THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (29 page)

1969: A woman encounters a half-man, half-ape creature while camping near Alleene, Arkansas.

Horrified, the girl ran back toward the tent. In doing so, the creature was apparently startled as well, and in making its own escape, ran full tilt into the side of their pickup truck before running off into the trees. The noise woke her father and brothers, who decided it would be best to pack up and leave immediately. As they packed hurriedly, they saw the creature crossing a nearby logging road, apparently curious to see what the people were doing. They noted that it moved rapidly on two legs and never dropped down to all fours. Before leaving, the men found footprints where it had run into their truck. The witnesses stated that the prints were clearly defined in the soft moist soil and measured approximately 14 inches in length by 8 inches at the widest. The tracks were distinctly three toed, a trait often attributed to the Fouke Monster.

Corresponding reports have been cataloged in neighboring Texas, with a particularly high concentration in the counties nearest Fouke, such as Red River, Bowie, Cass, Marion, and Harrison. An encounter similar to the ones reported in Fouke happened to my friend Brad McAndrews while he was visiting his grandparents house in Marion County. (Marion County is just southwest of Arkansas along the Sulphur River Watershed.) I had heard details of Brad’s encounter through mutual friends, but upon hearing the story from him firsthand, I had to seriously face the reality these reports represented. It’s one thing to document reports from strangers, no matter how credible they seem or how positive their references are, but it is another thing entirely to hear an account from a friend and person who would have absolutely no reason to lie to you about such a thing. Brad is now a medical research biologist, but at the time he encountered a strange ape-like creature in the woods near his grandparent’s home, he was simply an average ten-year-old kid who came upon something quite out of the ordinary.

It was around noon on a hot June day in 1989. Brad and his brother were staying at their grandparents’ cabin which was located on a remote spot of land outside the town of Jefferson, Texas. On that day, Brad’s grandmother and aunt offered to take the boys on a picnic, so the group of four ventured from the cabin down a path out past their old barn. Knowing of a spot that might be good for their picnic, Brad ran ahead to scout out the area. By now he was beyond sight of his grandmother and the others. When he arrived, he found that it was far more overgrown than he had remembered, so he turned and headed back towards the group.

As he headed back up the path, he heard a rustle in the woods. Something appeared to be coming directly toward him, so he stopped, thinking it might be a deer. As Brad waited anxiously, hoping to get a glimpse of a large buck, the cracking of twigs, pine saplings, and leaves became louder until finally an animal emerged from the woods. But this was no fine buck; it was something far more unexpected… and frightening. What emerged from the trees was an ape-like creature approximately seven-to-eight-feet tall with dark, reddish-brown hair and weathered looking skin. At first it was running on all fours, but upon seeing Brad, it stopped and rose up on two legs. It was then that Brad could see that it was, as he described it, “more human, than ape.” In his own words:

At about 15-20 yards to my right, it came into view and turned to its right. It was moving, on all fours, at what I would call a hustled pace, almost as if it was running from something. When it was at about 9-12 yards from me and about two feet off of the roadway, it used a rather large wooden fence post to hoist itself into a bipedal progression, using its left arm and hand. Its change in gait or posture did not result in a change in its speed. It then took a few running steps before passing behind a five foot sapling and stopping right before me. I could hear and feel the weight of this animal as it impacted the ground. When it reached me, it immediately stopped and squared its shoulders at me. I had never been so scared in my life, even to this very day. At only a distance of maybe 7-8 feet with nothing in between us, I completely froze and even held my breath hoping that maybe it wouldn’t see/hurt me and just leave. I never felt that it was charging me, but rather that it happened upon me by accident. This creature seemed to be just as startled to see me as I was to see it. His facial expression and body mannerisms told me that he was caught off guard and seemed very apprehensive as if it wasn’t sure what to do. We locked eyes with each other for a number of seconds before he turned his upper torso back and to his right (as if looking over its shoulder), shifting his weight onto his right leg, as if considering to take off, only to turn back to me and lock eyes again, and repeating this twice more. He seemed to be curious about me, but looked like he wanted to get the hell out of there. He stood unobstructed right before my eyes for what seemed like an eternity, but probably only lasted maybe 8-10 seconds.

As he stood transfixed on the creature, Brad began to hear his younger brother calling his name as he came up the grassy pathway. At that point, the animal glanced in his brother’s direction and suddenly sprinted off on two legs, using its hands to tunnel its way through the thicket of trees. Relieved, Brad turned and ran toward his brother as fast as his legs could carry him.

Sketch by Pete Travers based on Brad McAndrew’s description.
(Courtesy of Pete Travers)

As an adult now, and having studied biology in college and in his ongoing profession, Brad was able to document his experience very thoroughly, reflecting on the nature of the animal:

First and foremost, I cannot explain enough how human-like this creature was. From its facial features and expression, body language, and walking/running gait, this creature was scarily human other than its other body characteristics. Even at my age, I could tell that this was an intelligent creature by the way it seemed to be assessing his circumstances. I also cannot express enough how fluid this creature was in shifting from a four legged “run” to a bipedal running gait. This creature does not have any problems, or handicap whatsoever, in its gait, ability to walk or run on two legs, or to progress from one to the other while moving at a high rate of speed. It was very much more human than “ape.” I don’t really like to use the word ape when describing it.

