THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (24 page)

Following this evaluation, the skeleton is transported to Bossier City, Louisiana, where it is examined by forensic anthropologist Clay Stewart. However, as in the case of the previous two examiners, nothing conclusive is offered.

In the end, it seems that the original report filed by the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office—that it was the carcass of an exotic Siberian tiger pet—was still the most likely explanation. The documentary merely exploits the interesting looking remains by leaving out the police report details and not bringing in an expert more familiar with the biology of wild cats.

The production apparently floundered for a while as the McCulloughs sought distribution. It was eventually released in 1995, but by this time the McCulloughs and Crabtree were in a dispute over money issues. As with Pierce and
The Legend of Boggy Creek
, Smokey felt he needed to take legal action and found himself right back in the offices of a law firm to sort it out. Twenty years had passed since the Pierce episode, but it was evident that filmmakers and Fouke just didn’t seem to mix very well.

Monsters By Moonlight

With the coming of the world wide web, reports of Fouke Monster sightings were easier to propagate. The stories no longer needed a traditional printed outlet, such as newspapers or books, to reach the public. Reports could be investigated by Sasquatch researchers, bloggers, or cryptozoologists, and posted for the world to see with the click of a few keystrokes. Using this technology, innovative special interest groups began setting up websites and casting their URL’s into the vast cyber sea. One such group was the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization, GCBRO for short, founded in 1997 by Bobby Hamilton.

Most people associate Bigfoot with sightings in the Pacific Northwest of the United States or in British Columbia, Canada. Only
Fate
magazine or the local papers would pay much attention to any of the local varieties, unless of course they managed to star in a movie. But even for the Fouke Monster and his Southern kin, there was no official place dedicated to furthering alleged reports of the Southern Sasquatch until organizations like the GCBRO changed the situation. As stated on their website, one of the group’s primary missions is “to bring to light more encounters and happenings from the South.”

Over the years, several notable researchers have joined the GCBRO, including Chester Moore, Jr., who has penned several cryptozoology-related books of his own and is a frequent contributor to magazines such as
Texas Parks & Wildlife
and
Louisiana Sportsman
. The GCBRO database holds numerous sighting reports, many of which have been investigated by one or more members of the team in an effort to maintain a reasonable level of integrity. Scanning the entries, it is not surprising that a couple of the more interesting reports originated from the Sulphur River area near Fouke.

One of the incidents occurred on September 17, 1997, as reported by a woman living 10 miles south of Texarkana on Highway 237. Her property, which she and her husband purchased only weeks before, was north of Boggy Creek on the west side of Fouke. She stated that while she was out one evening shopping, her husband was outside tending to the lawn and working on his car. At around 6:00 p.m., he began to feel uneasy. It was as if he were being watched, but initially he could not figure out the source of the strange feeling. It wasn’t until he began look into the surrounding wooded area that he noticed something moving in the brush. When he walked closer to the woods, he saw a “large, dark brown creature.” He described it as “about seven feet tall with a dark black face.” Unsure of what it was, the man stood there and watched the creature for several minutes, until he decided to return to the house and grab his pistol. But when he returned, the creature was no longer visible, so he walked slowly toward the woods in an attempt to get another look. Finally, he spotted it sitting on the ground about 30 feet from where he had first seen it. By his estimation, he was roughly 200 feet from it. He stood there for sometime, watching the animal, until finally the sun dropped behind the horizon and the animal was engulfed by the encroaching darkness. When the woman returned from shopping, he was waiting in the yard with his gun and a flashlight to make sure she got into the house safely.

This was not the only strange incident to occur near the couple’s home, however.

On the bright moonlit night of February 2, 1999, the couple was sitting outside, watching for the heard of wild hogs that often passed through their 50 acre property in hopes of bagging a tasty one for cooking. To get a better shot, they moved up to the second floor of their two-story home. As the hogs approached, they could see their wily silhouettes against the moonlit backdrop.

Suddenly, they heard “a strange sound from far to the right.” Following that came another sound, seemingly in reply to the first, from directly behind the hogs. “It sounded like a whistle that turned into a gibberish type noise,” the woman reported. Frightened, the hogs snorted and scrambled for the treeline. “Then there was a blood curdling scream,” she continued. “I could tell by the sound that one of the hogs was being slaughtered. It was followed by loud shriekish screams and howls with this gibberish sound mixed in. I have never heard anything quite like this before. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.”

The noises continued for another five minutes, inspiring all the neighboring dogs to go crazy. Then there was silence.

The next morning, the couple found a large, flat spot in the field, approximately four feet in diameter, covered in fresh blood. The grass in the surrounding area was torn up, indicating it had been the scene of at least one hog’s final stand, although no dead hogs could be found. “Whatever killed that hog, picked it up and walked away with it,” the wife concluded.

While no hairy creatures were observed in this case, images of the Fouke Monster spring to mind as both the Fouke Monster, and Sasquatch in general, have been accused of preying on hogs. This case, if true, seems to implicate two or more large creatures working together in a calculated game of hunt with the hogs as prey. But nothing about that night is certain except for the hog butchery, so this is purely conjecture. The area is known to host mountain lions and other large predators, so the identity of the actual killer will never be known.

