A sceptic and co-host of the MonsterTalk podcast, Blake Smith has spent years taking apart famous photographs and monster reports. On the SS Watertown phantom faces he worked for about two decades. In 2010 he published "The Watertown Ghosts" in Fortean Times, concluding the heads would have been between 5 and 10 feet tall. In 2012 he returned to the Jacobs Creature frames and measured the animal against a salt lick and a reference tree. It fell within normal black bear size. On Skeptoid in 2014 he judged the Skookum Cast a sensational discovery handled without science.
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Pro earlySkeptoid episode 1024 author, argued for a newspaper hoax
Host of Skeptoid episode 1024, which treats the case as a hoax
Pro earlySkeptoid author who analysed the case as a likely newspaper fiction
Pro earlyResearcher who searched service records for Jackson and wrote about the photo in Skeptic
Sceptic and MonsterTalk co-host who investigated the photo and found the uncropped original
Pro earlySkeptic writer who proposed an accidental double exposure (2015)
Pro earlyMonsterTalk host, examined the case in 2026
Pro earlySceptic quoted by Creative Loafing in 2011, suggesting otters, dolphins and manatees
MonsterTalk host who discussed priming and suggestion
Skeptoid episode 441 author, critic of the cast
MonsterTalk host who analysed the frames