Beast of Bray Road - The Gable Film

The Gable Film

In 2002 a film surfaced, supposedly made in the 1970s. It became known as the Gable film because of a paper label affixed to the box. The film, just over 3 minutes long, shows at first what looks like simple home movies, of kids riding snowmobiles, a man washing his truck. Near the end of the film, the person videotaping is riding down a remote dirt road, when he stops and goes out to check what looks to be a huge bulky creature on all fours. The creature suddenly runs after the cameraman, who tries to run away, before there is rustling and a brief shot of teeth and fangs before the camera falls to the ground. A second film was "discovered" and showed a police investigation after the cameraman in the first film is found dead. The police camera pans over to two officers examining the body, which is revealed to have been torn in half by whatever attacked the cameraman. In posts to several cryptozoology and related forums, a user identified as Don Coyote stated that he knew a relative of the dead body in the film. The relative said that the officer saw something that was apparently very traumatic. The officer lost his mind and began rambling "Dogs have four toes, Bears have five."

For years, the debate raged about whether the films were real or not. Finally in 2010, on the History Channel program, Monster Quest, Steve Cook confirmed that both films were fake, made in 2002 by Mike Agrusa, who had been a longtime fan of Cook's "The Legend," a song about the dogman. The "creature" in the first film was actually a man in a Ghillie suit. The body in the second film was made of painted styrofoam. Although Monster Quest dramatized the event to make it appear that their expert had analyzed and found curious flaws in the film, then dispatched werewolf expert Linda Godfrey to interrogate Cook to determine the truth, Cook claimed in a lengthy blog post that he informed all parties involved in the production that the film was fake weeks before filming on the episode began.