Lunch with Peter Byrne by Mike Rugg

The following weekend found me driving
down to Los Angeles, CA at 4 am to meet up
with Scott McClean. Renown for his wallsized
frame 352 enlargements and his fantastic
collection of archival newspaper stories, Big
News Prints, Scott had invited me to join him
that Saturday for a bigfooting lunch with Peter
Byrne. It was an opportunity to meet someone
who had been active in the search for bigfoot
since the late 1950s, not to mention his work
prior to that searching for sign of the Yeti in
Nepal. Peter had also invited Cliff Barackman,
a fellow field researcher and friend from Long
Beach, CA and David Murphy, the man who is
writing the authorized biography of Roger
Patterson.
We were joined by a man who founded the
Kodak film processing laboratory in Seattle,
WA in the mid-1960s along with his daughter
and a friend. As you might imagine, much of
the discussion centered around the processing
of Kodachrome 2, the film stock which Roger
Patterson used to capture the images from Bluff
Creek on October 20, 1967. It was very
interesting and no definite conclusions were
reached regarding the processing of that
famous footage.
Peter also shared with us photographs he had
from his investigation of the Patterson/Gimlin
film site. He also had some other amazing
photos from his earlier expeditions in the Bluff
Creek wilderness. The summary of this
luncheon event will soon be posted on Peter
Byrneʼs website (a work in progress) and weʼll
be sure to direct you to that web location as
soon as it becomes available.
It was a wonderful afternoon talking bigfoot
and enjoying the hospitality of Peter and his
friend Kathy. It was also a great time spent
with Scott, Cliff and David. I hope you all have
had the chance to read some of the amazing
articles Scott has compiled into his book, Big
News Prints. The Bigfoot Discovery Museum
has a copy of the book available for your
perusal and most of the articles can be found on
a thread at www.bigfootforums.com under the
media section heading of “Amazing Historical
Archives.”