Hoaxer Cliff Crook promoting Phony Photo, again

Hoaxer Cliff Crook promoting Phony Photo, again

posted by Matt Moneymaker; January 30, 2010 ; See also what Loren Coleman has to say about him at Cryptomundo.


Hoaxer Cliff Crook spoke to reporters recently, while displaying some new fake tracks, and promoting his Wild Creek photo again. The news story partly covered the new ongoing bigfoot history exhibit at Washington State Capital Museum in Tacoma. It's a great exhibit. Do see it if you can. It will be there for months. Bob Gimlin will be speaking there in June. For more details click here.

Cliff Crook's semi-famous "Wild Creek" photo.

See a larger version at Cryptomundo.

Crook owns that image, but he *licenses* it to publishers for up to $9,000 a pop. He has promoted it consistently for years, and licensed it several times to publishers.

It can be found in newer children's books about the subject, and more than one pictorial encyclopedia about famous legends and mysteries. It also appears in several foreign publications, which likely licensed it from Crook as well.

Crook got a lot of mileage out of the puffy black statue. In reality, it may have only been knee-high in size. Doug Hajicek thinks it was less than a foot tall.

Any publisher who licenses the Wild Creek photo will have a cause of action against Mr. Crook for fraud if he did the deal under the pretense that it's an authentic photo ... or the pretense that he doesn't know either way. Both stories are bald-faced lies. He faked that photo himself in the 1990's.

Long-time hoaxer Cliff Crook of Bothell, Washington, has a unique niche in the bigfoot evidence fabrication business. He's a sculptor.

What does a bigfoot-hoaxer-sculptor do? He mostly sculpts fake tracks, at his home.

At one time he had a whole track duplication factory in his garage and backyard.

Crook has sculpted more than just phony bigfoot tracks though. He has sculpted entire bigfoot statues of various shapes and sizes.

He didn't sell those statues, rather he took photos of them and tried to pass them off as authentic photos.

The A&E Documentary "Bigfoot" shows a series of his other phony photos, using completely different statues. See those images below. The documentary says the photos were taken by various amateur photographers, but the package of photos was actually provided to the production company by Cliff Crook, who claimed he obtaind them from various amateur photographers ...

Throughout the 1990's Crook was trying repeatedly to fake a photo that could become an iconic image, like Patterson frame 352 -- an image that book publishers would occassionally license for thousands of dollars because the image was so famously associated with the bigfoot topic.

Finally, back in the late 1990's, Crook came up with his masterpiece -- the Wild Creek photo (see image of black creature on the upper left of the page).

Crook's story on this photo: He obtained it from "a park ranger in the Wild Creek area near Mt. Rainier, Washingtion."

Supposedly the ranger didn't want to bring attention to himself, so he "sold" the photo to Cliff Crook and "asked to remain anonymous".

Not long after creating his masterpiece in the late 1990's, he came up with new gimmicks every so often to attract the attention of TV reporters, with various bogus claims and "revelations." Whenever he could get some reporters to show up, he would push his Wild Creek photo in front of their cameras, just to get it on TV or in the newspaper.

His ploy has succeeded once again. He lured TV reporters to do a story on him by claiming to have "proof that Bigfoot exists". His proof: Some newly sculpted fake footprints he made himself.

He described himself to reporters as "America's First Bigfoot Researcher" and used the TV opportunity to push the Wild Creek photo in front of cameras once again.

Fortunately, a local newspaper near the State Capitol Museum decided to contact Dr. Jeff Meldrum (the leading scientist studying the bigfoot mystery, particularly track casts) when they were preparing their story about Crook, to ask him about Crook's new claims.

Meldrum said Crook was "blowing smoke". The TV reporters didn't mention that, however.

Ten years ago, when Crook was heavily pushing the same fake photo, word started to get around that he was a notorious hoaxer-sculptor. Crook's response was to distance himself from the photo (while still promoting the image) by suggesting that he may have been fooled by the "unidentified person" who allegedly sold him the photo ... It was another bogus story, from a man who is full of them.


Other hoax photos of statues made by long-time hoaxer Cliff Crook. Shown in the A&E Documentary "Bigfoot".