With understanding of my own height at the time and after taking that into consideration, I would estimate the creature to stand between 7 1/2 - 8 1/2 feet tall. He had very broad shoulders and heavy muscle structure. This was a massive creature that I would guess weighed in the vicinity of four to five hundred pounds, but I can honestly see it pushing 600 plus pounds. It did not appear shiny, but rather dull and coarse. I would guess the length to be about 3”-4”. The hair covered most of the body, not including the face (with the exception of cheeks and jawline), forehead, palms of the hands, and the hair appeared much thinner on the chest and abdominal regions. Its head was cone-shaped slightly to the back of the head with the hair growing up and back—not growing down into the face. There was a forehead, as the hairline on the head did not extend down to its brow line (which was pronounced). Its neck was very thick and maybe short. I also believe that it may have had a restricted ability to swivel its head from side to side, as a human might do. Its eyes were a dark brown and its skin looked somewhat tough and weathered. I have difficulty describing the color of its skin. I can only describe it as an overly weathered and medium toned skin with a face that seemed more human than ape.

For obvious reasons, my friend’s encounter, with its sobering detail and eerie description, sticks out in my mind. I often visited my extended family in the countryside of Polk County, not far from this incident, so I can easily envision the setting and circumstance. If I could be scared out of my wits at that age by simply watching
The Legend of Boggy Creek
, then I can only imagine how downright frightened I would have been to witness something like this in real life. Seeing a creature on film is one thing, but seeing it up close and personal must surely be something else entirely.

Not be left out, counties such Bossier, Caddo, and Claiborne in Louisiana have also seen the same trend of reports, reinforcing the idea that the natural network of waterways spreading out along the Sulphur River Watershed could be home to a population of these undiscovered animals or perhaps the offspring of a once-captive animal gone feral. Whether it is the same type of creature sighted near Fouke is impossible to determine - they all seem to be large and hairy - but regardless it does seem to present a heavy case for the presence of one or more strange beasts in the area. Strange beasts who might occasionally wander up the meandering path of the Sulphur River to the infamous Boggy Creek, and from there to the sleepy little town of Fouke.

Diminishing Domain

In an attempt to dismiss the Fouke Monster sightings as isolated cases of mass hallucination or hysteria, some people point to the fact that the number of sightings has severely declined since the 1970s. Some people even claim that the sightings have stopped altogether. While I have shown that sightings definitely continued far beyond the monster’s initial heyday, it is true that they have diminished in number over the years. There is no way of truly knowing why, but regardless, it doesn’t provide enough ammo to debunk the whole affair. In fact, it might actually strengthen the case.

At the time of the initial rash of sightings during the 1960s and early 1970s, the landscape of Miller County was quite different than it is now. In those days, the land surrounding Fouke had not yet undergone the major deforestation that it has seen of late. Other than the small area carved out by Fouke’s main street and Highway 71, most of the land in and around the town at the time was still heavily wooded. That’s not to say that the area looks drastically different today, but there is definitely less woodland in the immediate vicinity than there once was.

The main two factors that have contributed to this deforestation have been the steady increase of open farmlands and the construction of Highway 549 that started early in the decade of the 2000s. The highway, which opened for traffic in December 2004, runs from Texarkana to Doddridge and takes a large bite out of lands formerly thick with trees. As in any case of major construction and land clearing, animals are forced to retreat further into undeveloped areas. This would, presumably, include any undocumented ape-like creatures that may dwell there.

If we look closely at the Fouke Monster sighting timeline, this diminishing wildlife domain seems to have had an effect on the reports of the monster. In the 1960s, most of the sightings took place near the outlying community of Jonesville, located near Mercer Bayou. Although Jonesville is still nestled in the dense Sulphur River woodland, it was even more isolated back in those days. Any creature moving through the landscape of the bayou could easily have happened upon one of the unassuming homes that dot the area and find itself face-to-face with humankind, as in the case of Mary Beth Searcy or Louise Harvin. Trappers and hunters were plentiful in the area back then and would be the most likely to stumble upon any such shadowy creature, as indeed they did. Sightings by the Crabtrees, Phyllis Brown, and Kenneth Dyas easily fit into this scenario, having hunted in and around the Mercer Bayou for most of their lives.

The encounters in the 1970s were closer to the town of Fouke, but this is not something that raises a major red flag. At the time, the spot where Boggy Creek crosses Highway 71, Willie Smith’s soybean field, the Ford’s rent house, and even the location on Oates Street closer to Texarkana were still sitting on the edge of vast wooded areas, and it was not uncommon to see wild animals at these locations. But over time, development in the community, and more dramatically, the conversion of woods to farmland has slowly lifted the veil of virgin timber and replaced it with the tarnish of civilization. As one would expect, the likelihood of seeing any large, reclusive animals near town was severely reduced.