THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (10 page)

Workers during early construction of Highway 71 in 1928.
(Courtesy of the Miller County Historical Society)

3. Jonesville Monster

The Haunting Begins

The Fouke Monster did not start out as the Fouke Monster. Well, that is to say it
did
start out as a “monster” and still is one (as far as we know), but in the process of its rise from the swamps to greater fame, a renaming took place. It actually began its cryptid life as the “Jonesville Monster,” named in reference to a small community located about six miles southwest of Fouke.

If anyone thinks the area around Fouke where Boggy Creek crosses the highway is spooky at night, then just take a drive down the backroads of Jonesville late one evening. This is a true monster’s paradise where the trees bend threateningly toward the road, and the brush is so thick it can hide even the largest of predators that may be lurking only a few feet away.

Jonesville was founded in the late nineteenth century by a family of settlers bearing the Jones surname. Many of their descendents still live there today, some of which have given me insights into the monster’s tale. The community itself is not much larger than it was back in the early 1900s, and it still enjoys a low profile setting amid the rich Sulphur River Bottoms. The borders of the community fit roughly between Boggy Creek on the north, Highway 71 to the east, and the Sulphur River to the southwest. Just a few miles to the west sits the magnificent Sulphur River State Wildlife Management Area while Mercer Bayou spreads out just beyond the Sulphur River to the south. All in all, Jonesville has a bay window view of some of the state’s most remote and inhospitable swamplands. When the rivers flood, all sorts of game are forced to expand their territory to avoid the mucky wallows. It’s times like these when the residents of Jonesville watch closely for any strange figures lurking in their backwoods.

Taking a short jog south on the old U.S. 71, Jonesville arrives without fanfare. In fact, it is easy to pass right on by if you don’t know where you are going. There’s only one road in and one road out of Jonesville. This main thoroughfare is marked by a stark white church sign, and other than a few dirt driveways that disappear behind the trees, there’s not much else to announce its presence. Turning down the road and heading into Jonesville, all semblance of highway is immediately lost. The modern world seems to disappear in the rearview mirror like some strange Twilight Zone episode. The roads here are crudely paved and without curbs, as you would expect from old country roads. The small ditch that slopes off each side of the road is quickly met with wire fencing, trees, and brush, lining both sides like a natural wall. You can’t see the houses that dot the countryside. You know they are there because of tell-tale driveways winding behind the trees, but it’s hard to make out any real details even in daylight. The foliage is thick, especially when summer is in full bloom. And if it’s hard to see a house, imagine how hard it is to see a dark hair-covered creature that may prefer to watch
you
instead of letting its presence be known. Driving in the area always makes me realize how easy it would be to hide in the dense underbrush just out of sight.

As the evening sun continues to slip down behind the treeline, a spooky calm starts to set in. The sun’s errant rays still break through the dense forestry here and there, as shadows begin to form pockets of dusky darkness all around. In many places the trees are so thick they envelop the road in a complete canopy. Rounding a corner and proceeding down an incline into these long black tunnels is like driving into the great maw of an enormous beast. It’s definitely a creepy place, where the imaginations of passersby and tourists could certainly run wild. Maybe
they
could mistake the shadowy figure of a distant hunter for that of a hairy monster, or believe a bear to be a bipedal manimal. But it was
not
tourists or city folks who originally encountered the legendary beast of Boggy Creek; it was the locals, the people who have lived here all their life. These people do not paint the dark woods with fancy metaphors or pay heed to gaping maws of canopy trees. These country folks know well the wildlife of the area and regard this place as their home, not a spooky place of legend. They have little time for nonsense as they carve out an existence in the often inhospitable setting. So when the people of Jonesville first began to speak of a strange ape-like animal that was haunting their land, it might have done us well to listen.

The original settlers of Jonesville, circa 1895.
Seated L to R: Mrs. Bose Jones (holding Isadore), Mr. Bose Jones.
Standing: Albert “Bank”, Mary Jones Grandberry Davis, Ed,
Epsie Jones Harris, Commadore.
(Courtesy of the Miller County Historical Society)

Sifting through old
Texarkana Gazette
newspapers, I came across what appears to be the earliest reference to a sighting in modern times. It came from Leslie Greer who served as Miller County Sheriff from 1967 to 1974. In 1946, Greer states in the article, “I was campaigning for tax assessor and stopped to talk to a lady sitting on her front porch. She lived about halfway between Fouke and the Below Bridge. [7]  She told me that she saw some kind of animal go down in the field in a low, bushy place. She said it looked kind of like a man, and walked like a man, but she didn’t think it was a man.”

Greer never gave much thought to the report until the rash of 1971 sightings, so up until that time there was little awareness of the creature beyond the boundaries of Jonesville. But as with Willie Smith and Sheriff Greer, once the frenzy started at the Ford house, all the strange incidents from the past began to make sense, at least in the eyes of those who already possessed a piece of the scattered puzzle.

