THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (11 page)

Here is how it all began…

It was early in the evening as the sun began to set over Jonesville. Lynn Crabtree, a seasoned woodsman and hunter even at his young age, set out to hunt some squirrels near the lake on the Crabtree property. [9]  He was armed with a 20-gauge shotgun loaded with squirrel shot, which would be sufficient for small animals but not for what he was about to witness.

As he sat by a tree waiting for any unlucky squirrels to happen by, he heard the hoofbeats of horses making their way down an old logging trail and eventually splashing into the waters of the lake. The horses belonged to a neighbor and often ran loose, so it was nothing out of the ordinary. He then heard the bellowing of a dog from the same direction. With this, Lynn got up and began to head toward the sound, thinking that perhaps their dog might have been injured or gotten hung up in a fence. But as he approached, he realized that the noise must have been coming from the
thing
that now stood in front of him, a mere 30 steps away. It was some type of “hairy man or gorilla type beast with very long arms.” Lynn could only assume that it had been the reason the horses fled into the safety of the lake.

The beast, which seemed agitated, suddenly stopped as it caught sight of Lynn. The boy could see that the creature stood an estimated seven or eight feet high with reddish-brown hair about four inches long. Its face was obscured by hair with “only a dark brown nose showing, flat and close to his face.” Thinking it must surely be a man, Lynn raised his gun in an attempt to frighten him off. But the strange manimal didn’t react to the danger posed by the gun and started walking toward the boy. Surprised and scared, Lynn shouted a warning before firing off a round. He aimed for the head, but the beast seemed totally unaffected as it continued to advance. The Crabtree boy shot off two more rounds before finally fleeing in panic towards his parents’ house.

If the Crabtrees had been the only ones present when Lynn returned from the woods, then the story might have ended there. But as circumstance would have it, the family had company at the time, so when the horrified teenager burst into the house, the story was fated to become public knowledge.

After Lynn had calmed down, Smokey made his way out to the very spot where the boy said the encounter occurred. He found evidence of the gunshots, which had hit the tree trunks at a height consistent with firing at the head and torso of a seven-or-eight-foot bipedal creature. Surprisingly, however, although the family had heard three shots, just as Lynn described, Smokey could not find any spent shotgun shells.

Puzzled, Smokey returned to the house. The story was undeniably fantastic, but there was no reason for anyone at the house to question Lynn’s sincerity. In Smokey’s own words, “The community knew [Lynn] well… and respected him highly for being a truthful boy.” As a boy who was raised in a very traditional and moral fashion, he was never known to be a liar or to make up ridiculous tales. The Crabtree’s visitors knew this as well, as the family was known to be honest and hard working.

I never did get a chance to interview Lynn about the incident, but I spoke to several people who had known him over the years, including his lifelong friend Mackey Harvin who also grew up in Jonesville. He confirmed the details of the event and spoke highly of Lynn’s credibility. It was his opinion that if the young man said he encountered such a creature, then he absolutely did.

There is, of course, no evidence to back up Lynn’s tale. So what are we to make of his story? If he wasn’t lying, and if it wasn’t a case of misidentification, then one can only conclude that there was some kind of mysterious ape-like creature living in the woods near Jonesville.

In light of this, I’ve often pondered the two most puzzling aspects in the story: first, that there were no spent shells on the ground when Smokey returned to investigate, and second, that a boy who could shoot a squirrel with his firearm could not hit a target that would have been at least two to three feet wide across the shoulders. If the boy’s estimate that he was less than 30 steps away is correct, and given that a shotgun requires less accuracy than say a rifle or handgun, it would stand to reason that he could have easily hit the animal at least once. Yet, the thing kept advancing on the boy and no blood was found at the scene.

If the incident did in fact occur, one must assume that the creature either picked up the shell casings or scattered them out of sight before leaving the scene. Perhaps the creature had been curious seeing those shiny objects on the ground.

1965: Lynn Crabtree encounters the creature at Crabtree Lake.

As for Lynn missing the creature with three shots, I tried to think back to when I was a boy of 14 hunting the backwoods of Texas. Granted, I was probably not as seasoned as Lynn, who had spent his whole life in a rural setting, hunting animals to put food on the dinner table. But regardless, I can imagine the cold steel of my grandfather’s 20-gauge Remington shotgun in my hand shaking as I raise it in warning, while a hairy, seven-foot “monster” begins to move in my direction. I had missed shots at my dad’s Coors cans while practicing under calm circumstances, so I can see how the boy might have missed, his hands shaking like jackhammers as he pointed it toward the hairy thing, not sure if it was man or ape. Or maybe Lynn did score a hit or two, but the small size squirrel shot had not penetrated the creature’s thick fur, which is certainly possible.

Beyond such conjecture, the mystery remains. Lynn
never
spoke to the press about the incident. He passed away in 2011.

