The clip has spawned Bigfoot speculation and provides more data for an Idaho State University professor who has become a Bigfoot expert.
The students who chose to remain unidentified told Local News 8 they were on a field trip for a school project when they spotted a dark figure watching them from a ridge above them. One student took the digital video clip with his camera.
“It just didn’t look human like. I don’t know what that is, it’s not a bear, it’s not a moose or anything. It was big and bulky and black,” the student told Channel 8.
The students also told the television station that they climbed up the ridge and took photographs of large footprints they discovered.
ISU professor and Sasquatch expert, Jeff Meldrum, has examined the photos and the short video captured by the students. Retired ISU professor and anatomist Trent Stephens was in Meldrum’s office when the film was being examined Wednesday.
The two professors have co-authored two books.
“I was just dumb-founded,” Stephens said. “That arm swaying is exactly like the Patterson film.”
Stephens was referring to the famous film clip of a purported Bigfoot captured by Roger Patterson in 1967 on the Klamath River in California. Over the years the film has been reviewed and analyzed in attempts both to debunk or authenticate it.
“There are only two arm swings,” Stephens said about the Pocatello student video clip, but he said he was struck by how much they looked like the swinging arm movements captured in the Patterson film.
“If it’s (the video clip) real, it’s pretty exciting,” Stephens said. “There’s always room for a hoax, but this was pretty amazing.”
Stephens said scientists like himself and Meldrum gather and consider all available data when exploring a hypothesis.
“Science is about looking at data,” he said.
Stephens said there are only two possible explanations for Sasquatch sightings in the U.S. One is the sightings are simply hoaxes and the other is there are large unidentified primates hidden in the woods and mountains.
The alleged sighting of an unknown biped near Pocatello comes just days before Meldrum is scheduled to give a presentation on the history of Sasquatch along the Oregon Trail in Montpelier this Friday and Saturday. In the Sunday Insight section of the Journal, Meldrum wrote an article on his research into Indian lore and purported sightings of large unknown creatures by people during the mass migration to Oregon that occurred during the mid-1800s.
The Animal Planet show “Finding Bigfoot” had announced plans stop in Pocatello in mid-June to interview Meldrum and people who may have possible encounters to share before the student film clip surfaced.
“Unless it’s an out and out hoax, it’s very interesting,” Stephens said about the brief moment along Mink Creek captured by the students.
