the so called Kentucky clips. Can you tell me about them?
Yes. Dennis Pfohl showed me several videos, some of them taken in color and daylight. I watched them on his laptop screen one by one.

Why did Dennis Pfohl show you these clips?
I believe he did so because he was hoping to win Janice Carter over and have her work for Adrian Erickson. They wished to have another habituation case to help back up the Kentucky project. But I think Janice was never able to furnish any videos or other proofs to Adrian Erickson.

Who had taken these videos from Kentucky?
I just know that S. had taken the close-up videos of the female and was told by Dennis that J. had taken a couple of good videos of the male. I did not get to see any videos of the male. Dennis did say that there was a resident male around at times and that he thought this female was its mate. I did not get to see any video of the baby either.

Can you tell me about the videos Dennis Pfohl presented to you?
One color video showed several minutes of the young female sleeping on the ground. It was a bit dark in the woods but the one who filmed did an excellent job of capturing her while she slept. The female hominid was not curled up tightly, but rather laying mostly on her back. She looked very relaxed.

What was the color of the creature?
It had very thick, soft and silky looking black hair, with maybe a slight reddish hue at times, but that could have been from maybe the sunlight coming through the trees and reflecting a bit of red in the hair.

What else did you notice?
A bit of a zoom-in was next done by the person filming. The hominid was thick around the middle. I don't know if this was before she had her young one or not. The camera then focused along her arms and hands and fingers. Her hands were very human looking and the thumb looked to be at about the same place as a human's would be, maybe only slightly lower. I did note that the shoulders and upper arms, and the forearms were extremely muscular. The hair all over the hominid was long and wavy across the chest area and the stomach area and down the shoulders and arms. The forearms hair was maybe a little bit shorter.

Did you see muscle movement?
Her muscles moved as they should in the arms and hands and fingers. I did note that the young female began to move more and more and stir like she was waking up and that whoever had the camera was backing off some.

Did she have large breasts?
I did not see any breasts. They may have actually been shown but not close enough for me to see them. If she had breasts they were certainly not even close to the size of Patty's in the Patterson/Gimlin film.

How do you know then that it was a female?
I just took Dennis' word for it. He told me it was a female and I believed him.

Can you tell me about the other clip?
This was the best. The hominid, probably the same female, was slowly walking through the woods and coming closer to a couple of trees. She went out of sight behind two of them and then appeared on the other side of them, stopping and standing still as she peered around the woods. You could see her from above her forehead somewhat and then down to about her waist. Clearly, the camera had been zoomed in. Her right side was against the tree and it left her left side free and you could see her shoulder and some of her upper arm too.

This one was of the same color as the first. It had curly, sometimes wavy hair all over her body, on the back of her hands, on the top of her head, and along down to her shoulders and chest. Her hair was from at least 3 inches to possibly 8 inches long, with the longer hair mainly on the head hair and shoulders and upper body.

How did the face look like?
Her face reminded me of a wookie from Star Wars, with a rather flat face in some respects. Although she was totally black skinned, her face did look a whole lot like an Eskimos face. But this is just my own impression. Her head looked to be more rounded and not one of those with a pointed head at all. Her eyes were of a beautiful dark brown, almost black color. There were a lot of the white areas like on our eyes. They were set deep in their sockets. She had very bushy eyebrows. If I remember correctly, she had soft hair all over her face, and maybe a very small portion of just hairless skin around her eyes and nose.

How was her nose like?
Her nose was like ours, very much so. It began and ended where our noses do. But it looked more like a black person's nose, a bit wider on the base where the nostrils are. Her nostrils were big also.

Lips and teeth?
Her lips were lightly rosy in color and plumper on the lower lip. It may have looked plumper because her upper lip came down over the lower lip due to the eye teeth which were grown out on each side of her mouth. The eye teeth were pointed and not flat like ours are. They curved backwards. They looked exactly like small fangs. The inside of her mouth was pink like ours and the rest of her teeth looked very white and more like humans'. Her cheeks were fat and rounding.

How did she move and act?
Very cautious. She displayed a look of wild cunning as she looked slowly around. I did not see her blink at any time, but this video was also fairly short. She was an intelligent being in my own opinion. She did move her lips and opened her mouth a little, and turned her head from side to side very slowly every now and then.

Did you notice any similarities to the Patterson creature?
Both had hair on their heads, faces, and bodies. But Patty had far less hair and looked larger and also more human without the fangs.

Do you think the creature in this video was real?
I believe that it was not a person in a suit, or a hoax of any kind.

But is it really a sasquatch?
In my honest opinion it clearly shows a sasquatch. There is no doubt in my mind. I know what orang-utans are and monkeys, great apes, bears, cougars, and many other type creatures. This was an unknown creature to mankind.

Were there any other videos Dennis Pfohl showed you?
Yes, beside the "pancake video" he showed me another video. Leila Hadj-Chikh was with S. in this video. They were driving. Then they stopped the car. I was told at this point that the female sasquatch was calling to the two women from across a strip of field at the wood line. You could barely hear something making some noise. Then the video showed the two women talking to the sasquatch and trying to entice it closer to them. The two eventually went on to town. The next morning, as I was told, someone found that S.'s car windshield had been struck rather badly. The video showed it. It looked like two or three big fists had broken it in. The hood of the car was bashed in all over.

Do you know why they are holding back the clips?
I was told by Dennis that Adrian did not wish to release the video clips and other biological information until all work was completed. They wanted to take a certain number of hours of good, clear films of the sasquatches. I was also told that Adrian would most likely first release the clips in Canada. I think Dennis said that Adrian felt more comfortable doing this in his own country. However, this was a few years back so I cannot be certain that this is still their plan.

Were you asked to keep the project secret?
No, I was not asked to sign any documents about what they have shown me or told me. So I am not bound to keep this secret.
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