So I'm lying in bed, grading research projects, and the TV is on in the background just for noise. "MonsterQuest" comes on, a show about "The American Werewolf" or some such--the Dogman of Michigan. I'm too lazy to put down my grading and find the remote, so I half pay attention to it.
And as part of the show, there's a clip of "the Gable film"--an eight-mm film--kid on a snowmobile, someone chopping wood, then a drive in a truck and then this indistinct beast charges whoever's filming and the last action shot is the thing's gaping maw with big ole teeth chomping on the camera lens. MQ experts weigh in. The film obviously dates from the 1970s. As to the creature, they point out that it's definitely an unknown beastie, not a bear, not a wolf, not a dog, and it couldn't possibly be a guy in a suit because its movements and musculature are clearly inhuman.
But then disc jockey and author Steve Cook appears and identifies the mysterious creature as a gias. That is a guy in a suit. In fact, he was the guy in the suit. Even more, the film was shot not in the seventies, but about 2007, on old equipment. There was even a sequel "investigative film" showing the dead bodies of the thing's victims. But there was also a "making of" film shot at the same time showing Cook in the ghillie suit, doing a quadripedal run (a very good one too), the "dead body" revealed as a guy apparently sprawled on his face but actually standing in a hole and wearing a fake torso that made him look as though he were ripped in half, and so on (I think this was Cook again, in drag and a wig).
Long story short, a fake that for at least a couple of years evidently fooled a lot of experts. So...it can be done, eh?
