Christmas came early for FoF and the first set of presents appears to have been NEW CLOTHES!  First up of this duo of episodes is the Honey Island Swamp Monster which was selected during the usual sit-around session.  They started even earlier this time, I think they’re just messing with us now.  I do want to bring up something from the introduction, though, where they are flashing videos and introducing characters.  They flash on the screen the words “Unexplainable Videos”  Point of order, but that would more properly be shown as “Unexplained Videos”  and even that would need an asterisk.

I won’t go into the other videos this time since there has already been a bit of description about them, but I will concur with Revenant on the “methane” one.  I said Eddy right as they were showing it, too.  The only other thing I’ll say is that Ben was the lazy guy this time around and didn’t appear to contribute a video.

Chi-Lan brings us the Honey Island Swamp Monster which is an 8mm film shot by Harlan Ford and which ended up in the hands of his granddaughter.  The footage shows a dark, upright, biped walking through trees and other vegetation.  Quite well masked such that no real details are seen.  A good imagination and some common sense would have negated needing to go and try to recreate this footage, but then those two items were probably not at hand.

Jael asks Bill (who’s from that area) if there could be any natural creature that it could be and he responds that it could be a bear but that it would be extremely rare.  Yes, it would, bears just don’t walk that way, even in Jellystone.

Austin says that they have amazing footage and that it’s testable.  Just what does “testable” mean anymore?  Can you create some dark blob walking behind a bunch of trees?  Like I said, that should be something they can determine from their cushy chairs.  But then that would preclude them doing a night time investigation wouldn’t it?  They either need to drop the premise of debunking videos and just go out and investigate the scene (which would make more sense) or drop the premise of having a second season.

Thus, more travel dollars are burned up as Ben, Larry, and Chi-Lan head to Slidell, Louisiana to track down the mysterious beast.

Enroute Larry talks about how excited he is for this case because these ape-like animals have long been inhabiting the swamps of the south.  Notice how he says it as fact.  If that is the case then why do they need to even investigate it?

So it’s off to talk to Dana Holyfield, Harlan’s granddaughter, in hopes that she can shed some light on the footage and tell them exactly where it was shot.  Would she know that?  This will be followed upon by talking to the locals about any more recent sightings that may have taken place.

Dana, her husband, and the FoFers head onto the river on an airboat to go to the location where the footage was shot.  Chi-Lan actually makes me wish that alligators grew to enormous proportions or that they could at least get their jaws up about 10 feet in the air when she pumps her arms around in the air doing a “whoo whoo whoo” as they get underway.

Larry will go down in history as being the only person feeling the need to wear a tie into a swamp.

They arrive at the location, Dana says that she doesn’t know when it was filmed, that it was just given to her by her grandmother.  She shows them where it was filmed although one moss covered slimy tree looks pretty much the same as the next moss covered slimy tree there.

Chi-Lan borrows the original film so as to run some tests on it.  After applying her photographic expertise by studying what is given to her, she concludes that it is indeed 8mm film and that it is in a blue roll.

She next asks if Dana has a profile as to what the Honey Island Swamp Monster looks like.  This profiling will ensure that the monster never makes it through another TSA checkpoint in it’s life.

Dana, refusing to open her eyes and look at the FoFers (can’t say that I blame her) talks about things you hear especially when the moon is full.  Ben, realizing that this is going nowhere asks her if she knows of anyone else they can talk to and she refers them to David Shutte, a Gary Busey stunt-double, who lives around the bayou on a house boat.

They thank Dana and head up to meet David who tells them about an encounter back in 1993.  It was a nice summer’s night around 10:30 pm.  As they were coming back from the water, “it” ran out from behind the tent and dove? into the water causing the water to splash maybe 15 -20 feet high since it hit the water with speed.  15 – 20 feet?  That’s a pretty good splash.  I have this image of a Sasquatch doing a cannonball into the water to get that sort of splash.  They spotlighted the water and didn’t see anything.

Ben does a “Josh” and asks David that if they were to go looking for this thing, does he have any advice for them.  David gives some very helpful advice telling them that if they come across it, it’s better left alone.

They re-embark on their airboat, recreating the bow scene from Titanic and making me wish for icebergs in the bayou.

They discuss the size and such with it being between 6 and 7 feet tall on its hind legs.  Hind?  Do you really need to use the term hind when the other two appendages are quite clearly arms and probably were not used for locomotion since before the Rift exodus?

Ben says that could possibly have been a native Louisiana black bear (as opposed to an imported one)  Ben, Ben, Ben.  Spend 4 seconds on youtube looking at bear videos and cross that one off the list right now before you subject us to:

Black Bear Test

No such luck, off to the New Orleans Audubon Zoo to meet Paul Benoit, a black bear expert.  Good thing, too, Paul might be able to shed some light as to whether or not the creature in the footage is just a misidentified black bear.  Oh Boy!

Paul lets them know that they are at the black bear exhibit and he’ll go get ready to let him out.  So, Bear Attack in 3 – 2 – 1, AHHHHHH!  Chi-Lan demonstrates her photographic expertise by showing that she has her camera ready to go and prepares to film the bear.  Ben gives a countdown and the bear, not familiar with western numerals, especially in reverse, charges on “2” and brings the cast of FoF to the ground.  Oh, where was I, must have drifted off there a second and was imagining an alternate ending.