Others Come Forth

Once the word about Lynn’s frightening encounter got out, it wasn’t long before other creepy tales came to light to back up the boy’s story. First, Lynn’s great uncle, James Crabtree, reminded everyone that he had also seen something that fit a similar description in the nearby woods 10 years earlier. Fred Crabtree also came forth with a similar story saying that he had seen a hairy man-like creature prowling in the dense backwoods near Jonesville months earlier. He was out hunting when he came across the shadowy creature as it stood among the thick trees. Like James, he was unable to get a good look before the thing slipped out of sight, but it seems reasonable to assume that it was the same creature or perhaps another of its kind. He hesitated to shoot, since it was impossible to determine if it was man or animal. Circumstantial and nepotistic as these tales were, they still gave credence to the boy’s extraordinary claim that a monster was living among them.

An especially chilling account came from Mary Beth Searcy who also lived in the area of Jonesville near Boggy Creek, about three miles from the Crabtree property. Mary Beth, a teenager at the time, was spending the night at home with her mother, older sister, and baby niece, while her brother and father were spending the night elsewhere. When the other women went to bed early with the baby, Mary Beth continued doing her schoolwork. As the spring air cooled with the deepening night, Mary Beth’s sister asked her to cover the bedroom window to prevent the baby from becoming ill. Grabbing a blanket, Mary Beth approached the window and proceeded to cover it. As she did so, she glanced into the yard, which was bathed in enough sparse moonlight to see the immediate area between the house and the outlying trees. She was shocked to see a large, hairy creature emerging from the woods, walking on two legs as though it were human. She screamed and ran from the window as the other women bolted awake. The women spent the rest of the night in sleepless terror.

The Searcy house—one of two structures used in the movie
that still stands today.
(Photo by the author)

This account would later be recreated in the movie
The Legend of Boggy Creek
with Judy Baltom playing the part of Mary Beth, and Mary Beth playing the part of her own sister. [10]  According to Fouke residents, the movie’s portrayal of the events is an accurate retelling with the exception of the dead cat shown at the end. (It apparently died of fright.) If true, this must have been a horrifying experience for the young girl, since they had no phone and the nearest neighbor was more than a mile away. The Searcy house still stands today, although it’s been vacant for many years. And even though neighbors now live in the homes next door, it’s still something of a spooky sight; it’s not hard to imagine what it must have been like back then when Mary Beth saw the creature leering in the darkness.

I tried many times to interview Mary Beth, but she was not willing to talk. Over the years she’s experienced too much ridicule about the incident and had just decided to stop talking about it. The last time she commented publicly was in 1992, when she was interviewed by a reporter from KTBS-TV in Shreveport, who was doing a twentieth year anniversary retrospective on the movie. On camera, Mary Beth explained how she felt:

Mary Beth: “They ask you about it, you know, like they’re really serious and then they laugh at you [saying] ‘ah, you don’t believe that do you… you don’t expect us to believe it??’ Well, if hadn’t expected them to believe it, I wouldn’t tell ‘em. I’ve never told a lie in my life.”

Reporter: “But you know it’s real as far as you’re concerned.”

Mary Beth: “I saw it.”

Her words and the sincere tone of her voice leave little doubt that she still sticks by her story.

After the news spread of Lynn Crabtree’s sighting, men started showing up at Smokey Crabtree’s house offering to help hunt down the creature. Nearly 20 locals, armed with guns, horses, and tracking dogs scouted the area, but they were unable to find any solid evidence of the creature’s presence. One of the men on horseback claimed that some kind of creature had passed by and spooked his horse, but he was unable to get a good look at it.

Smokey continued to look for the creature on his own for the next few nights, but again, the experienced woodsman came up empty-handed and somewhat disappointed that he was unable to conclusively prove Lynn’s story. But there was a glimmer of hope that a real living creature was out there. In a 1971 interview with the
Texarkana Gazette
, Smokey told how they were able to solicit a response from the monster:

“At that time we tried to get dogs to run the thing but they wouldn’t go in the woods. For three nights after that we used a wounded rabbit call and got the creature to answer it but he would never get close to us.

“It started making a noise like a house cat then went into a chatter something like a goat then into a noise something like an owl. After a while it seemed to get annoyed and made a sound like a cross between a scream and a growl. That sound would really make your hair stand on end.”

A short time later, another 14-year-old boy from the Jonesville area, Kenneth Dyas, claimed to have encountered the monster while deer hunting. Dyas is now deceased, so very few details can be found regarding this incident. According to sources, Dyas shot at the creature and fled the woods as fast as he could.

Another sighting report came to me via Frank McFerrin, a long-time Fouke resident and curator of the Miller County Historical Society Museum. He estimates that the incident took place around the same time, in 1964 or 1965, although the details of Phyllis Brown’s spooky encounter with a similar creature were not known publicly until several years after the fact.