THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (27 page)

Illegal liquor operations continued long after the era of Bonnie and Clyde, but they were less prominent as a source of major crime. Yet, even into the 1960s, nearby stills continued to be raided. According to an article in the April 19, 1964, edition of the
Texarkana Gazette
, federal liquor agents raided two moonshine liquor stills that week in Stamps, Arkansas. Many more continued to operate under the radar in and around the Sulphur River area, and you might even find a few today. (But I don’t recommend you go looking!)

So, while there is no doubt that the Fouke area has a long history of moonshine activity, what evidence is there to suggest that moonshiners were responsible for the monster tales? Like the circus train theory, it seems that everyone I spoke to while doing research in Fouke knew of the moonshine theory, yet no one could pinpoint a single confession or conversation that links this theory to reality. Fouke/Jonesville is a very tight-knit community, and like other small towns, people are intimately familiar with one another. When someone speaks of the monster, word gets around. If an old moonshiner claimed that he or she had created the monster, word would have gotten around. Yet, not one person, not even the old timers, can cite a single person who has claimed responsibility for the monster’s creation.

But just for argument’s sake, lets say that the monster
was
a masterful myth purported by a group of clever liquor entrepreneurs. Would they spread stories of imaginary sightings or convince others to claim that they had seen a big hairy monster lurking outside their window or run by their car at night? To do so would be completely contrary to the low profile most early witnesses tried to keep for fear of ridicule, or worse, a trip to the loony bin. As we have seen, most of the early tales came to light as a result of other people spreading the word, such as news reporters or filmmakers, not through the deliberate spreading of rumors by the people who had seen the monster. The purposeful moonshiner theory cannot account for the sightings by younger kids like Lynn Crabtree, Kenneth Dyas, or by hunters such as Phyllis Brown who kept quiet about their sightings for many years before their stories leaked out. And what about Bobby Ford who had only lived in the area for a few weeks? How could he have so quickly conspired with moonshiners on their master plan. It’s just not possible.

Furthermore, to complete the farce, it would require someone to dress up in a fur suit and take a midnight jog down a dark stretch of Highway 71, as in the case of musician Carl Finch’s sighting in 1967. Finch was an outsider, having no prior knowledge of “the monster,” so it seems incomprehensible that these type of sightings could have been staged by the moonshiners. It just doesn’t add up.

Again, as in the case of the circus train, this does not completely rule out the possibility that a moonshiner or two didn’t try to use the monster to their advantage, but it cannot account for all the sightings over the last 60 years. Besides, if this was a masterful plan by moonshiners, it totally backfired. On more than one occasion, the monster incited hundreds of people to take to the local woods on a monster hunt. That’s not the kind of thing you want to happen when you are trying to kick back at the hideout and enjoy a jar of White Lightning with a few close friends.

On the flipside, some have claimed the monster owes his creation to the fevered visions of those who were
customers
of the moonshiners. While this may account for a sighting or two, it certainly cannot account for all of them, or even a majority. Many of the sightings were reported by respectable people, skilled hunters, and policemen, who were definitely not drunk at the time. To them, the monster was a sober reality.

There’s a Panther Under the House

The next theory up for evaluation is the “panther” explanation. In this scenario we are asked to believe that a large cat, specifically a
black panther
, is responsible for some or all of the sightings and track finds.

In order to examine this more closely, we must first decide if any so-called panthers live in the area around Fouke. The answer should be fairly easy to come by, but for some reason most regional wildlife management agencies like to play down the existence of predatory felines, often denying their presence altogether, despite overwhelming eyewitness reports. Ironically, this sounds very much like the dilemma of the Fouke Monster.

The term “black panther” is itself confusing since it is not a distinct species of cat, but rather a generic term for black (melanistic) specimens of the genus. In other words, “black panther” is just a commonly used name for the dark colored version of
any
species of large cat. For example, black panthers in Latin America are actually black jaguars (
Panthera onca
), and in Asia or Africa they are black leopards (
Panthera pardus
). In North America, they may be black jaguars or possibly black cougars (
Puma concolor
), although no cougars have ever been proven to have this variant.

Confused yet? No problem. Just keep in mind that a “black panther” is not necessarily one specific cat, but simply
any
large cat that is black in color. Beyond that, the cougar, also referred to as a mountain lion or puma, is primarily tan or gray in color with a lighter underbelly. No doubt this type of cougar comes to mind when one thinks of North American wild cats.

All that being said, do any
large cats of any color
exist in Arkansas? Well, yes and no. Mountain lions (cougars) were known to be present in Arkansas until their apparent eradication, which most agree occurred by 1920. In 2001, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission took mountain lions off the state’s endangered species list and officially adopted the policy that there are no wild mountain lions in Arkansas. However, some sightings have been reported and the animals have been photographed, indicating that these animals still roam free in the state, even if only in small numbers.

An article which appeared in the December 22, 2006, edition of
The Daily Citizen
out of Searcy, Arkansas, contained the details of a sighting four miles north of Searcy. A mountain lion had been seen on several occasions by multiple people. The
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
cited an incident in August of 2003, when a hunter’s game camera captured the image of a mountain lion on private land near the Winona Wildlife Management Area west of Little Rock. That same year, the
Democrat-Gazette
ran another article detailing a study by the biology department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, which serves as the state’s clearinghouse for cougar reports. The study was headed by David W. Clark, a former UA graduate student, who stated: “We have documented a minimum of four mountain lions in Arkansas over a span of five years based on Class I evidence.” This evidence included photographs, scat, tracks, and casts of tracks.