The bears come out and look so much like the original swamp monster video that they should have just called an end to it right then and there.  But, no, Chi-Lan wants to be even more exact and wants to see the bears on their hind legs.  Paul gets one to stand for 17 seconds which really should have closed this case.  I mean, absolutely identical match!  But, no, Chi-Lan (determined to take this to the extreme) asks if Paul has ever seen the bears walk.  Walk?  Why do we need to go that far?  Paul says no, not by themselves.

Chi-Lan says that she is glad that they did this test.  Why?  Well, let’s listen to her own words:

“I’m glad that we did this test.  We’re able to disprove that it’s NOT a natural inhabitant of the area, the Louisiana black bear.”

Got that?  Let’s examine that sentence.  They were able to DISPROVE that it’s NOT a natural inhabitant of the area.  Disproving means to show that something isn’t.  So they showed that it isn’t NOT a natural inhabitant.  Well, in mathematics, two negatives cancel and become a positive, ie -(-3) is actually a +3.  So, let’s look at her genius statement again, reduced to its simplest form.   Essentially they showed that it is a natural inhabitant.  Case closed?  Please?

No    Now they are going to test whether or not it’s just a hunter in camouflage.   They lay out a path of colored flags for their test subject to walk along.  They show a side by side of their Experiment Camera view that they have painstakingly set up to recreate the scene in the Original Video.  I  must say they did a pretty good job.  It almost looks like both of them could have been shot in Louisiana.  Other than that, not too good.

Ben joins Recon and gets out a Ghillie suit which he just happened to have on the airboat.  The suit is donned by soldiers and hunters alike to give them a bush like appearance and blend in very well in vegetated areas.

Chi-Lan applies some makeup so as to really blend in.  Come on, if you’re putting on a Ghillie suit, the whole atmosphere is ruined if you call it “make up”  Face-paint is a much better term in this circumstance.  Course, when Ben responds by saying “Make me beautiful” maybe “make up” IS more appropriate.

Skipping the hokey dialog where Larry and Chi-Lan express their awe of the suit, Ben takes up position and prepares for the daunting task of walking once he is appropriately cued by Larry’s countdown.  Larry is coming up in the ranks of FoF, he’s been entrusted with the role of countdowner.  Way to go, Larry!

Ben walks and Chi-Lan films while she and Larry do their “wows”  In review the footage looks pretty close.  In both sets of footage you can occasionally see a dark upright thing going between tree trunks.  Spot On!

Chi-Lan declares that the test shows that they can hoax the video with a simple Ghillie suit.  Ben concurs, says it could have been a hunter.  But Larry adds, “But it definitely doesn’t mean that that’s what it was” and then goes on to talk about several eye-witnesses claiming to have seen the monster.  Broken record here, but then why do they bother with the attempted recreations?

Chi-Lan says that they really need to do a night time investigation because the video was shot, well, in the day.

Larry builds some sandtraps and the gang plays a few holes while they wait for night fall.  Apparently he watches GH, although he didn’t happen to have any flour with him.  Amazing that he had packaged sand, though.

Ben strings some fish that Chi-Lan conveniently had in one of her jacket pockets and drapes them over a branch as bait above the sandy area.  The sand should help them see the foot prints of anything coming to take the bait.

Chi-Lan will monitor cameras at base camp while Ben and a still-tie-adorned Larry will go tromping through the swamp calling out “Here, Bigfoot. Here Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Bigfoot”

Skiffing through the bayou, Ben and Larry scan the banks with a thermal camera hoping to see something.  They hear splashing and move toward shore and disembark.  After a while of searching they see a baby alligator and even they realize that it was probably not the source of the sound of branches breaking.

So, they head deeper into the woods searching and make their way to the traps where the fish still hang in relatively intact pieces with no tracks in the sand below.

Then they see something and train the FLIR on it.  Speaking of training, they must have been trained in holding a FLIR by the GHA school of FLIR holding.  It is just not that hard to hold a camera steady so that it doesn’t swing around that wildly!  They think they see eyes but the hit disappears and we hear a bloodcurdling roar indicating that David Shutte probably just stepped in one of his own skunk traps.  We get the roar again (or they replay it) and we get sent off to commercial.  We come back, hear the roars again, and it’s back to the Situation Room in time for lunch.

Ben recaps the experiments as usual.  They get to the part with the roar and Ben says that they talked to one of the local trackers who also heard it and says that sometimes the male wild boars will sometimes fight to the death and it gets really gory.  Maybe.

What about the film?  Other than it being in a blue roll?  Chi-Lan says they don’t know when, but that it was after 1965 since that’s when Super-8 film was invented.  She goes on to say that a roll of that size usually has 3600 frames but that this film only has about 2500.  So, a third of the film is missing.  There were no splice points so either the first or end part is missing.

Chi-Lan says it was faked and that it was a hunter in a ghillie suit.  Larry says that they did a good job of recreating the footage but he wouldn’t say that there is no Honey Island Swamp Monster (which isn’t what they were trying to prove or disprove)  Ben pretty much says that the Monster might still be out there.  Well, we knew that was going to be the result all along.

As to the fact of the footage being missing.  So what.  We shot with that back when I was growing up and we often edited out things like forgetting to turn the camera off and getting nice shots of the ground, etc.  Missing footage in something like that doesn’t prove anything one way or the other.

Discussion of this episode is here.