Another person alleged to have early knowledge of the Jonesville creature was James Crabtree. In about 1955, he claimed to have come up on a bizarre creature while fishing in a nearby river. The creature was large and hairy like a gorilla, but it walked like a man. I confirmed the story with Crabtree’s great niece, Syble Attaway, who kindly agreed to meet me one afternoon in Fouke. She was approximately 10 or 11 years old when she heard her great uncle tell about what he had seen that day.

“We went over there one day,” Ms. Attaway began, describing how she had gone to her grandparent’s house to visit a sick relative. “They would be sitting around talking, you know. Uncle James said, ‘I went down to the river that morning to run my trot lines. I was floatin’ down the river and saw something up on the bank.’ He said ‘it was sittin’ down like a man, washing its feet. I tried to ease up, or float up on it, but it stood up and walked off.’”

As the adults talked, Syble’s grandfather, Lee Crabtree, suggested that it might have been a gorilla. But James was sure it wasn’t. The size of the animal didn’t seem right. Lee thought perhaps his brother had seen a bear, but again James disagreed. She recalled his unsettling answer: “It walked like a man; it didn’t walk like a bear. It just stood up and walked off.”

One of the roads near Jonesville, pictured in 2011.
(Photo by the author)

It seems unlikely that an experienced woodsman like James Crabtree would mistake any sort of local wildlife for a mysterious creature. The locals who knew James, or knew of him, believed he was one of the best hunters and trappers to ever come out of Jonesville. It just came down to whether one believed Mr. Crabtree or not. Ms. Attaway herself felt that the story was true. “There was something [to the stories], I guarantee there was. They just didn’t sit around and make things up. They might exaggerate a story about an old coon dog or something, but they didn’t just sit around and make up stuff that didn’t really happen. These were just three old people sitting there discussing their day to day life.”

Though she heard this account many years ago, Ms. Attaway remembers the tale distinctly. Not only must it have sounded strange and frightening to a small girl, but her grandparents told her not to repeat the story for fear that outsiders might take them to be crazy. In fact, this was a real concern and one of the reasons that these early Jonesville sightings did not make the newspaper. No Jonesville resident in their right mind would call up the
Texarkana Gazette
to report a “monster sighting.” Back in those days, these country folk did not have much in the way of riches, all they had of value was their
word
. This being so, the integrity of their word was highly important. To sully it with tall tales of monsters was not something most people were willing to risk. Not only did they run the risk of losing the value of their word, but a one-way ticket to a sanitarium might be in their future if they continued to purport such fantasies.

Despite such hazards, however, the strange stories did make the rounds, at least locally. According to the recollections of Fouke residents, such as Frank McFerrin who was born and raised there, James Crabtree’s story circulated among the locals when it first occurred in the 1950s, but was not taken seriously at the time. “This was one of the first sightings that received a wider acclaim. In other words, it reached up here to Fouke. But I think many people wouldn’t put credibility in it at first,” McFerrin told me as I interviewed him one afternoon in Fouke. I asked if the newspapers had gotten wind of the incident. McFerrin explained that: “[News of] the sighting didn’t travel very far. It was just something local people talked about.”

But James Crabtree wasn’t the only one who had seen a strange animal lurking around Jonesville at the time. Ms. Attaway recalled another incident that took place not long after her great uncle’s sighting on the river. She was riding in the car with her grandparents, heading back to their house, which was located near Independence Cemetery on County Road 9. “We were going home at night and I was lying down in the back seat. It was probably after seven o’clock because it was bedtime,” she remembered. “We had almost gotten to grandma and grandpa’s when something crossed the road in front of them.” Syble didn’t get a look at the creature, but she will never forget the strange conversation that followed.

“Lee, what was that?” her grandma asked, concerned as to what it might have been.

“I don’t know, but it sure was hairy,” he responded.

“It walked like a man.”

Her grandfather paused a moment and then said: “It had too much hair to be a man.”

A Change of Fate

One of the most significant incidents involving the alleged creature occurred in 1965 when an encounter with Lynn Crabtree, a boy of 14, would forever link it to the legendary Crabtree family and ultimately change its destiny. [8]  Without this chance meeting, Charles Pierce’s
The Legend of Boggy Creek
may not have turned out as well as it did on the big screen, since the Crabtree’s stories would go on to play a major role in the movie, due in part to the notoriety of this incident.

Though many books on the subject of Bigfoot have summarized the incident over the years, the best and most thorough account can be found in the first memoir by J.E. “Smokey” Crabtree, Lynn’s father. Simply titled
Smokey and the Fouke Monster
, the book goes into great detail about this monster sighting and all the events that followed, including the monster hunts and the filming of
The Legend of Boggy Creek
. The book, which includes the fascinating tale of Smokey’s upbringing and adult life, not only makes for good reading but is inspirational as well. Though Smokey Crabtree’s stories were often damaging to his own family’s well-being and privacy, they are woven into the monster’s very existence. As such, one cannot tell the story of the Fouke Monster without including the tales of Smokey Crabtree.