The Game and Fish Commission attributes these rare cases to escaped pets rather than to remnants of the state’s original mountain lion population. According to Game and Fish biologist Blake Sasse: “We haven’t come across any [mountain lions] in Arkansas that we can’t trace back to a pet animal that’s escaped or intentionally been released.”

But regardless of how the cats got there, they have definitely been there, and were just as likely to have been present back in the mid-1900s when the whole Fouke Monster business got underway. As for the black panther variation that some have claimed is responsible for some of the monster incidents, that’s even more debatable; although, again, there have been reports of melanistic mystery felines all over North America, including the state of Arkansas. In fact, one of them was clearly spotted in the Texarkana area in June of 1971, during the peak of Fouke Monster activity. While Deputy H.L. Phillips and Sheriff’s Posse member Gary Beard were patrolling near Sugar Hill Road, several hundred yards from Highway 71, they saw what Phillips referred to as a “darn big black panther.” It walked right in front of the patrol car, so there was no doubt about what they had seen. Phillips and others conjectured that it was this creature, or another like it, that may have been responsible for some of the Fouke Monster incidents.

Resident Rick Roberts has personally seen two black panthers near Fouke. The first was at Coon’s Crossing near Jonesville; the second was seen by both Rick and his brother Denny as it lurked around Denny’s property in Fouke.

I also had a rather timely sighting of a strange feline on one occasion as I was leaving Fouke. My wife and I had spent the day conducting interviews and doing various research for this book and were heading home just before dusk. We traveled south on Highway 71 from Fouke and turned on the access road leading to the newer Highway 549. As we began to merge onto 549, my wife pointed to an animal standing in the grassy area off to the side of the shoulder. We were moving quickly, but there was no doubt at all that it was a black cat. A very large black cat. As we passed by and picked up speed, I turned and looked back so I could watch the animal for as long as possible. It did not appear as large as a full grown wild cat, such as you would typically see at a zoo, but it was noticeably larger than a common house cat and there was no doubt that its fur was a uniform, solid black color. After it faded from view, I turned back and we discussed what we had both seen. There is no way to be certain, but we both found it ironic to see what we believed to be some kind of medium sized black “panther” lurking right there on the outskirts of Fouke.

So now that we know big cats “exist without existing” in Arkansas, could they possibly be masquerading as seven-foot-tall man-like apes? Going back to the Ford incident, there is some evidence that suggests the family’s mysterious visitor may have actually been some type of panther, black or otherwise. Upon the initial investigation conducted by Constable Ernest Walraven, he found evidence that something had torn away some of the tin that was nailed around the bottom of the house. The house sat about three feet up off the ground, so there was ample room under it for animals to hide. He also observed scratch marks and tracks that might indicate some kind of large cat had been making a home under the house. Even Don Ford was quoted a few days later as saying, “We think now it might have been a big cat, like a mountain lion or puma.”

No further evidence had surfaced to show that it was such a cat, so the reason why he changed the story is not clear. Maybe it was due to the hundreds of people who were crawling all over the property on the Monday after the news report came out, making it hard for him to sleep. “I work nights and haven’t been able to get any sleep today,” he remarked to newspaper reporters. By minimizing the monster, perhaps he thought the hoopla would die down.

In Bobby Ford’s initial statement, he was quoted as saying: “I was walking the rungs of a ladder to get up on the porch when the thing grabbed me. I felt a hairy arm come over my shoulder and the next thing I knew we were on the ground. The thing was breathing real hard and his eyes were about the size of a half-dollar and real red.” Presumably, it was the same hairy arm that had poked its way through their window on the previous night. It’s hard to imagine that they would not recognize a cat’s paw, even if it was black in color, but perhaps it could be mistaken for the hand of some other more
mysterious
creature. Even in Bobby’s struggle to reach the porch, it was dark outside and perhaps it was too difficult or he was too frightened to focus on the creature long enough to get a better look. He felt that he was fighting for his life, so that would be understandable.

Tracks found on subsequent occasions, such as the ones spotted in June of 1971, near the abandoned fertilizer plant on Oats Road, after sightings were reported in the area, could also be attributed to such an animal. However, there was no direct link to the Fouke Monster, so even if the tracks were made by a panther, it did not implicate the monster as a mere cat.

So in the long run, even if we credit a black panther for the attack on the Fords, for some of the track finds, and maybe even for another vague sighting or two, this doesn’t come close to a satisfactory explanation for the sightings as a whole. Like the moonshiner or hoax theories, the black panther theory does not account for why highly seasoned hunters saw hairy man-like animals
walking upright
in the woods, or running by their tree stands, or why countless people had clearly seen a bipedal creature resembling an ape walk across roads in plain view.

The black panther is indeed a high ranking player in the world of cryptozoology, but his story is not that of the Fouke Monster.

Sundown Town

Another theory to explain the Fouke monster is rooted in one of the darkest corners of American history. This particular rubbish theorizes that the monster was invented as a means to keep non-whites out of Fouke. While it is not something that most of us are proud of, it’s a fact that racism has plagued our country since the very beginning. After the abolishment of slavery in 1865, things got even worse, causing scenes of racial tension and violence to be played out all across the U.S. Every facet of our society has been affected, and indeed it seems that few cities or towns were immune to the issue. Fouke was no exception and even found itself on a list of suspected “Sundown Towns.”