Werewolves in America: The Gable Film

This is a quick writeup about the infamous Gable Film, which was a homemade horror film that was seen by some as evidence of a werewolf like creature in the American Northern Midwest.

When you first see the Gable Film, without knowing about it, you get this eerie feeling that you are watching something that you’re not supposed to see.

It is grainy and appears to be shot in the early to mid 1970s. There is a long haired man chopping wood and many period vehicles.  There are people riding vintage snowmobiles and the whole thing looks like a period film shot on one of those old movie cameras.

Well, it WAS shot on an old home movie camera, so the film is intentionally made to look like a period home movie.

It’s all play and vehicles, just like any real home movie, until you come to a shot in the woods where this stocky creature that walks like a mountain gorilla comes into view. It seems to have pointed ears and it charges the cameraman. The last frame of the film shows an open mouth full of teeth.

Upon analysis of the film, the last frame with teeth appears to be spliced in, because it just appears for that one final frame.

Okay, well enough.

This film was supposedly found in a garage sale or estate sale box with nothing identifying the owner or where it was shot.

So, it was released and of course, since these werewolf creatures have been sighted in the area of the northern midwest for some time, it had some people frightened and even some skeptics left scratching their heads. Of course, some people just figured it was a hoax, but it was creepy and could leave you wondering nonetheless.

Well, to make a long story short, the film ended up on the cable show, Monsterquest, where they interviewed the guy who helped release the film, and he led them to the film’s creator. It is most definitely a hoax, but it’s also very interesting to see HOW this one was created since it gives insight into the mind of the hoaxer and also how these things can be created to look real and even vintage.

Here is a video on the Gable Film:

So you see, you can create a realistic looking vintage film if you have the right equipment, setting, and props.

While I personally have mixed feelings on hoaxers like the guy who produced the Gable Film, I have to admire the guy’s ingenuity and even his follow up film purporting to show the aftermath, right up to the gory torso up against his partially buried body to make it look like he was ripped in half by the beast.

This isn’t to say that all of these other people who claim they have sighted unexplained things in the area are lying or wrong, but you DO have to take so called video proof with a grain of salt since there are VERY talented people out there who are capable of producing such believable hoaxes.

There are so many Bigfoot, UFO, lake monsters, and other potential hoaxes out there that you just can’t trust most of them.

Modern computers have brought in amateur CGI and other techniques, but the Gable Film proves that you can accomplish this without ANY modern tools, and going the vintage look route is something that can really fool people.

They had a guy analyzing the Gable Film, and he didn’t know it was a hoax, and he was describing how the way the creature walked in the video, it was unlike a human in a suit. It was, in fact, a human in a Gillie suit!

This brings into question all sorts of film “proof”, right up to the famous Gimlin Bigfoot film that has been THE Bigfoot proof for decades.

What I am saying here is that it’s okay to wonder if these unexplained things exist, but you have to be careful and not believe without some sort of scrutiny applied to ALL claims. Without that, it’s a hoaxer’s dream.

So, while I am uneasy about praising hoaxers since they help to add ridicule to claims by people who are genuine in their belief that they experienced something real, it does add to our body of evidence about hoaxes, the ability of hoaxers, and our ability to spot even high quality hoaxes and rule them out before thy fool too many people. It also increases the ability of the real researchers to become familiar with and debunk them before they gain much traction or damage the investigative field too much.

The Gable film is one of those things that provides something for everyone. For the researcher, it provides a prime example of a very good hoax, to help them spot others before being fooled and made a fool of. For skeptics, it provides validation of their skepticism. For everyone else, it provides entertainment and the cheap thrill and then relief that it wasn’t real to begin with.

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