Another report posted in the GCBRO database occurred around the same time, although the creature was spotted in the morning sun instead of by moonlight. It was July 11, 1998, around 9:00 a.m. A woman (who requested anonymity) was babysitting her sister’s children in the Jonesville area southwest of Fouke. Eager to enjoy the daylight before the unbearable heat set in, she walked the children a short distance from the house to an area where some new timber had been cut, when something strange caught her eye off to the right. As she focused on it, much to her horror she realized it was a “very large hairy creature” watching them from the edge of the woods. The woman was shaken but managed to keep her composure as she hurried the kids back toward the house. “I kept looking out the corner of my eye to see if it tried to follow us,” she wrote, as she described the sense of fear. “I have to say this, that was the longest walk I have ever had to take. I was scared to death and was so afraid that the thing was going to come after us. But it never did.”

The incident bears a striking similarity to one of the memorable scenes in
The Legend of Boggy Creek
where some kids and their mother witness the beast as it stands on the edge of a clearing. If true, it would seem that the monster was still up to his old tricks, casting a curious eye upon the human presence near his old haunting grounds of Jonesville. In 1998 the area was still much the same as it had been back in the 1960s.

Another report from the area was investigated by my friend Conor Ameigh of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The incident occurred in the late night hours of November 1996. In this case a truck driver was traveling north on Highway 71, having made an earlier delivery in Shreveport. The sky was overcast, but the Halogen headlights of his 18-wheeler effectively carved away the darkness as he rolled across the lonely blacktop. The trip had been uneventful until approximately 1:00 a.m., when he neared the Sulphur River Bridge that crosses the highway eight miles south of Fouke. As he drew closer, his eyes were drawn to a tall dark shape standing near the water on the right-hand side of the road. At first he believed it to be a dead tree trunk, but then he noticed the shape had two red eyes reflecting back in the headlights. Suddenly the “tree” began walking away from the river’s embankment toward the woods. The driver was both startled and curious, so he let off his throttle to slow down. The creature looked to be dull gray in color, like that of a dead tree. As it walked away on two legs, it took huge steps, covering the ground quickly without any noticeable arm movement. As the truck continued to slow, the brakes made a deep rumbling sound. At that point, the driver heard a loud scream coming from the direction of the creature, before it disappeared from view in the darkness. Shaken, the driver accelerated and left the area without stopping in Fouke. It was only later that he was able to do some internet research, finding that others had reported unexplained creatures in the area. Prior to that, he had only associated Sasquatch tales with the Pacific Northwest. Whether anyone else believed his story or not, the driver’s mind was permanently changed after what he saw that night.

Swamp Stalker

By 1999 a few more organizations had joined the hunt for the “Sasquatch of the South,” offering additional resources for submitting reports and spreading information. One of these was the Texas Bigfoot Research Center (now known as the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, or TBRC for short), a group of researchers dedicated to proving the possible existence of a large, undocumented primate species in the four state region of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. The organization was initially founded by Craig Woolheater and Luke Gross, the former having been inspired by the tales of the Lake Worth Monster in Texas, as well as the Fouke Monster.

Since then the TBRC’s membership has expanded to include a wide range of skilled personnel with backgrounds in wildlife biology, anthropology, ecology, military intelligence, and law enforcement, just to name a few. Over the years, the group has been consulted on numerous occasions by documentary and television producers seeking input on the mystery. Members have appeared in shows such as
Weird Travels
and
MonsterQuest,
which air frequently on the Travel Channel and History Channel television networks.

Browsing their website’s vast database of sighting reports, we find that they too offer several cases from the Miller County area. The first one occurred on January 15, 2000. The witness claims to have seen a “hairy man-like creature approximately eight-foot tall” walking through a wheat field west of Fouke in the late afternoon hours. He described the creature as having thick, reddish brown hair, which was matted with sticks and leaves. The witness also noticed a “distinct musky smell” downwind from the animal.

At one point the alleged creature suddenly stopped and looked at the witness. The man was armed but did not attempt to shoot. In his own words: “I was very frightened when it stopped and looked in my direction. I had a gun but would never shoot anything unless it is game.”

After the creature traversed the field, it disappeared into the trees and was not seen again. Perhaps not coincidentally, the field was located on the edge of Boggy Creek.

The next report on file is an even more chilling account, which also occurred during the winter of 2000. The witness in this case was leery about sharing his experience for fear of ridicule, but nonetheless allowed his report to be published online and for a TBRC investigator to follow up with questioning. The result is a detailed account of a frightening face-to-face encounter with a large, unidentified primate.

The incident took place on a cold moonlit night sometime after midnight. The witness and several other men were coon hunting near Mercer Bayou in an area the old timers call Thornton Wells. Coon hunting is typically done using well-trained dogs, so the men in question were using Treeing Walker Coonhounds to locate the target animals. At some point, the witness reported that his dog treed a raccoon on one side of the swamp while the other dogs pursued coons elsewhere in the swampy bottoms. The witness followed his dog’s lead and separated from the other men. After locating the coon and collecting his dog, he started back across the swamp to rejoin the group when something strange happened:

Suddenly I heard something walking in the flooded timber. (Bare in mind this whole area is 8-15 inches flooded with brackish swamp water.) I could tell by the gate [
sic
] that it was someone coming in the flooded woods. So I called out to them, thinking it must of been one of my hunting companions. To my dismay no one answered—instead all I heard was a deep throated gurgling growl and [smelled] the awfullest [
sic
] putrid smell. The smell was like when you kill a wild hog and grab him by the hind leg and then you give out dragging him and put your hand up to your nose and the smell knocks you over. I also heard a whining kind of a whistling sound. My dogs were on my leash and were whimpering. These were UKC Lipper-bred Walkers, they probably weighed in at close to 100 lbs. They could rip a 20 lb coon apart, yet there they were cowardly crouched behind my legs whimpering. I couldn’t understand it. Still, in all, I was not concerned about any of this and got my dogs and started back across the swamp.